Editorial Policies

All articles published in SPACE International Journal of Space Studies in Architecture and Urban Design undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review by at least two referees. Each paper submitted is initially being screened by the Editorial board of the journal in order to find out whether the quality and content of the paper suit the aims and scope of the journal or not. If yes, then the paper is sent to at least two anonymous reviewers. SPACE International Journal of Space Studies in Architecture and Urban Design does not permit the authors to recommend peer reviewers.

Each submitted manuscript is evaluated on the following basis:

• The originality of the work by means of its contribution to knowledge and understanding to the field of scholarly publishing.
• Theory and methodology in terms of explanation and reflection of the theory and the research method/s of the work as well as themselves.
• The quality of the data or theoretical analysis and argumentation.
• Its ability of expression, use of the English language and structure of the manuscript including the abstract.
• The significance of the paper to space studies in architecture and urban design.

Therefore, all reviewers are asked to provide a clear assessment of the issues given above and they use a series of decision categories in the assessment of submitted papers. These decisions and their explanations are provided in the table below.

Table: Decision categories of SPACE International Journal of Space Studies in Architecture and Urban Design

* According to the editorial policy of the journal a paper should advance to at least the next level of decision in each round of submission. For example, a paper’s revised version which was previously accepted with major revisions should receive a new decision of at least ‘accept with minor revision’. This applies at all levels of decisions.

The comments as well as the decision requests by peer reviewers will be considered by the Editor when making a decision, but ultimate responsibility for acceptance or rejection rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief. 

All submitted articles in this journal have undergone rigorous double blind peer review by at least two referees, based on initial editor’s screening. More information regarding SPACE International Journal of Space Studies in Architecture and Urban Design peer review process is available here (link to Peer Review Process).

Authors can choose to publish gold open access in this journal (link to Open Access).

Please read the Instructions for Authors for information on how to submit your article.

The steps of the peer review process are as follows:

• The Author submits a manuscript.
• The Editor does the initial screening. If the editor decides that the content and the quality of the paper suit the standards of the journal, forwards it to at least two reviewers. If not, immediately rejects.
• Each reviewer reviews the manuscript according to the guidelines of the journal and requests a decision.
• The article is returned to the editor along with recommendations to reject the article or accept it with minor revisions or accept with major revisions or accept it.
• The Editor drafts a decision to be sent to the author.
• The article is returned to the Author along with the reviewer’s feedback.
  • If the paper is rejected, the author has the feedback of the reviewers.
  • If the paper is accepted with major revisions, a revised version of the paper will be submitted, and peer reviewed again. The revised version should achieve at least an ‘accept with minor revisions’ decision.
  • If the paper is accepted with minor revisions, a revised version of the paper should be submitted. The revised version will be assessed by the editors and not sent out again for peer review.
  • If the paper is accepted, it will return to the editor.
• The Editor receives the last and revised version of the article and sends it to the production editors to be published.

We welcome genuine appeals to either editor decisions or reviewer comments. However, you will have to provide both strong evidence and information in response to the editor’s decision and reviewers’ comments.

If you wish to appeal editor’s decision or reviewers’ comments, please submit an appeal letter to the journal’s online editorial office. Please address this to the editor in-chief and be sure that you explain the basis for the appeal clearly. You should:

• Elaborate why you disagree with the decision and/or comments and provide replies specifically to any of the editor’s and/or reviewers’ comments related to the reject decision.
• Include evidence if you think and believe that a reviewer has made technical errors in his/her assessment of your manuscript.
• Provide evidence if you believe that a reviewer may have a conflict of interest.

In the case that the author/s have reasonable objections to the review/s, it will be taken into consideration seriously by the Editorial Board. If there is a doubt about the objectivity or quality of the review, the Editor-in-Chief will assign additional reviewer(s).

Additional reviewers may also be assigned when reviewers’ decisions are contrary to each other (accept or reject) or otherwise substantially incompatible.

The final decision on the acceptance of the manuscript for publication rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief.

Maintaining confidentiality of the peer review and editorial decision-making process at all levels is a requirement as well as complying with data protection regulations (including GDPR). The invited reviewer should declare any competing interest before assessing the manuscript. SPACE International Journal of Space Studies in Architecture and Urban Design does not permit reviewers to involve a colleague as a co-reviewer for an article and to share the manuscript.

In the process of investigating any ethical query, the submitted manuscript, author, reviewer/s, and any other person/s who is involved will be treated in confidence. It should be known that during an investigation there may be a need to share information with the third parties, such as the ethics committee and/or the authors’ institution at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.

SPACE International Journal of Space Studies in Architecture and Urban Design is a Subscription-based (non-OA) Journal. Publisher own the rights to the articles in the journal. The articles can be read by subscribing to the Journal either individually or institutionally. In order to use the articles in any way, permission from the publisher must be obtained. Optional Open Access publication is available in this journal. See Optional Open Access publication if you are interested in OAP.

SPACE Studies Publications needs publishing rights from each author for their article in order to publish it. Therefore, authors are asked to sign an author contract which grants SPACE Studies Publications the necessary publishing rights. This is in the production phase right after a manuscript has been accepted. The Production team of the Journal then sends an email to the author with all the details.

In the standard author contract, the author transfers or in other words “assigns” copyright to SPACE Studies Publications as the owner and publisher of the journal.

Assigning the copyright enables SPACE Studies Publications to:

• Manage the work of an author effectively and publish it.
• Make the work available and increase the visibility of the work through the academic community and beyond.
• Act as stewards of the work as it appears in the scholarly record.
• Handle the requests of reusage on the author’s behalf.
• Take action when appropriate where the article has been infringed or plagiarized.

After assigning copyright, the author still retains the right to:

• Be credited as the author of the article.
• Make printed copies of his/her article to use for a lecture or class which is being lead on a non-commercial basis.
• Share the article using his/her free e-copies with friends and/or colleagues.
• Present the article at a meeting or conference on a non-commercial basis.
• Post the article on personal website or institutional repositories depending on embargo period. Embargo period for personal website is 0 (zero) months, whilst embargo period for the institutional repositories and networks is 18 months.

Optional open access (OA) publication is possible and available in this journal with a standard Article Publication Charge (APC).

When an article is published OA, the author retains the copyright in his/her work. The author is asked to sign an author contract which gives SPACE Studies Publications the non-exclusive right to publish the Final Version of the author’s article. The author contract asks for the author’s choice of Creative Commons license, which dictates what others can do with his/her article once the article has been published.

The licenses SPACE Studies Publications offers for open access articles are

SPACE Studies Publications’ Open Access article processing charges vary according to the membership level. Details can be found on APC Payment (Open Access Article Processing Charge Payment).

While submitting an article to SPACE International Journal of Space Studies in Architecture and Urban Design, there are ethics to be followed by the authors which are as follows.

• Authors should be clear about the authorship. Being clear means all the contributions to the article are in the right order, all the acknowledgements are given, and they are up to date, all the co-author/s (if any) have contributed to the article and thus agree to submit the paper, and if you are not submitting the paper in the existence of your co-authors you inform them when you submit.
• Authors should be sure that they included all the funding and funders (if any) in their cover letter. 
• The data used by authors should be either of their own or the permission/s should be taken. 
• Authors should avoid plagiarism and self-plagiarism. This means they should be sure that they cited their own and others’ works correctly, and they have written permissions to re-use and/or reproduce the figures and tables of others.
• Authors should submit their article to just one journal at a time which means it will be considered by one journal and its team at a time. If the author decides to submit her/his paper to other journal, she/he always have right to withdraw it.