Editorial Policies

Journal

Editorial Policies

The following policies apply to SPACE International Journal of Space Studies in Architecture and Urban Design published by SPACE Studies Publications. Before submitting your article, please read these policies carefully in order to ensure you have totally and correctly followed all the requirements.

Peer Review Policy

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

Decision Category	Explanation of the Category
Accept	The editors and the reviewers decide that the paper meets the standards of the journal and that it should be accepted for publication without the need for further revisions. There may still be some minor editing tasks required at the proofs checking stage.
Accept with minor revisions	The assessment of the editors and the reviewers is that the paper makes a strong contribution to the field, thus it has a significant merit but there are some further revisions required to meet the standards of the journal which also maximises its contribution. The revised version of the paper is normally assessed by editors and not sent out again for peer review.
Accept with major revisions	The assessment of the editors and the reviewers is that the paper has potential but there are significant further revisions required for the paper to meet the standards of the journal. Authors are clearly informed of the required revisions that needs to be made. In all cases the revised version of the paper is sent out for further peer review and if possible, by involving the original reviewers of the paper.
Reject and resubmit	The assessment of the editors and reviewers is that the paper does not currently meet the standards of the journal, but still, there is potential in the paper if it is revised substantively. A resubmitted paper always starts the peer review process from the beginning, thus sent out for full peer review again.
Reject	The assessment of the editors and reviewers is that the paper is unlikely to meet the required standards of the journal OR the paper does not meet the required standards of the journal even following revision OR a resubmitted or revised paper has failed to proceed with the next stage of the decision process*
Managing Editor Immediate Reject	When a paper does not meet the required standards of the journal the editors can decide to reject it immediately and not sent it out for peer review. This may occur when the paper is technically substandard such as not in the correct style or format or too short to develop a robust argument by means of its subject is not relevant to the readership of the journal paper’s potential impact is too low for the journal which may depend on lack of potential of being original or significant contribution in terms of its standards is found too low for the journal couldn’t pass the plagiarism check In all cases except plagiarism check, at the discretion of the editors may consider, author’s resubmitting the paper.

* 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.

Peer Review Statement

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.

Authors can choose to publish open access in this journal.

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

Peer Review Process

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.
o If the paper is rejected, the author has the feedback of the reviewers.
o 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.
o 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.
o 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.

Appeals and Complaints

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.

Confidentiality of Peer Review

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.

Copyright

SPACE International Journal of Space Studies in Architecture and Urban Design is a Subscription-based (non-OA) Journal. The publisher owns the rights to the articles in this 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 the ‘Copyright Transfer Agreement’ which grants SPACE Studies Publications the necessary publishing rights. This agreement should be signed and uploaded while submitting the paper. However, the agreement will be void and null if the work is not accepted so that not published in the Journal.

In the agreement, the author transfers or in other words “assigns” copyright to SPACE Studies Publications which is 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 for reuse on the author’s behalf.
Take action when appropriate where the article has been infringed or plagiarised.

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 led on a non-commercial basis and not in mass online courses
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.

Open Access Publication Policy

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

CC BY 4.0

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Others can distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.

CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This license allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

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

Green Open Access Policy

The “Green Open Access Policy” means that the Author has the right to self-archive specified digital versions of the Contribution (which can be updated from time to time) listed below in the table notwithstanding the Exclusive Licence.

According to the Journal’s Green Open Access Policy, the Author continues to keep the non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-commercial right to re-use or deposit digital versions of the Article as specified in the table below:

Version	Author’s institutional/departmental repository	Author’s personal webpage/website	Non-commercial subject repository	Commercial repository/ social media
SMUR	Any time	Any time	Any time	Any time
AM	After acceptance	After acceptance	After acceptance	Abstract only + link to the Journal
VoR	Abstract only + link to the Journal	Abstract only + link to the Journal	Abstract only + link to the Journal	Abstract only + link to the Journal

The Author accepts and confirms that:

under the Green Access Policy the reuse of the Contribution does not affect the Exclusive Licence;
the Green Access Open Policy of the Journal does not permit any kind of full Contribution in AM or VoR form to be placed/uploaded on any platform, commercial website, repository or scholarly collaboration networks including but not limited to: Academia.edu, Researchgate, LinkedIn and Mendeley.

Under the Green Open Access Policy of the Journal, the reuses of the Contribution should include:

a link to the Contribution on SPACE International Journal on Space Studies in Architecture and Urban Design using a DOI link such as http://doi.org/[DOI],
a statement specifying what rights of the end-users relate to their right to use the version of Contribution in question and that the Contribution was accepted to be published and will be seen in a revised form after the peer-review process and/or the Journal editors’ input.

Publication Ethics for Authors

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.

Conflict of Interest and Full Disclosure

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Editorial Policies