Journal Policies

Review Policy
Submitted articles are subjects to initial editorial screening and anonymous peer-review at least by two peer-reviewers. Firstly, the submitted articles will be evaluated within our initial editorial screening. After this preliminary stage, only afterwards it will be submitted to the peer-reviewers. For more details, please read the Review Policy section.

 

Anti-Plagiarism Policy
The publisher and journal have a policy of Zero Tolerance for Plagiarism. All articles will be checked by PlagScan before being sent to the reviewers. If a case of plagiarism or duplication is detected, the article will be immediately rejected. If plagiarism or duplication is detected after the publication of the article, the journal editors have the right to issue a correction or retract the published article. Any attempts for plagiarism will be strictly sanctioned by the journal editors.

 

AI Tools Policy
In line with COPE guidelines, artificial intelligence tools (e.g. ChatGPT) cannot be listed as named authors on submitted articles. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their article, even those parts produced by any AI tool, and are thus liable for any inaccuracies or breaches of publication ethics. Authors who have used AI tools to develop their article must include a note in the article's Acknowledgements section describing the technologies used and the purpose. This does not apply to software such as spelling or grammar checkers or reference managers.

 

Open Access Policy
Horizons is an electronic and fully open-access journal, which means that all articles are freely available, ensuring maximum, worldwide dissemination of content. The journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. The main principles of open access we support are:

  • peer-reviewed literature should be freely available without subscription or price barriers;
  • literature is immediately released in open access format (no embargo period); and
  • published material can be re-used without obtaining permission as long as a correct citation to the original publication is given.

Horizons accept and is guided by the BOAI definition of open access:

"By open access to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."

*Horizons and University St. Kliment Ohridski in Bitola have endorsed the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), the principles of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), and the Action Plan on Diamond Open Access.

Please feel free to visit the following links in order to find further information about the Free and Open Access initiative:

  • Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
  • The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA)
  • Open Access Overview (focusing on open access to peer-reviewed research articles)
  • The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)
  • A Registry of Open Access Repositories Mandatory Archiving Policies (ROARMAP)

As an open-access journal, all contents are freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without prior permission from the publisher or the author.

What is Diamond Open Access?

Diamond Open Access is an open-access publishing model where scholarly articles are made freely available to readers without cost or barrier. In the Diamond Open Access model, the entire publishing process, from peer review to publication, is funded by non-profit organizations, research institutions, or government agencies rather than by charging fees to authors or readers.

 

Language Quality
At HISJ, we consider the language aspect of the articles of particular relevance. It is the responsibility of authors to ensure the quality of language in their articles. It is highly advised to have your manuscript reviewed by a native speaker or an English language expert prior to submission, in order to guarantee that the language meets the required standards.

 

Article Correction and Retraction Policy

  • Erratum, is a statement by the authors of the original article, that briefly describes any correction(s) resulting from errors or omissions. Any effects on the conclusions of the article should be noted. The corrected article is not removed from the online journal, but notice of erratum is given. The Erratum is made freely available to all readers and is linked to the corrected article.
  • Retraction, is a notice that the article should not be regarded as part of the scientific literature. The journal editors follow COPE guidelines on retraction.
  • Corrigendum, notifies readers that an article has been corrected subsequent to publication. It is issued by the publisher and is used in cases where production errors (either the fault of the authors or the publisher) affect the integrity of the article metadata (such as title, author list, or byline) or will significantly impact the readers' ability to comprehend the article. The original article is removed and replaced with a corrected version and a Corrigendum describing the correction is linked to it. The date the correction is made is noted on the corrected article. Corrigenda are freely available to all readers.
  • The journal editors always are willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

 

Copyright Policy

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. All materials are published under an open-access license that gives authors permanent ownership of their work.
  • Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (author's pre-prints on the author server or institutional server only, while the author's post-prints on the author's personal website, departmental website, employer's website, or institutional repository) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
  • Published sources must be acknowledged.
  • Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published before and that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
  • The journal editors are not responsible for any possible violations of existing copyright in articles published in the journal all responsibility is on the authors of those articles. The journal or publisher is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work. It is the author's responsibility to bring an infringement action if so desired by the author.

 

Repository Policy
The publisher and the journal have a registered deposit policy with Sherpa Romeo.

 

Archiving
HISJ is archived in the National and University Library “St. Kliment Ohridski” – Skopje and LOCKSS.

Open Journal Systems supports the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system to ensure a secure and permanent archive for the journal. LOCKSS is open-source software developed at Stanford University Library that enables libraries to preserve selected web journals by regularly polling registered journal websites for newly published content and archiving it. Each archive is continually validated against other library caches, and if the content is found to be corrupted or lost, the other caches or the journal is used to restore it.