Management and continuance

Historical Searches is the journal of Institute for History, University of Sarajevo, and is published from 2008, following the international indexation.

Printed and electronic version

Historical Searches has printed and electronic version (with separate ISSN). Printed issue is intended for exchange and sale, and the electronic version has open access and can be found at the web site of Institute for History.

Frequency

The journal is published bi-annually.

Scope

Historical Searches is publishing the articles of experts from various fields of history.

Originality and plagiarism policy

In the journal Historical Searches, only original scientific and expert articles, as well as reviews from all the historical disciplines, can be published. The articles are published for the first time, which means that they are not published elsewhere, or submitted for publishing in some other journal or publication. Reviewers and editorial members are responsible for checking the originality of articles.

Language

The language of the journal Historical Searches is Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, with an abstract in English. The articles can be in other languages, in which case they must have the abstract in Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian and English. We are expecting the authors to check the orthography for their papers, but the additional proofreading is also organized by Institute for History.

Financing

The journal Historical Searches is financed by Institute’s sources, gained by selling Institute’s publications and public sources of different organisations and institutions for publishing (such as Publishing Foundation, Ministry of Education and Science etc.).

Free of charge

Historical Searches does not charge article processing charges or submission charges.

All manuscripts submitted to Historical Searches undergo a “double-blind” peer review process, i.e. the reviewers do not know who the authors of the manuscript are and the authors do not have access to the information of who the peer-reviewers are. They are reviewed by at least two reviewers.

Once a manuscript is submitted, the Editor determines if the manuscript is appropriate to the journal scope and is of sufficient quality to go through the normal review process or not.

If the manuscript is not of a sufficient quality to go through the normal review process or if the subject of the manuscript is not appropriate to the journal scope, the Editor rejects the manuscript with no further processing.

If the Editor determines that the submitted manuscript is of sufficient quality and falls within the scope of the journal, the manuscript is sent to a minimum of 2 reviewers for peer-review. The reviewers submit their reports on the manuscripts in Peer review Form along with their recommendation according to one of the following actions:

Acceptable without correction,
Acceptable with suggestion for revision,
Acceptable only if adequately revised and requiring re-review,
Reject.

When all reviewers submit their reports, the Editor can make one of the following editorial recommendations:

Publish unaltered,
Consider after minor changes,
Consider after major changes,
Reject.

If the Editor recommends “Publish unaltered”, the manuscript is accepted for publication.

If the Editor recommends “Consider after minor changes”, the authors are notified to prepare and submit a final copy of their manuscript with the required minor changes suggested by the reviewers. The Editor reviews the revised manuscript after the minor changes have been made by the authors. Once the Editor is satisfied with the final manuscript, the manuscript can be accepted.

If the Editor recommends “Consider after major changes”, the recommendation is communicated to the authors. The authors are expected to revise their manuscript in accordance with the changes recommended by the reviewers. When the Editor receives a revised manuscript it is being sent to the reviewers for their approval. If the reviewers approve the revised version, the manuscript is accepted for publication, if not, it is rejected.

If the Editor or two of the reviewers recommend rejecting the manuscript, the rejection is immediate.

The editorial workflow gives the Editors the authority in rejecting any manuscript because of inappropriateness of its subject or lack of quality. The Editor cannot assign himself/herself as an external reviewer of the manuscript. This is to ensure a high-quality, fair, and unbiased peer-review process for every manuscript submitted to the journal, since any manuscript must be recommended by two external reviewers along with the Editor in charge of the manuscript in order for it to be accepted for publication in the journal.

Users are allowed to copy and redistribute the material, transform, and build upon the material as long as they cite the source.

The authors, through granting the Institute for History the right to publish the work, accept the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which allows the Institute to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, create adaptations, and to commercially use the work, if stated by the author. The authors grant the Institute a non-exclusive license to publish the work in paper form. The Institute has the sole right to determine all the technical aspects of the journal, including the price and the form of distribution. Furthermore, the authors grant the Institute a non-exclusive license to use the work in the following way:

• sell and distribute the work in form other than selling copies, store it in electronic form, distribute parts of or all of the work for the purpose of the promotion of the Institute via computer networks and other digital media; record the work in any form, including digital media, and reproduce it in any form, including digital media;
• record the work in the memory of public computers located in the office of the Institute (or rooms used by the Institute);
• lend or lease copies of the work;
• make the work available, and send it through multi-media networks, esp. the Internet and Intranet, on-line, on demand, including making the work publicly available, in order that anyone can obtain access to the work or its parts wherever and whenever it is convenient for them.

Our Publication Ethics Statement is based on the Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors[1] and the position statements developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore 2010[2].

Publication decisions

The editor and editorial board are responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. They may be guided by the policies of the journal’s editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor and editorial board should maintain the integrity of the academic record, preclude business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards, and always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

Fair play

The editor and editorial board evaluates manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the author(s).

Confidentiality

The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

The editor should seek so ensure a fair and appropriate peer-review process. The editor should recuse oneself from handling manuscripts (i.e. should ask a member of the editorial board instead to review and consider) in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or (possibly) institutions connected to the papers.

Duties of reviewers

Contribution to editorial decisions

Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.

Promptness

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.

Standards of objectivity

Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Acknowledgement of sources

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor’s attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Disclosure and conflict of interest

Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Duties of authors

Reporting standards

Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.

Originality and plagiarism

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.

Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication

An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.

Acknowledgement of sources

Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.

Authorship of the paper

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Fundamental errors in published works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

The policy of the Journal Historical Searches is to ensure the balance, independence, impartiality and scientific precision of its articles. We expect all authors to disclose any real or apparent conflict(s) of interest to readers that may directly relate to the subject matter of their article. This policy is not intended to prevent authors from publishing who may have a potential conflict of interest. The intention is merely for any potential conflict to be openly identified so that readers may judge the article for themselves given full disclosure of the facts. It is for the readers to determine whether the authors’ outside interests may have led to a possible bias in the presentation of the conclusions presented.