Submissions

Author Guidelines

Guidelines and Instructions for Authors:

1. Articles must be unpublished, original works.

2. Articles may be submitted in English.

3. Only linguistically correct versions, previously proofread/revised by a language professional, editable (Word only, not PDF) will be accepted. Please note that after making minor or major revisions, a submitted paper will need additional proofreading.

4. EiP follows the APA citation system. The authors are requested to use the EiP Template. Graphs and tables are welcome (we recommend submitting them as an additional, editable file).

5. The corresponding author is the first author. They are responsible for submission and communication with the journal’s editors, concerning the reviewing process, licensing process, and other formal procedures. The corresponding author is also the main partner of the Editorial Board for managing potential disputes.

6. The editors encourage authors to submit originally conceptualized and edited articles. However, they also promote standards to improve publication excellence, including sound theses (or hypotheses), definitions, arguments, explanations, and references to peer-reviewed papers, books, data files, and further scientific sources. To improve the quality of publications, articles are expected to have catchy titles, abstracts explaining the research problem, method and expected outcomes, and catchy keywords (including brief formulations, e.g., ‘a falsification postulate’, names of theories, names of scholars and thinkers, etc.) that will help the global  community of researchers find the article with search tools.

7. Articles should consist of basic sections, such as ‘Objectives’, ‘Theoretical Background/The State of the Art in a Related Research Field’, ‘Method/s’, ‘Research Findings’, ‘Explanations’, ‘Discussion/Open Questions/Further Research Perspectives’; and the ‘References’ Section (sections’ titles to be specified according to the context).

8. If a publication has a DOI number, the author is required to provide the DOI in the bibliography.

9. Once the reviewing process is successfully completed, the paper should be converted to the EiP Template. The authors may do that before submitting the paper. Graphs and tables should be submitted additionally, as a separate editable file. The cover page must include the corresponding author’s first name & surname, affiliation, e-mail address, ORCID number, the title of the submitted paper (in English), abstract (in English) & keywords (in English), and a brief Bio.

10. The full list of the authors (including their affiliations, e-mail addresses, ORCID numbers and brief Bios) must be provided on the subsequent (2^nd) page. On the same page the authorship and contributions of all included authors should be transparently defined (please briefly describe who contributed to the work and in what capacity). The authorship statement should exclude ghost, guest and gift authorship (gift contributions should be moved to ‘Acknowledgments’). For more https://publicationethics.org/authorship

11. Potential conflicts of interest should be mentioned on the same page. For more see https://publicationethics.org/competinginterests

12. Articles reporting on findings and data collected on the basis of research/experiments with human and animal subjects must be provided with and Ethical Statement and permission/license signature issued by a related Institutional Board.

13. Articles reporting on research projects should include the award signature, institutional affiliation, and the name of the project manager.

14. Co-authored articles and articles based on data, research instruments (questionnaires) and otherwise originally authored or certified scientific information constituting intellectual property owned by third parties or institutions must be sufficiently documented by, e.g., licenses and permissions mentioned in footnotes/references.

15. Editors may require original data files or research instruments (e.g., a psycho- or sociometric questionnaires, surveys, etc.) to prove their validity during the double-blind peer reviewing process).

16. According to Directive 2019/1024 of the European Parliament and the Council of 20 June 2019, once the article has been approved and is ready for publication, the journal encourages authors to share the article links and files making their data files available for readers.

17. The journal does not accept or request any article processing charges (no-APC policy). CFP’s for special thematic issues by guest editors are published for free - all standard regulations and procedures apply to those issues. Ethics in Progress does not publish any "special issues" outside the ordinary publishing schedule. 

18. Articles can be submitted at all times - new submissions should be made using the electronic submission system.

19. The author retains all copyrights.

20.  Once the article has been uploaded for publication, no changes or reeditions are allowed, neither can changes be made after an article becomes visible in the open access system, and, automatically, shared with databases, repositories and impact measuring tools worldwide.

The Author receives the following to read, sign and send back "Agreement for granting a CC BY-SA 4.0 license" (mandatory).

Ethical statement & References quality

 If you report on research that involves human or animals subjects, biological or historical materials, or confidential or copyrighted data, or which is based on copyrighted, certified, validated or licensed research instruments and methods, please provide appropriate approval from an ethics board (signature thereof), third parties’ approvals, and an ethical statement.

 A sample ethical statement

• * contains: basic information on 1) the financial support of the project by sponsoring institutions, 2) the reference to ethical standards, guidelines, best practices observed from the very beginning (project submission) to the publication of research findings/results, 3) conflict of interest (if there is no conflict of interests, please clearly state this); 4) the institutional approval of an ethics committee/institutional board (if the research included human or animal participants, * biological or historical matererials, personal or data collection, data processing, recycling, etc).
• * must complete the requirements of an Ethics Committee (institutional board), foundation granting projects
• * provides a declaration on/certification of compliance with ethical standards, related to the research method utilised.
  

How to provide an up-to-date and high-quality rerefences section?

• Use proper citation style (first, look at papers already published in EiP)
• Provide an up-to-date literature review (most relevant & recent literature)
• Peer-reviewed articles and books are more credible and your publication will also be seriously studied by readers
• Primary sources & first-rate literature: original articles & books published in reputable journals & publishing houses (after being peer-reviewed / double blind peer review system); avoid predatory journals and not reviewed sources if you want to be quoted (check whether a journal is indexed by, e.g., SCOPUS base)
• Interpretations of, discussions of, and reviews of critics … are secondary sources with reference to original sources (e.g. do not quote Kant from papers authored of Kant-researchers)
• Avoid non-scientific, para-scientific, popular sources (Wikipedia, blogs, underdocumented information)
• Provide information on databases and researchers or authors whose (licensed, certified, permitted, etc.) data, graphs, surveys are used in your reseach and paper submission. 

How to make a good abstract?

Editors, peer reviewers, and readers (especially fellow scholars) – would like to quickly learn what new, original and relevant contribution your paper makes. If they judge the abstract to be clear and structured, they are more likely to read the paper, and then to incorporate its content into their own research.   

Abstracts & keywords constitute the first, core (and sometimes the only) information used as a basis by editors and scientific councils/committees when deciding what to do with a submission. The abstract determines the main discipline that the paper is related to and who should review the submission. It is recommended that the core discipline or subdiscipline and research areas are named in in the ‘keywords’. A poor or unclear abstract may lead to ‘desk-rejection’ (no-idea-what-it-is-about-so-move-on-to-the-next). They also assume the rest of the paper will have the same quality as the abstract.

Readers of a new submission may have a general orientation in the field/area. So authors must help them. Also, when they are experts, they search for something novel & stimulating. Abstract = an author’s “statement of how your research uniquely addresses the issue” (https://www.aje.com/arc/make-great-first-impression-6-tips-writing-strong-abstract/).

Good abstracts are clear, and clarity involves structure. They accompany articles and reviews, e.g.,

1. Research paper (for those want to be treated like a researcher – not necessarily like a penman, narrator, essayist) should be accompanied by an abstract displaying the stages of research reported in the paper, and follow this structure: brief introduction/background, methods, results, discussion/conclusions – regardless of the discipline
2. Review-paper (reviewing existing, relevant, research-based scholarship, reconstructing, revisiting, elucidating, interpreting and reinterpreting – with the focus on: a selected – and defined – topical issue/ argument/method, results/findings, conclusions (please indicate the criteria of your selection!)  
3. Discussion-paper (critical paper): discussing and revising existing scholarship with the focus on a certain – defined – methods, arguments, reasons, results, purposes (e.g. underdocumented) and propose better ones or describe what your criticisms add to research development/advances; show new perspectives and their relevance
4. Book review.

What makes a good abstract?

NO’s to avoid:

No simple ‘summary’ of the contents

No ‘history of science’

No side issues and details

No references, citations, footnotes 

No results or information not considered in the text

No overstatements (without justification in the following paper body) 

No undefined acronyms, abreviations, figures or jargon that will be confusing to the reader

Length: 12–20 lines (ca. 100 words). Just enough to awaken the curiosity of a reader from your research area

Catchy (the first 2–3 lines may decide whether a potential reader will be attracted and motivated to continue reading)

Structured (has some basic sections) 

Agrees with the information in the main body of the paper 

Main types of abstracts
(according to your discipline and research type)

1. A descriptive abstract contains no judgments and statements, just an essential and structured description on the content and research reported in the paper.

2. An informative abstract contains a solid and relevant outline on the research reported and discussed in the body, announces the main objectives/aims/research questions, methods and conclusions. It is a paper, but in a skeletal form only.

3. A highlight abstract: attracts a reader’s attention and presents one, spectacular, pathbreaking/innovative hypothesis with reference to the state of the art, making a reader curious; it is like an independent piece of the paper.

A structured abstract: structured abstracts are preferable for Ethics in Progress. They are the opening section of the paper. They are read first – sometimes only the abstract is downloaded, read and circulates in the scientific and virtual world. It’s like a scientific business card.

Theoretical background, Objective, Methodology, Results (Findings), Discussion (Explanation), and Conclusions belong to a structured abstract.

Please do not copy/paste or compile paragraphs from the paper as ‘the abstract’.

Please use the active voice, when possible; single passive sentences are acceptable.

Abstracts are separately and carefully peer-reviewed.

They require careful proofreading.

Before submitting, please check whether your study is sound and comprehensive solely on the basis of the Abstract.

Please provide a minimum of four keywords (a maximum of 8). They can be descriptive, contain names of theories and names of scholars.