Focus and Scope

Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Literacka is a semiyearly journal of literary scholarship dealing with current problems in the areas of literary history and theory. The journal is published in Poznan and edited by scholars affiliated with the Faculty of Polish and Classical Philology at Adam Mickiewicz University. Each year, two issues of the journal come out, the first in June (materials for this issue are gathered by the end of February each year) and the second in December (materials for this issue are gathered by the end of September).

Peer Review Process

The reviewing process is in keeping with the guidelines published by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education published in the brochure “Good Practices in Scholarly Reviewing Procedures”

The phases of the review process are as follows:

1. The first readers of an article submitted for publication in Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Literacka are the editors – after receiving a positive evaluation from them, the article can be submitted for external review;
2. External reviewers hold a rank not lower than assistant professor, and the area of their specialization is appropriate to the content of the articles sent to them for reviewing;
3. The editors of the journal are careful to ensure that the reviewing procedure is free of any possible conflicts of interest;
4. The reviewing procedure is confidential in nature – the reviewer does not know the name of the article’s author, nor is the author informed who is reviewing the article (double-blind review process);
5. The evaluation of each article concludes with a clearly formulated assessment: (a. The journal should publish the article; b. The journal should not publish the article; c. The journal should publish the article pending the changes and additions indicated by the reviewer);
6. Reviews, together with the final version of the article and the author’s detailed responses to reviewers’ questions, are kept in the journal’s archive;
7. Each year, a list of the reviewers who collaborate with the journal is published on its website. 
   Review Form 

Open Access Policy

This 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.
For articles published in Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Literacka there are neither article submission charges nor article processing charges whatsoever. Publication in PSP.SL is entirely free.

Reviewers

Reviewers of articles published in 2009-2016

dr hab. Alina Biała (Uniwersytet Jana Kochanowskiego)
prof. dr hab. Barbara Bobrowska (Uniwersytet Kardynała Stefana Wyszyńskiego)
prof. dr hab. Sławomir Buryła (Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski)
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Chemperek (Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej)
prof. dr hab. Anna Czabanowska-Wróbel (Uniwersytet Jagielloński)
dr hab. Dariusz Dybek (Uniwersytet Wrocławski)
prof. dr hab. Grażyna Halkiewicz-Sojak (Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika)
dr hab. Wojciech Kajtoch (Uniwersytet Jagielloński)
dr Dorota Karwacka-Pastor (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr Marzena Karwowska (Uniwersytet Łódzki)
dr hab. Sławomir Kufel, prof. UZ (Uniwersytet Zielonogórski)
dr hab. Elżbieta M. Kur, prof.  UPH (Uniwersytet Przyrodniczo-Humanistyczny w Siedlcach)
dr hab. Małgorzata Latoch-Zielińska (Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej)
prof. dr hab. Jacek Lyszczyna (Uniwersytet Śląski)
prof. dr hab. Paweł Matyaszewski (Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawła II)
dr hab. Adam Mazurkiewicz (Uniwersytet Łódzki)
dr hab. Iwona Morawska (Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej)
dr hab. Dariusz Nowacki (Uniwersytet Śląski)
prof. dr hab. Waldemar Okoń (Uniwersytet Wrocławski)
prof. dr hab. Maria Olszewska (Uniwersytet Warszawski)
dr hab. prof. UŚ Danuta Opacka-Walasek (Uniwersytet Śląski)
dr hab. Dominika Oramus, prof. UW (Uniwersytet Warszawski)
prof. dr hab. Dariusz Pawelec (Uniwersytet Śląski)
dr hab. Grzegorz Pełczyński, prof. US (Uniwersytet Szczeciński)
dr hab. Krystyna Pietrych, prof. UŁ (Uniwersytet Łódzki)
dr hab. Dariusz Pniewski (Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika)
prof. dr hab. Jerzy Smulski (Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika)
prof. dr hab. Krzysztof Uniłowski (Uniwersytet Śląski)
dr Krystyna Wierzbicka-Trwoga (Uniwersytet Warszawski)
dr hab. Marek Wilczyński, prof. UG (Uniwersytet Gdański)
dr hab. Marcin Wołk (Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika)
dr hab. Agata Zawiszewska (Uniwersytet Szczeciński)
prof. dr hab. Piotr Zwierzchowski (Uniwersytet Kazimierza Wielkiego)

Ethical Guidelines

Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. Seria Literacka is a semiyearly journal of literary scholarship dealing with current problems in the areas of literary history and theory. The history of the journal, edited by scholars affiliated with the Institute of Polish Philology of Adam Mickiewicz University, began in the early 1970s. Despite the editorial staff having changed several times since then (working, since 2015, in permanent collaboration with the journal’s academic council, composed of renowned Polish and international scholars), its high standards of scholarship and the ethical norms of its publication process have remained unchanged. The rules approved by the editors, which apply to all members of both the editorial staff and the academic council, as well as the journal’s authors, reviewers and publishers, are fully in accordance with the guidelines contained in documents issued by COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics). The editors also make every possible effort to ensure that unlimited universal access to articles published in the journal is provided to readers (an open access policy) – for this reason, full electronic versions of articles published in the journal are released without delay via Mickiewicz University’s Open Journal System (http://pressto.amu.edu.pl) upon publication of a new issue in paper form.

Ethical Guidelines for the Editors

The journal’s editorial staff– in consultation with the international academic council – performs an initial assessment of articles submitted for publication and selects which to tentatively accept. Works distinguished by particular originality as well as suitable methodology and linguistic proficiency are directed to the next stage in the process. A negative evaluation from the editors results in a decision against publishing the submitted article – in which case the author is informed in writing of the editors’ decision; they reserve the right to keep the article with their annotations of it in the journal archive, but cannot use the text for any other purpose without the author’s consent. If the initial evaluation from the editors is positive, the article is then sent on to two independent reviewers – the reviewing procedure is confidential and is conducted in accordance with the standards of the double-blind review process (neither review nor author knows who the other is). In such a case, the author is informed both of the editors’ initial decision and of the final decision, which takes into account the reviewers’ comments. During the process of evaluation (by the editors and then reviewers) the only considerations of any importance relate to the merits of the articles and their use of language; the editors are not influenced in their assessment by the author’s personality, nationality, creed, or gender. The editors guarantee authors the chance to read the reviews in their entirety, while maintaining the strict anonymity of the process.

In order to ensure the originality and high quality of works published in the journal, the reviewing process is implemented using the state-of-the-art technology of the CrossCheck system. CrossCheck is an initiative of CrossRef and iThenticate, providing professional support in preventing the publication of works that violate copyright or perpetrate other forms of scholarly dishonesty. The system offers a highly sophisticated tool for comparing documents with the largest database of scholarly content in the world, taken from many different sources. Texts that are found to contain other people’s writing, whether plagiarized or otherwise not properly attributed, will be rejected by the editors, and the author’s institution of employment duly informed of the violation of copyright and good scholarly practices.

Ethical Guidelines for Authors

Each author submitting an article for publication is responsible for the quality and originality of the text submitted. Any and all instances of scholarly dishonesty (the use – without proper attribution – of other people’s work, concealment of authorship or of financial support given by institutions for research) will result in rejection of the article by the editors. The author likewise guarantees that the essay submitted has never previously been published in its current form. If the text is a modified version of an earlier publication, this fact should be clearly stated at the time of its submission – in such a situation, should the editors decide to publish the submitted article, it must necessarily be presented with appropriate notes providing information about its original form and place of publication.

In the case of a collective submission, the group submitting the article for publication is obligated to state the real number of authors and the contribution of each to the production of the work (together with their affiliations and notation of who wrote or came up with which particular parts, theses, methodologies,  etc.). The author is also obligated to provide information about sources of financial support for the work and contributions by scholarly research institutions, associations, and other entities, if any. The author submitting the text is chiefly responsible for the truth and accuracy of this information. In the case of a work by multiple authors, the article should be accompanied by a signed statement from each author to the effect that he or she accepts its contents and guarantees the authenticity of the parts attributed to him or her.

The editors remind authors that ghostwriting (the concealment of someone’s significant contribution to the production of a published work) and guest or honorary authorship (the identification, as author or co-author, of someone whose participation in the production of a work was negligible or non-existent) are instances of scholarly dishonesty, and any such cases, if detected, will be exposed. The editors will document all instances of scholarly dishonesty, particularly any infringements or violations of the ethical principles binding upon all scholars.  

Articles are submitted by means of the Open Journal System of Mickiewicz University (see here). This approach makes it possible for the original text file to be archived immediately, before– depending on the editors’ decision – being forwarded to the two external reviewers. The Platform enables later versions of the article to be archived (incorporating, for example, reviewers’ comments or corrections entered by the author) as well. That guarantees transparency and eliminates possible errors (for example, resulting from the use of the wrong file for the publication process). 

Ethical Guidelines for Reviewers

The reviewing procedure is in keeping with the recommendations of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, published in the brochure “Good Practices in Scholarly Reviewing Procedures”:

The reviewer should not be engaged in the reviewing process if there is even the slightest possible suspicion of a conflict of interest arising from the collaboration or other relations between reviewer and author. Information about the absence of a conflict of interest should be presented in the form of a signed declaration.

The reviewer is required to prepare an assessment addressing the substance of the article entrusted to him or her; the assessment should be free of all comments of a personal nature or value judgments not supported by argumentation. The reviewer’s assessment should contain answers to the questions presented in the review form  (the journal’s editors are responsible for providing the reviewer with such a form – to simplify matters, the form can be downloaded as a file from the journal’s website, located within the Open Platform of Mickiewicz University). The review must contain a clear declaration either for or against publishing the submitted article. In cases where reviewers present divergent or contradictory assessments, the editors will engage a third reviewer or request an assessment from a member of the journal’s academic council whose competencies encompass the relevant area of scholarship. An expert evaluation obtained in this manner is then binding for the editors.

Printed copies of the reviews, signed by the reviewers and bearing the date of their completion, are kept in the journal archives.

Reviewers do not have the right to use reviewed articles or passages therein for their own purposes without the author’s written consent. 

Statistics

Number of articles downloaded in 2015 (As reported by the COUNTER system)

Journal History

The first issue of Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne appeared in 1973 and was edited by a group of scholars studying under Prof. Tadeusz Witczak’s tutelage. In 1994 the publication was divided into the Literary Series and the Linguistic Series. At that time, Barbara Judkowiak, Elżbieta Nowicka and Barbara Sienkiewicz became the editors of the Literary Series. Another change followed in 2002, when Przemysław Czapliński, Zbigniew Przychodniak and Piotr Śliwiński took over as the journal’s editors. All of these teams of editors contributed to the history of a solid, dependable publication, attentive to developments in the discipline and open to diverse points of view. That tradition is continued by Wiesław Wydra, Marcin Jaworski and Piotr Śniedziewski, who have been in charge of the journal since 2009 (in 2014 the editorial staff was joined by Elżbieta Winiecka, Grzegorz Raubo, and Wiesław Ratajczak).