Policies

SAJAT POLICIES

 

 

FOCUS AND SCOPE

 

The South African Journal of Arts Therapy (SAJAT) is dedicated to fostering dialogue and research on Arts Therapies across Africa and the Global South. SAJAT is focussed on considering how arts and culture have had an instrumental role in forging identities and post-colonial scholarship which promotes cultural diversity, inclusivity and social justice. The purpose of SAJAT is to provide a scholarly forum to advance the understanding of how art therapy, alongside other arts therapy modalities, contribute to the treatment, education, development, and enrichment of people who engage with them. This is a new platform for a broad spectrum of ideas in therapy, practice, professional issues and research.

 

SAJAT promotes creative expression, imagination and innovative practices in arts therapy scholarship which furthers the practices of mental health services that actively respond to societal trauma and challenges facing children and adults. SAJAT aims to be representative of a variety of arts therapy modalities, cognisant of the value of a dynamic interface between the visual arts, dance, movement, music and drama as well as interdisciplinary fields that provide a platform for under-represented African arts therapists on the global stage. It extends knowledge and education in the field for mental health and allied professionals.

 

SAJAT welcomes contributions from established and emerging scholars, and is open to proposals for Themed Issues, guest edited by leading scholars in relevant arts therapy modalities. SAJAT is the newest publication in the field and showcases emerging and established voices in Africa-centred scholarship.

 

SAJAT is owned and published by the University of Johannesburg Press, and is financially supported by UJ research funding with external support. SAJAT publishes original papers that have not been published previously. This includes: academic articles, research papers, academic reviews, relevant communications, conference papers, position papers, reflective writing, and visual research. SAJAT is an open access journal that doesn’t charge any fees either to readers to read, nor to authors to publish. Contributions to SAJAT are to be submitted in English with summaries in English.  The journal is open to all researchers globally, regardless of gender, career stage or ethnic and religious affiliation.

 

The journal is issued twice every year.

 

The articles published are archived and indexed accordingly through CLOCKSS, LOCKSS and the PKP PN.  

 

 

EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

 

The editorial board is an advisory and governance structure appointed by the Association in line with best practices in journal governance. It brings together scholars representing various areas of expertise within the scope of the journal’s focus. Board members serve voluntarily for a three-year term subject to renewal.

 

The SAJAT editorial body includes the editor-in-chief, guest editors, copy editor, editing manager and editorial board members. The Editor-in-chief and Guest Editors are appointed by  the Editorial Board. Editorial operations related to content and peer review are independent and free from the influence of the entities that support the journal.

 

The Editors are responsible for deciding which articles submitted to SAJAT will be published. The Editorial Board is guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

 

The Editors reserve the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts in case it is found that they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects. The Editorial staff will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication within four to eight weeks (dependent on peer reviewers turn-around time) from the date of the manuscript submission.

 

The Editors must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If they feel that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the manuscript shall be made by the Editorial Board.

 

Editors shall evaluate manuscripts for their scientific content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.

 

The Editorial staff must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

 

In the case of double-blind peer review, the Editors and Editorial staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.

 

 

Editor’s Code of Conduct

 

The editors of this journal will:

  1. Maintain high-quality assurance and ethical standards in submissions published in the journal;
  2. Ensure the integrity of the peer-review process;
  3. Promote equal and equitable access to publishing opportunities for authors;
  4. Maintain cordial relations among all stakeholders including authors, reviewers, editors and the board;
  5. Attend expeditiously to all complaints;
  6. Treat all submissions fairly and justly on the merits of their content;
  7. Maintain and improve the journal’s reputation.
  8. Promote the journal in their networks;
  9. Provide advice related to the publication of high-quality manuscripts;
  10. Serve as a mechanism for authors to appeal against editorial decisions.
  11. Receive an annual report from the Editor-in-Chief detailing the status of operations and including such statistics and other relevant information;
  12. Make recommendations to the Editor-in-Chief based on the annual report.

 

 

AUTHOR RESPONSIBILITIES

 

Authors warrant that their manuscript is their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal constitutes misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by SAJAT.

 

If a manuscript has previously been submitted elsewhere, authors should provide information about the previous reviewing process and its outcome. This provides an opportunity for authors to detail how subsequent revisions have taken into account previous reviews, and why certain reviewer comments were not taken into account. Information about the author's previous reviewing experience is to the author's advantage: it often helps the Editors select more appropriate reviewers.

 

In case a submitted manuscript is a result of a research project, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc. shall be provided in a footnote or in the acknowledgements.

 

It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that manuscripts submitted to SAJAT are written with ethical standards in mind. Authors affirm that the manuscript contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

 

 

PUBLISHING ETHICS

 

There are standards of expected ethical behaviour for all parties involved in the publishing of scholarly journal articles: the authors, the journal editors, the peer reviewers, and the publisher. This publication ethics statement is based on COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. The journal editors, peer reviewers and authors are expected to follow  The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)  guidelines on professional publishing standards at publicationethics.org. In addition to COPE, the following organizations have also collaborated to identify best practices for scholarly publications: the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the JSTOR.

 

 

REPORTING STANDARDS

 

SAJAT is committed to serving the research community by ensuring that all articles include enough information to allow others to reproduce the work. A submitted manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit reviewers and, subsequently, readers to verify the claims presented in it (e.g. provide complete details of the methods used, including time frames, etc.). Authors are required to review the standards available for many research applications from Equator Network and use those that are relevant for the reported research applications. The deliberate presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards. Book reviews and technical papers should be accurate and they should present an objective perspective.

 

Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions and must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the content public. Authors may be required to provide the proof that they have obtained such permission. Authors are also exclusively responsible for the contents of their data/supplementary files. Authors affirm that data protection regulations, ethical standards, third party copyright and other rights have been respected in the process of collecting, processing and sharing data.

 

Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors. Authors may be required to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their manuscripts.

 

 

INCLUSIVE LANGUAGE

 

SAJAT promotes accessible, and inclusive language to ensure that scientific research is widely understood and respectful of all individuals. To promote accessibility, authors should:

 

  • Use clear, simple language that is understandable across disciplines and for non-native English speakers;
  • Avoid overly technical or unnecessary terminology, unnecessary complexity, long sentences, repetition, uncommon acronyms and abbreviations, stereotypes, idiomatic speech, slang, and cultural assumptions;
  • Explain technical terms when needed;
  • Respect diversity and avoid implying superiority of any group based on gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, health status, age, or socio-economic background.
  • Use inclusive and appropriate language in relation to race and ethnicity and provide participants with a comprehensive range of categories and subcategories to choose from when collecting self-reported racial or ethnic identity data, as well as the option to select multiple, not mutually exclusive categories;
  • Be cautious in generalizing findings from studies to groups simply on the basis of a shared identity category and provide the rationale behind any racial or ethnic groupings used in the Methods section;
  • Where it is necessary to make reference to the indigenous identity of a person or group, use the terms preferred by the person or group. If in doubt, ask the person or group;
  • Make a distinction between biological sex and socially constructed gender. Use self-identified pronouns and gender-neutral terms (e.g., "chairperson" instead of "chairman");
  • Use "impairment" for medical conditions and "disability" for societal barriers. Avoid discriminatory language and offensive terms (derogatory labelling, depersonalising, stereotyping and emphasising the disability) in relation to the portrayal of people with disabilities (e.g. use ‘a person diagnosed with cancer’ rather than ‘a cancer victim’)

 

Consult also additional resources from C4DISC (Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications): https://c4disc.org/toolkits-for-equity/

 

 

AUTHORSHIP

 

Authors must make sure that only contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors and, conversely, that all contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the acknowledgements section.

 

As a guide, authors should refer to the criteria for authorship that have been developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). In order to be named on the author list one must have:

  • made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  • contributed to the drafting of the work, or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  • provided final approval of the version to be published; AND
  • agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved; AND
  • agreed to be named on the author list, and approved of the full author list.

 

Each author’s contribution must be detailed using the CRediT taxonomy.[1]

The addition or removal of authors during the editorial process will only be permitted if a justifiable explanation is provided to the editorial team and publisher. Attempts to introduce 'ghost', 'gift' or ‘honorary’ authorship will be treated as cases of misconduct. 

[1]In  some submission systems this is done by selecting CRediT roles in the article submission form. If this is not supported in your submission system, require authors to include a contribution statement in the manuscript. Example:

Author 1: review and editing (equal).

Author 2: Conceptualization (lead); writing – original draft (lead); formal analysis (lead); writing – review and editing (equal).

Author 3: Software (lead); writing – review and editing (equal).

Author 4: Methodology (lead); writing – review and editing (equal).

Author 5: Conceptualization (supporting); Writing – original draft (supporting); Writing – review and editing (equal). More information: https://credit.niso.org/implementing-credit/

 

 

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF SOURCES

 

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Information received in a private conversation or correspondence with third parties, in reviewing project applications, manuscripts and similar materials, must not be used without the express written consent of the information source.

 

When citing or making claims based on data, authors should provide the reference to data in the same way as they cite publications. We recommend the format proposed by the FORCE11 Data Citation Principles.

 

 

PLAGIARISM

 

Plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

 

Plagiarism includes the following:

  • Word for word, or almost word for word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks);
  • Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

 

Please note that all SAJAT submissions are thoroughly checked for plagiarism. SAJAT utilizes iThenticate and Turn-it-in in this respect. Any manuscript that shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected and returned to the author with the necessary evidence. The Editorial Board and UJ Press Manager will be notified accordingly. Future submissions by that author will not be considered.

 

In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described below under Retraction policy. Moreover, future submissions by that author will not be considered.

 

 

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

 

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, the following standard statement should be added: ‘No conflict of interest was disclosed’. Conflict of interest may be of non-financial or financial nature.

 

Examples of the conflict of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • individuals receiving funding, salary or other forms of payment from an organization, or holding stocks or shares from a company, that might benefit (or lose) financially from the publication of the findings;
  • individuals or their funding organization or employer holding (or applying for) related patents;
  • official affiliations and memberships with interest groups relating to the content of the publication;
  • political, religious, or ideological competing interests.

 

Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical or field trials or other research studies, should declare these as competing interests on submission. The relationship of each author to such an organization should be explained in the ‘Conflict of interest’ section. Publications in the journal must not contain content advertising any commercial products.

 

 

FUNDAMENTAL ERRORS IN PUBLISHED WORKS

 

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the SAJAT Editor or publisher and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper.

 

By submitting a manuscript, every author agrees to abide by SAJATs Editorial Policies.

 

 

ORCID

 

SAJAT asks that all authors submitting a paper register an account with Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID). ORCID numbers for all authors and co-authors should be added to the author data upon submission and will be published alongside the submitted paper, should it be accepted. ORCID registration provides a unique and persistent digital identifier for the account that enables accurate attribution and improves the discoverability of published papers, ensuring that the correct author receives the correct credit for their work.

 

 

FUNDING INFORMATION

 

If a paper is a result of the funded project, authors are required to specify funding sources according to their contracts with the funder.

 

 

REVIEWER RESPONSIBILITIES

 

Reviewers are required to provide written, competent and unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the manuscript. The reviewers assess each manuscript for compliance with the profile of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the originality and scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly apparatus.

 

Reviewers should alert the Editor to any well-founded suspicions or the knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Reviewers should recognize relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors and alert the Editor to substantial similarities between a reviewed manuscript and any manuscript published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, in the event they are aware of such. Reviewers should also alert the Editor to a parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal, in the event they are aware of such.

 

Reviewers must not have conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the funding sources for the research. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the Editor without delay. Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor without delay.

 

Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

 

 

PEER REVIEW

 

The submitted manuscripts are subject to a peer review process. The purpose of peer review is to assist the Editors in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communication with the author it may also assist the author in improving the manuscript. SAJAT utilizes a double-blind peer review for all issues, unless a (non-accredited) special open issue is clearly indicated. Each submission will have two reviewers. Should one of the reviewers not be available, or provide an insufficient review, a third reviewer may be appointed at the discretion of the Editors involved.

 

The turn-around time for each issue aims to be three to four months, from the time of manuscript submission to the time of publication. This is dependent on resources and the efficiency of peer reviewers who are given a 4-week review period. The edition call should be posted at least two to three months ahead of the submission dates.

 

The choice of reviewers is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief and Editors. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript; they must not be from the authors' own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors.

 

The Editor sends submitted manuscripts with guidelines to two identified experts in the field. The reviewers’ evaluation form contains a checklist in order to help reviewers cover all aspects that can decide on the quality of a submission. In the final section of the evaluation form, the reviewers must include observations and suggestions aimed at improving the submitted manuscript; these are sent to authors, without the names of the reviewers. In a double-blind peer review, all of the reviewers of a manuscript remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.

 

All of the reviewers of a manuscript act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor-in-Chief and Editors may assign additional reviewers.

 

During the review process, the Editor-in-Chief and Editors may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if they are necessary for the evaluation of the scholarly merit of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

 

The Editorial team shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.

 

Members of the Editorial team are permitted to submit their own papers to the journal. In cases where an author is associated with the journal, they will be removed from all editorial tasks for that paper and another member of the team will be assigned responsibility for overseeing peer review.

 

 

POST-PUBLICATION DISCUSSIONS

 

SAJAT encourages post-publication debate either through letters to the Editor, or on an external moderated site, such as PubPeer.

 

 

LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS (LLM) AND GENERATIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) TOOLS

 

SAJAT conforms to the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) recommendations on chat bots, ChatGPT and scholarly manuscripts and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s position statement on Authorship and AI tools.

 

AI bots such as ChatGPT cannot be listed as authors on your submission. Authors must clearly indicate the use of tools based on large language models and generative AI for data or code generation, data collection, cleaning, analysis, or interpretation, (which tool was used and for what purpose), preferably in the Methods or Acknowledgements sections. Photography, videos or illustrations created wholly or partly using generative AI are not considered acceptable. The use of non-generative machine learning tools to manipulate, combine or enhance existing images or figures should be disclosed in the relevant caption upon submission to allow a case-by-case review. Concealing the use of AI tools is unethical. The use of AI-based tools for copyediting and spell checking does not need to be declared. AI outputs should not be cited as primary sources for backing up specific claims.

 

Editors and Reviewers must ensure the confidentiality of the editorial work and the peer review process. Editors must not share information about submitted manuscripts or peer review reports with any tools based on large language models and generative AI. Reviewers must not use any tools based on large language models and generative AI to generate review reports. Concealing the use of AI tools is unethical and undermines transparency in editorial work and peer review. The editorial and review processes are confidential, and using AI tools on the manuscript makes it public, violating the confidentiality principle, disclosing confidential information in public, and compromising transparency.

 

 

INVESTIGATIONS

 

Procedures for Dealing with Complaints and Appeals:

 

Anyone may inform the Editors and/or Editorial Staff at any time of suspected unethical behaviour or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary information/evidence to start an investigation.

 

  • The Editor-in-Chief will consult with the Editorial Board on decisions regarding the initiation of an investigation.
  • During an investigation, any evidence should be treated as strictly confidential and only made available to those strictly involved in investigating.
  • The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them.
  • If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious.

 

Minor Misconduct

 

Minor misconduct will be dealt directly with those involved without involving any other parties, e.g.:

  • Communicating to authors/reviewers whenever a minor issue involving misunderstanding or misapplication of academic standards has occurred.
  • A warning letter to an author or reviewer regarding fairly minor misconduct.

 

Major Misconduct

 

The Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board, in consultation with and, when appropriate, a small group of experts should make any decision regarding the course of action to be taken using the evidence available. The possible outcomes are as follows (these can be used separately or jointly):

  • Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct.
  • Informing the author's (or reviewer's) head of department or employer of any misconduct by means of a formal letter.
  • The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy (see below).
  • A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period.
  • Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action.

 

When dealing with complaints and appeals, the editorial team will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE):  https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts.

 

 

RETRACTION POLICY

 

The infringement of the legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), the violation of professional ethical codes and research misconduct, such as multiple submissions, duplicate or overlapping publication, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data and data fabrication, undisclosed use of tools based on large language models and generative AI, honest errors reported by the authors (for example, errors due to the mixing up of samples or use of a scientific tool or equipment that is found subsequently to be faulty), unethical research  or any major misconduct require retraction of an article. Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct errors in submission or publication.

 

For any retracted article, the reason for retraction and who is instigating the retraction will be clearly stated in the Retraction notice. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this practice has been adopted for article retraction by SAJAT. In the electronic version of the retraction note, a link is made to the original article. In the electronic version of the original article, a link is made to the retraction note where it is clearly stated that the article has been retracted. The original article is retained unchanged, save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”

 

Repository policy

 

This journal allows authors to deposit the published version of their work in an institutional or any other repository of their choice.

 

 

RESEARCH DATA SHARING

 

SAJAT encourages authors to share research data that are required for confirming the results published in the manuscript and/or enhance the published manuscript under the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’. We encourage authors to share supporting software applications, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound or video clips, large appendices, data tables and other relevant items that cannot be included in the article.

 

The preferred mechanism for sharing research data is via data repositories. Authors may deposit relevant data in a FAIR-compliant repository – institutional, disciplinary, or general-purpose (e.g. Zenodo). If you need assistance in finding a FAIR compliant repository, use these links: https://repositoryfinder.datacite.org/ and https://www.re3data.org/. Authors should also provide via the repository any information needed to replicate, validate, and/or reuse the results /their study and analysis of the research data. This includes details of any software, instruments and other tools used to process the results. Where possible, the tools and instruments themselves should also be provided. A DOI will be assigned to each research data file, enabling the research data to be cited the same way as publications. Authors affirm that data protection regulations, ethical standards, third party copyright and other rights have been respected in the process of collecting, processing and sharing data.

 

Exceptions: We recognize that open sharing of data may not always be feasible. Exceptions to open access to research data underlying publications include the following: obligation to protect results, confidentiality obligations, security obligations, the obligation to protect personal data and other legitimate constraints. Where open access is not provided to the data needed to validate the conclusions of a publication that reports original results, authors should make metadata available explaining the research and access rules to the data. 

 

 

ETHICAL AND SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS

 

If data access is restricted for ethical or security reasons, the manuscript must include:

  • a description of the restrictions on the data;
  • what, if anything, the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent said about the data sharing; and
  • all necessary information required for a reader or reviewer to apply for access to the data and the conditions under which access will be granted.

 

 

DATA PROTECTION ISSUES

 

Where human data cannot be effectively de-identified, data must not be shared in order to protect participant privacy unless the individuals have given explicit written consent that their identifiable data can be made publicly available.

In instances where the data cannot be made available, the manuscript must include:

  • an explanation of the data protection concern;
  • any intermediary data that can be de-identified without compromising anonymity;
  • what, if anything, the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent said about data sharing; and
  • where applicable, all necessary information required for a reader or peer reviewer to apply for access to the data and the conditions under which access will be granted.

 

  • Link to research data from a Data Availability Statement within the submitted paper, which will be made public upon publication.

 

A ‘Data Availability Statement’[2] should be added to the submission, prior to the reference list, providing the details of the data availability, including the DOI linking to it. If the data is restricted in any way and/or is not being made available within the journal publication, a statement from the author should be provided to explain why.

 

Consider the following when depositing data related to a publication:

  • Check whether a repository where the data is deposited has a sustainability model.
  • The data must be deposited under an open license that permits unrestricted access (e.g., CC0, CC-BY). More restrictive licenses should only be used if there is a valid reason (e.g., legal).
  • The deposited data must include a version that is in an open, non-proprietary format.
  • The deposited data must have been labeled in such a way that a third party can make sense of it (e.g., sensible column headers, descriptions in a readme text file).
  • Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, the studies must have been approved by an appropriate Ethics Committee. The identity of the research subject should be anonymized whenever possible. For research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardian).

 

 

CODE SHARING

 

Authors are encouraged to share any code used in their work, especially author-generated code. If commercial software was used, its name and version should be provided. This information can be included in the Methods section.

When feasible, code should be deposited in a public repository with a persistent identifier and version control. Open-source licensing is recommended. Deposited code should include:

  • Installation and usage instructions
  • Operating system details
  • Programming language and data format information
  • Software dependencies (version, toolboxes, modules)
  • Documentation for reproducibility, including purpose explanations
  • Actual or sample data with log files or equivalent documentation

 

For studies using custom code or mathematical algorithms essential to the conclusions, a Code Availability Statement must be included. This statement should specify code description, access details, repository identifier, and any access restrictions. It should be provided as a separate section following the Data Availability Statement.

 

 

EXPERIMENTAL PROTOCOLS SHARING

 

Authors are encouraged to share step-by-step research protocols to facilitate replication and further research. These can be uploaded to a protocol-sharing platform of choice or a repository. If such protocols are available, please provide a DOI or other citation details with submission.

 

 

PREREGISTRATION

 

SAJAT supports study pre-registration (including clinical trials) and pre-registration of analysis plans in public repositories. Authors should indicate at submission whether any part of their study was preregistered. If so, they must include an active link to the preregistration in the Methods section and specify the preregistration date. Any deviations from the preregistered protocol should be disclosed, along with the reasons for those changes.

 

 

OPEN ACCESS POLICY

 

SAJAT is an Open Access journal. All its content is available free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, as well as to establish HTML links to them, without having to seek the consent of the author or publisher. The journal does not charge any fees at submission, reviewing, and production stages.

 

 

SELF-ARCHIVING POLICY

 

Authors can deposit preprints (versions before peer review), Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) and/or Versions of Record (VoRs) in a repository of the authors' choice (e.g. an institutional, disciplinary and general-purpose repository. etc.), author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website prior or during the submission process, at any time after the acceptance of the manuscript and at any time after publication. Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and links must be made to the article's DOI and the license.

 

 

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSING

 

Authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media. Articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.

 

Authors can enter the separate, additional contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the published paper (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

 

 

METADATA POLICY

 

The journal metadata are freely accessible to all, and freely reusable by all, under the terms of the Creative Commons Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license.

 

 

DISCLAIMER

 

The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the SAJAT Editors and Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. The publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

 

 

Developed by EIFL, inspired by:

 

[1]In  some submission systems this is done by selecting CRediT roles in the article submission form. If this is not supported in your submission system, require authors to include a contribution statement in the manuscript. Example: Author 1: review and editing (equal). Author 2: Conceptualization (lead); writing – original draft (lead); formal analysis (lead); writing – review and editing (equal). Author 3: Software (lead); writing – review and editing (equal). Author 4: Methodology (lead); writing – review and editing (equal). Author 5: Conceptualization (supporting); Writing – original draft (supporting); Writing – review and editing (equal). More information: https://credit.niso.org/implementing-credit/

[2] Don’t forget to mention the Data Availability Statement in Author Guidelines and include it in the manuscript template, if you provide one. The Data Availability statements should take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple types of research data):

  • The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
  • The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
  • The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
  • Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
  • All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
  • The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].

The phrasing has been taken from: Hrynaszkiewicz, Iain, Natasha Simons, Azhar Hussain, Rebecca Grant, and Simon Goudie. 2020. ‘Developing a Research Data Policy Framework for All Journals and Publishers’. Data Science Journal 19 (1): 5. https://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-005.