Editorial Policies

Material Disclaimer

The opinions and views expressed in the contributions published in the IJCCR are those of the authors, and do not represent the official policy or position of the journal, the editorial board, or RAMICS.

Peer-review Process

Double-blind peer review for scientific research articles

The International Journal of Community Currency Research uses a double-blind peer review process for all research articles. Each submission is initially assessed by a member of the editorial board to make sure that the manuscript is compatible with the journal’s scope and basic standards of scientific rigor and is well-written in good, understandable English. These things being so, the anonymised manuscript is then sent to two independent reviewers who produce an anonymous report (the reviewers do not know the identity of the authors and, reversely, the authors do not know who reviewed their manuscript). The reviewers are chosen according to their specific field of expertise and in awareness of the conflict-of-interest rules. We are very grateful to them for accepting to review a paper. The authors may suggest reviewers or indicate those who they feel would be unsuitable due to conflict of interest reasons [add in link to Conflict of interest policy], though the decision on reviewers is made independently by the editorial board.

Adapted peer review for empirical research reports or other articles

The review process for practice-oriented empirical research, book reviews, and other categories can be conducted in the same way as double-blind review, but also in a simpler form as open review or editorial review. This will be noted in each case for such articles.

Reports and Decision

The reviewers’ reports aim to assess the scientific quality of a submitted paper, in terms of its contribution to the literature, originality, methodology, analysis and interpretation, and quality of communication . The referees can suggest three types of publication decisions to the editor-in-chief:

• acceptance: the paper is suitable for publication as it is, the final publication decision is given by the editor-in-chief
• rejection: the paper is not suitable for publication, the author will be notified with some explanations for this decision 
• Revision (major or minor): the paper is promising but there is room for improvement. The report will provide guidelines and comments to the authors.

We aim to give authors one month to answer the reports and resubmit their paper if a revision decision is made. Usually the new version of the submission is reviewed by the same referees. Reviewers may request more than one revision of a manuscript. All of the points raised by both reviewers and the editor must be responded to, even if you disagree on a point you must state your reasons. 

The final decision of publication rests with the editor-in-chief. It can be that the reviewers are not in agreement, or you feel they have not adequately reviewed the paper. In such a case you may write to the editor-in-chief and justify why another review should be made.

Peer Review Timeline

We try to review submissions quickly, which means within a month. If you get no acknowledgement within a month of submission  please contact us directly by email. The initial assessment of the submission is done in a couple of weeks. In the case of a desk rejection, the corresponding author will be informed as soon as possible and we will make suggestions if we have ideas where you might alternatively submit your submission.

If the paper is assessed as consistent with the scope and quality standards of the IJCCR, it is then sent to reviewers who have two months to send their reports. We regret that this time frame is not always feasible for all our reviewers. In the case of a revision decision, the authors have one month to address the issues raised in the reports. Once the paper is definitively accepted, it will be published and will be counted as part of the next issue edited by the journal.  

Open Access Policy

The IJCCR is an open access journal, meaning that any contribution published in the journal is accessible to anyone, without any fees.

Why does it matter?

We believe that information is a public good, and as such, research must be available to everyone who can make use of it, apply it, or build on it. Open access to information benefits research and researchers as it helps to accelerate research, share learnings and make literature and research as useful as it can be. Open access to publications also enables easier communication and cooperation between disciplines, improving interdisciplinary works. We think that the whole potential and effectiveness of research can only be achieved through open access publication and that this policy amplifies the social value of research. Activists often lack institutional access and by making our research open it can reach practitioners directly and be impactful.

What does it mean?

In order to achieve this open access policy, we keep all issues freely available for any reader on our website and we publish our journal under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License” CC-BY [add link to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/] which allows anyone to:

• copy (digital and hard copies), download, print, redistribute and share the material in any way;
• adapt, remix, transform and build upon the material, for any purposes, even commercial ones. There are no limits to the reuse of the content. 

These rights only stand under the following terms:

• Any user of the material has to give appropriate attribution and credit to the original document and its authors. This means that any user has to cite the document correctly, and attribute it by name to its authors. To do this please use the reference citation provided on the website, and ideally include a DOI link to the document. 
• Any changes from the original document have to be indicated. 
• A user may use the material, but must not use it in a way that suggests that the original authors endorse the user or endorse the user’s derived use of the original work.

Copyright and Permissions

The copyrights are retained by the authors, meaning that they are the owners of their submission. By submitting to the IJCCR, the authors give permission to the journal to publish their submission under a CC-BY license.

If you are a reader or an organisation, and want to use a publication of this website beyond what is authorized by the publication license, please ask the authors directly for permission, since the journal is not responsible for authorizing uses beyond the license conditions  .

IJCCR does not publish AI generated texts. Responsible uses of AI are permitted but must be explicitly disclosed (see European Commission, Directorate General for Research and Innovation (March 2024) Living guidelines on the responsible use of Generative AI in research, ERA Forum stakeholders’ document. EC: Brussels).

Fees and Donations

All papers are freely submitted to the journal. The authors do not need to be members of RAMICS. [But if you would like to join you can do it here - add link] The IJCCR is run on a voluntary basis and does not charge Author Publication Fees (APF) nor any Article Processing Charge (APC). When submitting a paper, an author accepts they will become a part of the journal’s reviewing community and agree to review one submission in the future, for free  .

Nevertheless, there is a cost to processing, publishing and web-hosting publications. We are grateful for any donations [link for donations] toward this cost.

 

Data availability

The IJCCR does not require the authors to share their data and codes. However, you must clearly cite your data, whenever they are collected by another person or institution, or to clearly document your data whenif you are the ones who collected it. We also encourage you to cite the software packages you use. 

We highly encourage you to store your data and codes    , to give access to them, and to provide reasonable assistance to requests for replication. Replication is one of the practices that increases the quality of scientific research so we encourage you to favorably answer any future questions or clarifications about:

• how to access data: if you have it and can provide it, please, do it. If you do not have it and it is publicly accessible, such as in a public data repository [a link here would be good as many won’t even know about these], please, indicate how one can access it. If you do not have it and it is privately owned, please, indicate how one can ask permission to get it. If you collected original data, the replication tools also include survey instruments or experiment instructions and details on subject collection. 
• how you transformed your data: please, be able and willing to provide the codes of your data cleaning process and how you build the final database you used for your computations. 
• how you obtained your results:please, be able and willing to provide the codes you used to implement your model or to obtain your results.
• how you framed your data collection: social data and qualitative data as well as any numerical data can all be important for data interpretation.