About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Acta Baltico-Slavica is an interdisciplinary journal publishing research on issues concerning the Balto-Slavic area. The main focus of the journal are the current and past cultural, linguistic and social phenomena. We encourage transnational research transgressing ethnocentric boundaries, and prefer studies that combine methodologies coming from various disciplines, taking advantage of the latest developments in the humanities and social sciences. Acta Baltico-Slavica puts emphasis on the pluralism of scientific approaches by publishing articles that inspire academic discussions.

Acta Baltico-Slavica publishes contributions in English, Polish and Russian.

Regular Sections of the Journal

Articles

Original papers that contain new studies on the subject being the focus of a given issue.

Sources and Materials

Archival materials, elicited sources (field research and oral history), transcriptions of texts that document the diverse language varieties used in the Balto-Slavic region, as well as photo archives (photocopies of documents, with description). The subject area in the section will not be limited by the main subject of a given issue – the materials published should be consistent with the general profile of the journal. Materials and sources will be published in their original languages.

Discussions, Polemics, Review Articles

Articles or discussions and polemical views, and review articles.

Reviews

Reviews of academic books and important articles published in other academic journals; the subject area should be consistent with the general profile of the journal.

Chronicle

Reports from international scholarly events, such as conferences and thematic sessions on issues related to the profile of the journal. Also, other texts concerning scholars who work in the field, such as interviews, tributes, notes on the occasion of anniversaries, and obituaries.

New Publications

Brief notes on new books and articles on issues concerning the Balto-Slavic region, published in the previous year.

Peer Review Process

All articles published by the Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences are subject to a review procedure. By submitting a manuscript, the author agrees that the manuscript will undergo a review procedure. All reviews are double-blind (i.e. the identity of the reviewer is not disclosed to the author and vice versa). The reviewers use review forms as required: a form for journal articles, review articles.

The editors of the journal make a preliminary assessment within 30 days from the date of submission of the manuscript. If they accept the manuscript, it is sent to two external reviewers selected by the Editor-in-Chief, Editor in Charge of the issue or another member of the Editorial Team. The reviewers are required to submit their reviews within 30 days.

Within 7 days from the submission of the reviews, the editors inform the author whether the manuscript has been accepted for publication, accepted pending revisions or rejected. The author should make revisions as required and submit the final version of the manuscript within 30 days. Should the author fail to meet the deadline, the manuscript will be published in the next issue of the journal.

The final decision whether to publish the manuscript, request revisions, or reject the manuscript is made by the Editor-in-Chief. In instances when a manuscript is submitted by the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, all decisions concerning the manuscript in question will be made by the Deputy Editor or a member of the Editorial Team.

In the event that the author does not agree with the comments from the reviewers or the editors, or the editors do not accept the revisions made by the author, the author has the right to withdraw the manuscript, and the editors have the right to reject it or, by way of exception, send it to a third reviewer.

Publication Frequency

The journal is published annually.

Open Access Policy

This is an open access journal, which means that all content is freely available to users, including institutional users, without charge and without having to log in.

Publication Ethics

The publisher of the journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and aims to follow COPE’s Code of Conduct for Journal Editors. In the event of ethical misconduct on the part of the author(s) – such as plagiarism, falsifying data or self-plagiarism (a type of plagiarism where the author republishes his/her own work in its entirety or reuses portions of his/her previously published work) – the editors of the journal request an explanation and undertake appropriate steps as specified in the COPE guidelines. In particularly blatant cases, this may mean rejection of the manuscript, notification of authorities at the author’s institution, and exclusion of any further submissions by the same author from being processed by the journal.

Competing Interests

A conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence his or her actions. These range from those with negligible potential to those with great potential to influence scholarly judgment. A conflict of interest may exist regardless of whether a person is aware of it.

The most obvious examples of a conflict of interest include financial relationships, such as employment, consultancies, honoraria, paid expert opinions, as well as reporting lines. They carry the most considerable risk of undermining the credibility of the journal, the authors, and science itself. Conflicts may also occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and political and intellectual passion.

If any conflict of interest exists, the reviewer and the author must declare it to the editors of the journal.

A conflict of interest is also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties.

Confidentiality

All those involved in the publishing process (editors, reviewers, translators, etc.) are required to treat all information relating to submissions in strict confidence.

Authorship

Authorship credit should be based on: substantial contributions to conception or analysis and interpretation of data; drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and final approval of the version to be published.

“Ghostwriting” and “Guest Authorship”

The following authorship problems should be prevented before submitting a manuscript: “ghostwriting” and “guest authorship”. “Ghostwriting” refers to a case when a person who made substantial contributions to a publication is not credited as an author or, in the case of purely technical support insufficient for authorship, the person is not acknowledged in a publication. “Guest authorship” is the opposite situation, when a person appears in the publication as an author even though he/she was not involved in the preparation of the manuscript or his/her contribution was insignificant.

Contributorship

In the case of works where more than one author contributed to the research and the manuscript, the nature of the contribution of each author – and not percentage contribution – should be specified in the manuscript, e.g. “Authors’ contribution: DF is responsible for the conception of the research; BK collected the examples. Both authors participated in drafting the manuscript”; or: “The following declarations about contributions of particular authors to the research have been made: concept of the study: first author; data analyses: second author; drafting the manuscript: first and second author”). This information will be published in the article.

Changes in Authorship

In accordance with the COPE guidelines, any changes in authorship require written consent of all authors. Each of them should issue a statement on the acceptance of the proposed changes and send it individually via direct email to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal. The corresponding author takes responsibility for providing a clear reason for the change(s) and should coordinate interaction between the authors and the Editor-in-Chief. If no satisfactory agreement can be reached among the authors, they should contact their home institution(s) for a final decision; the editors do not engage in resolving such disputes

In the case of articles which have already been published, the change in authorship information is made by retracting the article and publishing a corrected version.

Corrections, Retractions, and Commenting

As regards publishing corrections and expressions of concern as well as retracting articles, the publisher follows the COPE guidelines.

Corrections

Minor corrections (clarifications) are possible through comments posted by the editors or the publisher to the published version of the article.

In the case of major corrections, a new, corrected version of the article is published, fully indexed and linked to the original article. Major changes cover errors that significantly affect the understanding of the original article.

Commenting

Readers may post comments. The editors reserve the right to remove a comment if its content is inconsistent with generally accepted ethical principles.

Archiving

Copies of published articles are deposited at the Library of Science (operated by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling at the University of Warsaw as part of the Open Science Platform) and the Digital Repository of the National Library of Poland. As of 2020, they are made available at the Internet Archive library in the collection “Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences”.

Author Self-Archiving

Authors are permitted to post their work online (e.g. in institutional repositories or on their website) only after it has been published in this journal and only in the publisher’s version. For more information on this topic see Sherpa/Romeo.

Transliteration

Authors are requested to transliterate non-Latin scripts in accordance with the Romanization Tables of the Library of Congress (ALA-LC).

Below you will find a list of direct links to Romanization Tables for Slavic scripts:

Author Fees

The publisher does not charge any fees for a preliminary assessment of submissions or for their publication.