NOASP, a division of Cappelen Damm AS, complies with the membership guidelines and best practices set forth by the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA).
NOASP journals are listed with the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ); monographs and anthologies are listed with the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAJ).
NOASP recognizes the importance of the integrity and completeness of the scholarly record to researchers, librarians and others, and has therefore drawn up a policy on corrections, retractions, plagiarism and peer-review integrity.
Editors-in-chief must be of at least an associate professor level. Ideally the editorial team of each journal shall include at least one senior full professor. Editors-in-chief are highly involved in the selection of the editorial team. NOASP seeks to ensure that the editorial team is comprised of individuals from multiple institutions and preferably located in different countries to limit competing interests. In some cases, an editorial team may be based at one institution.
All journals are governed by an editorial board, the members of which may be appointed by the editorial team and, when appropriate, by the publisher. Members of the editorial board are charged with monitoring and safeguarding publishing ethics among other things.
All book manuscripts submitted to NOASP as well as all article manuscripts submitted to a journal published by NOASP are run through the online plagiarism screening service iThenticate before being sent out to peer reviewers (unless rejected at the triage stage, i.e., direct rejection). The reports generated from iThenticate for journal articles are evaluated by the journal’s editor-in-chief or a qualified subject editor; reports for book manuscripts are reviewed by the publisher. Cases of suspected plagiarism must be reported to NOASP; the publisher and editor-in-chief together determine the steps to be taken vis-a-vis a case of suspected plagiarism.
Manuscripts submitted to NOASP or a journal published by NOASP are subjected to external peer review. The decision to accept or reject a manuscript submitted to a journal is based on comments from at least two reviewers in a double-blind process. At least one of the peers will be an expert outside the journal’s editorial board. As a main rule, one of the peers will be from the same country as the author, or will be familiar with the professional tradition in the author’s country. Editorials, book reviews, and similar, are not necessarily peer-reviewed. Peer review for book manuscripts is single-blind, with one reviewer.
Where authors have suggested reviewers in their covering letter, editors may contact these individuals if the suggestions are reasonable, and the editor is confident that no competing interests are present (e.g. a colleague at the same department, a former co-author, or within the author’s research network).
Only scientifically qualified persons evaluate reviews and make the decision to accept or reject a submission. Typically, for journals this means the editor-in-chief makes a final decision, or a subject editor or guest editor, where applicable. The editor-in-chief is accountable for the quality of editorial decisions, and in some journals, published articles state the name of the responsible editor who managed peer review and made a final decision.
Journal editors consider competing interests when a manuscript is submitted by a colleague at their own institution or from their research network. In this case, a co-editor – or an external trusted expert – with no such connections is asked to act as the editor for that particular paper.
Should a member of a journal’s editorial team submit a manuscript to the journal, a co-editor will be assigned to take charge of the entire review process and act as editor for that particular paper. Alternatively, the co-editor may assign an external trusted expert. The person acting as editor will be named as responsible editor of the article, indicating that the editor who submitted the paper has had nothing to do with the handling of this particular article.
All manuscripts submitted to journals published by NOASP are handled through the NOASP platform. In cases where a guest editor is involved, NOASP will provide support and ensure that all materials are handled through the platform. It is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief to appoint guest editors of special issues. Guest editors are informed that the practices outlined above also apply to guest editors.
Peer reviewers are expected to disclose any competing interests. Reviews shall be objective and constructive. Reviewers shall consider the methodological rigor of the submission, the appropriateness of findings on the basis of methodology, the appropriateness of conclusions, proper establishment of the contribution within the scholarly literature more broadly, among other things. All reviewed manuscripts shall be treated confidentially.
Articles that have already been published will remain unaltered as far as is possible, though updated with information that an erratum/corrigendum or other amendment exists.
Should an author discover a major mistake or error in his/her text after it has been officially published online, the editor will be consulted/notified and if found necessary an erratum or corrigendum will be published. There will be links from the online version of the text to the erratum/corrigendum and vice versa.
This action is reserved for texts that are seriously flawed and so the findings or conclusions cannot be relied upon. Texts may be retracted for several reasons. These may include 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) as well as issues such as research misconduct (data fabrication), duplicate or overlapping publication, fraudulent use of data, plagiarism or unethical research. For any retracted content, the reason for retraction and the party instigating the retraction will be clearly stated in a retraction notice. The retraction notice will be linked to the retracted material and the content will be clearly marked as retracted (including the PDF).
Journal editors-in-chief who become part of the NOASP network of editors receive initial training to review editorial guidelines and standards and ongoing support from the publisher.
Each NOASP publication is assigned an in-house managing editor who is a member of the NOASP team at Cappelen Damm Akademisk. All managing editors receive initial and ongoing training in the detection of irregularities in the editorial process.
To prevent and detect any potential breaches in proper editorial management of peer review – whether inadvertent or deliberate – NOASP carries out regular internal audits of all journals. Following a rotating schedule, each journal is subjected to a review every three years.
This audit covers a random selection of articles, including spontaneously submitted content and those from special issues where contributions have been invited and the peer review performed by a guest editor. Any articles submitted by a member of the editorial team during the preceding three-year period shall be included in the review.
All documents associated with the peer review of the selected articles are reviewed for: evidence of clear and appropriate external peer review, competing interests, and that general practices and standards have been upheld.
Authors are responsible for disclosing all relationships that could be viewed as potential competing interests. Any authors listed must meet the criteria for authorship, which are described in the Author Guidelines of all NOASP publications. Other contributors shall be mentioned in the acknowledgements section of the paper and their contribution described. Authors shall verify that all data referred to in the manuscript are authentic. Should errors or other discoveries warranting a correction or a retraction of the article be detected, these shall be brought to the attention of the publisher immediately.
Authors who wish to submit a complaint related to the peer-review process should contact NOASP’s Division leader Marte Ericsson Ryste via email: marte.ericsson.ryste@cappelendamm.no.
Complaints regarding suspected abuse or inappropriate content shall be submitted to the specific journal’s editor-in-chief as a first point of contact, with a cc to Division leader Marte Ericsson Ryste: marte.ericsson.ryste@cappelendamm.no.
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