Journal Regulations

1. In accordance with the Founding Act and its Statute, Academicus ISJ, is a self-published, non-profit journal, pISSN 2079-3715 and eISSN 2309-1088, peer reviewed scientific publication, semi-annual (January - July), in Open Access and publishes results of research and scientific activities across Social Sciences and Humanities. This journal will collect works and research developed from the perspective and disciplinary and interdisciplinary structuring of these scientific areas.
   
2. The journal publishes the latest knowledge in the above-mentioned sciences, thus contributing to improving the socio-economic indicators of the region and expanding the concept of region from the Southwestern Balkans, to the Mediterranean, Central and Eastern Europe and beyond
3. The underlying principles of publishing are originality, topicality, and applicability in practice.
4. Academicus ISJ welcomes works or research resulting from the efforts of scholars and academics in different fields who are able to meet the scientific and editorial requirements of this journal.
5. Academicus ISJ is led by an international Editorial Board, whose members with their outstanding reputation in scientific research and their academic qualities, by a visionary and strategic orientation, ensure a clear focus and the qualitative contribution of the journal in the publication of the scientific content, on a global scale. The Editor in Chief runs the general management of the journal in collaboration with the Editorial Secretariat, by coordinating the activities of the publishing process including author’s submissions and the reviewer’s workflow.
6. The journal is being monitored by prestigious international indexing agencies which list and measure the academic impact of scientific publications, by integrating their web-based tools, which provide data on the use and impact of research and scholarly products and has been included in internationally recognized electronic data bases and prestigious libraries worldwide.
   

1. The author(s) (hereinafter referred to as the author) is/are responsible for elaborating and submitting articles to the Editorial Secretariat of Academicus ISJ, as the sole holder(s) of the right to decide on the use of the work.
2. The author of an article is responsible for its scientific and linguistic quality, as well as for the Ethics in Research, in conformity with all publication provisions as laid out in the Right of Authorship and Copyright and Publication Ethics.
   Only works previously not published elsewhere or sent for publication to other the journals will be considered to publishing by the journal. Academicus ISJ is a double blind peer review journal and does not consider for publication pre-print or working papers previously posted online.
   The author is allowed to self-archive in open access repositories and any website only post-print articles  after the publication online of their work at the Academicus ISJ website and, in this case, must cite Academicus ISJ as the publisher of this work.
   
3. The author is required to submit articles by uploading them to the journal website according to the specified procedure as in Authors Submission directory. In order to protect specific characteristics present in the article or in case of failure of the above-mentioned upload, the author can send the proposal to the editorial e-mail address info@academicus.edu.al, which confirms receipt through an email within five calendar days. Otherwise the author should re-send the article. The submission and processing of articles is free of charge.
4. Based on the observations and recommendations of the Editorial Board, which are based on the evaluations developed by the Reviewers, the author shall modify or correct the article submitted. A modified final copy is to be returned to the editor's address: info@academicus.edu.al following up the above-mentioned procedure and taking into consideration deadlines that the editor sets.
5. Articles not accepted for publication shall be returned to the author via the Editorial Secretariat, together with the reason for return signed by the Editor in Chief by bringing back the parts at their initial state, with no any obligation between them, as there is no any obligation in case Authors decide to withdraw their proposal, by sending a withdrawal  request at info@academicus.edu.al, independently the processing stage of the proposal, prior to its publication.
6. The Editorial Secretariat communicates with the Author(s) of an article included in the publication of an issue during the Layout process and welcome their suggestions in case of need of any correction, that may incur due to the article’s processing. The author of an accepted article shall receive 1 (one) copy of the publication containing the published article.

1. The Editorial Board selects the reviewers for each research field covered by the journal, based on the UDC classification. Reviewers are grouped according to the scientific field covered by the journal. The Editorial Board evaluates the performance of the reviewers on a one-year frequency and each 2 years renews the least performing reviewer of each scientific field, with candidates who self-apply for the role based on the Call for Reviewers of the Editorial Board, based on a pointed evaluation of their CVs.
2. Reviewers are selected from international academic and scientific environments, and have an outstanding reputation at the European level and even further. Their reviews and assessments will assure the highest quality of the journal in terms of scientific content and publishing standard, by providing a professional evaluation and developing an ethical process, unaffected by any Conflict of Interest, about with they declare at the moment when they accept a proposal for review.
3. The reviewer receives the article “in blind” from the Academicus Publication  Management System, which lists the proposals according the scientific fields he/she covers and has a reviewing limit of two article per issue. Each proposal is available to two reviewers.
4. The reviewers, by an individual login at the Reviewers space, part of Academicus Publication Management System, elaborate an overall assessment, in English, of the article in an Evaluation Form, focusing on its originality and contribution, and specify its quality in terms of both its scientific and practical value. All comments must be sufficiently justified and the assessment conclusion must be clear and unambiguous. In the assessment, the reviewer must state whether he/she:
   1. Recommends the article for publication.
   2. Recommends the article for publication after taking due regard to comments (minor revisions).
   3. Recommend the article for publication after eliminating formal deficiencies (major revisions).
   4. Does not recommend the article for publication, but author(s) should be encouraged to resubmit in the future, after re-elaborating the paper, referring the reviewers comments.
   5. Does not recommend the article for publication.
5. The conclusions of a reviewer’s assessment are considered as recommendations. The time allocated for elaboration of the reviewer’s assessment is 3 weeks. The Editorial Board has an exclusive right to decide on an article’s publication.
   

1. According to the law, the author of a work is an individual who, through his or her mental inventive activity, has created a certain work. Should this work be a product of inventive activity of several individuals, the work is subject to authorship in common.
2. The author is in possession of the Personal Rights of Authorship, e.g. the authorship protection right, the work inviolability right, and the right for public use in a way not diminishing its value, etc. 
3. When an article is published in Academicus ISJ, this publication is considered the intellectual property of Academicus ISJ, a DoI is assigned to it, to identify the content and provide a persistent link to its location on the Internet of the full article with a customized metadata resolution.
   Academicus’ DOI http://doi.org/10.7336/academicus.2011.04.01
   will lead to the work published in Academicus year 2011 issue 4 paper 1, where 10.7336 is the DoI prefix of Academicus ISJ assigned by the registration agency (the International DOI Foundation).
   In order to preserve the digital content of each article in open access within a long-term storage, all works published in Academicus ISJ have been archived in 2 institutional repositories, one of them in OA.
4. The author grants his or her permission for publication and distribution of the work by submitting the article in order to publish it in Academicus ISJ, while taking in consideration that:
   1. Academicus ISJ is a scientific and academic journal with a registered trademark protecting its own rights and intellectual property.
   2. When a certain work is being published in Academicus ISJ, this publication is considered the intellectual property of Academicus ISJ which holds the copyright. In order to re-publish this work at another editor, in all languages, the author must formally inform the editor at the email address info@academicus.edu.al and only after receiving the approval from Academicus can proceed with re-publication, by always citing that the first publication of this work has been done by Academicus ISJ, by mentioning the corresponding Issue and Year of publication. 
   3. The journal follows COPE guidelines and Best practices for Corrections, Retractions or Editorial expression of concerns with the article, in the post publication phase. (The Post Publication Policy of Academicus ISJ is available in a specific chapter of this Journal Regulation)

   4. The author is allowed has the right to distribute and Self-Archive in Open Access repositorie, send and distribute at any website, under a CC License of Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) only post-print articles, with our publishing format, after the publication online of their work at the Academicus ISJ website (without asking the publisher for any authorization), and in this case must cite Academicus International Scientific Journal as the publisher of this work.

1. Academicus ISJ as a Diamond Open Access Scholarly Publishing embraces the Code of Conduct of OASPA and follows guidance from COPE to support the ethical publishing principles, Conflict of Interest (CoI) and malpractice statements. The guidelines are applied to the journal Editors following COPE on General Approach to Publication Ethics for the Editorial Office. The same  is applied to Authors and Reviewers. The journal will follow the COPE flowcharts on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.
   
2. According to the international best practices in scientific publishing and professional conduct code, the author is asked to complete and sign the Declaration for Publishing in Academicus ISJ (in attach at the e-mail address: info@academicus.edu.al, as image, or in  pdf file with electronic signature). This document declares that the proposal has not been previously published and is not currently being considered elsewhere for publication in any another journal, is not a pre-print or working paper previously posted online in an open access repository, and that author(s) is the sole owner of the manuscript thereof and of all rights and title, and in case this work will be published at this journal, assigns to the publisher of the Academicus International Scientific Journal (Academicus ISJ) pISSN 2079-3715, eISSN 2309-1088 the rights to publish, distribute and create print work from said manuscript, since considered part of the intellectual property of Academicus ISJ. The author declares that is aware that the journal  creates derivatives and distrubutes online its content under  a Creative Commons License of Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0), and creates and disseminates metadata for a wider distribution, visibility and citation of the article.  The author(s) declares that has read the Journal's Regulation, which is fully understood and to which the author(s) is submitting the publishing of this work, and I am aware that Academicus ISJ follows the best practices dealing with ethical publishing principles  and malpractice statements, as well as its flowcharts on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct and the development of my research is in accordance to them.  The author declares that he/she understands what Plagiarism and Auto Plagiarism is and declares and warrants that his/her contribution is original, except for such excerpts or content cited correctly, without manipulating them. The research have been conducted according to the ethical research principles and it contains no libellous statements, does not infringe on any copyright, trademark, patent, statutory right, or propriety right of others.
3. Authors must declare in the Author’s Declaration for Publishing in Academicus ISJ that their proposal is not a result of Fabrication or Falsification of Data.

4. Researchers are bounded by a code of ethics in developing their research, that includes the following protections for the observed, interviewed or questioned subjects:

   a. Protected from physical or psychological harm (including loss of dignity, loss of autonomy, and loss of self-esteem)

   b. Protection of privacy and confidentiality

   c. Protection against unjustifiable deception

   d. The subject must give voluntary informed consent to participate in research. Guardians must give consent for minors to participate

5. Academicus ISJ encourages the author to declare if there is any potential Conflict of Interest related to the development and results of the research work by trying to support the interest of potential founders or sponsors with the publication of the research findings.

1. Title of the article (followed by any subtitles) (each may contain up to 120 characters)
2. Name and surname of the author(s) including scientific title or grade according their national academic advancement schema, email address and ORCID of the author(s) .
3. The name of the university, research center or other scientific research developing entity where the author is affiliated.
4. Abstract (which must contain from 250 - 500 words)
5. Keywords (from 4-7 words) 
6. UDC code of the article
7. The text of the article must contain from 5000 - 10000 words and be structured as follows:
   1. Introduction (which must contain up to 500 words)
   2. Analysis and Results (in case the paper needs the inclusion of Methodology and Experimentation, they must contain from 200-250 words)
   3. Conclusion
8. Bibliography and References (which must not surpass 50 titles) must meet one of the following standards: MLA, APA, Harvard, Chicago. References within the text must be followed by a progressive number with superscript at the end of the word and explanations must be placed at the end of the page on which the reference is inserted. Bibliography must be in the same standart, ordered alphabetically, and the works of the same author, must be ordered by date from oldest to newest, and in the case of non-English texts it is mandatory to cite the original edition in parentheses.
9. Figures (no more than 5, following the standard formats jpeg, gif, png) must have a resolution 300-600 dpi and be placed in the text, followed by the figure’s title and source.
10. Graphics and schemas, in case they have not been created in a vector graphic format (Microsoft and Adobe) by the author but are instead a scanned figure, must not contain any title or legend within them, and be placed in the text, followed by the graphics or schema title and source.
11. Tables must be created in Excel format, not as an image, and placed in the text, followed by the table’s title and source.
12. Mathematical formulas, not as an image, will be created always including the functions of  Equations and Symbols, historically included in the Microsoft Office Suite.

1. Academicus International Scientific Journal, (Academicus ISJ), is a Diamond Open Access Journal, in accordance with the spirit  “Open Science free for all” of the Declaration of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, the ECHO Charter, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing and Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.

   This means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the authors.

2. Academicus ISJ by sharing the principles of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science at the 41st session of UNESCO General Conference in November 2021, is member of the Initiative for Open Citations (i4OC), Open Abstracts (I4OA) and Open Archives Initiative for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).
3. All articles content of this journal is licensed under a Creative Commons License of Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Users are obliged to cite the source, Academicus International Scientific Journal, and the author.

4. Academicus ISJ, by enabling the scientific community and research supporters and funders to have access to and freedom to reuse research literature for knowledge discovery and the development, it absolutely does NOT allow such content, copyrighted by Academicus, to be placed in a collection, volume, or any other usage, at another editor, (excluding here digital databases where Academicus ISJ is indexed and archived) which will be later commercialized and produce revenues to such users by this commercial activity.

5. In order to preserve the digital content of each article in open access within a long-term storage, all content published in Academicus ISJ have been archived in 2 institutional repositories, one of them in OA, in Portico Repository and at an Institutional Repository with DSpace digital service.