Evaluation system

The billingual online journal "Spekali" is  Double blind peer reviewed, "Gold" open access journal  that publishes original research and review articles in an interactive, open access format. Articles may span the full spectrum of the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities.

According to the evaluation policy of the journal, the  reviewers are independent of the authors and are not affiliated with the same institution.

Spekali journal uses double-blind peer-review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not give away their identity.

PUBLICATION ETHICS STATEMENT

“Spekali”, as the online bilingual academic Journal of Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University  is committed to high standards of critical scholarly review and professional publishing judgment. Journal is under the editorial direction of its  independent editors. It is the journal editors who make all decisions regarding the content published in each issue; they ensure the accuracy, completeness, and originality of each article published. UHP supports our journal editors and sponsors in their efforts to manage their journals ethically and transparently, while adhering to established editorial principles and practices in their disciplines.

Additional information about each journal’s author guidelines may be accessed by going to the journal home page on our website and clicking on the “Guide for Authors” tab.

EDITORIAL DECISIONS

The editors of each journal are responsible for selecting which articles will be accepted for publication. Each journal editor, with the assistance from their editorial board, create the policies and guidelines for their journal while abiding by legal requirements regarding plagiarism, libel, and copyright infringement. The editors may request assistance from other journal editors or reviewers when making their decisions.

The journal editors evaluate the content of each manuscript for appropriateness for the journal. Each manuscript is also evaluated for the intellectual content without regard to the author’s sex, race, ethnic origin, religious beliefs, or political philosophy.

Any unpublished materials which have been included within a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s own research without the express written consent of the original manuscript author.

PEER REVIEWER DUTIES

Each journal has a Peer Review Process in place which assists the editor in making editorial decisions about a manuscript’s quality and suitability for publication. The journal editor may provide manuscript authors with each peer-reviewer’s response, which can help authors in improving their manuscript.

Potential peer reviewers who do not feel qualified to review a manuscript, or believes that they will not be able to provide a prompt response, should notify the editor as soon as possible. The reviewer should be an impartial party with respect to the author(s) of the manuscript. It is important for reviewers to inform the journal editor, if they suspect, or are aware of, a conflict of interest which may include prior co-authorship, a close professional relationship, or a personal relationship.

All submissions received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shared or discussed with others, except as permitted by the journal editor.

Manuscript reviews must be conducted objectively and without personal criticism of the author. Each Reviewer should express their views clearly and provide supporting arguments.

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Reviewers should also make the editor aware if they recognize a significant resemblance between the manuscript under review and any other published paper.

Any ideas or information obtained through peer review is considered privileged information and should be kept confidential. If a Reviewer has a professional or personal connection with any of the authors or institutions connected to the paper, they should inform the editor that a conflict of interest may exist.

The scholarly peer review process applies to original research articles only. Other types of scholarly content which regularly appear in scholarly journals such as book and media reviews, political reviews, dialogue, editorial commentary, and others, are not usually subject to the peer review process.

AUTHORSHIP

Each author listed on the manuscript should be limited to only those who have made a significant contribution to the concept, design, execution, or interpretation of the research or study. Every person who has made a significant contribution to the paper should be listed as co-author. If there are others who have participated in a significant way to the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as a contributor. The corresponding author should review and confirm that co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved and agreed to submit the final version of the paper.

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be understood to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the research project should also be properly acknowledged.

Authors of papers reporting on original research must provide an accurate description of the research/work performed and an objective discussion of its importance to the field. All evidence and supporting data should be represented accurately in the paper. Each manuscript should also include references that allow others the ability to reconstruct the argument. It is unacceptable to intentionally include inaccurate statements or fabricated data in the manuscript, which is considered unethical behavior.

Authors must guarantee that their submitted work contains no content that may be considered as libelous or as infringing in any way on the copyright of another party. If the authors have used the work and/or words of others, it has been appropriately cited or quoted.

Authors are asked to provide the raw evidence and data in connection with a paper for editorial review and should be prepared to provide access to such evidence (consistent with the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases) and should be prepared to retain such evidence and data for a reasonable time after publication.

Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. The journal editor will make every effort to process and evaluate submissions in a timely fashion. Should an author decide to submit the manuscript to another journal, he/she must request the journal editor to withdraw their manuscript from consideration.

Authors must properly acknowledge the work of others and should cite all publications that have been influential in determining their scholarly understanding of the subject of their paper.

Authors must sign a publication agreement in order for their accepted manuscript to be published in the journal. Each journal has its own publication agreement which will be provided to the author upon acceptance of their manuscript.

ERRORS IN PUBLISHED WORKS

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

If the journal editor finds that a significant error has been published for which a correction needs to be made, and in cases where there is reason for concern about matters such as plagiarism, fabrication of research, duplicate publication, or failure to disclose conflicts of interest, the editor will review and resolve the matter in consultation with the author. In all instances, the publisher  is committed to preserving the integrity of the scholarly version of record.


PLAGIARISM CHECKER 

Spekali uses Turnitin Similarity Check to screen for unoriginal material. Authors submitting to a Spekali journal should be aware that their paper will be submitted to TurnItIn Check at any point during the peer-review or production process.

If the paper commits plagiarism, this may result in the following actions being taken, depending on the nature and severity of the case:


  • If a paper is still in peer review, it may be returned to the author with a request that they address the issues through appropriate citation, use of quote marks to identify direct quotes, or re-writing.
  •  If the similarity between the manuscripts is too extensive for revision, it may be rejected. 
  • If the paper is already published online, a correction*, expression of concern or retraction may be published. 
  • The author’s institution may also be informed.


All articles submitted will be evaluated using a 100-point scoring system.

The article has a very good chance of being published in a Journal if both of the reviewers agree that the manuscript is good (positive assessment is considered 51 points).

The articles will be assessed using the following criteria:

  • Content-related criteria (maximum score: 20 points)
    There are examined:  topicality of the assigned task and goal of the research.
  • In-depth analysis and quality of a research (maximum score: 20 points)
    There are checked: developing of the ideas presented by the author fully; in-depth and thorough study of a problem; accuracy of argumentation, concretization and complexity; relevance of scholarly literature with the researched subject.
  • Data reliability (maximum score: 20 points).
    Checking for the accuracy of data:  whether the author is based on first source of data; if all the cited sources are given in the reference list of the mentioned article.
  • Layout of the article (maximum score: 20 points).
    There are checked: if the article is well organized, whether each paragraph is sufficiently extensive.
  • Conclusions (maximum score: 20 points).
    There are checked: novelty and significance of the researched results; whether the conclusions are logical or not.


Notice: Reviewers should remain anonymous throughout the review process and beyond. The article will be rejected if its rating appears less than 51 points.