Research Integrity

The below policies apply to all Open Library of Humanities journals.

Revised March 2023

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Authors of published articles remain the copyright holders and grant third parties the right to use, reproduce, and share the article according to a Creative Commons license agreement.

One of the benefits of open access publishing lies in others being able to re-use material. We believe that the greatest societal good is possible when people are free to re-distribute scholarship and to create derivative works. This is why we use the CC BY 4.0 license, under which others may re-use your work, on condition that they cite you.

If a more restrictive licence is required (for example, if you are reproducing third party material that cannot be reproduced under more open licences), please make this request upon submission in the ‘Comment to the Editor’ field or email your editor directly, stating the reasons why.

Anti-plagiarism Checking

A combination of pre-screening and open access is the best possible defence against plagiarism. All articles submitted to Open Library of Humanities (OLH) journals can be screened for plagiarism by the iThenticate system from Crossref. This system compares incoming articles to a large database of academic content, and alerts editors to any possible issues.

Rigorous Peer Review

OLH ensures that all research output, in both journals and books, is thoroughly peer reviewed by external reviewers, and offer the option of open peer review if required. Publications of a commentary or opinion nature may not be sent for external peer review but will include extensive editorial review and revisions as required. All of our journals adhere to the COPE guidelines for best practice.

Archiving and Indexing Policy

OLH is committed to ensuring that content is discoverable and accessible through indexing and archiving services. Every effort is made to submit and maintain journal listings on major indexes and archives.

OLH journals are, where possible, indexed by the following services:

As of 2023, OLH is undertaking the ongoing process of indexing journals on the following services:

All OLH content is indexed with Crossref and assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). This means that all of our references are made available so that citations can be tracked by the publishing community, and the content is added to the iThenticate anti-plagiarism database. All journals contain the correct website information to be harvested by Google Scholar. In addition, all journals are available for metadata harvesting via OAI-PMH and are registered with Open Archives.

Journal content is archived around the world to ensure long-term availability. To secure permanency of all publications, this journal utilises CLOCKSS, and LOCKSS archiving systems to create permanent archives for the purposes of preservation and restoration. Where relevant we automatically archive journal and book content with subject specific archives such as PubMed Central or Europe PMC / PMC Bookshelf. Our journals are also archived, or are pending to be archived, with Portico and the British Library's UK Legal Desposit Collection.

We fully support and encourage author self-archiving of all content (sometimes termed 'green' open access). All OLH journals are registered with Sherpa Romeo to ensure that the license terms and self-archiving policies of the journals are 100% clear.

If the journal is not indexed by your preferred service, please let us know by emailing support@janeway.freshdesk.com or alternatively by making an indexing request directly with the service.