Criteria for Submissions

1. Submissions should lean towards research that is qualitative and addresses such areas as human social relationships, bodily experience, emotional sentiment, mental states, and the contemporary contexts in which these occur. Such research may address areas of religion, spirituality, psychology, philosophy, sexuality, cultural practice and personal preference.

2. The theoretical framework upon which submissions are founded should draw on the work of theoreticians from within Continental Philosophy and in particular phenomenology. The submissions should relate aspects of these theories to those aspects of human experience to which contributors choose to draw attention.

3. Before preparing a manuscript for submission, evaluate the research to judge whether it will be an important contribution to the field.

The following checklist might help in assessing the quality of content and in deciding whether the research is likely to merit publication:

• Is the research question significant and is the work original and important?
• Is the research outcome based on sound theoretical and methodological principles?
• Has the research process adhered to appropriate ethical standards?
• Is the research at a sufficiently advanced stage to make the publication of results meaningful? (Adapted from the APA publication manual, 5th ed.,  pp. 5-6)

4.  Submissions must not exceed 5000 to 7000 words, and must be prefaced by a 300 word précis of the paper. Bibliographies, footnotes and research notes may be added but should not exceed 1000 words.

5. Authors must certify that their paper is not under consideration by any other journal AND that it will not be submitted elsewhere until and unless a final, written rejection decision from the Editor-in-Chief has been received.

6. Articles accepted for publication by the Editor-in-Chief will attract a processing fee of US$500. (Invited papers, including Special Editions and Book Reviews, are exempted.) The corresponding author will be invoiced by the publisher at the time of acceptance and publication of the article will be contingent on payment of the processing fee.

7. The processing fee assists with costs entailed in the many necessary ongoing activities that are cenral to the good operational functioning of the IPJP. In particular, this includes the editorial process of language and copy editing, proof-reading and formatting, as well as site maintenance and web hosting.

8. Where a prospective author is unable to meet the processing fee but where the nature and substance of the submission is considered by the Editorial Board to be meritorius AND the circumstances exceptional, the processing might be waived upon application by the author.

9. Journal articles are published Open Access under a Creative Commons license, which allows free download and use of the articles with appropriate attribution of authorship. However, acceptance of an article for publication is on the understanding that authors will grant in writing a license to the publisher to publish and sell the article in print form.

10. Submissions are made electronically via the journal site to the Editor-in-Chief.

11. The preferred word-processor format is:

• MSWord

and the required referencing style is:

• APA (American Psychological Association)

See the IPJP Referencing Style Sheet

For an online video tutorial on the latest APA  key elements, click here. Alternatively, the Purdue Online Writing Lab has relatively extensive (and downloadable) APA style guides.    

12. Prospective authors are advised to note the Instructions to Authors, and strongly encouraged to follow the Author Guidelines even at the early stage of initial submission.

13. From time to time, the journal might call for papers from the academic community that are focussed on particular cognate areas of concern.

14. The journal reserves the right to suggest alterations to contributions, and to reject papers as seen fit. Correspondence will not be entertained in this regard.

15. Editorial policy is to publish in the English language. Should submissions be received in other languages, contributors will be charged for the cost of translation into English.

16. Reviewers will be grouped into categories consistent with their areas of expertise; in philosophy, psychology, health and nursing, visual arts, social science, education, religion, etc. Articles related to these fields will generally be sent to reviewers whose expertise lies in the relevant field.

17. Reviewers are scholars who have not previously co-published extensively with the author(s), and who are for this and other reasons free of bias in relation to the subject matter, the author (s) and / or their institution.

18. On receipt of an article, the Editor-in-Chief will remove all references to the author identity and send the article to members of the review panel whose expertise relates to the subject area of the submitted article.

19. Within one week of acceptance of an article for publication, contributors are required to submit a brief professional biography to be published at the end of their article. These biographies should include the contributor's qualifications, current role and organisational affiliations, and / or recently published work. Contributors are encouraged to submit head-and-shoulder photographs (colour) of themselves for publication in the journal.

All articles will be blind-reviewed by two (2) or more reviewers. Reviewers have three options in respect of their recommendations:

• accept without qualification
• accept with qualification: publication subject to editing/rewriting as stipulated
• reject outright (in which case no correspondence will be entered into).

In those cases where an editorial qualification applies, the Editor-in-Chief may, in consultation with the reviewers, initiate a developmental revision process aimed at improving the calibre of the article in question. At the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief, the revised article may be submitted for a further process of review prior to final approval and publication.

A Refereed and Peer Reviewed Journal

In order to achieve a high standard of academic excellence and acceptance by readers, the Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology is refereed by recognised scholars in the field, and chooses to make use of a process of blind review, which involves each manuscript being submitted to two or more reviewers who receive the manuscript but have no information about the author. The Journal seeks to conform to the highest standards for refereed and peer-reviewed electronic journals as recommended internationally by SHERPA.

Additionally, the IPJP is compliant with the National Code of Best Practice in Editorial Discretion and Peer Review.

Plagiarism

Over the past few months, the journal has noted a marked increase in the number of submissions containing unacknowledged intellectual material, ranging from sentences and central phrases to entire sets of paragraphs and even, in a recent instance, a series of sections comprising approximately 60% of the original work, copied verbatim from online as well as traditional sources.

The IPJP, in common with the broader academic community of scholars, frowns upon the ‘unacknowledged and unauthorized reproduction’ of intellectual material in this fashion.

Prospective authors are advised that the journal will not publish work which, in the assessment of the editorial team, contains ‘unacknowledged and unauthorized reproduction’ of the ideas and words of others. Please therefore ensure that the source of all cited, quoted or otherwise incorporated material is duly acknowledged, as the IPJP does not wish to be a repository for plagiarised work.

Copyright

The editorial policy on copyright is not to hold restrictive copyright on manuscripts for publication in the journal, but to require authors to assign to the Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology the right to publish their texts both electronically and in any other format they see fit, along with the right to store manuscripts in an electronic archive. As with accepted scholarly practice, authors wishing to quote text from this journal must cite in full the details of the author, title, journal title, edition number and date of the article/s they wish to cite.

The IPJP's policy in this regard accords with the best practice models supported by SHERPA.

Authors might also wish to visit the SPARC hosted site dealing authors' rights as well as the Scholarly Communications section of the Duke University Library.

It is suggested that material cited from the Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology should be referenced as follows (APA style):

Boulder, R. (2004). How to avoid surprises: An experientially-based hermeneutic exposition. The Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 4(2), 12 pp.   Retrieved 18 August 2008 from http://www.ipjp.org

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