All submitted manuscripts must conform to Literary Studies’s policies as described. In all instances, Literary Studies closely follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles of publication ethics laid out in its core practices documents. Their advice includes support on handling issues such as: conflicts of interest, authorship and contributorship issues and disputes, misconduct allegations and data issues, overlap and plagiarism, and peer review integrity.
Literary Studies Editorial Boards are independent, and the publisher will not interfere with editorial decision making. Where ethical or legal concerns are present, a decision may be changed; acceptance of a manuscript may be rescinded should an ethical issue or conflict with policies be identified. Manuscripts that do not conform to Literary Studies ethical policies may be withdrawn from submission by the publisher.
Literary Studies performs checks on all manuscripts to confirm that they conform with the Publication Ethics Guidelines. Some of the checks described are performed with the support of automatic checks, facilitated by SuSy, while others are performed manually by the Journal Editorial Office teams. Where potential issues are flagged, these are confirmed by a human decision maker. Where a manuscript does not conform to policies or is flagged upon check, in many cases, an Academic Editor is consulted.
Literary Studies is a member of COPE. We fully adhere to its Core Practices and to its Guidelines.
Literary Studies uphold a rigorous peer-review process together with clear ethical policies and standards to support the addition of high-quality scientific studies to the field of scholarly publication. Where we become aware of ethical issues, we are committed to investigating and taking necessary action to maintain the integrity of the literature and ensure the safety of research participants.
Submitted manuscripts should conform with Literary Studies editorial policies and ethical policies as outlined on this webpage and Literary Studies Instructions for Authors. In addition, submissions should adhere to individual journal guidelines.
Principles:
Authors submitting to Literary Studies must ensure that their manuscripts are ethically sound and meet industry-recognized standards that are reflected in Literary Studies policies.
Authors who submit their manuscripts to Literary Studies must:
This list is not exhaustive, and authors should be aware of local regulations and accepted norms within academic publishing.
Literary Studies follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines which state that in order to qualify for authorship of a manuscript, authors must meet all four criteria:
Those who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be listed in the acknowledgments. More detailed guidance on authorship is given by ICMJE.
Different disciplines adopt their own criteria, for example, the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) guidelines are well-known in biomedical fields, the APA (American Psychological Association) guidelines are used in Psychology, the EuChemS (European Chemical Society) guidelines are adopted in Chemistry, whereas in the arts, humanities and social sciences, publications by single authors are more common. However, the minimum recognized requirements for authorship are making a substantial contribution to the research and being accountable for the work undertaken (COPE Discussion document: authorship).
Any change to the author list during the editorial process or after publication should be approved by all authors, including any who have been removed. We reserve the right to request evidence of authorship, and changes to authorship after acceptance will be made at the discretion of Literary Studies.
Author Contributions
For complete transparency, all submitted manuscripts should include an author contributorship statement that specifies the work of each author. For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided.
The following statements should be used: Conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; methodology, X.X.; software, X.X.; validation, X.X., Y.Y. and Z.Z.; formal analysis, X.X.; investigation, X.X.; resources, X.X.; data curation, X.X.; writing—original draft preparation, X.X.; writing—review and editing, X.X.; visualization, X.X.; supervision, X.X.; project administration, X.X.; funding acquisition, Y.Y. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Please refer to CRediT taxonomy for an explanation of terms. Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work reported.
The corresponding author should act as a point of contact between the editor and the other authors, keep co-authors informed, and involve them in major decisions about the publication.
Joint first authors can be indicated by the inclusion of the statement “X and X contributed equally to this paper” in the manuscript. The roles of the equal authors should also be adequately disclosed in the contributorship statement.
For review articles, where individual statements are less applicable, a statement should be included that clarifies who was responsible for the ideation, who performed the literature search and/or data analysis, and who drafted and revised the work.
For articles that are principally based a student’s dissertation or thesis, Literary Studies recommends that the student is listed as principal author.
Consortium/Group Authorship
If authorship is retained by the consortium or group, the consortium or group should be listed as an author. Individual consortium/group author members listed in the author byline must qualify for authorship according to ICMJE guidelines.
Where work is presented by the author(s) on behalf of a consortium or group, this should be clarified in the author list, for example “Author A on behalf of XXX Consortium/Group”. The consortium/group will not retain authorship and will only appear in the author list.
If provided, the consortium/group members will be listed in a separate section at the end of the article in Acknowledgments, Appendix or Supplementary Materials.
Deceased Authors
If a manuscript is submitted with a deceased author included in the authorship, or if an author passes away during peer review, the corresponding author, or co-authors, should inform the editorial office. If the deceased author was a corresponding author, the authorship group should nominate a co-author for this role. The corresponding author should confirm the contribution of the deceased author and any potential conflicts of interest. Upon publication, a note will be added under the author list.
Changes to Authorship
Authors are expected to carefully consider authorship before manuscript submission. Any change to the author list should be made during the editorial process, before manuscript acceptance. Authorship changes, including any addition, removal, or rearrangement of author names will require the approval of all authors including any to be removed. To request any change in authorship, the journal must receive a completed authorship change form that includes the signatures of all authors, and provides a reason for the change. Any changes to authorship requested after manuscript acceptance will result in a delay in publication. If the manuscript has already been published, requests for a change in authorship will be evaluated and require the publication of a Correction. We reserve the right to request evidence of authorship, and changes to authorship after acceptance will be made at the discretion of Literary Studies.
Authorship Disputes
Literary Studies follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines when it comes to resolving authorship disputes that may occur either during processing or post-publication. Here, COPE guidelines clearly state that Journals are not in a position to adjudicate on appropriate authorship contributions (https:/publicationethics.org/resources/discussion-documents/authorship) and that disputed authorship is not usually grounds for retraction when “there is no reason to doubt the validity of the findings” (https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines).
In situations where disputes cannot be settled by the effected parties, Literary Studies will reach out to an appropriate Institution or Governing Body for final adjudication.
Literary Studies recognizes the opportunities and challenges presented by the rapid development of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) such as ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) for scholarly publishing. In order to provide transparency to the academic community, Literary Studies has developed the following policies based on the general guidance provided by STM and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) position statement.
Manuscript preparation
Where GenAI has been used for purposes such as generating text, data, graphics, study design, or data collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, authors are required to declare this during the submission process. Furthermore, for transparency, authors are required to disclose details of how the GenAI tool was used in the “Materials and Methods” section, and provide the GenAI tool’s product details in the “Acknowledgments” section.
Recommended acknowledgement statement:
“During the preparation of this manuscript/study, the author(s) used [tool name, version information] for the purposes of [description of use]. The authors have reviewed and edited the output and take full responsibility for the content of this publication.“
The use of GenAI tools for the purposes of text editing (e.g., grammar, structure, spelling, punctuation and formatting) is not covered by this policy and does not need to be declared.
Authors are fully responsible for the originality, validity, and integrity of the content of their manuscript, including any material contributed by GenAI tools, and must ensure, through careful review, that this content complies with all Literary Studies’s publication ethics policies including, but not limited to, Plagiarism, Data Fabrication and Image Manipulation and Intellectual Property.
Authorship
GenAI tools and other large language models (LLMs) cannot be listed as authors. These tools do not meet Literary Studies’s requirements for authorship.
GenAI use by reviewers
GenAI tools and other large language models (LLMs) should not be used by reviewers in the preparation of review reports. Reviewers are solely responsible for the content of their reports and the utilization of these tools may violate confidentiality, proprietary, and data privacy rights. Some limited use to improve the written quality of the peer-review report, such as checking grammar, structure, spelling, punctuation, and formatting, may be acceptable but should be disclosed upon submission of the peer-review report. Under no circumstances should reviewers upload manuscripts, either in whole or in part; images; figures; tables; or any kind of communication related to manuscripts under review to any GenAI tools, as to do so violates Literary Studies's confidentiality policy relating to peer-review. If it is determined that AI tools have been inappropriately used in review report preparation, the report will be discarded.
GenAI use in editorial decision making
Academic Editors (Editors-in-Chief, Editorial Board Members and Guest Editors) play an essential role within peer-review to ensure the integrity and rigor of the process. Given this significant responsibility, Academic Editors must not use GenAI tools during the editorial review or decision-making process. Under no circumstances should Academic Editors upload manuscripts, either in whole or in part; images; figures; tables; or any kind of communication related to manuscripts under review to any GenAI tools, as to do so violates Literary Studies's confidentiality policy relating to peer-review.
Plagiarism is not acceptable in Literary Studies. Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving credit to the original source.
Reuse of text that is copied from another source must be between quotation marks and the original source must be cited. If a study's design or the manuscript's structure or language has been inspired by previous studies, these studies must be explicitly cited.
All Literary Studies submissions are checked for plagiarism using the industry standard software iThenticate. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, an investigation will take place and action taken in accordance with our policies.
Literary Studies reserves the right to request original images at a sufficiently high resolution and unprocessed data files upon submission, during the peer review process, and for the purpose of post-publication investigation.
Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image. Irregular manipulation includes 1) introduction, enhancement, moving, or removing features from the original image, 2) grouping of images that should obviously be presented separately (e.g., from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels), or 3) modifying the contrast, brightness or color balance to obscure, eliminate or enhance some information.
Any concerns raised over undeclared image modifications during manuscript processing or after publication will be investigated, and the authors will be requested to provide original images and unprocessed data. In case these data are unavailable upon request, the Editorial Office will halt the peer review process until the issues are satisfactorily resolved. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, the publisher may reject the manuscript. In instances where irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we may correct or retract the paper, and the issue may be raised with the authors’ institutions.
Data presented must be original and not inappropriately selected, manipulated, enhanced, or fabricated. This includes 1) exclusion of data points to enhance significance of conclusions, 2) fabrication of data, 3) selection of results that support a particular conclusion at the expense of contradictory data, 4) deliberate selection of analysis tools or methods to support a particular conclusion (including p-hacking). We strongly recommend preregistration of methods and analysis.
Literary Studies encourages authors to retain unprocessed data and metadata files after publication by archiving their datasets on their laboratory or institutional servers, or in public, community-supported repositories, for at least five years after publication.
Institutional Review Board Statement
When reporting on research that involves human subjects, human material, human tissues, or human data, authors must declare that the investigations were carried out following the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975, which was revised in 2013. According to point 23 of this declaration, approval from the local Institutional Review Board (IRB) or another appropriate ethics committee must be obtained before undertaking the research to confirm that the study meets national and international guidelines. As a minimum, a statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board must be stated in the ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ Section of the article.
Example of an Institutional review board statement: “The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code) on [date of approval].”
For non-interventional studies (e.g. surveys, questionnaires, social media research), all participants must be fully informed whether their anonymity is assured, why the research is being conducted, how their data will be used, and if there are any risks involved in participating. As with all research involving humans, ethical approval from an appropriate ethics committee must be obtained prior to conducting the study. If ethical approval is not required, authors must either provide an exemption from the ethics committee or cite the local or national legislation that indicates ethics approval is not required for this type of study. When a study has been granted exemption, the name of the ethics committee that provided this should be stated in the ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ Section with a full explanation for the rejection of ethical approval.
Informed Consent Statement
Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data, or human tissue must include a statement of informed consent for participation in research. Verbal informed consent to participate in a study can be acceptable under some circumstances (such as in ethnographic studies). The authors must explain the rationale for using this kind of consent in the “Informed Consent Statement” Section. For verbal informed consent, a copy of the script used must be provided during the submission stage.
Literary Studies follows the practical framework defined in Guidance for Editors: Research, Audit and Service Evaluations and introduced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Research that could pose a significant threat, with broad potential consequences to public health or national security, should be clearly indicated in the manuscript, and potential dual-use research of concern should be explained in the cover letter upon submission. Potential areas of concern include but are not limited to biosecurity, nuclear and chemical threats, and research with a military purpose or application, etc. For these manuscripts to be considered for peer review, the benefits to the general public or public health must outweigh the risks. The authors have a responsibility to comply with relevant national and international laws.
According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, “Authors should avoid entering into agreements with study sponsors, both for-profit and non-profit, that interfere with authors’ access to all of the study’s data or that interfere with their ability to analyze and interpret the data and to prepare and publish manuscripts independently when and where they choose”.
Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of the reported research results. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include but are not limited to financial interests (such as membership, employment, consultancies, stocks/shares ownership, honoraria, grants or other funding, paid expert testimonies and patent-licensing arrangements) and non-financial interests (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, and personal beliefs).
Any role of the funding sponsors in the design of the study, in the collection, analyses or interpretation of data, in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results must be declared in this section. If there is no role, please state, “The funding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results”.
Authors can disclose potential conflicts of interest via the online submission system during the submission process. The corresponding author must include a summary statement in the manuscript in a separate section “Conflicts of Interest” placed just before the reference list. The statement should reflect all the collected potential conflicts of interest disclosures in the form.
See below for examples of disclosures:
Conflicts of Interest: Author A has received research grants from Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company X and owns stocks in Company Y. Author C has been involved as a consultant and expert witness in Company Z. Author D is the inventor of patent X.
If no potential perceived conflicts exist, the authors should state:
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
For all articles published in Literary Studies, copyright is retained by the authors. Articles are licensed under an open access Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, meaning that anyone may download and read the paper for free. In addition, the article may be reused and quoted provided that the original published version is cited. These conditions allow for maximum use and exposure of the work, while ensuring that the authors receive proper credit.
In exceptional circumstances, articles may be licensed differently. If you have specific condition (such as one linked to funding) that does not allow this license, please mention this to the Editorial Office of the journal at submission. Exceptions will be granted at the discretion of the publisher.
For previously published content, it is essential that prior to submission, authors obtain permission to reproduce any published material (figures, tables, text, etc.) that does not fall into the public domain, or for which they do not hold the copyright.
Permission is required for:
Permission is not required for:
Once you have obtained permission, the copyright holder may give you instructions on the form of acknowledgement to be followed. Alternatively, we recommend following the style: “Reproduced with permission from [author], [book/journal title]; published by [publisher], [year]”.
Translations
Literary Studies may consider high-quality content that has been previously published in a different language for publication, provided that the original study is appropriately referenced in the Acknowledgments section.
“This is a translation/reprint of (insert title here) originally published in (insert language) by (insert publisher) (insert journal name, year, issue/volume number, page numbers). This translation was prepared by (insert name) with support from (insert name of funding source, if any). Permission was granted by (insert publisher, copyright holder, and/or authors name).”
Any translated articles that do not follow the above guidelines are unacceptable. Those that pass the pre-check will be peer-reviewed in accordance with Literary Studies’s editorial process.
Authors should ensure that where material is taken from other sources (including their own published writing), the source is clearly cited and that where appropriate permission is obtained.
Authors should not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work.
Authors should not copy references from other publications if they have not read the cited work.
Authors should not preferentially cite their own or their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications.
Authors should not cite advertisements or advertorial material.
In accordance with COPE guidelines, we expect that “original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations”. This condition also applies to an author’s own work. COPE have produced a discussion document on citation manipulation with recommendations for best practice.
Data availability statements
Data availability statements are required for all articles published with Literary Studies. During the peer-review and editorial decision process, authors can be asked to share existing datasets or raw data that have been analyzed in the manuscript, and whether they will be made available to other researchers following publication. Authors will also be asked for the details of any existing datasets that have been analyzed in the manuscript.
Below are the recommended Data Availability Statements:
|
Data availability status |
Recommended Data Availability Statement |
|
Data available in a publicly accessible repository |
The original data presented in the study are openly available in [repository name, e.g., FigShare] at [DOI/URL] or [reference/accession number]. |
|
Data available on request due to restrictions (e.g., privacy, legal or ethical reasons) |
The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author due to (specify the reason for the restriction). |
|
3rd Party Data |
Restrictions apply to the availability of these data. Data were obtained from [third party] and are available [from the authors/at URL] with the permission of [third party]. |
|
Embargo on data due to commercial restrictions |
The data that support the findings will be available in [repository name] at [URL / DOI link] following an embargo from the date of publication to allow for commercialization of research findings. |
|
Restrictions apply to the datasets |
The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because [include reason, e.g., the data are part of an ongoing study or due to technical/ time limitations]. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to [text input]. |
|
Data derived from public domain resources |
The data presented in this study are available in [repository name] at [URL/DOI], reference number [reference number]. These data were derived from the following resources available in the public domain: [list resources and URLs]. |
|
Data sharing is not applicable (only appropriate if no new data is generated or the article describes entirely theoretical research |
No new data were created or analyzed in this study. Data sharing is not applicable to this article. |
|
Data is contained within the article or supplementary material |
The original contributions presented in this study are included in the article/supplementary material. Further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author(s). |
|
Dataset available on request from the authors |
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors on request. |
Data preservation
Literary Studiesacknowledges that researchers, institutions, journals, and data repositories have a shared responsibility to ensure long-term data preservation, and Literary Studies encourages authors to select data repositories with this goal in mind.
Literary Studies encourages authors to commit to preserving their datasets on their laboratory or institutional servers, for at least five years after publication. If, during that time, the repository to which the data were originally submitted disappears or experiences data loss, we may ask the authors to upload the data to another repository and publish a correction or update to the original publication.
If authors remove their data from the original public repository or change access criteria in a manner that is inconsistent with the publication, we may ask authors to notify the editorial office as soon as possible.
How to choose an appropriate data repository
Literary Studies encourages the submission of data to community-recognized data repositories where possible. We recommend the authors visit re3data.org or fairsharing.org to help identify registered and certified data repositories relevant to their subject area if no community resource is available. If the authors’ institution has its generalist data repository this can be used to host authors’ data as long as the repository can mint DataCite DOIs, and allows for data to be shared under open terms of use (for example the CC0 waiver).
Data repository criteria
The following criteria should be considered when selecting an appropriate repository, ensuring that platforms:
Data citation
Authors are encouraged to formally cite any datasets stored in external repositories that are mentioned within their manuscript, including the main datasets that are the focus of the submission, as well as any other datasets that have been used in the work. For previously published datasets, authors should cite both the related research articles and the datasets themselves. Appropriate citation of data is checked and enforced by Journal Editorial staff before publication.
Along with the Editorial Office, all participants in the peer-review process, including Editors-in-Chief, Editorial Board Members, Guest Editors and Reviewers, take responsibility for overseeing the integrity of Literary Studies’s editorial process.
If a participant in the peer-review process has ethical concerns about a manuscript sent for review or decision, or receives information about a possible ethical issue after publication, they must contact the Editorial Office as soon as possible. The Editorial Office will then conduct an investigation as per the Literary Studies Comments and Complaints Policy and in accordance with COPE guidelines.
Before and during peer review, the following checks are performed by Managing Editors and Assistant Editors in the Editorial Office. However, concerns from Reviewers and Editors should still be reported to the Editorial Office.
When making a recommendation or final acceptance decision on a manuscript, Reviewers and Editors should consider:
Potential Conflicts of Interests
We support transparency, and all those involved in the peer-review process must carefully consider and declare any conflicts of interest when participating in the review, decision-making process, and publication of an article. All associations that interfere with, or could be potentially perceived as interfering with, the full and objective assessment, peer review and decision-making process must be declared.
Even if a Reviewer or Editor believes that the existence of a conflict of interest, or several conflicts of interest, will not impact the peer review or decision-making process, the Reviewer or Editor should remove themselves from the process to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest and to protect the integrity of the peer-review process.
Types of Conflicts of Interest
Personal or Collaborative
Neither Reviewers nor Editors should take part in the review of manuscripts submitted by authors who are affiliated with their own institution, by authors who are research or project collaborators, or by any authors who are personal friends, family members, or spouses. Reviewers or Editors should not take part in the review or decision-making process of manuscripts submitted by authors who currently represent or have represented a mentor or mentee role or relationship in the past, or those with whom they have collaborated or coauthored in the last 3 years.
Financial or Professional Conflicts
Financial conflicts include any professional or business relationships, financial or commercial interests, or other competing interests that may be viewed as potentially introducing bias into the review process. Neither Reviewers nor Editors should receive professional or personal benefits, salary, board membership, funding or grants from a company or companies with interests in the reported results or other aspects of the manuscript content, honoraria, or hold any other interests in a company whose product is discussed in the article, or intellectual property rights such as patents, royalties, and copyright as a result of their contribution. Reviewers and Editors should not take part in the review or decision-making process of manuscripts where conflicts of interest that may be viewed as potentially introducing bias are present.
Other Conflicts
Any other conflicts of interest, either real or potentially viewed as influencing the outcome of peer review and the decision-making process, should be declared. Reviewers and Editors should evaluate the manuscript’s merit, originality and appropriateness for the journal in accordance with Literary Studies editorial guidelines. Literary Studies aims to build journal that are diverse and inclusive, and discrimination based on race, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, country of origin, physical ability, or socio-economic status has no place in Literary Studies. Reviewers and Editors must disclose personal biases that may affect peer review.
In the event of a conflict of interest, alternative Reviewers and/or Editors will be found. If an Editor submits a manuscript to the journal, their submission will be handled by other Editors who do not have a conflict of interest.
Confidentiality and Anonymity
Reviewers and Editors must keep the content of the manuscript, including the abstract, confidential. Reviewers must inform the Editorial Office if they would like a student or colleague to complete the review on their behalf.
Literary Studies perform single- or double-blind peer review. Reviewers should be careful not to reveal their identity to the authors, either in their comments or in metadata for reports submitted in Microsoft Word or PDF format.
Literary Studiesoffer authors the possibility to publish review reports with their paper and for Reviewers to sign their open peer review reports; however, Literary Studies will not reveal reviewer names until publication and only with their explicit agreement.
Readers who have concerns or complaints about published papers should first contact the corresponding author to attempt a resolution directly, before contacting the Editorial Office.
The Editorial Office may be contacted in cases where it is not appropriate to contact the authors, if the authors were not responsive, or if the concerns were not resolved. The Editorial Office will coordinate with the complainant, author/s and Editors-in-Chief or Editorial Board members for the investigation, remedy or resolution of any concerns or complaints.
Complaints, comments, or update requests relating to scholarly validity, ethical or legal aspects of either the paper or its review process will be investigated further where appropriate. All complaints, comments or update requests relating to published papers are investigated by the Editorial Office with the support of the Editorial Board and final approval by the Editor-in-Chief. For ethical concerns, final decisions are made by the Editor-in-Chief or Editorial Board members who are supported by the Editorial Office to promote adherence to core principles of publication ethics as expressed by the COPE. Other persons and institutions will be consulted as necessary, including university authorities, or experts in the field. Legal counsel may be sought where the complaint has legal implications.
Literary Studies recognizes our responsibility to correct scientifically relevant errors or ethical issues that have been brought to our attention. To offer transparency regarding any changes for our authors and readers, we have the following standardized criteria in place for updates to any of our published papers.
Direct update
Direct updates are updates made directly to the publication and can be completed in certain situations (please refer to our correction reference guide) if deemed by the Editorial Office to be a reasonable request. Once approved, the paper will be updated and re-published on our website. Following this, all relevant indexing databases will be notified to ensure that the database versions have also been revised.
Corrections
Literary Studies distinguishes between Minor and Major corrections.
Following both a Minor and Major correction, all relevant indexing databases will be notified to ensure that the database versions have also been revised.
Author Name Change Policy
Some authors might wish to change their name following publication. In such cases, Literary Studies will update and republish the article and re-deliver the updated metadata to the appropriate indexing databases (please note that all updates are dependent upon the policies of the databases). Our teams are aware that name changes can be sensitive and/or private in nature, for a variety of reasons that may include alignment with gender identity, marriage, divorce, or religious conversion. Therefore, to protect author identity, a Correction will not be published and co-authors will not be notified. Authors should contact the journal’s Editorial Office with their name change request.
Retractions
Sometimes a paper needs to be retracted from the body of research literature. This could be due to inadvertent errors made during the research process, gross ethical breaches, fabrication of data, large amounts of plagiarism, or other reasons. Such articles threaten the integrity of scientific records and need to be retracted.
Literary Studies follows the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for retraction.
If a Retraction is published, the original publication is amended with a “RETRACTED” watermark, but will still be available on the journal’s website for future reference. However, retracted articles should not be cited and used for further research, as they cannot be relied upon. Retractions are published using the same authorship and affiliation as the paper being retracted, so that the notice and the original retracted paper can be properly found by readers within indexing databases. The Retraction notice will also be published in the current Issue of the journal. Partial Retractions might be published in cases where results are only partially wrong.
A paper will only be completely removed from Literary Studies’s website and relevant indexing databases in very exceptional circumstances, such as:
(1) The removal has been requested by an order from a court or government authority;
(2) The content poses a threat to personal privacy or the legal rights of other parties, which cannot be adequately addressed through editorial notices or updates;
(3) The research was conducted or published unlawfully, and its ongoing presence may lead to potential legal issues or privacy concerns;
(4) Although marked as retracted, the content poses risks to the general public.
Under these situations, the retraction notice explains why the entire paper has been removed, and only the metadata (title and authors) is kept.
Literary Studies works closely with authors and editors to promote adherence to core principles of publication ethics, as expressed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Where we become aware of ethical issues, we are committed to investigating and taking necessary action to maintain the integrity of the literature.
Should you have any concerns about a published manuscript, we encourage you to use this form, providing as much information as possible. A member of our team will then be in touch.
You can also get in touch via email below.