For Authors

As a pioneer open access publisher, our mission is to make new research findings accessible to everyone. We are serving scholars from across the globe and from a variety of backgrounds. To deepen our understanding of the research communities that we serve, we aim to build journals that are just as diverse and inclusive. Only by valuing differences can we create an equitable and inclusive work environment and foster the openness that is key to our mission.

Authors warrant that their manuscripts are their original works, that they have not been published before, and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same paper to another journal constitutes a misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from further consideration. The work that has already been published elsewhere cannot be reprinted in the Journal of Mediterranean Cities.

Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions. Authors affirm that the article contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties.

Authors must make sure that their author team listed in the manuscript includes all and only those authors who have significantly contributed to the submitted manuscript. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the Acknowledgments section.

It is the responsibility of the authors to specify the title and code label of the research project within which the work was created, as well as the full title of the funding institution. In case a submitted manuscript has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the conference shall be provided in the same place.

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Parts of the manuscript, including text, equations, pictures, and tables that are taken verbatim from other works must be clearly marked, e.g., by quotation marks accompanied by their location in the original document (page number), or, if more extensive, given in a separate paragraph.

Full references of each quotation (in-text citation) must be listed in the separate section (Literature or References) in a uniform manner, according to the citation style used by the journal (APA Style). References section should list only quoted/cited, and not all sources used for the preparation of a manuscript.

Authors must ensure that they have written and submit only entirely original works. If authors have used the work, information, or words by others, this must be appropriately cited. Authors should not copy entirely or in part any work or manuscripts by others and submit as the author's own. Copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another's paper (without attribution) must be excluded. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
Duplicate publications, redundant publication, text recycling, and self-plagiarism are also inappropriate practices and should be avoided. Papers describing the same research should not be published in more than one journal or primary publication. Hence, authors should not submit for consideration a manuscript that has already been published in another journal. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unethical publishing behavior and unacceptable.

Only persons who meet authorship criteria indicated below should be listed as authors of the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content:

Made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study.
drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content.
have seen and approved the last version of the paper and agreed to its submission for publication.
All persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (such as technical help, writing and editing assistance, general support) but who do not meet the criteria for authorship must not be listed as authors, but should be acknowledged in the "Acknowledgments" section.

Authors should disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the work should be disclosed (including the grant number or other reference number if any).
Information obtained privately (from conversation, correspondence or discussion with third parties) must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source.

Authors should not use information obtained in the course of providing confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, unless they have obtained the explicit written permission of the author(s) of the work involved in these services.
Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, and proof of ethics approval, and copyright permissions. Authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal by the deadline given.

When authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal’s editors or publisher and cooperate with them to either correct the paper in the form of an erratum or retract the manuscript or article. If the editors or publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the authors’ obligation to promptly correct or retract the paper or provide evidence to the journal editors of the correctness of the paper.

Policy of Screening for Plagiarism

Papers submitted to the Journal of Mediterranean Cities will be screened for plagiarism using plagiarism detection tools. The journal will immediately reject papers leading to plagiarism or self-plagiarism.

Plagiarism is the use of published and unpublished ideas or words (or other intellectual property) of others, without attribution or permission, and presenting them as new and original, rather than derived from an existing source. The intent and effect of plagiarism is to mislead the reader as to the contributions of the plagiarizer. This applies whether the ideas or words are taken from abstracts, research grant applications, Institutional Review Board applications, or unpublished or published manuscripts in any publication format. Plagiarism is scientific misconduct and should be addressed as such.

Journal of Mediterranean Cities requires authors to specify any sources of funding (institutional, private, and corporate financial support) for the work reported in their paper. This information, in the form of the name of the funding organization/s and the grant number -or should be included at the end of the article under the heading ‘Funding’ and provided at the time of submitting the paper. If there was no funding, the following wording should be used: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.” Any suppliers of materials should be named, and their location (town, state/county, country) included if appropriate. This information will be included in the published article.

Self-plagiarism refers to the practice of an author using portions of their previous writings on the same topic in another of their publications, without specifically citing it formally in quotes. This practice is widespread and sometimes unintentional, as there are only so many ways to say the same thing on many occasions, particularly when writing the methods section of an article. Although this usually violates the copyright that has been assigned to the publisher, there is no consensus as to whether this is a form of scientific misconduct, or how many of one's own words one can sue before it is truly "plagiarism." For this reason, self-plagiarism is not regarded in the same light as plagiarism of ideas and words of other individuals.

Authors can adhere to the following steps to report plagiarism:

Inform the editor of the journal where a plagiarized article is published.
Send original and plagiarized articles with plagiarized part highlighted.
If evidence of plagiarism is convincing, editor should arrange for a disciplinary meeting.
Editor of the journal where the plagiarized article should communicate with the editor of the journal containing the original article to rectify the matter.
The plagiarist should be asked to provide an explanation.
In case of nonresponse in the stipulated time or an unsatisfactory explanation, the article should be permanently retracted.
Author should be blacklisted and debarred for submitted an article to a particular journal for at least 5 years.
The concerned head of the institution must be notified.

The Journal of Mediterranean Cities does not publish plagiarized papers. The Editorial Board has adopted the stance that plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

Plagiarism Includes

Verbatim (word for word), or almost verbatim copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks) in a way described under Authors’ responsibilities;

Copying equations, figures, or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

The author bears the responsibility for checking whether the material submitted is subject to copyright or ownership rights, e.g., figures, tables, photographs, illustrations, trade literature and data. The author will need to obtain permission to reproduce any such items and include these permissions with their final submission. Where use is so restricted, the editorial office and Publisher must be informed with the final submission of the material. The author should add any necessary acknowledgements to the typescript, preferably in the form of an acknowledgements section at the end of the paper. The author should credit the source and copyright of photographs, figures, illustrations etc. in the supplementary captions. Plagiarism could be detected using Google search engine or one of two programs: iThenticate or Turnitin.

English Editing and Proofreading

Please write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Authors who feel their English language manuscript may require editing to eliminate possible grammatical or spelling errors and to conform to correct scientific English may wish to use the available English Language Editing centres. During or after the review process of manuscripts if one of the editorial board members of the Journal of Mediterranean Cities realized that the article needs “English Editing and Proofreading,” it is the authors' responsibility to ask a native English speaker or any other organizations to provide proofreader version of the article.

Note: Editing should be done using Microsoft Word. Ask your “proofreader” to turn on “Track change” during the process of proofreading. So, the authors will submit the final edited version of the word file and another word file including the track change.

Note: Before the publication of the article all the articles need to go through the proofreading process.

Note: The following are English language guidelines for submissions to the Journal of Mediterranean Cities:

A sentence should not start with but for and (use however or find alternatives).
Define abbreviations the first time they are mentioned in the abstract, text; also, the first time they are mentioned in a table or figure.
Please capitalize all words in headings including hyphenated words (e.g., Anti-Antagonist), except conjunctions (and, or, but, nor, yet, so, for), articles (a, an, the), and all prepositions (including those of five letters or more) (in, to, of, at, by, up, for, off, on, against, between, among, under). The first and last words in the title are always capitalized.
The 'th' in 19th or 20th should NOT be written in superscript.
There is no space after > or < unless it is between two figures, i.e., 8 < 9.
Write 1980s rather than with an apostrophe (1980’s) or just 80s.
Write don't, can't... in full, i.e., do not, cannot.

Reporting Standards

Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.

Data Access and Retention

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

Fundamental Errors in Sublished Sorks

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

Authors of Work

The author of the paper should be the person who made the greatest contribution to the creation of the work. All those who contributed to the making of the work should be listed in the paper and as co-authors. If there are other contributors who took part in the preparation of making the same work should be listed or admitted as associates. Before accepting a last version of the paper for publication is necessary that the author and all co-authors approve the last version.

Changes in 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 an Erratum. We reserve the right to request evidence of authorship, and changes to authorship after acceptance. Requirements that are not sent by the respective author (corresponding author) will not be considered.

Copyright

The Author(s) warrant that their manuscript is their original work that has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; and that its publication has been approved by all co-authors, if any, as well as tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities at the institution where the work was carried out. The Author(s) affirm that the article contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of others. If copyrighted works are included, the Author(s) bear the responsibility to obtain written permission from the copyright owners. The Corresponding author, as the signing author, warrants that he/she has full power to make this grant on behalf of the Author(s).

Retraction Policy

Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or any major misconduct require retraction of an article.

Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct numerous serious errors, which cannot be covered by publishing corrections. A retraction may be published by the Editor-in-Chief / Editorial Board, the author(s), or both parties consensually.

The retraction takes the form of a separate item listed in the contents and labeled as "Retraction". The original article is retained unchanged, except for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted”.

Submission Checklist

- Please read the Aims & Scope to gain an overview and assess if your manuscript is suitable for this journal;

- Use the Microsoft Word template to prepare your manuscript.

- Make sure that issues about publication ethics, research ethics, copyright, authorship, figure formats, data and references format have been appropriately considered.

- Ensure that all authors have approved the content of the submitted manuscript.

Types of Publications

The Journal of Mediterranean Cities has no restrictions on the length of manuscripts, provided that the text is concise and comprehensive. Full experimental details must be provided so that the results can be reproduced. The journal requires that authors publish all experimental controls and make full datasets available where possible.

Manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Mediterranean Cities should neither be published previously nor be under consideration for publication in another journal. The main article types are as follows:

Articles:Original research manuscripts. The journal considers all original research manuscripts provided that the work reports scientifically sound experiments and provides a substantial amount of new information. Authors should not unnecessarily divide their work into several related manuscripts, although short Communications of preliminary, but significant, results will be considered. The quality and impact of the study will be considered during peer review.
Reviews:These provide concise and precise updates on the latest progress made in a given area of research. Systematic reviews should follow the PRISMA
Theoretical and Empirical Manuscripts.
Educational and Pedagogic Manuscripts.
Cases.

The Editors encourage authors to be creative in this section. Use of selected dialogue from the case, comments about class usefulness or student responses to use of the case, or any other information which authors feel is valuable may be used. The synopses should capture the attention and interest of users. The synopsis should follow the format described in the following section.

Submission Process

Manuscripts for the Journal of Mediterranean Cities should be submitted online at www.mediterranean-cities.com. The submitting author, who is the corresponding author, is responsible for the manuscript during the submission and peer-review process. The submitting author must ensure that all eligible co-authors have been included in the author list and that they have all read and approved the submitted version of the manuscript. To submit your manuscript, register and log in to the submission website. All co-authors can see the manuscript details in the submission system, if they register and log in using the e-mail address provided during manuscript submission.

Accepted File Formats

Authors are encouraged to use the Microsoft Word template to prepare their manuscript. Using the template file will shorten the time to complete copy-editing and publication of accepted manuscripts. The total amount of data for all files must not exceed 120 MB.

Citation Policy

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.

NOTE TO AUTHORS: By submitting a manuscript, the authors agree to abide by the Editorial Policies of the Journal of Mediterranean Cities.