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All publications of HUP undergo a rigorous peer-review process before publication decision is made. All journal proposals and book manuscripts are sent for external peer review to at least two independent experts selected by HUP editorial team.
See here for more information on our peer-review policies.
Helsinki University Press’ journals publish guest edited article collections, such as special issues or special collections. A special issue (SI) is published as a separate issue, whereas a special collection (SC) is a page that groups together articles published as part of a general journal volume. In both cases, guest editors oversee and edit the articles as well as manage the peer review process. Nevertheless, in all cases, journals’ editorial teams closely collaborate with guest editors to ensure that also SI’s and SC’s editorial processes are of high-quality.
All HUP’s journals adhere to COPE best practices for guest edited collections and follow the below guidelines, based on the DOAJ requirements for special issues and collections:
We acknowledge that analytical and/or generative AI tools can be useful in some phases of research. Still, these tools are incapable of replacing human critical thinking. HUP expects authors to declare any use of AI. Additionally, authors must be transparent in their use of AI-generated material and explain in their manuscripts which tools and how they have been utilized in their manuscript.
As per the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) statement of ‘Authorship and AI tools’, AI tools cannot take ethical and legal accountability for research. Hence, AI tools cannot be listed as authors in any of HUP publications. Authors must take full responsibility for their work, including parts produced by AI.
We note that caution should be exercised also with regard to plagiarism, as large language models (LLMs) may use already published works in creating contents, but they might leave out references. Authors are responsible in making sure that their publication does not plagiarise other researchers’ contributions (ideas, data, words, etc.). Additionally, authors should note that ChatGPT and LLMs can create false references that are based on non-existent studies or researchers.
A combination of pre-screening and open access is the best possible defence against plagiarism. All journal articles and book manuscripts submitted to Helsinki University Press are automatically screened for similarity issues by the Similarity Check system provided by Crossref. This system compares incoming submissions to a large database of academic content, and alerts editors to any possible overlaps between previous publications.
All our content is released under a Creative Commons license. We recommend our journals to use CC BY 4.0, as recommended by Plan S. For book authors/editors, we recommend using CC BY-NC 4.0 license, which prohibits commercial use of the material but allows sharing and copying the work, providing author attribution is clearly stated. Nevertheless, we support publishing under any CC licence as per authors'/editors' request.
Helsinki University Press, our journals and book series adhere to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core practices and follow COPE guidelines on Publication Ethics. All HUP’s journals adhere to the COPE guidelines for best practice, and include their own statements on Competing Interests; Funding and Ethics; Corrections and Retractions; Misconduct and Complaints.
Editorial teams and academic boards working with book projects are asked to adhere to best practices for ethical editing and peer review procedures along the lines of Cope Ethics toolkit for a successful editorial office.
HUP instructs peer reviewers to inform any possible conflicts of interest that the Press should know during the review process. If a consulted expert has a conflict of interest related to the content or author(s) of a manuscript or is in other ways involved with the matter, reviewers are asked to contact the Press, and more suitable reviewer will be selected instead.
With strict editorial policies and two separate proofing rounds with editors/authors, Helsinki University Press aims to ensure that there are no mistakes left in final publications. Nevertheless, despite all efforts, at times published works may need corrections. In general, HUP does not correct minor or insignificant typos or small errors. More serious errors and issues concerning publishing ethics or copyright matters, etc. will be considered.
As per COPE guidance, the Press gives due consideration to all complaints on alleged ethics violations. All complaints are reviewed by the managing editor and publishing director in consultation with the academic board, if necessary.
Possible amendments, publisher's notes, corrections, retractions/withdrawals are handled according to COPE recommendations. For further information on ethical complaints, please download HUP’s ethics complaints procedure document here: HUP Ethics complaints procedure
If you have any ethical concerns on HUP’s publications, please contact: hup-info@helsinki.fi
We strongly recommend that all editors, reviewers, and authors register an account with Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID). Registration provides a unique and persistent digital identifier for the account that enables accurate attribution and improves the discoverability of published papers, ensuring that the correct author receives the correct credit for their work. As the ORCID remains the same throughout the lifetime of the account, changes of name, affiliation, or research area do not affect the discoverability of an author's past work and aid correspondence with colleagues.
All HUP’s publications are indexed with Crossref and have 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. All of our article metadata is openly available for harvesting by indexing services via OAI-PMH and the journals are registered with Open Archives.
HUP focuses on making content discoverable and accessible through indexing services. Book and journal contents are also archived around the world to ensure long-term availability. HUP’s books are additionally available via Google Books, JSTOR, and OAPEN. Individual journal’s index listings are available on each journal’s website.
Helsinki University Press is a member of the Association of European University Presses (AEUP), Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP). Additionally, the Press is listed as an official publication channel in the Norwegian Register for Scientific Journals, Series and Publishers, in the Danish Bibliometric Research Indicator, and in the Finnish Publication Forum.
As members of CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) our content is regularly archived with many of the world's leading research libraries. The CLOCKSS archive ensures that all Helsinki University Press content will always be made available as open access.
We fully support and encourage author self-archiving of all content (sometimes termed 'green' open access). We allow immediate self-archiving of all content. We register all of our journals with SHERPA/RoMEO to ensure that the license terms and self-archiving policies of the journals are 100 per cent clear.
HUP is committed to making its publications and the research process behind them as open and transparent as possible. We acknowledge the fact that different fields of study have various standards of data sharing. HUP encourages authors to share their data whenever it’s possible and is not in conflict with e.g. subjectivity privacy concerns.
If the author chooses to share their data, we recommend that they read the FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable guidelines and apply them when possible. HUP personnel can be contacted for guidance and in finding a suitable data repository.
HUP uses open, non-proprietary standards for all of its content, meaning that it can be easily transferred to archives and other publishers. All of our article XML is compliant with the Journal Archiving Tag Suite (JATS) schema.
HUP does not seek to possess journals’ or books’ content, and in our contracts with societies the authors retain copyright to their work. If a society decides to change the publisher, all journal and book series content can be transferred from our platform. We endorse and adhere to the NISO Transfer Code of Practice, which ensures that a transfer process occurs with minimum disruption and that the journal content remains easily accessible by librarians and readers during the transfer between publishing parties.