•  
  •  
 

Policies

Contents

Philosophy of Journal of Western Archives

For more information, please see Journal of Western Archives Journal Overview page.

Who Can Submit?

Anyone may submit an original article to be considered for publication in Journal of Western Archives provided he or she owns the copyright to the work being submitted or is authorized by the copyright owner or owners to submit the article. Authors are the initial owners of the copyrights to their works (an exception in the non-academic world to this might exist if the authors have, as a condition of employment, agreed to transfer copyright to their employer).

Plagiarism will not be tolerated, and articles found to contain plagiarized content will be removed from the online journal.

{ top }

General Submission Rules

There are no APCs (author publishing charges) for publishing with the Journal of Western Archives.

Submitted articles cannot have been previously published, nor be forthcoming in an archival journal or book (print or electronic). Please note: "publication" in a working-paper series does not constitute prior publication. In addition, by submitting material to Journal of Western Archives, the author is stipulating that the material is not currently under review at another journal (electronic or print) and that he or she will not submit the material to another journal (electronic or print) until the completion of the editorial decision process at Journal of Western Archives. If you have concerns about the submission terms for Journal of Western Archives, please the journal editor, Genesie Miller.

{ top }

Formatting Requirements

Journal of Western Archives has no general rules about the formatting of articles upon initial submission. There are, however, rules governing the formatting of the final submission. See Final Manuscript Preparation Guidelines for details. Although bepress can provide limited technical support, it is ultimately the responsibility of the author to produce an electronic version of the article as a Microsoft Word, WordPerfect or RTF file that can be converted to a PDF file.

It is understood that the current state of technology of Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) is such that there are no, and can be no, guarantees that documents in PDF will work perfectly with all possible hardware and software configurations that readers may have.

{ top }

Editorial Process

The Journal of Western Archives engages in a rigorous blind peer-review process. Each submission is initially reviewed by a member of the editorial board member, and is then distributed to two community peer-reviewers. Publication decisions are made by the journal editor based on the recommendations of these reviewers.

{ top }

Rights for Authors and DigitalCommons@USU

As further described in our submission agreement (the Submission Agreement), authors retain copyright to their articles, but license the work for distribution by the Journal of Western Archives under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY).

{ top }

Attribution and Usage Policies

Reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the article or any material therein, in any medium requires credit to Journal of Western Archives as the initial publisher (e.g., First published in the Journal of Western Archives, vol. 1, issue 1 (Spring 2010).

{ top }

General Terms and Conditions of Use

Users of the Journal of Western Archives Web site and/or software agree not to misuse the Journal of Western Archives service or software in any way.

The failure of Journal of Western Archives to exercise or enforce any right or provision in the policies or the Submission Agreement does not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any term of the Submission Agreement or these policies is found to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the Submission Agreement and these policies remain in full force and effect. These policies and the Submission Agreement constitute the entire agreement between Journal of Western Archives and the Author(s) regarding submission of the Article.

{ top }

Formatting Requirements

The Journal of Western Archives recognizes the value of artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential to help authors in the research and writing process. The ability of AI to generate ideas, analyze data, polish language, and accelerate research discovery is exciting. However, generative AI is unable to replicate the human creative process or the critical thinking necessary to produce sound scholarship. The following policy governs the journal’s approach to AI.

General

The Journal of Western Archives will not reject submissions solely based on the use of AI

Articles purely generated by AI will not be accepted. Authors must make a substantial contribution to all submissions.

AI may not be listed as an author in any submissions to the Journal of Western Archives.

The Journal of Western Archives does not accept illustrative images that have been created or altered using AI.

Authors are accountable for the work that they submit, including that generated by AI.

All content will go through normal review processes and editorial decisions will be made based on peer review, quality of writing, and content.

The journal reserves the right to request AI transcripts from author(s) and may provide those transcripts to peer reviewers as context for the submission.

For Authors

Authors are required to disclose the use of AI when a manuscript is submitted. This includes, but is not limited to, data analysis and AI generated content. This information must appear in the cover letter accompanying the submission and in the submission itself. The disclosure in the cover letter may be brief and may take the format: This article used AI to do X, Y, and Z. It should then indicate where in the article AI was used, including page numbers. If the submission is accepted for publication, this statement will be included in the published version prior to the introduction.

All articles using AI must disclose the following information in the text of the article itself:

  • A clear statement on the use of AI in the manuscript, including which tools were used and for what purpose.
  • A description of how the author(s) have verified the accuracy, validity, and appropriateness of any content generated by AI and how any identified errors were corrected.
  • A description of how the author(s) have verified that content generated by AI was not plagiarized.
  • A description of how the author(s) have verified that the content generated by AI is accurate and not fallacious nor complete fabrication.

This disclosure may appear as part of a literature review, as part of a methodology section, or in other appropriate places in the article.

If the editor learns that AI was used inappropriately in the preparation of a submission (including the generation of incorrect text or content, plagiarism, or inaccurate attribution), the submission may be rejected at any point in the publication process.

For Peer Reviewers

Peer reviewers may not use AI to generate reviews of submissions. Submissions are the intellectual property of the author(s). The journal does not have permission from authors to submit any works in progress to generative AI tools/large learning models. Any unauthorized use of an author’s submission is in violation of the journal’s policy. If it is learned that a peer reviewer has used AI to generate a review, they will be dropped from the list of potential peer reviewers.

Reviewers may not use AI to improve the quality of the language in their review.

Reviewers suspecting the inappropriate use of AI in a submission should note their concerns in a separate note to the editor.

{ top }