Stage#1 (3 weeks)

1)    Submission of an original manuscript via electronic online submission;

2)    Quick and holistic judgement by the DPJ Main Editors whether manuscript fits the Focus and Scope of the Journal and is comprehensible. If it does not, the Author will be notified with an e-mail of rejection.

3)    Assignment of 2 managing editors and one Main Editor to the manuscript by the editor-in-chief (or by the deputy editor-in-chief). The role of the Main Editor on the Managing Editors Team to represent the voice of the author (about a week);

4)    Quick but more in-depth judgment and decision by the Managing Editors Team on whether the manuscript has to be rejected without sending it to the full scale peer review. The rejection should be based on being out of the Aims and Scope of the journal OR on having unsalvageable problems with the quality of its argumentation, grounding, and/or research that would not promise an important contribution and productive dialogue in the DP field (no revision is possible). If the Managing Editors disagree with each other or find the manuscript promising, the manuscript moves to the next step (2 weeks);

Stage#2 (5-7 weeks)

5)       The Managing Editors Team selects 3-4 competent referees (minimum 2) in the appropriate field in or out of the DPJ community and send them the manuscript aiming at 4-week review. If the invited referees do not accept the assigned job in a week or two, they have to be replaced with new referees. The referees provide recommendation to the editors, justifications, and suggestions (if appropriate) based on their own authorial judgment (4-6 weeks);

6)     The Managing Editors Team makes their authorial decision informed by the Referees’ Comments and their own authorial judgment: (“Decline Submission”, “Resubmit for (new) Review”, “(minor)Revision Required”, or “Accept Submission (as it is)”. If they cannot make the decision, the Editor-in-Chief is assigned to make it (or a Deputy of the Editor-in-Chief depending on circumstances) (1 week);

7)      If the manuscript is sent back to the author(s) for major or minor revisions, and the author(s) decide to follow the recommendations and resubmit the revised manuscript, there is a 5-month deadline for re-submissions. If the revisions are not submitted within 5 months, the article will be automatically archived, unless there is a new deadline negotiated with the Managing Editors. In case the author(s) still wishes to pursue the publication in DPJ, they will be asked to create a completely new submission. In case the author(s) decide to withdraw the manuscript they should inform the Managing editors right away.

Total for the first reviewing cycle: about 7-10 weeks.

The consecutive reviewing cycles, if needed, can be shorter based on the managing editors’ judgments by omitting some steps or abbreviated, depending on the issues with the manuscript.

In a case when a manuscript is accepted and moving to minor revision, copyediting, and layout preparation stage, the managing editors may solicit commentaries among participating or non-participating DP community, referees, or even themselves. Any member of DP community can volunteer for commenting that goes through the managing editors’ reviewing process.

Part II. Anonymity, attribution, and collaboration

1. Authors are encouraged to nominate Managing Editors and referees for their manuscript, experts in the addressed area, without any promise or obligation on a part of the DPJ editors to invite any of them;
2. Authors may choose to remain anonymous (i.e., masked) or attributed (i.e., known);
3. Referees may choose to remain anonymous or attributed for the authors and/or the public;
4. During the reviewing process both authors and referees may change their status from being anonymous to being attributed to each other (and public or just to each other);
5.  DPJ Main Editors can submit their manuscripts for peer-review publications. However, to avoid a conflict of interest or its appearance, they have to submit their peer-reviewed manuscripts using a newly created pseudonym DPJ account. They should remain anonymous for the other Main Editors, all Managing Editors signed to their manuscript, and external reviewers, if and until their paper is accepted. The rest of the Main Editors, the assigned Managing Editors, and the external reviewers should remain blind with the regard to the real authorship of the manuscript. Thus, this policy precludes collaboration of ALL DPJ Main Editors on a peer-review article, while collaboration of fewer than all is possible.

Part III. Authors’ disagreements and conflicts with Managing Editors’ decision about their manuscript

First, let us state that it should be expected by DPJ that authors may legitimately disagree with DPJ Managing Editors decisions about the fate of their manuscripts and/or concrete recommendations. These disagreements are common and normal both as embedded in the logic of peer-review process and in personal experience of scholars. Although it may feel personal at times, there is nothing personal in these growing disagreements: scholars often view each other scholarship differently and disagreeably. The differences of how these natural disagreements are handled in DPJ is that, in contrast to many other academic journals, we have a public forum where authors can share their grievances and we can discuss these issues as an academic community. Also, we (i.e., DPJ community) are concerned about an imbalance of power between the authors (on the one side) and Managing Editors and external reviewers (on the other side) embedded in the current peer-review process in favor of the second side. To address this structural problem of the power imbalance we appoint a Main Editor to represent the author(s)’s voice on the Managing Editors Team. We hope that this appointment could help to develop better — more respectful, democratic, meaningful, and dialogic — peer-review journal practices. 

Second, Managing Editors should have a legitimate right to overrule judgments of external reviewers. The Editorial decision about the fate of the manuscript is formed the independent authorial judgments by the Managing Editors Team, assigned to a submitted manuscript, informed by external reviews. It is NOT a result of a mechanical counting how many external reviewers are “PRO” or “AGAINST.” 

Third, the final authority and responsibility for the manuscript belongs to the DPJ authors who may decide to accept or reject some or all of the judgments and suggestions proposed by the Managing Editors and/or external reviewers. The suggestions of the Managing Editors and reviewers are just merely potential direction for the authors to consider in the effort of producing a high quality manuscript and NOT conditions for publications. When authors choose to disagree with the Managing Editors and/or external reviewers, their justifications for their decisions can be very helpful for the Managing Editors and the external reviewers of the revised manuscript.

Fourth, although the final authority for the manuscript belongs to the DPJ authors, the final authority for publication of the manuscript in DPJ belongs to the DPJ Managing Editors.

The following policy addresses possible diverse conflicts between the Third and the Fourth points:

Case 1: The authors feel that the external peer reviews are not helpful or do not offer fair critique of their manuscript, while trusting in the Managing Editors Team.

If the authors feel that their scholarship spirit is not being understood enough by some or all external reviewers or some or all external reviewers are not fair (e.g., paradigmatic gatekeeping), they may ask the Managing Editors to change some or all external reviewers.

Case 2: The authors are satisfied with the Managing Editors Team’s decision but dissatisfied with their particular recommendations

If the authors agree with the Managing Editors Team’s decision but disagree with their suggestions, the authors should make their authorial revisions as they feel appropriate in light of reviews (and, of course, based on their own authorial judgments).  In an additional letter, authors should keep track of their revising decisions and their justifications, including rejections of the current Managing Editors Team’s suggestions. This letter may help the Managing Editors and the external reviewers better understand the authors’ angle on the manuscript and their scholarship.

 

Case 3: The authors are dissatisfied with the Managing Editors Team’s decision

If the authors are not satisfied with the Managing Editors Team’s decision, they should contact the DPJ Main Editors. The DPJ Main Editors will appoint different and additional temporary Managing Editors. The Temporary Managing Editors will consider all the reviews (external and form the current Managing Editors) and then form their own authorial judgment, which will be final.

Case 4: The authors continue to be dissatisfied with nearly all Managing Editors Team’s and external reviewers’ suggestions

If the authors find near all suggestions by the external reviewers and the Managing Editors, appointed and temporary, unhelpful for their own voice, DPJ may be not the best choice journal for their manuscript. In this case, the authors may want to consider withdrawing their manuscript and submitting it elsewhere, regardless of the Managing Editors’ judgment of seeing its promise for DPJ.

In a case of disputes with the Managing Editors that they cannot resolve themselves, the authors are encouraged to contact the DPJ Main Editors — the Editor-in-Chief and the 2 Deputy Editors — for their help and authority. For this reason, only one of the 3 DPJ Main Editors may be appointed as a Managing Editor for any particular manuscript.

If one or two Main Editors submit a manuscript as its authors, they should use pseudonyms and pseudonym DPJ accounts, known only to themselves and to the rest of the Main Editors who cannot serve as Managing Editors. All communication by the authors who are Main Editors has to be managed from the pseudonym account and separate pseudonym email address. In case of dispute described above, Temporary Managing Editors can be appointed by Main Editors, who are not the authors.  If all 3 Main Editors submit a manuscript as its authors, the Editors of Book Reviewer section will be appointed to manage conflicts between the authors and Managing Editors of this manuscript.

Part IV. Non-sexist and non-discriminatory language journal policy

The journal is committed to gender-neutral language, gender-inclusive language, inclusive language, or gender neutrality that aims to eliminate (or neutralize) reference to gender in terms that describe people. For example, the words fireman, lesbian, stewardess, and, arguably, chairman, are gender-specific; the corresponding gender-neutral terms are firefighter, homosexual, flight attendant and chairperson (or chair). The pronoun "he" may be replaced with "he or she" or "s/he" when the gender of the person referred to is unknown. Other gender-specific terms, such as actor and actress may be replaced by the originally male term (actor used for either gender) (see more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_language). Sexist, xenophobic, ethnic, national, body image, and homophobic slurs, or racist and classist terms should not be used unless it is a part of the research focus in itself.

Publication Frequency

The journal is volume-organized (except “a special issue” of a thematically related collection of articles). All unrelated articles are published as soon as they are ready for publication. The journal volume is defined by the year of articles' publications.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content. Our publisher, the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh, abides by the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of Open Access:

“By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”

Researchers engage in discovery for the public good, yet because of cost barriers or use restrictions imposed by other publishers, research results are not available to the full community of potential users. It is our mission to support a greater global exchange of knowledge by making the research published in this journal open to the public and reusable under the terms of a Creative Commons CC-BY license.

Furthermore, we encourage authors to post their pre-publication manuscript in institutional repositories or on their Web sites prior to and during the submission process, and to post the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version after publication. These practices benefit authors with productive exchanges as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.

There are no article processing charges, submissions fees, or any other costs required of authors to submit articles to this journal.