Editorial Policies

Material Disclaimer

The opinions and views expressed in the contributions published in the IJCCR are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the journal, the editorial board, or RAMICS.

Peer-review Process

Double-blind peer review

The International Journal of Community Currency Research uses a double-blind peer review process. Each submission is initially assessed by a member of the editorial board to make sure that the manuscript is compatible with the journal’s scope and basic standards of quality. Then, the anonymised manuscript is sent to two independent referees who produce an anonymous report (the reviewers do not know the identity of the authors and, reversely, the authors do not know who reviewed their paper). The referees are chosen according to their specific field of expertise and to the conflict-of-interest rules. We are very grateful to them for accepting to revise a paper. The authors can not nominate or exclude reviewers.

Reports and Decision

The reviewers’ reports aim to assess the scientific quality of the paper, in terms of contribution to the literature, originality, methodology, analysis and interpretation, and quality of communication. The referees can suggest three types of publication decisions to the editor:

  • acceptance: the paper is suitable for publication as it is, the final publication decision is given by the editor;
  • rejection: the paper is not suitable for publication, the author will be notified with some explanations for this decision; 
  • revision: the paper is promising but there is room for improvement, the report will provide guidelines and comments to the authors. We aim at giving authors one month to answer the reports and resubmit their paper. Usually the new version of the submission is reviewed by the same referees. Reviewers may request more than one revision of a manuscript. 

The final decision of publication rests with the editor.

Peer Review Timeline

We try to provide a quick reviewing of submissions, even though some may take more time. The initial assessment of the submission is done in a couple of weeks. In case of a desk rejection, the authors will be informed as soon as possible. If the paper is assessed as consistent with the scope and quality standards of the IJCCR, it is sent to reviewers who have two months to send their report. We regret that this time frame is not always feasible for all our reviewers. In case of a revision decision, the authors have one month to address the issues raised in the reports. Once the paper is definitively accepted, it will be published in the next issue edited by the journal.

Open Access Policy

The IJCCR is an open access journal, meaning that any contribution published in the journal is accessible to anyone, without any fees.

Why does it matter?

We believe that information is a public good, and as such, research must be available to everyone who can make use of it, apply it, or build on it. Open access to information benefits research and researchers as it helps to accelerate research, share learnings and make literature and research as useful as it can be. Open access to publications also enables easier communication and cooperation between disciplines, improving interdisciplinary works. We think that the whole potential and effectiveness of research can only be achieved through open access publication and that this policy amplifies the social value of research. 

What does it mean?

In order to achieve this open access policy, we keep all issues freely available for any reader on our website and we publish our journal under a “Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License” CC-BY which allows anyone to:

  • copy (digital and hard copies), download, print, redistribute and share the material in any ways;
  • adapt, remix, transform and build upon the material, for any purposes, even commercial ones. There are no limits to the reuse of the content. 

These rights only stand under the following terms:

  • Any use of the material has to give appropriate attribution and credit to the original document, meaning that the user has to cite correctly the paper and attribute it to its authors (use the reference citation provided on the website), and ideally provide a link to the document. 
  • Any changes have to be indicated. 
  • The user may use the material in a way that does not suggest that the authors endorse the user or endorse the use of their work that is made.

Copyright and permissions

The copyrights are retained by the authors, meaning that they are the owners of their submission. By submitting in the IJCCR, the authors give permission to the journal to publish their submission under a CC-BY license (see Open Access Policy section to know more about this license).


If you are a reader or an organisation, and want to use a publication of this website beyond what is authorized by the publication license, please ask the authors for permission, since the journal is not responsible for unauthorized uses.

Privacy statement

The personal information that is shared with the editorial board of the IJCCR during the submission process, like names, e-mail addresses, disclosed information and such, will exclusively be used for the journal scientific aims. Only information that is necessary to ensure the correct running of the scientific publication process will be collected. They will not be used for any other purpose. Such information will not be made publicly available nor will it be shared with third parties. 

The personal information collected is kept by the journal as long as the authors accept us to store them, they can ask for their deletion at any time. We advise you to let the journal store your private information as long as your publication is available on our website, as they might be useful to solve any future issues or to contact you. 

For any questions or concerns regarding the use of personal information, please contact us.

Fees

All papers are freely submitted to the journal. The authors do not need to be members of Ramics. IJCCR is run on a voluntary basis and does not charge Author Publication Fees (APF). When submitting a paper, an author accepts to be part of the journal’s reviewing community and to review one submission in the future, for free.

Data availability

The IJCCR does not require the authors to share their data and codes. However, you must clearly cite your data, whenever they are collected by another person or institution, or to clearly document your data when you are the ones who collected it. We also encourage you to cite the software packages you use. 

We highly encourage you to store your data and codes, to give access to them, and to provide reasonable assistance to requests for replication. Replication is one of the practices that increases the quality of scientific research so we encourage you to favorably answer any future questions or clarifications about:

  • how to access data: if you have it and can provide it, please, do it. If you do not have it and it is publicly accessible, please, indicate how one can access it. If you do not have it and it is privately owned, please, indicate how one can ask permission to get it. If you collected original data, the replication tools also include survey instruments or experiment instructions and details on subject collection. 
  • how you transformed your data: please, be able and willing to provide the codes of your data cleaning process and how you build the final database you used for your computations. 
  • how you obtained your results: please, be able and willing to provide the codes you used to implement your model or to obtain your results.

Ethics policies

Ethics statement and Ethics committee approval

When submitting your paper to the IJCCR, you have to provide an Ethics Statement in the authors’ page. In this statement, authors confirm that they comply with the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity published by the Association of All European Academies (ALLEA) and accessible here. As announced in ALLEA’s  website, the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity serves the European research community as a framework for self-regulation across all scientific and scholarly disciplines and for all research settings. IJCCR ascribes to the 2017 revised edition of the Code. which has included challenges from technological developments, open science, citizen science and social media. The European Commission recognises the Code as the reference document for research integrity for all EU-funded research projects and as a model for organisations and researchers across Europe. The Code was published originally in English on 24 March 2017 and was translated to all official EU languages by the European Commission’s Translational Services and with the support of ALLEA Member Academies.

The IJCCR does not require the authors to submit the Ethics Committee Approval issued by the researchers’ organisations, when available. However, the journal or the reviewers may ask authors to disclose it, if they have any ethical concerns about the research. If authors do not have this document, it might impact the publication decision at any point in the process.

Ethics and malpractice

The IJCCR aims at complying with the highest standard of ethical practices in economics and social sciences and improving our publication process for this purpose. We try to objectively ensure the quality and scientificity of all contributions we publish. We follow the ethical guidance of ALLEA.

Unethical practices are unacceptable. We urge all parts of the publication process to follow the standards of ethical practices of ALLEA. 

Ethical responsibilities of authors

Authors must list all relevant persons as authors and no one else. The authors are the persons who contributed significantly to the experimental design, its implementation or analysis and interpretation of the data, to the writing of the manuscript at draft and any revision stages. They should all approve the final version. All persons who contributed significantly to the writing of the manuscript are considered an author; “ghost writers” are prohibited by the journal. Any person who made less significant contributions to the paper should be acknowledged in a footnote at the beginning of the paper. The IJCCR is very careful regarding authorship misconducts. 

Here is a non-exhaustive list of unethical practices that are prohibited by the journal:

  • falsification or manipulation of data or result,
  • fabrication of data or results
  • dishonesty in the analysis and interpretation of results,
  • plagiarism, citation manipulation and duplicate publication,
  • and so on.

The authors of a paper must be ready to:

  • disclose their relationships that could lead to any conflict of interest, 
  • provide their data if the editorial board or reviewer ask it,
  • provide all ethics requirements of their study, 
  • cooperate with the editorial board during the publication process and after,
  • notice the editors if they find a mistake in their paper during the publication process.

Ethical responsibilities of reviewers

Any peer review manipulation is prohibited by the journal. The reviewers must follow these ethical practices:

  • accept a review only in their field of expertise and if they can meet the deadline,
  • review in an impartial, unbiased and confidential way,
  • inform the editors if they think they might encounter conflict of interests
  • only use the paper they reviewed after its publication, with appropriate citation, and keep the paper confidential before its publication,
  • review the manuscript in a professional way.

Do not hesitate to follow the guidance in the “Guidelines to reviewers” section. 

Ethical responsibilities of editors

The editors are composed of the Editor-in-Chief and the members of the editorial board. They are responsible for each paper published in their journal, they must make sure that these publications are of sufficient scientific quality and comply with the ethical standards and editorial policies of the journal. The role of the editors is to:

  • being transparent and clear regarding the publication process,
  • answering all questions and requests of clarification from the authors, reviewers and readers,
  • ensure the functioning of the journal, its frequent publication and its development,
  • try to improve the procedures implemented by the journal, in all fields, and take into account any relevant suggestions or remarks given by someone in order to achieve this objective,
  • ensuring academic integrity and ethical practices,
  • being transparent over correction issues.

The editors must:

  • take notice of the feedback received from readers, researchers and practitioners
  • provide explanatory and informative feedback and guidance,
  • handle seriously any conflict or misconduct allegation,
  • observe and prevent any conflict of interest,
  • ensure anonymity of both authors and reviewers during the publication process,
  • pre-review contributions that are within the scope of the journal, unless there are serious problems with the study,
  • pre-review submissions following the ethical standards of independence and impartiality,
  • arrange regular meetings with the editorial board for the development of publication policies and the journal,
  • be open to the discussion of published papers and take seriously any convincing criticisms. Criticized authors have a right to reply, they must be contacted by the editors,
  • make their decisions independently from the owner of the journal. 

If you suspect any ethical misconduct from authors or reviewers or editors, please, contact the editors, an investigation will be launched in order to clarify the situation. The journal takes very seriously all ethical concerns or allegations. In case of evidence of misconduct or other fraudulent action, the journal might decide to retract a publication.

Originality and plagiarism

Plagiarism defined the use of words, ideas, models etc without giving proper credit to their original creator or author through full citation of their work. Please notice that it includes plagiarism of your own works in the case you do not cite one of your previous papers that you quote or reuse in your current paper. Plagiarism is academic dishonesty: the work you submit to a journal has to be yours. 

Your submission has to be an original research, actively contributing to the existing literature. It must not be already published in another journal, nor submitted to another journal. Submissions to the journal may be checked for originality in a plagiarism checker software. If the IJCCR finds plagiarism issues with a paper, it might not be published, and if it is an already published paper, it could be removed from our website, following an investigation from the editors. 

Here are some tips to help you avoiding plagiarism:

  • always give the citation of words or ideas that are not your own,
  • use quotes when using someone else’s words,
  • do not superficially paraphrase a text, you should rephrase carefully what the author wrote with your own words according to your understanding of the text and cite her or him,
  • cite yourself if you are using your previous papers,
  • facts and common knowledge need not be cited, if you are unsure, include a citation,
  • be all the more careful about plagiarism issues in the literature review part,
  • you can self-check your text using plagiarism checker tools.

Conflict of interest policy

The IJCCR guarantees the independence and the impartiality of the publication process of submissions by implementing the following conflict-of-interest principles:

Co-editors will not handle, nor have access to the reviewers’ names and reports about submissions from:

  • current colleagues;
  • thesis advisors;
  • co-authors, current or in the past 2 years;
  • Ph.D students they advised in the past 2 years;
  • graduate students of their current institution;
  • a family member.

Co-editors must disclose to the editor-in-chief any other relationships with the authors of a submission that they think could create a conflict of interest. The editor-in-chief will change the co-editor associated with the submission. If the editor-in-chief might be in conflict with the authors of a paper she or he was supposed to handle, she or he will ask another member of the editorial board to handle this paper, with appropriate confidential practices. 

Referees review papers in a blind fashion, so they are not supposed to be biased by any conflict of interest, since they do not know who are the authors of the submission they review. However, it might happen that the reviewer recognised a paper from one of her or his colleagues, (past) student, friends and so on (we know that the community who publishes in the IJCCR is linked with close relationships); in this case, the reviewer must disclose it to the editorial board, and she or he will be dismissed from the reviewing of the paper. The co-editor in charge of the paper will choose another reviewer.

Disclosure policy

The IJCCR does not systematically require that all authors of a submission provide a disclosure statement. However, in case you are involved in a relationship that could lead to a conflict of interest with respect to your submission, we highly encourage you to provide a personal Disclosure statement (one for each author or co-author who thinks she or he should provide one). This statement is important and it is in the best interest of the author because:

  • it helps us choosing the most neutral referees possible for your submission;
  • it protects you from conflict of interest allegations that may occur in case a non-disclosed relationship is discovered;
  • it helps readers to better understand your standpoint at the time of the research. 

The statement should disclose:

  • any sources of financial support to fund the study. If there is none, that fact should be stated;
  • any interested party from whom you received a significant financial support (at least $10 000, in the past three years), or a significant in-kind support, such as access to a dataset for instance. An “interested party” is any individual, group or organization that has a financial, ideological, or political stake related to your submission.
  • any paid or unpaid positions as officer, director, or board member of relevant non-profit organizations or profit-making entities. A “relevant” organization is one whose policy positions, goals, or financial interests relate to the article.
  • if another party had the right to review the paper prior to its circulation

You only have to disclose relevant relationships, meaning that a disclosure statement is author-specific as well as paper-specific. It might happen that relationships that do not involve yourself directly, but involve one of your relatives or close partner should relevantly be disclosed.

In case you are not sure if a relationship should be disclosed, ask yourself this question: “Would I or one of my co-authors or my institution, be embarrassed if I had not disclosed this relationship and it was subsequently discovered by a journalist, colleague or university administrator?” If the answer to this question is “yes”, the relationship should be disclosed. If you are still not sure, we advise you to disclose the relationship, since you are more likely to regret not disclosing something than having disclosed it. Notice that your personal beliefs do not need to be disclosed. 

If your submission is published, your disclosure statement will be added in a footnote at the beginning of the paper.

Guidelines to reviewers

The IJCCR is very grateful to its reviewers, and we thank you for accepting to review submissions to the journal. When reviewing a submission, you will have to provide a publication recommendation and an assessment of the paper, to the authors and to the editors, based on six criteria: accuracy of title and abstract to reflect contents of the paper, originality, conceptual development, research method, readability and relevance to the journal audience. You will be given a form to fill in. Your review must be impartial, independent, confidential and ethical. We ask you to send us your report within 60 days. To help you to review the submission, you can apply the following guidance.

  1. The report does not need to be unnecessarily long, only focus on relevant criticisms and remarks. Most of the time, two or three pages are enough. 

  1. Be professional and benevolent in your review: although you have to be frank in your assessment, gratuitous or irrelevant criticisms should be avoided and may be edited out before they are shared with the authors. Unnecessarily harsh comments diminish us as a profession. 

  1. Here are some guidelines for the structure of the review that you may apply:
    1. Brief critical summary of the submission: clearly identify the contributions to the literature, this is important to eventually judge whether it is worth publishing it. Be specific about the strengths and weaknesses in the paper’s execution.
    2. Major concerns: highlight essential issues or concerns that absolutely need to be met by the authors to allow the paper to be published. If you are recommending acceptance, this section should be short, if you are recommending rejection, here is where you should justify it. Please, give specific attention to the assumptions, internal validity and external validity of the paper. 
    3. Minor suggestions: other suggestions that are not crucial but you think can really improve the paper’s quality. These remarks are left to the discretion of the authors. Please, be parsimonious, you should justify any extension or robustness check with at least a paragraph explaining why you would expect the results to change, the direction in which you believe they would change, and what this would mean for the paper at large if it did. 

We kindly ask you to not give your name or any way to recognise you in your report or filename, since the peer-review process is double-blind. In case despite the anonymisation of the manuscript you think you know who wrote the paper and that you might have a conflict of interest with them, please follow instructions as stated in the Conflict of interest section. Similarly, if you might be involved in a conflict of interest regarding  the topic of the paper you review, please notice the editors. Reviewers should bear in mind that all manuscripts contain confidential information, which should be treated as such.

For more guidance, you can read the following article: Berk, Jonathan B., Campbell R. Harvey, and David Hirshleifer. 2017. “How to Write an Effective Referee Report and Improve the Scientific Review Process.” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31 (1): 231-44.