Policies

We publish work under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International Licence CC BY-NC 4.0, which means that authors retain their copyright and publication rights while giving us permission to reproduce their work here, as long as we do so with proper attribution and not for commercial gain.

Open Access

We are an open access journal, which means we do not charge readers to access, print or download our content. We publish the articles with a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC 4.0). We do not charge any fees to our authors.

Peer Review

All our scholarly article are subject to peer review before publication. We use a double anonymous system, which means the identity of the author is not revealed to the reviewers, and vice versa.

Inclusion and Access

Leaf Journal actively supports the equality of opportunity between writers who share a protected characteristic and those who do not. Inclusion and access have been a touchstone of our planning. While we take responsibility for our own processes in terms of inclusion and access, if there are ways in which we could be doing better, please let us know via email LeafJournal@bathspa.ac.uk.

Research Ethics

All articles submitted for publication should be underpinned by integrity and professionalism in research. What this means for individual articles will vary. It may mean that you could be asked to provide evidence of engagement with your institution’s Ethics Committee, for example in the case of research involving young or vulnerable people. It may mean that you could be asked to justify unusual research methods. Many institutions provide training in research ethics. If this is not available to you, then The Concordat to Support Research Integrity is a useful alternative and Prof Jen Webb’s Researching Creative Writing is a thorough guide to designing research in a creative space.

Research Misconduct

We will undertake reasonable steps to prevent research misconduct. We ask all contributors to declare the work is their own with all citations properly acknowledged. We operate an identity-hidden peer review system and provide guidance to peer reviewers which asks for special attention to be given to methodology and data where relevant. In the event that allegations are made of research misconduct, or misconduct comes to light through other means, we will follow COPE guidance. We reserve the right to share material such as article submissions with editors of other journals where research misconduct is alleged.

Article Withdrawal

In the event that research misconduct is identified, we will withdraw the article in question. For posterity, the article will remain in our archive, however it will be preceded by a statement indicating that the article has been withdrawn. In extreme cases, where the article has been found to violate legal standards (for example, defamation), the metadata (Title, Author, etc) will be retained, but the text will be replaced by a notice that the text has been withdrawn for legal reasons.

Corrections

In the case of corrections, we will follow COPE guidance.

Post-publication Debate

In the first instance, we request that post-publication debate should be directed to us as ‘Letters to the Editor’ via email LeafJournal@bathspa.ac.uk. Any further action will follow COPE guidance.

Preservation of Access

Our Scholarly Articles, Conference Proceedings and Symposium Proceedings are all registered with DOIs and deposited in PKP Preservation Network for long-term preservation should the journal fold. Additionally, authors are free to deposit their articles in an institutional repository of their choice without embargo.

Complaints against the Journal or its Staff

Complaints against the journal or its staff should be directed in the first instance to one of the two managing editors. As appropriate, they will conduct an internal investigation. If necessary they may request additional assistance from the Editorial Board. The investigation should be timely and transparent.

Dr Elen Caldecott: e.caldecott@lancaster.ac.uk
Lucy Cuthew: l.cuthew@bathspa.ac.uk