The Nordic Association of Architectural Research (NAF/NAAR)
Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
The Nordic Association of Architectural Research (NAF/NAAR) is an independent and not-for-profit association of architectural researchers from universities and schools of architecture in the Nordic countries. Free researcher-driven research is protected and endorsed by the association, which has existed since 1987.
The Nordic Journal of Architectural Research (NJAR) is the scientific journal of NAF/NAAR. It is published by SINTEF Academic Press, Norway. It strives for the highest level of scholarly publication and is presently ranked at level 2 in Denmark, Norway, and Finland (Sweden does not use this ranking).
For all parties involved in the act of publishing (the author, the journal’s editor(s), the peer reviewer, and the publisher), it is necessary to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior. This publication ethics and malpractice statement for The Nordic Journal of Architectural Research (NJAR) is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors: https://publicationethics.org/.
1. Editorial Board
The editorial board of NJAR consists of 20 members from Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden. They are all recognized experts in the field of architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture.
The NJAR website (http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/pages/view/Journal) provides the full names and affiliations of the editorial board members. The website also offers contact information for the editorial office and its editors-in-chief: Sten Gromark, PhD, Magnus Rönn, PhD, and Marius Fiskevold, PhD.
Editors-in-Chief
There are presently three editors-in-chief, two from Sweden and one from Norway (2021). They are appointed by the board of NAF/NAAR and are all recognized experts in the field of architecture, urban design, and landscape architecture. They work closely together and inspect all phases of each other’s work. This rule was introduced by NAF/NAAR to prevent any kind of editorial misconduct among the editors of NJAR.
Duties of the Editors-in-Chief
No Discrimination
Submitted manuscripts are evaluated solely for their intellectual content and academic rigour without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
Discretion and Confidentiality
All inquiries, received articles, and essays are treated with the utmost discretion and confidentiality. Under no circumstances may the editors-in-chief disclose anything about an inquiry or a manuscript received to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and publisher, as appropriate.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s own research. As editor, you cannot be in charge of the process of peer reviewing articles written by you or your close colleagues. Neither can you peer review articles written by close family members or your cohabiting partner. You may not have any personal gain or further the interests or research of your research institution to the detriment of others. As a matter of course, an editor whose article has been included in an issue of NJAR, or who has any other special personal interest in the outcome of the issue, shall be disqualified from participating in the peer review process for the NJAR issue in question. Neither can authors whose articles are included in a NJAR issue do a peer review of articles that have been included in the same issue written by other authors.
Publication Decisions
The managing editors-in-chief of the journal are responsible for deciding which of the submitted articles should be published. They conduct the double-blind peer review process and control all manuscripts for plagiarism prior to the peer review and publishing. NJAR’s plagiarism control system is called ‘URKUND’ and it is used by highly ranked universities in Sweden.
The editors-in-chief are obliged to give advice to potential external theme editors regarding the journal’s academic content, editorial practices, and ethics policy. A NAF/NAAR board member is appointed to support and check the advising process. Should there be disagreement among the editors of the journal, then the decision-making process will follow a specific order presented in the editorial guidelines provided by NAF/ NAAR (http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/pages/view/guidelines). If needed, the president of NAF/NAAR will make the final decision.
2. Authors and Author Responsibilities
- Authors do not have to pay any fees for being published in NJAR. There are no financial relations/transactions between author(s) and the journal or the association behind the journal.
- Authors are requested to follow the author’s guidelines provided by NJAR. The guidelines are available on the website of the journal (http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/information/authors).
- By submitting one’s work for review and potential publication, all authors attest to, and agree to abide by, the COPE code of ethical conduct (see above).
Originality and Plagiarism
The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works. If they have used the work and/or words of others, this must be appropriately cited or quoted. Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given.
- Authors are obliged to participate in a double-blind peer review process, which includes responding to comments from peer reviewers and making the required clarifications/improvements.
- Authors are obliged to make revisions and to correct any mistakes pointed out by peer reviewers and editors-in-chief.
- Authors have to follow APA 6th for references and, in an acknowledgement at the end of the article/essay, should provide information on how the research has been funded (research foundation, university, authority, organization, spare-time research, etc.)
Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication
An author should not submit manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Likewise, an author is only allowed to submit and publish one article or essay per issue of NJAR.
Authorship of a Manuscript
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the submitted manuscript or reported study.
As a rule, the maximum number of authors per article is four (4). Where there are others who have contributed to the manuscript or research, they should be named in an acknowledgement section. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the author list of the manuscript, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.
3. Peer-Review Process
- All scientific articles and academic essays published in the journal will have been subjected to a double-blind peer review. Review forms are available on the NJAR website, from which they can be downloaded free of charge: https://www.sintef.no/contentassets/54cd3888736a4d26b2eafb856334721e/articlereviewformfinalnjar.pdf/
https://www.sintef.no/contentassets/54cd3888736a4d26b2eafb856334721e/essayreviewformfinalnjar.pdf/
- All peer reviewers used by NJAR are recognized researchers. The NAF/NAAR regulation requires that reviewers must hold a PhD and possess specialized knowledge on the subject matter of the article/essay. Reviewers who do not hold a PhD are only permitted in very exceptional cases (artistic research).
- The requested academic qualifications of peer reviewers used by NJAR are clearly described on the website of NJAR (http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/pages/view/Journal).
- Peer reviewers perform their work for NJAR for free. There are no financial relations/transactions between NJAR or the association behind NJAR and the peer reviewers
Duties of the Peer Reviewer
Appropriate peer reviewers are identified and contacted by the NJAR editors-in-chief. In an initial letter prior to the review process, the editors inform the peer reviewer about the review process, her or his task, and the responsibilities and ethical obligations that go along with the job. The letter points out that:
- Reviews should be conducted objectively
- Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate
- Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments and references as necessary and not be defamatory or libellous
- Reviewers should declare any competing interests
- Reviewers should decline to review manuscripts in which they have a competing interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers
- Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of material supplied to them and may not discuss unpublished manuscripts with colleagues or use the information in their own work
- Any reviewer who wants to pass a review request on to a colleague must get the editor’s permission beforehand
- A fundamental principle in the peer review process is that the author(s) and peer reviewer(s) must not come from the same country.
- The reviewers are asked to take the following aspects into consideration when reviewing a manuscript (see review forms): Does the manuscript have an introduction, which states the objectives of the work and provides an adequate background and a clear research question? Is there a sufficient description on methods and the selection process? Does the author present a theoretical framework? Are results and analyses clear and concise? And does the manuscript include final discussion and conclusions?
- Reviewers should identify any relevant published work that has not been cited by the author(s). Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editors’ attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published data of which they have personal knowledge.
- Accepted articles/essays that are subject to ‘major revisions’ must be revised by the author(s) and undergo a new peer review (second round). The author(s) must send back the revised manuscript and state in a separate letter how the review comments in the review form have been addressed. The reviewer(s) get the revised manuscript and check whether it meets requirements for publication.
- The editors-in-chief check if the review from the peer reviewer(s) seems to be fair and objective. If not, a new peer reviewer will be selected for the job.
4. Publication Ethics – Summary
- NJAR applies and endorses the code of ethical conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): https://publicationethics.org/
- The ethics (COPE) of NJAR is stated on the website of the journal: http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/pages/view/Journal.
- By submitting one’s work for review and potential publication, all authors attest to, and agree to abide by, the COPE code of ethical conduct.
- The editors-in-chief control all manuscripts for plagiarism before peer review and publishing. NJAR’s plagiarism control system is called ‘URKUND’ and it is used by highly ranked universities in Sweden.
- The editors-in-chief give advice to occasional theme editors regarding the journal’s editorial policy and content. A NAF/NAAR board member is appointed to support and check the advising process.
- Should there be disagreement between the editors of the journal, the decision-making process follows a specific order presented in the editorial guidelines provided by NAF/NAAR. If needed, the president of NAF/NAAR makes the final decision.
- The publisher and the editors are always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
5. Copyright and Access
- It is clearly stated in the author’s guidelines (http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/information/authors) that the author(s) is responsible for image rights, and that all images shall have references. This demand is checked by the editors-in-chief, the publisher, and the graphic designer of NJAR.
- The individual articles/essays are available to readers through subscription (http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/information/librarians). All staff and students get access to every published article/essay when university libraries subscribe to the journal. Individuals can obtain access by personal subscription.
- The journal applies ‘green open access’, which means that the author(s) has the right to deposit the publisher’s version of her or his article/essay through the author’s own institutional repository or open archive immediately after it is published in the journal (http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/information/authors).
This can be interpreted as ‘gold open access’ from the author’s perspective.
- After one year, all articles are freely available on the website. This information is stated in the minor section ‘Readers’ on the website’s home page (http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/information/readers) and in the author’s guidelines (http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/information/authors).
- Authors hold the copyright to their articles/essays.
6. Archiving
a) Website: Backup of the complete system is done every night by the server provider. Daily backups are kept for one week; one backup per week is kept for a month; and one backup per month is kept for over a year. The respective backup is stored in another physical location than the actual server.
b) The publisher: All issues (from volume 1, issue 1, 1987) are stored in electronic form on the publisher’s server. The publisher’s server is backed up every night using a cloud solution. The complete archive for the journal is the property of The Nordic Association of Architectural Research (NAF/NAAR), and it will be transferred to the association if the publisher decides to withdraw from the project.
7. Ownership and Management
- The Nordic Journal of Architectural Research (NJAR) is a journal run by The Nordic Association of Architectural Research (NAF/NAAR). Its members own the journal. This information regarding ownership is found on the NJAR website in the major section ‘THE ASSOCIATION’ (http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/pages/view/Association NAF/NAAR). It is an independent, non-profit association of architectural researchers from universities and schools of architecture in the Nordic countries.
- The association (NAF/NAAR) has two main objectives: the production of a journal (NJAR) with high scientific standards; and the organization of annual symposia on research issues of significance for its research community.
- On the NJAR website (http://arkitekturforskning.net/na/pages/view/Association), the NAF/NAAR board, working committee, and accountants are presented with names and affiliations.
8. Website
The website has six (6) major sections on the front page called HOME, THE ASSOCIATION, THE JOURNAL, THE PUBLISHING HOUSE, CONTACT, and ARCHIVE. These major sections provide needed information to and facilitate the process for authors, reviewers, and readers, as well as the research community. In the right margin on the home page there are four (4) minor sections with information called Readers, Authors, Theme Editors, and Subscription.
9. Publishing Schedule
The website provides a tentative publishing plan two years ahead. The plan includes both ‘mixed issues’ and ‘theme issues’ of NJAR.
10. Name of the Journal
The Nordic Journal of Architectural Research (NJAR) is a unique name that aptly covers the topic of the journal. However, the name gives the journal a certain regional connection, which might be somewhat misleading. The name NJAR was invented in 1992 when the association behind the journal was founded as a truly Nordic association. Thus, the name represents not a geographical delimitation of topics, but rather a certain political context evident at the time in the research community in Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Sweden.