MAP Education and Humanities (MAPEH)

All MAP journals adhere to publication ethics and malpractice outlined by COPE. Thus, all parties involved in the act of publishing should agree upon the standards of expected ethical behavior.

For Authors

Authorship

• All listed authors must have made a significant contribution to the research presented in the manuscript, they must have approved of its claims and accepted to be included as authors.
• Anyone else who contributed to the research or manuscript preparation, but is not an author should be acknowledged with their permission.
• Any change to the author list during the manuscript processing or after publishing the manuscript must be approved by all the authors, including the one(s) removed.
• In case of co-authorship the corresponding author is expected to inform the other authors accurately and include them in all the major decisions.

Conflict of interest

• Any possible conflicts of interest (e.g. related to the potential financial support, personal connections, affiliation relations, ideological stances) on the side of author(s) must be communicated during manuscript submission. They do not always prevent manuscript from being published; however, they must be clearly declared, which will enable others to make proper decisions about the manuscript.

Funding

• Authors must report any funding they received for their research.

Duplicate submission and redundant publication

• Manuscripts submitted to this journal must not be also submitted elsewhere while under consideration.
• For any previously published content all necessary permissions must be secured from the copyright holders. Reuse of the content published by the author(s) outside the Methods sections should be attributed or quoted in the text, or in case of the reuse of the figures or substantial wording necessary permission from the copyright holders must be obtained.
• Extended versions of conference manuscripts will be considered, but the previous version must be cited, a significant amount of new data must be included and all necessary permissions must be obtained.

Originality and objectivity

• Authors are expected to present their findings accurately and interpret them objectively.
• Original research results must be novel, and not previously published in any language.

Corrections and retractions

• All noticed errors or inaccuracies in the published manuscripts must be reported to the Editorial Office. Errors by the authors might be corrected by corrigendum and by the publisher by an erratum.
• If the errors significantly affecting the conclusions are detected or some evidence of misconduct obtained, the manuscript might be retracted following the COPE Retractions Guidelines.

In addition to the norms included in the list, authors are expected to adhere to local regulations and academic publishing norms.

For editors

Editors should not accept to be involved in the manuscript processing if they:

• Have a recent publication with any of the authors or their manuscript is currently under consideration for publication
• Share or have recently shared an affiliation with any author
• Collaborate or have recently collaborated with any author
• Have a personal connection to any author
• Have a financial interest related to the work
• think they cannot be objective
• Editors should also declare if they have discussed the manuscript with any authors prior to submission

For reviewers

Reviewers should not accept to be involved in the manuscript processing if they:

• Have recently publication some material with any author or their co-authored manuscript is currently under consideration for publication
• Have recently shared an affiliation with any author
• Have recently collaborated with any author
• Have a personal connection to any author
• Have a financial interest related to the work
• Feel they cannot be objective
• Reviewers should also declare if they have discussed the manuscript with any authors prior to submission

Any other interest not included in the list must be declared in the review form, and will be considered by the editor.

In case of breaches of the publication ethics policies, the following sanctions might be imposed:

• Rejection of the manuscript or any other manuscript submitted by the author(s)
• Not allowing submission for 1-3 years
• Prohibiting from acting as an editor or reviewer

For more serious ethical violations some additional sanctions might be applied.

Submission of the manuscript

Login or Register to make a submission.

Authors are requested to submit their manuscripts as a Word file or a PDF file (if specific symbols are included) via system.

Submission of a manuscript to MAPEH entails that the manuscript has not been published before (except in the form of an abstract), that it is not currently being considered for publication in another journal, that its publication has been approved by all co-authors (if it is a co-authored paper) and that it will not be published in any other language elsewhere without the permission of the publisher. All articles are checked for plagiarism on submission; if clear plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) is identified, the article will be rejected.

MAPEH welcomes contributions in English and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian. If the language of the manuscript is not the native language of the contributor, it should be spell-checked and grammar-checked by a native speaker before submission. MAP publishing house also offers high-quality proofreading and editing services. More information about these services can be found on MAP author services.

Submission checklist

Please check whether all the steps have been taken before the submission process starts:

• One author has been designated as the corresponding author and his/her contact details have been provided (e-mail address, postal address, and ORCID number)
• All the necessary documents have been prepared:
  1. Title page (containing title of the manuscript, author details – name, title, affiliation, ORCID, email, postal address)
  2. Manuscript without title page (not exceeding 9000 words, references excluded)
  3. Tables/figures/graphs
  4. upplemental files (where applicable)
• Manuscripts have been carefully proofread (spell- and grammar-checked) and edited.
• Manuscripts have been prepared for blinded review. Inadequately blinded manuscripts will be returned to authors for further anonymization, which can impede the review process. Thus, please avoid self-identifying citations and references both in the text and in the reference section not to reveal your identity and use ‘Author, date of publication’ or ‘Author 1, Author 2…, date of publication’ in a co-authored paper.
• Permission for the use of any copyrighted material has been obtained.
• A conflict-of-interest statement has also been provided, even if authors have no competing interest to announce.

The manuscript is first assessed by the assigned Editor, and it is sent to two external peer reviewers only if the editor concludes it meets the basic standards and fits within the scope of the journal. Authors are limited to having maximum three articles under review at any point in time. In case an author has three papers under consideration, the review process for at least one paper must be complete before another paper is submitted. This does not apply to Editorials or other non-peer reviewed papers.

The journal will take into consideration the following paper types:

• Research papers – presenting the results of an original research study. These manuscripts describe in detail the way in which the research was conducted, a thorough analysis of the results and their objective interpretation. They should consist of the following sections:
  1. title page
  2. abstract (150 to 300 words)
  3. key words (5 to 7 key words)
  4. introduction
  5. literature review
  6. methodology (detailed description of participants, data collection and analyses)
  7. results (with tables and figures incorporated in the text)
  8. discussion
  9. conclusions (implications and limitations)
  10. references (following APA 7 style, please check author guidelines)
  11. appendices (if necessary).
• Review papers – overviewing the existing published literature in a particular field. These manuscripts include a research synthesis and meta-analysis and they are critical evaluations of material that has already been published. In meta-analyses, authors use quantitative procedures to statistically combine the results of studies. In review articles authors should:
  1. define and clarify the research problem;
  2. summarize previous investigations to inform the reader of the state of research;
  3. identify gaps, inconsistencies, contradictions in the literature and propose some further steps to be taken;
  4. The components of review papers can be arranged in various ways (by grouping research based on conceptual or theoretical similarity, methodological similarities among the studies reviewed, or the historical development of the field).

MAP Education and Humanities is an open access journal. Thus, upon publication all articles are available (with no embargo period) to be downloaded, shared, and reused without restrictions as long as the source and the original publisher are properly cited. This way open access ensures the widest possible access to research.

Publication is funded by a fee paid once a paper is accepted. All the articles use the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY).

MAP Education and Humanities publishes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), so all the data related to the manuscript are distributed in line with the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/), which means that you as a reader may:

• Share, i.e. copy and redistribute the material in any medium and format;
• Adapt the material, i.e. remix it, transform, and build upon it for any purpose

On the condition you follow the license terms stating that, you are expected:

• To make correct attribution giving proper credit, providing a link to the license and indicating if the changes were made;
• Not to create any further restrictions

However, some papers might include figures, tables or graphs taken from another sources, for which MAP does not hold the copyright. The original copyright holders should be contacted to check the conditions on which this material can be reused.

Manuscripts submitted to MAPEH are initially reviewed by the MAPEH editor to check their potential suitability. Only those manuscripts that meet the MAPEH criteria will be sent out for formal peer review. Reviewers evaluate the manuscript, focusing on its originality and value, technical quality, clarity and organization, depth of research and contribution to the field. Based on reviewers’ advice, the editor decides to: accept the manuscript, require major revision, require minor revision, or reject the manuscript. Reviewers’ feedback and timely submission are greatly appreciated.

All reviews are submitted online through the MAPEH submission system. Reviewers should observe that the author(s) have followed the author guidelines, editorial policy and publication ethics and that the reporting guidelines are fully applied. The reviewer report should be objective, unbiased, clear, unambiguous, accurate, and constructive. The reviewer’s comments must be substantiated by facts and arguments and reviewers should avoid hostile or sarcastic comments. Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of the manuscript and should not discuss the unpublished manuscript with colleagues. If reviewers want their manuscript to remain anonymous, they should avoid disclosing their identity through named comments.

Reviewers should fill in the MAPEH reviwer report. The following questions need to addressed to properly evaluate the paper:

• Does the title reflect the contents of the manuscript?
• Does the abstract contain precise and essential information about the manuscript?
• Is the manuscript’s framework clearly established in the introductory section?
• Are the study’s objectives and research questions clearly defined?
• Are the usefulness and significance of the current study explicitly specified?
• Does the author use a sufficient number of references to outline the study’s background?
• Does the author use credible and updated research sources to strengthen his/her arguments?
• Is the research methodology clear and precise?
• Was the statistical analysis conducted appropriately? (if applicable)
• Are the tables and figures effectively presented? Are they sufficiently informative?
• Are the findings appropriately discussed in the context of previous literature in the field?
• Are main conclusions supported by the obtained results?
• Do authors support their arguments with clear evidence?
• Are sources in the reference list cited correctly and according to the journal guidelines?
• Does the language need improvement? Does the manuscript contain any typographical and grammatical errors?
• Is the manuscript understandable and appropriate for the MAPEH journal?