This page describes how Peer Academics publishes: what it costs, when articles appear, what rights attach to them, and what the journal does about work you have already posted elsewhere. It is written so that you can tell, before you submit, exactly what you are agreeing to.
Open access
Peer Academics is fully open access. Every article is free to read on the journal's website as soon as it is published. There is no embargo period, no subscription, no paywall, no registration requirement for readers, and no version of an article that is withheld from the public version of record. The journal does not operate a hybrid model and does not sell access to any part of its content.
No charges to authors
Peer Academics charges authors nothing at any point. Specifically, there are:
- no article processing charges (APCs);
- no submission, handling, or review fees;
- no page, figure, color, or supplementary-file charges;
- no charge for publication in open access, because open access is the only mode the journal has;
- no fee of any kind on rejection, revision, acceptance, or withdrawal.
Because nothing is charged, Peer Academics operates no waiver, discount, or hardship scheme. Such schemes exist to relieve authors of fees, and there are no fees to relieve. If you are ever asked to pay anything in connection with a submission to Peer Academics, the request did not come from the journal — report it to [email protected].
The costs of running the journal — hosting, the editorial platform, and administration — are met by the Publisher, Asociația Societatea Studenților din Uniunea Europeană (EUSS). The journal carries no advertising, and no commercial party has any role in editorial decisions.
Frequency and continuous publication
Peer Academics publishes continuously within an annual volume. An accepted article is copyedited, typeset, proofed by you, and then published on the website as soon as it is ready; it is not held back to fill an issue. Each article is assigned to the volume current at the date of publication and receives its own article number, and articles are added to that volume throughout the year.
The practical consequence for you is that an accepted article is not held back to wait for an issue to fill or close, and that the version published first is the version of record. Corrections after publication are handled by publishing a separate, linked correction notice rather than by silently editing the published file.
Licensing and copyright
The Publisher has not yet fixed the license terms under which articles will be distributed, and no license is claimed for the journal's content at this time. This is being decided before the first article is published.
Two commitments apply in the meantime, and they bind the journal:
- No article will be published until the license that applies to it is stated on the article itself, in the Author Guidelines, and on this page.
- You will be asked to agree to the copyright and licensing terms in writing at the point of acceptance, before publication. If you do not accept them, your manuscript is not published and you are free to submit it elsewhere; nothing you have already done in the review process transfers any rights.
Until that decision is published here, do not assume any particular license for Peer Academics content, and do not state one in a data availability statement, funder report, or institutional deposit.
Preprints
Peer Academics does not treat a preprint as prior publication. You may post your manuscript to a recognized preprint server — institutional or disciplinary — before, during, and after review with this journal, and doing so will not by itself prejudice the editorial decision.
What you must do:
- Disclose the preprint at submission. Give the server and the permanent link or identifier in the submission comments to the editor. Do not name the preprint inside the anonymized manuscript file, because that would identify you to reviewers.
- Check that the preprint's license permits the journal to publish the article. If it does not, resolve this before acceptance.
- Update the preprint record once the article is published, adding a link to the published version so that readers can find the peer-reviewed text.
If you do not disclose a preprint and the editor discovers it during review, the manuscript is paused while the editor establishes what was posted and when; an undisclosed posting that turns out to be a published article, rather than a preprint, is handled as duplicate submission.
Peer Academics does not itself operate a preprint server, does not post submitted manuscripts publicly, and does not disclose the existence or content of a submission to anyone outside the editorial process.
Identifiers and preservation: current status
So that you can plan deposits and reporting accurately, the journal states its position plainly:
- Peer Academics has not yet been assigned an ISSN. An application will be made to the Romanian ISSN National Centre.
- The journal has no Crossref membership and no DOI prefix. Articles published before that changes will not carry DOIs; cite them by the journal name, volume, article number, and URL.
- The journal is not yet enrolled in a digital preservation network such as the PKP Preservation Network, CLOCKSS, LOCKSS, or Portico. Until it is, you are advised to deposit the accepted version in your institutional repository as well.
- The journal is not indexed in any database or directory and claims no bibliometric indicator of any kind.
This page is updated when any of these facts changes. The journal's publishing practices are informed by the principles of DOAJ, COPE, and ICMJE; Peer Academics is not a member of, or listed by, any of them.