Media Theory follows the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing as proposed by organisations such as The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and it is expected of authors, reviewers and editors that they follow the best-practice guidelines on ethical behaviour contained therein.

Authorship and contributorship

Collaborators should decide who will be an author before the work is started and confirm who is an author before submitting the manuscript for publication. The submitting author would normally be the main point of contact with the journal throughout the production process, but does not necessarily have to be the first author listed in the published article.

All members of the group named as authors should have contributed substantially to the drafting and revising of the article, give approval for the final version to be published, and be accountable with regards to any questions on the accuracy or integrity of any and all parts of the article.

Submission of an article for consideration in Media Theory implies that the work described has not been accepted for publication elsewhere, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and does not duplicate material already published. Prepublication or redundant/overlapping publication would preclude your article from consideration for publication with Media Theory.

Inclusivity

Media Theory is committed to be an inclusive publication, and the editors encourage submissions from women, minorities and scholars from the global south. All editorial decisions are made on merit alone regardless of the origins of the manuscript and the nationality, political beliefs or religion of the author.

Intellectual property

Media Theory is a libre open access journal and a member of the Radical Open Access Collective. All content is freely available without charge to the user or their institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the journal or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access, as well as DOAJ’s definition of libre (and not just gratis) open access.

Copyright of all articles published in the journal rests with the authors of each particular article. The authors grant the journal a non-exclusive licence to publish the articles. Authors are free to disseminate, re-use and re-publish their articles however they wish; we merely request that authors acknowledge prior publication in Media Theory (and include the appropriate reference and url).

All articles up vol.7, no.1 (2023) are published with a CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs) open access licence, which allows third parties to download authors’ articles and share them with others as long as they credit the authors, but which prevents third parties from changing articles in any way or from using them commercially.

All articles from vo.7, no.2 (2023) are published CC-BY. Third parties are free to:

  1. Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
  2. Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
  3. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.

Attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

No additional restrictions – You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

The journal is a member of DOAJ and currently in the process of applying for membership of COPE.

All articles in Media Theory are published with DOI numbers and are currently archived individually in HAL (the national archive in France) and Scholars Portal (a Trustworthy Digital Repository in Canada). All journal content will also soon be dark archived through LOCKSS to ensure the long-term digital preservation of content.

Data sharing and reproducibility

We encourage authors to make all data that is generated by their research, and that is drawn upon in their article, available at the earliest opportunity, wherever legally and ethically possible. This is not, however, obligatory.

Ethical oversight

Editorial appraisal of ethical issues covers the handling confidential data and whether participants in a study gave informed consent, as well as whether the overall design and conduct of each piece of work is morally justifiable. Editors may in some circumstances ask authors for more detailed information or ask other editorial colleagues to evaluate the ethical aspects of an article.

Conflicts of interest

In the interests of transparency, these should be raised immediately with the editor when submitting the article, and be declared in the published article. Conflicts of interest do not necessarily mean that the article cannot be published.

Complaints and appeals

Complaints should be directly emailed to the editor-in-chief (or one of the other main editors) and will be dealt with confidentially.

Complaints are coordinated by the editors of the journal, with the opportunity for escalation (to the whole of the editorial board, and if necessary the whole of the advisory board) if they cannot be resolved.

  • All complaints will be reviewed initially by the editor-in-chief and the other editors.
  • In the case that this initial response is felt to be insufficient, the complaint can be escalated to the wider editorial and advisory boards. The response of the boards, communicated by the editor-in-chief, will be final.
  • If a complainant remains dissatisfied after what the editor-in-chief considers a definitive reply, the complainant can complain to Committee on Publication Ethics. COPE publishes a code of practice for editors of scientific, technical, and medical journals. It will facilitate the resolution of disputes with member editors, journals and publishers but only once a journal’s own complaints procedures have been exhausted. (Although the journal is not yet a member of COPE, we would still follow their advice and guidelines.)

Complaint timeframes

  • All complaints will be formally acknowledged within three working days.
  • If possible, a full response will be made within two weeks. If this is not possible, an interim response will be given within two weeks. Further interim responses will be provided until the complaint is resolved.
  • Where we consider a complaint to be vexatious or the result of a coordinated campaign, we reserve the right to reply outside of the suggested time frames, and on some occasions we may not respond to all complainants individually.
  • Insults, threats and harassment, whether directly or indirectly on social media, for example, will not be tolerated.

Appeals

If you believe that your article has been rejected unfairly, please submit an appeal to the editor. Appeals must be submitted within 30 days of the rejection decision.

Appeals should address specific points of the reviewers’ and/or editors’ comments, and decisions will only be reversed if the editors are convinced that the decision was a serious mistake, or if the reviewers made errors of fact or showed evidence of bias. Appeals against editorial fit or the journal not being the right journal for the article are unlikely to be considered. If it is thought that the appeal is warranted, the article, reviewers’ comments, and author’s response will be reviewed internally by the main editorial team. The editors will decide whether to invite a resubmission, send it to another external reviewer, or uphold the original decision. In all cases, the editor’s decision is final.

Allegations of research misconduct

Allegations of misconduct will be dealt with on a case-by-case basis while following guidance produced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) – see also the above section on Complaints and appeals.

Misconduct includes but is not limited to:

  • Plagiarism
  • Falsification or fabrication of data
  • Redundant or duplicate publication
  • Simultaneous submission
  • Improprieties of authorship
  • Misappropriation of the ideas of others
  • A lack of declaration of conflicts of interest

Readers that suspect misconduct in a published article are encouraged to report this to the editor-in-chief.

Corrections and retractions

Corrections are made at the journal’s discretion. We have a duty to maintain the integrity of the scientific record, so minor corrections that do not affect the scientific understanding or argument of the paper (for example formatting or typographical errors or preference of wording) are unlikely to be accepted if submitted post-publication in order to prevent discrepancies in future citations of the article.

If the article has already been published and the correction is of a more substantial nature, a correction notice can be added to the issue. The online version of the article will link to the correction notice, and vice versa.

Retractions are considered only in cases of evidence of plagiarism, unreliable data or findings, duplicate publication, unethical research or other types of academic misconduct. Retraction notices explain why the article was retracted.

Post-publication discussions

Public comments are encouraged on our blog. All comments are moderated prior to posting.

Private correspondence can also be sent to the editor-in-chief.

The journal does not currently permit post-publication peer-review, although as a journal interested in radical open access publishing developments, this is something we may experiment with in the future.

Advertising (none)

The journal does not accept advertising of any kind.

Publication Charges (none)

Media Theory charges no fees to either authors or readers. The journal is, however, self-funded and dependent upon the voluntary work of the editorial board and external peer-reviewers. We therefore request that authors of accepted articles be considerate and provide clean, corrected and final versions of their articles in the journal’s house style; articles will be copyedited and proofed before publication, but all efforts to minimise our workload would be greatly appreciated.

Publishing schedule

Media Theory is published twice a year, with one issue in the summer and one in the winter. Normally, one of these issues is a guest-edited special issue on a particular theme, while the other is a collection of unrelated and unsolicited articles, and may also include special sections of solicited essays on a particular topic.