Judgment and decision making

Submission, Review, & Decision

Requirements for Submission

Submissions to OA Text must meet the following requirements to be considered for publication:

  • The submission represents work that has not been published or submitted for publication elsewhere.
  • The research carried out needs to be original and the data needs to be useful to other researchers. (we agree that it is not in our power to predict which submissions will be useful, hence we will be accepting all kinds of submissions inititally, with the hopes of learning and ignoring those submissions that are not useful) An inherent principle of publication is that others should be able to replicate and build upon the authors' published claims. The article should present the results of scientific research and the results should be repeatable.
  • Futile hypothesis and failed experiments need to have a sound reasoning behind their results.
  • The assurance that the experiments, statistics, and other analysis are performed to a high technical standard, are repeatable and should be described in full detail.
  • Conclusions and discussions (if any) are presented in clearly explained avoiding ambiguity and are supported by the data.
  • Importance of research in the respective field.
  • Feature Prospective, Broad area of research, Rigorous methodology, Adequate evidence for its conclusions.
  • The previous literature has been treated fairly and adequately.
  • The research meets all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity.
  • The authors have complied with applicable reporting standards and guidelines for data publication.
  • Avoid presenting your results with raw or unprocessed data.
  • The submission is written clearly and unambiguously in Standard English.

Submission Components

Manuscripts should be submitted by one of the author, who is listed in the manuscript while submitting the manuscript files through EMS, make sure your files are in Word or PDF (.pdf, .doc, .docx, .rtf) format.

Alternatively you can send it to our E-mail address:submission@oatext.com

Submitted manuscripts should typically include the following elements:

  • Cover letter (required)
  • Manuscript (required)
  • Figures
  • Tables
  • Supplemental Material

Authors are encouraged to provide the names and contact information for 3–5 external reviewers, though Associate Editors are not obligated to use these suggestions. Authors may also indicate researchers whom they feel should not review the submission.

For more information, please see our guidelines on Manuscript Preparation.

The Review Process

Each of OA Text journals are led by an Editor-in-Chief and supported by an international Board of Associate Editors, comprised of respected researchers in relevant fields. We are committed to providing Elementa authors with a fair and timely review process, constructive feedback, and a supportive environment. We publish articles that are methodologically sound, that are worthy of inclusion in the scholarly record, and that further research and discourse in the relevant field of study.

Our goal is to make initial decisions on submissions within 21 calendar days. After acceptance, the manuscript and supporting files will be immediately processed for publication, a process taking approximately 10 business days, if all supporting files are in order.

Our review process follows these steps:

  • All manuscripts submitted to OA Text Journals are received by the Editorial Assistant who examines all files including cover letter, text files, images and figures. If the files meet the technical and formatting of OA Text, as given in the Instructions for Authors, authors are sent an acknowledgement of the manuscript along with a Manuscript ID number.
  • After assigning the Manuscript ID number, the manuscript is sent for editorial review and external peer review. Authors are requested to quote the manuscript ID number in all correspondences with OA Text journals. If the manuscript files do not meet the technical requirements of the journal, authors are sent detailed instructions about the changes required in the manuscript and asked to resubmit the files to the Editorial Office, using "Submit Revision" page.
  • After the files pass the technical and formatting requirements, the manuscript is assigned to a Section Editor or a member of the Editorial Board.
  • The Editor reviews the manuscript and returns the manuscripts along with the comments to the Editorial Assistant or Editorial Secretary. The editorial process gives the editors the authority to reject any manuscript, if it doesn’t not meet the scientific publishing standards or is out of scope of the journal.
  • Based on the comments of the Editor the manuscript is sent for the external peer review. The manuscript is usually sent to two to four expert peer reviewers. The peer reviewer's identities are kept confidential to ensure a fair and unbiased review of every manuscript.
  • The pertinent Editor-in-Chief will review submissions to identify those that are appropriate for full review, and assign an Associate Editor to manage the review process.
  • The Associate Editor will select reviewers, manage the review process, and will make one of the following publication recommendations to the Editor-in-Chief:
    • Accept without revision;
    • Invite author(s) to revise the submission to address specific but relatively minor concerns;
    • Invite author(s) to revise the submission to address moderate to major concerns;
    • Reject, but indicate to the author(s) that further work might justify a resubmission; or
    • Reject outright.
  • If a revision is recommended, the Editorial Assistant will include, with her or his review, a short paragraph summarizing the most important issues raised by the reviewers for the author(s) to address and ask the author(s) to include a Response to Reviewers with their revision. In some cases the Editorial Assistant may seek further review from the original or other reviewers.
  • The Editor-in-Chief will make the ultimate decision regarding publication, and communicate directly with the corresponding author on the results of the review process.
  • After acceptance, a Production Editor will perform a technical audit of the final manuscript and supporting files, to ensure that the submission will move through the production process smoothly.
  • After the acceptance of the manuscript, it may be edited for grammar, punctuation, style and accuracy. An edited, pre-print, proof of the manuscript with all figures, table and charts included, is sent to the corresponding author for approval. The proof will be sent as a PDF file. The authors will also be sent a proof corrections form, which the authors can use to submit any changes required in the manuscript. Please note that at this stage only the type-setting like incorrect punctuation will be corrected. It will not be possible to make any significant changes to the text or add or delete figures. The proof need to be returned to the Editorial Office within three days (72 hours).
  • After the correction proofs are received by the Editorial Office, the final version of the manuscript is prepared for publication. During preparation for publication, HTML, PDF, XML and other formats of the manuscript are prepared. After receiving page proofs, the average time to publication is approximately four weeks. All manuscripts are published in HTML and PDF formats.