Submissions

Login or Register to make a submission.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, or RTF document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.

Author Guidelines

The manuscript sent for publication (on e-mail, at sferapublica@e-uvt.ro) will be written in the Microsoft Word program, using the 12-point Times New Roman font, with a 1,5 line spacing and without leaving spaces between paragraphs. The articles synthesizing the Bachelor or Master`s dissertations must be between 10.000 and 12.000 words in length. Interviews, book reviews, reports and statements will be prepared taking a total of 1.000 to 3.000 words into account. Papers have to be written in Romanian, English or German.

The first page of the research article necessarily contains its title, the contact data of the author (name, academic affiliation and e-mail address), an abstract of 200-250 words and up to seven keywords, meant to facilitate the access to the paper after publication. Please find a sample of the text structure in the attachment. Students are invited to use this model when writing their research articles. The reference guide can be found here. The other types of papers (interviews, book reviews, reports and statements) can be composed under a free format, considering the word limits presented above. For any additional information or clarifications, please contact the editorial team at sferapublica@e-uvt.ro.

Articles

Section default policy

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

The Editorial Board of the journal is committed to the standards required for an ethical publication process at all stages, with the following being expected from editors, peer-reviewers, and authors:

Authors

*The authors will attest that the manuscript is not submitted, undergoing review, or published elsewhere.

*Manuscripts must meet the formal requirements found in the Submission Guidelines below.

Reviewers

*The reviewer will inform the Editors in the case of any conflict of interests or if the evaluation of the manuscript is not possible for any other reason.

*The reviewer will follow the standardized form provided by the Editors.

Editors

*Every manuscript submitted to the journal will be subjected to an evaluation by the Editors, followed by a double-blind evaluation undertaken by two anonymous referees.

*The Editors will not accept any unethical behaviour and all acts suspected of malpractice will be investigated.

*The Editors will correct any proven inaccuracy or misleading statement that has been published in the journal.

*Any articles which are proven to be plagiarised will be retracted.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

The manuscript sent for publication (on e-mail, at sferapublica@e-uvt.ro) will be written in the Microsoft Word program, using the 12-point Times New Roman font, with a 1,5 line spacing and without leaving spaces between paragraphs. The articles synthesizing the Bachelor or Master`s dissertations must be between 10.000 and 12.000 words in length. Interviews, book reviews, reports and statements will be prepared taking a total of 1.000 to 3.000 words into account. Papers have to be written in Romanian, English or German.

The first page of the research article necessarily contains its title, the contact data of the author (name, academic affiliation and e-mail address), an abstract of 200-250 words and up to seven keywords, meant to facilitate the access to the paper after publication. Please find a sample of the text structure in the attachment. Students are invited to use this model when writing their research articles. The reference guide can be found here. The other types of papers (interviews, book reviews, reports and statements) can be composed under a free format, considering the word limits presented above. For any additional information or clarifications, please contact the editorial team at sferapublica@e-uvt.ro.

INITIAL SCREENING AND PEER-REVIEW PROCESS

Public Sphere conducts a transparent and rigorous peer-review process. Manuscripts are initially evaluated by the editors, for an assessment with respect to meeting the general criteria and profile of the journal. If the article is not in line with the following requirements, it may be desk-rejected and the authors advised to submit it to a more suitable publication:

■ Does the manuscript follow a proper structural scheme (Introduction, Main body explaining the theory, methods and findings, Discussions/Conclusion) needed for a comprehensive research work?

■ Does the manuscript bring a contribution to knowledge in Political Sciences?

■ Is the theoretical perspective anchored in the current state of the literature and does the manuscript provide alternative arguments?

■ Are the research methods, used by the authors, explained?

■ Are there any limitations, identified in regard to the provided information and/or the methodology, exposed in the manuscript?

■ Are the conclusions sufficiently clear?

If the submission passes this first stage of evaluation, it will be handled by an editor who organizes the peer-review process. Papers are anonymized before sending them to two independent external reviewers, coming from different academic institutions from those belonging to the authors. They will be contacted and asked to evaluate the paper based on the quality with respect to its structure, content and methodology.

The decision on whether the manuscript will be peer-reviewed will be communicated to the authors within two weeks from submission. Please allow an additional time of eight to ten weeks (depending on the reviewers` availability) for the decision concerning the publication: acceptance / acceptance conditioned by minor or major revisions / invitation to submit the article elsewhere / rejection.

For any additional information or clarifications, please contact the editorial team of Public Sphere, at sferapublica@e-uvt.ro.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.