IJTARP Code of Publication Practice and Ethics

Overview

The International Journal of Transactional Analysis Research & Practice is an open access journal (https://ictaq.org), currently publishing issues in June and December.  It is hosted by Scholarly Exchange (Pittsburgh University) and the archives are maintained on LOCKSS (Stanford University). IJTARP is a Gold Member of the Directory of Open Access Journals (https://doaj.org).

The purpose of the journal is to publish high-quality material about TA theory, research and practice. The Editorial Board contains reviewers from a wide range of countries with a variety of qualifications, including many who have international accreditation recognised by major TA associations. The Editor has complete editorial independence (subject to reviews).

The journal has an extensive set of ethical guidelines to ensure that editors, reviewers, translators and authors are taking all reasonable steps to ensure that articles are in line with current publication, research and professional practice guidelines, that there are no conflicts of interest, and that appropriate updating occurs when necessary. There are also procedural documents to provide guidance to authors and reviewers.

The journal is published in English and the Abstracts are translated into a number of other languages (at https://taresearch.org).

No fees are payable by authors or readers, and all work done by reviewers, editors and translators is voluntary. Hosting and similar fees are paid to 3^rd parties from donations.

Focus and Scope

IJTARP publishes high-quality papers TA theory, practice and research, as well as material which compares TA with other approaches or models where these have significant implications for TA theory or practice. We therefore welcome theoretical reviews, practitioner reports, exploration of specific TA concepts, quantitative and qualitative research methods, outcome-oriented and process-oriented research – if it is relevant to TA, then it may appear in IJTARP. We do, however, expect material to be written to adequate academic standards, and for the practice or research being described to have been conducted ethically and competently.

Open Access

IJTARP is a genuinely open access journal. There are no charges to authors. 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 articles, or use them for any other purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/), appears on our SHERPA/Romeo listing (https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/29788), and is in line with Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution Licence  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

We encourage readers to sign up for the publishing notification service for this journal at https://ijtarp.org/user/register and this will ensure they receive the Table of Contents for each new issue, and any other announcements, by email.

We encourage Librarians to host IJTARP amongst their electronic journal listings, which they can do without fee in order to make the journal readily accessible to the users.

Licensing & Copyright

The work in this journal is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Editorial Board

The members of the Editorial Board are appointed by the Editor and share in the establishment of policies for the journal. Now that the journal has been established for several years, their main role is to serve as Reviewers. They are, however, expected to take action if at any time they suspect that the Editor or other members of the Editorial Board are behaving in ways that might be incompetent or unethical. In such a case, they are expected to challenge the individual about whom they have concerns, and only if that does not lead to a satisfactory conclusion, are they expected then to involve two or more other members of the Editorial Board. Should there is still not be a resolution of the issue, then ICTAQ Codes of Ethics and Professional Practice (https://ictaq.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/ictaq_codes_of_ethics_and_prof_practices.pdf) will be applied.

Members of the Editorial Board are also expected to serve if required as members of an Ethics Committee in line with the IJTARP Procedures for Handling Ethics Charges against Authors (https://ijtarp.org//handling-ethics-charges).

The Editor

The Editor has complete editorial authority, in the sense that there is no institution or association attempting to influence any decisions about what gets published. However, the Editor exercises that authority with the agreement of the Editorial Board.

The Editor maintains contact with authors, reviewers and translators, ensures that the content published makes an ethical and practical contribution to the development of TA theory, practice and research, oversees the overall processes of publication, and initiates and maintains contacts with relevant associations, institutions, databases, resource services and licensing authorities.

The Editor manages the Administrative Editor, who is paid to maintain the websites for the journal and abstract translations, to format and publish the issues, and to liaise about online activities with various bodies such as website hosts, databases, resource services and licensing authorities.

Author Responsibilities

For the avoidance of doubt, note that no fees are required to be paid by authors or by their institutions. They may if they wish make a donation, before or after publication, but this is not required and will not be associated in any way to the review and publication processes of their material.

Authors who submit material to this journal are confirming that they have followed and will continue to follow these Codes of Publication Practice and Ethics, the IJTARP Codes of Research Practice and Ethics, and any other codes instituted by other bodies which may apply within the context of their professional work which is the subject of their submission to IJTARP. They agree that they can be challenged if at any time it appears that they are in breach of any IJTARP Codes, and that they will take part in any subsequent procedures.

Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:

-  Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

-  Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

-  For the avoidance of doubt, authors may freely circulate their articles after publication provided that the original publication details still appear. They may write other articles about the same material for other publications as long as there is a significant difference; they are expected to confirm this with the Editors of other journals by ensuring that those Editors are aware of the contents of the IJTARP publication.

Authors are expected to confirm that:

-  no conflict-of-interest exists in relation to the material presented; this will include declaring if any fees have been received;

-  no plagiarism has occurred and any material drawn from the work of other authors has been correctly referenced;

-  they understand that their submission will be subject to an initial editorial review and then to review by at least two reviewers, and that they will then respond with amendments if required, or will accept a rejection of their material;

-  they will not use the feedback from IJTARP reviewers to submit an amended article to a different journal without the prior agreement of IJTARP;

-  they will promptly contact IJTARP Editor at any time in the future if/when they realise that any retractions, corrections, apologies or similar amendments need to be published, and they will respond constructively and without delay should the IJTARP Editor contact them with any such challenges from other parties;

-  that all named authors of this the material have contributed significantly to what is being submitted, and conversely that all those who have contributed significantly to what has been written have been included as authors;

-  that the submission of the material for review will not include any identification of the author(s) and there will be no mention publicly of the submission until after the review process has been completed (this is avoid the 'TA community' inadvertently alerting any reviewers of author identities).

Authors are expected to follow the IJTARP Author Guidelines (https://ijtarp.org/about/submissions#authorGuidelines) and to provide the necessary information in line with the requirements on the IJTARP website.

Appendix 1 shows the Submission Preparation Checklist to which authors must give online agreement when submitting an article.

Reviewer Responsibilities

For the avoidance of doubt, the role of an IJTARP Reviewer is a voluntary position; no fees are paid. Reviewers may publicise their role and that they are making a significant contribution to the TA community.

Peer review is an essential component of producing material for the journal, with reviewers providing valuable feedback to authors and to the Editor. Reviewers are expected to consider manuscripts objectively, provide observations in ways that authors can use them to make improvements, and maintain confidentiality even after the material has been published.

Reviewers are expected to confirm that:

1.  They can complete the review within a realistic timeframe, which will normally be no more than four working weeks, or to negotiate an extension such as may be needed at times of the year when holidays occur in their own country;

2.  No conflict of interest applies to the material they are being asked to review – if there is, they are not required to give any details and can simply refuse the request to provide a review;

3.  They have sufficient professional knowledge of the material they are being asked to review or are confident that they can access relevant existing material.

4.  Reviewers are expected to follow the IJTARP Reviewer guidelines (https://ijtarp.org//reviewer-guidelines) and to provide the necessary information in the format requested (the Review Form). Depending on whether the material is about theory, practice or research, they are expected to provide an overall evaluation of the article and specific feedback about the thoroughness of the literature review, their opinions on the purpose of the publication (e.g. research study objectives, development of theories or practices), and whether results, discussions and/or conclusions are presented appropriately and without bias. They are also asked to pay particular attention to any ethical considerations, and whether enough information about methodology is provided so that any research could be replicated.

Reviewers conclude with recommending whether the material should be accepted without revision, with minor revisions, with significant revisions, or rejected. There will always be at least two Reviewers, and the Editor may involve another if there are conflicting opinions.

Appendix 2 shows the IJTARP Review Form.

Translators

Volunteer translators make a significant contribution by maintaining sets of Abstracts in several languages (at https://taresearch.org). They also assist when authors submit material written in languages other than English. 

Translators are expected to confirm that:

• they are translating material as accurately and objectively as possible into another language;
• they are actively reflecting whilst they are translating to ensure that they are not making assumptions based on the ways in which other authors have described TA concepts, especially within their native languages.

Administration Notes

Corrections – because this is an online journal with permanent free access, should any corrections, retractions, etc be necessary in the future, they will be announced within the next issue and will also be clearly indicated within the original publication.

References – IJTARP follows APA guidelines.

Online Processing – we reserve the right to use only some aspects of the online procedures provided by the journal website hosts – we are happy to communicate directly by email and/or to meet online with authors, reviewers and translators when that is preferable to using automated processes.

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

You can find our LOCKSS PKP PLN archive details at https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/2218-3159

Plagiarism Policy

We use an online text matching software tool called TurnItIn to verify the uniqueness and originality of articles submitted for publication, during the submission and review process.  Authors will be advised if this software raises any plagiarism concerns and given an opportunity to respond accordingly, before any submissions are rejected.

Privacy Statement

We are an international open-access journal and we maintain information about authors, reviewers, translators and subscribers. We do not provide this information to any other organisations. We may analyse this information in terms of demographic data but this will not identify individuals without their consent (e.g. If we had only one subscriber in a locality and wished to enable others to contact them).  Our website uses cookies to collect the usual types of visitor information for analysis and individuals can set their browsers not to accept these, although some websites will then not function completely.

Our Editor, Julie Hay, is our data controller and data control officer and pays personal attention to how we maintain information about those who contact us.

The data processor for details entered into the IJTARP website are Scholarly Exchange, operating under the auspices of the University of Pittsburgh.  Individuals enter their own details here.

We propagate article and author information to reputable databases and directories in order to increase potential readership. 

We also maintain information about authors and reviewers within a reputable CRM system, for which Julie Hay is the data processor. This includes where known: name, email address(es), address details, telephone and/or other contact details, status in terms of journal activities, and sometimes notes of conversations that remind us of our discussions with an individual about IJTARP activities.

Our lawful basis for maintaining these records is as defined in the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (2018): “Contract: the processing is necessary for a contract you have with the individual, or because they have asked you to take specific steps before entering into a contract.” (p.13).

We have an implied contract with subscribers to provide a regular journal for them to read free of charge. We have written contracts with reviewers, translators and authors.

Our intended purposes for maintaining records include:

-  ongoing operation of the submission, translation, peer review, formatting and publication procedures of the journal;

-  alerting subscribers to the publication of new issues and to occasional;

-  other purposes as may arise in order to carry out the usual functions of the organisation.

Those who provide information about themselves can log in and amend/update their data within the journal online database at any time.

Authors and reviewers are asked to contact the Editor to request amendments, updates or deletion within the CRM system.

Reference: Information Commissioner’s Office (2018) Guide to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/ 

Appendix 1: 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.

1.  The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration, nor will it be offered elsewhere for publication during the review process.

2.  If the submission is accepted or rejected for publication, it will not be offered elsewhere for publication without the written permission of IJTARP Editor.

3.  The submission file is in Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.

4.  In the References, DOI's have been provided where they exist, together with URLs for online references.

5.  The text is single-spaced; uses 10-12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are either placed within the text at the appropriate points or at the end with placemarkers included within the text to indicate preferred positions.  Original data used to prepare graphs, pictures, etc is provided at the end or in a supplementary file so that these can be produced to IJTARP format if necessary.

6.  The instructions for Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

7.  With the exception of verbatim quotes, gender inclusive language has been used, including they, their, etc as an option for singular to avoid clumsy use of her/his etc.

8.  Appropriate permission has been obtained from clients, subjects, participants, etc and identities have been protected.

9.  I confirm that the material submitted has been written by the author(s) and understand that IJTARP will use plagiarism software to verify the uniqueness and originality of articles submitted for publication.

10.  Copyright conventions have been observed in line with the latest international legislation.  I agree to indemnify IJTARP against legal action resulting from publication of material I have provided, and have appropriate arrangements such as professional indemnity insurance or organisational support for this purpose.

11.  I have read the IJTARP Code of Publication Practice and Ethics, the IJTARP Code of Research Practice and Ethics, and the IJTARP Author Guidelines and confirm that my material is produced in accordance with these.

Optional: Notes to IJTARP Editor about my submission

Appendix 2: IJTARP Review Form

 

IJTARP Review Form                             

IJTARP Paper Reference Number:

Please use these Guidelines as a form and enter your comments in each box. Please include positive feedback as well as critique.

Reviewer Name:                                                 Review Date:

 

Abstract (or Reviewer Summary)
Please check if the Abstract provides an adequate description of the paper and, if not, please provide a one paragraph description (2-3 sentences) of your understanding of the paper, what it sets out to do, and what conclusions can be drawn.
Key words - do these reflect the content?  Do you suggest any additions?
Overall evaluation of the article
Is this article original and interesting?
What is the novelty of this research and how does it contribute to the existing literature?
Does the article fit the objectives and orientation of the journal?
Does the article fit IJTARP quality standards?
Is the language used clear? (note: IJTARP Admin will edit for grammatical English)
Does the article have a clear structure?
Literature review
Is the literature review relevant?
Does it leave out any significant body of research?
Is it up to date?
Are the concepts well defined and presented?
Is there a good presentation of existing debates in the literature, points of controversy and consensus, as well as a good analysis of what is missing?
Note: IJTAR accepts papers that stop at this point provided they will make a contribution to future researchers, practitioners or readers.
Study Objectives/Hypotheses
Is there a clear statement of hypotheses/objectives or a clear rationale for submission of a practice paper?
Has the author considered possible outcomes from different perspectives?
Is it clear how the objectives/hypotheses have arisen within the context described in the literature review?
Did the author consider potential negative as well as positive outcomes?
Funding Sources
If any funding sources have been mentioned, is there sufficient evidence of careful boundary management and avoidance of bias
Ethical Considerations
How comprehensively has the author considered ethical implications, e.g. clash of priorities between needs of client and needs of researcher or practitioner, clash of protocol with individual needs of client, ethics of publishing?
How competently have they ‘taken care’ that participants and any other stakeholders are giving informed consent?
How have they handled giving clients/research subjects the right to withdraw from the process at any point?
Methodology
Are methodological choices well described? Is it clear how these choices fit the research and/or practice philosophy, and take into account the needs of clients?
Is there a clear connection between the literature presented, the objectives or research question and the methodology of research or practice chosen?
Is there enough information given about the subjects/participants/clients? Does this include characteristics that might impact on the results of the research or practice?
Is the data/information gathering phase well-described and consistent with objectives/hypotheses/practice?
Results
Are the results well analyzed and supported by the data?
Are appropriate methods of analysis used for the type of data presented?
Is any graphic presentation helpful and easy?  Should there be more graphic presentation?
Are the results presented neutrally, with interpretations avoided until the Discussion section?
Do any calculations take into account sample sizes?
Discussion
Do the results provide strong evidence for the discussions/conclusions?
Does the author clearly label their own opinions, speculations and suggestions?
Is there a section on Limitations e.g. author bias, small sample size, aspects that with hindsight might have been dealt with differently, unexpected findings that might need more investigation?
Conclusions - or these may be included under the Discussion section
Does the article present a coherent relationship between theory, methodology and results?
Does the paper add to the body of knowledge, in terms of theory and/or practice?
Are possible implications and applications of the research or practice well-presented?
References
Are these sufficient, appropriate and up-to-date?
Note: IJTARP Admin will ensure that the correct formatting is used for References – reviewers need check content only
Final recommendation
Do you recommend that this article be:
Accepted without revision
Accepted with minor revisions – please indicate what these are
Accepted with significant revisions - please indicate what these are, if not already noted above
Rejected in its current form (with recommendation for submission to a different journal, if appropriate)