Types of papers

Forum geografic publishes original scientific papers of around 6,000-8,000 words (this word count does not include abstract, tables and references). We recommend following the classical structure of a research paper, namely Introduction, Methodology, Results, Discussions and Conclusion. More details are provided below.

Research ethics

For studies based on surveys, questionnaires, social media research (non-interventional studies), all participants must be fully informed if the anonymity is assured, why the research is being conducted, how their data will be used and if there are any risks associated. For the research focusing on vulnerable groups, it must provide adequate safeguards to protect the rights and welfare of subjects who are likely to be vulnerable.
Forum geografic does not charge any fees for the process of reviewing, publishing or posting online articles.

Publication ethics statement

The editors of Forum geografic enforce a rigorous peer-review process and strict ethical policies and standards in order to publish high quality scientific works. When cases of plagiarism, inappropriate authorship credit and the like do arise, the editors of Forum geografic have a zero-tolerance policy for these issues. Authors wishing to publish their papers in Forum geografic must comply with the following:

• Any suspicion of a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission.
• Authors should accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of their findings. Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the paper, so that other researchers can replicate the work.
• The submitted paper is original, unpublished and not simultaneously submitted to another journal. The manuscript does not contain any information that has already been published. If it includes already published figures or images, please obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CC-BY license and cite the reference accordingly.
• Plagiarism (copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from author’s own publications, without giving any credit to the original source) is not accepted. If plagiarism is detected during the review process, the manuscript will be rejected, with no possibility for later resubmission.
• Authors are fully responsible for the correctness of information and cited data in their paper and absolve Forum geografic of any issues related to the paper.

Forum geografic editors will investigate any allegations of publication misconduct and will contact the authors’ institutions or funders if necessary. If evidence of misconduct is found, appropriate action will be taken to correct or retract the publication. Authors are expected to comply with the best ethical publication practices when publishing in Forum geografic.

Citation policy

Authors should only cite references that were read in order to inform for the current research.

Declaration of authorship and publishing agreement

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete and sign a declaration of authorship and publishing agreement (see below), by which the authors provide the publisher with the license to publish their paper in both the electronic and printed versions of Forum geografic, to distribute and disseminate it via third parties, i.e. the cooperating publishing companies and bibliographic databases. Publication of papers in Forum geografic is free of charge and without honorarium for authors.

Article format

All manuscripts must be edited entirely in English. The submission should only have a basic semantic format. Download the article template and fill the contents as specified. Please observe the following rules:

1. do not apply any formatting to the text content. Emphasis should be used sparingly and only by applying the Emphasis style, not by formatting text as Italic;
2. use only the default styles for Title, Heading 1, Heading 2, and Normal text;
3. heading styles below the depth of Heading 2 (i.e. Heading 3, Heading 4…) are not allowed;
4. provide the mandatory information regarding authors, abstract, acknowledgements, author contribution, and references;
5. follow the APA 6 reference style, as specified.

The editorial board may reject any submissions that do not follow the above rules. For any further information, please contact us. The expected reference style and citation format is APA 6th edition (for more details, consult the documentation available at www.apastyle.org). We strongly advise the authors to use a software reference management solution – e.g. Microsoft Word 2007 or later citations and bibliography functions, Zotero – a free product able to collect, organize, import in Microsoft Office Word, cite, and share the bibliographic information, Mendeley – a free reference manager and academic social network.

Article submission

In order to disseminate the research results in the field, researchers, scholars and professionals are welcome to submit an electronic version of the manuscript (in Microsoft Office Word format) and also to one of the executive editors at oana.ionus@edu.ucv.ro (Geosciences) or liliana.popescu@edu.ucv.ro (Human Geography and Social Sciences).
Manuscripts are received at all times. However, in order to have your article published in one of the current year’s issues, the manuscripts must be submitted until the 15th of February (for the first issue) or the 15th of September (for the second issue).

Submission checklist: To submit an article for publication to Forum geografic, please send the manuscript using the existing template, together with a cover letter to the editor and an authors’ declaration, signed by all the authors.

Submission requirements: To submit an article for publication in our journal it is required that the article has not been published before, nor it is being considered for publication in other journals. Authors are responsible for the content and the originality of their contributions. In order to be published, articles must be thoroughly researched and referenced.

Copyright statement: By submitting a scientific work to Forum geografic the submitters agree to declare the following:

1. the submitted work belongs exclusively to the declared authors;
2. the submitted work represents original scientific research;
3. the submitted work has not been published or submitted for publishing to another journal;
4. if the submitted work is published or selected for publishing in Forum geografic, the authors waive any patrimonial claims derived from their authorship for the submitted work; the authors retain the moral rights for their submitted work, as granted under the applicable Romanian law; also, the authors agree to refrain from ulterior submitting of the work to other journals.

The submitters agree to be solely held accountable in case of breaching the above terms and to defend the representatives of Forum geografic in the event of a lawsuit related to the submitted work.

When submitting a paper the authors are required to print, fill and send a scanned copy of
this declaration.

Copyright and licensing

In addition to the above conditions and unless otherwise specified, the works published in Forum geografic are licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

Funding

All sources of funding of the study should be disclosed. Clearly indicate grants that the authors have received in support of their research work.

Author contribution

For research articles with several authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided. Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the work.

Conflicts of interest

Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interest that may be perceived as influencing the representation or interpretation of reported research results.

Editors and editorial staff as authors: Editorial staff or editors must not be involved in processing their own academic work. Submissions authored by the editorial staff is assigned to at least two independent outside reviewers. Decisions will be made by other Editorial Board Members who do not have a conflict of interest with the author.

Review process

Editorial independence is of utmost importance and all articles submitted for publication to Forum geografic are published only after positive double-blind review. The editorial board assesses the suitability of the paper based only upon:

• the suitability of selected reviewers;
• adequacy of reviewer comments and author response;
• overall scientific quality of the paper.

Initial review

Selected Editor(s) from the Editorial Board (based on the topic of the paper) will check if the paper is appropriate for publication in Forum geografic, mainly if:

• it is in line with the Aims and scope of the journal,
• it is an original contribution,
• checks for methodological rigour,
• there is a proper use of the English language.

At this stage, manuscripts are either rejected (if they are either outside the aim and scope of the journal, insufficiently original, have scientific flaws or are expressed in poor grammar) or sent for further review (double blind review). This initial stage usually takes between 2 to 4 weeks.

Double-blind review

Manuscripts that pass the initial review undergo a rigorous peer-review process by at least two anonymous referees. Reviewers should not have published with any of the co-authors during the past three years and should not currently work or collaborate with any of the co-authors of the submitted manuscript. Reviewers are selected based on the type of expertise and specific aspects needed for the paper. Multidisciplinary studies are assigned to reviewers from different disciplines. Authors of accepted papers in Forum geografic may be requested to review in their area of expertise. This stage usually takes between 12 to 15 weeks. Based on the feed-back of the reviewers, the editor(s) will decide on:

• Accept (either in the current form or after Minor Revisions): The paper is in principle accepted after revision based on the reviewer’s comments. Authors are given 2 weeks for minor revisions.
• Review again after Major Revisions: the paper requires substantial changes in order to be considered for publication. This resolution provides no guarantee that the revised version will be accepted for publication. Revised manuscripts are sent back to initial reviewers and additional reviewers may be invited to review it. The revised version of the paper must clearly respond to all the reviewers’ and editor’s comments and recommendations. Authors are required to send the revised version within three months. The acceptance of the manuscript would depend on the revisions. Only one round of major revision iteration is allowed.
• Reject: In case a major re-write is required (the paper is in line with the aims and scope of the journal, is scientifically sound, but it lacks important information/ structure), the paper is not accepted for publication.

Proofreading

To facilitate proper peer-reviewing of your manuscript, it is essential that it is submitted in grammatically correct English. Forum geografic provides minor English editing for all accepted papers, free of charge. However, if the paper needs extensive English editing, it may face rejection at an early stage.

Article processing costs

Forum geografic does not charge any fees for the process of reviewing, publishing or posting online articles.

Privacy statement

The submitted personal data, such as names or email addresses, are used only for the declared purpose of the journal (publishing original scientific research).