Journal ofPhilosophical Thought

Instructions for Authors

Publication process

• All author(s) must complete and sign the Authors’ Commitment Form; articles without this form will not be reviewed or published (download the Authors’ Commitment Form). All steps of submission, reviewing and publication are free of charge.
• Submitted articles are evaluated for quality, compliance with the aims and scope of the journal, and the submission guidelines (within one week at most). Articles that fall outside the journal’s scope or fail to meet the minimum requirements are rejected at this stage. Articles that do not meet the submission guidelines can be revised by the author(s) up to three times. If, after three revisions, the article still fails these requirements, it will be rejected; if the author(s) still intend to publish it in the journal, they must re-submit it as a new article. After approval at this stage, the article is sent to the Editor-in-Chief for the selection of expert reviewers. The submission date of an article is the date it is sent out for the selection of reviewers. If the author(s) do not comply with the submission guidelines and the article remains at the initial stage for some time before it is sent out for the selection of reviewers, this gives the author(s) no right to have the article accepted.
• Once the reviewers have been appointed by the Editor-in-Chief and the comments of at least two reviewers have been received, the article is sent back to the Editor-in-Chief for a final assessment. Normally the final assessment is reached within three months at most. If the journal’s response during the reviewing phase (from the date the article is sent out for the selection of reviewers to the date the reviewers’ comments are passed to the author(s)) exceeds three months, the author(s) may submit the article to another journal, provided that they state their definite withdrawal. The Editor-in-Chief can accept or reject the article at any stage of the reviewing process, and the number of reviews or revisions gives the author(s) no right to object to the editor’s decision.
• If the journal’s decision at this stage is not definitive (either definitive acceptance or rejection), the author(s) have a maximum of thirty days to revise and re-send the article according to the reviewers’ comments.
• When the revision(s) are received, the Editor-in-Chief or a person appointed by him determines whether they are adequate. The process of revision by the author(s) and evaluation of the revisions continues until a final decision is made to accept or reject the article; during this process the author(s) must submit each revision within seven days.
• If the article is definitively rejected at any stage, the author(s) have no right to object, and the duration of the reviewing phase gives no right for the article to be accepted.
• Once the Editor-in-Chief announces acceptance, the article is transferred to the journal’s editorial department, and the editors make all necessary edits. The journal has full discretion over the editing process, during which the author(s) must cooperate with the editors to correct any errors. After editing and before pagination, the submitting author must review and approve the galley proof. If the author(s) do not accept the final version, the article will be withdrawn. Under the journal’s guidelines, the submitting author’s approval represents the collective approval of all the authors.

Publishing ethics and copyright information

• The publishing ethics of all journals published by Afarand Scholarly Publishing Institute are based on the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
• All submitted articles that have passed the initial evaluation of compliance with the aims and scope and the submission guidelines of the journal are peer-reviewed by at most one member of the journal’s editorial and scientific board and at least one external reviewer.
• All authors must sign the form “commitment to publishing ethics, transfer of publishing rights, disclosure of conflicts of interest, and introduction of the authors” (Authors’ Commitment Form) when submitting an article. By signing this form, the author(s) undertake that “the submitted article is not being reviewed by, has not been published in, and will not be submitted to any other journal until the end of the reviewing process and a definitive decision; and if accepted, the author(s) are obliged to cooperate with the editors of the journal up to the pagination and publication of the article.”
• Copyright and publishing rights. The authors retain the copyright of their article. By signing the Authors’ Commitment Form, the authors grant the journal non-exclusive publishing rights for the article (excluding its content), so that the journal can publish it in any format, including online and print, and deposit it in national and international databases and indexes. These publishing rights are revoked only if the article is rejected, or if the authors withdraw before a final decision is made on the article. Once an article has been definitively accepted, it cannot be withdrawn. Published articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0), which allows anyone to share and adapt the work for non-commercial purposes with proper attribution.
• All authors of an article must comply with the research ethics protocols during all stages of the research. They must obtain all the necessary professional and ethical approvals for the research and submit them to the journal at the time of submission. They must also declare all financial resources used to conduct the research and any possible conflicts of interest. The ethical principles of research at Tarbiat Modares University are based on the COPE guidance on cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity cases.
• Articles submitted by the author(s) must not involve “duplicate publication” or “plagiarism”, as emphasized in the Authors’ Commitment Form. Exact text from other sources may only be used as a direct quotation. Any use of text, data or analysis from other sources that resembles the original material without substantial differences is plagiarism; this includes other articles by the authors themselves. Even if several articles are drawn from a single study, the text and references used cannot be the same, and the same data cannot be reused. If the editor is convinced that the author(s) have plagiarized, the case will be handled according to COPE guidance; the penalty ranges from a verbal warning to notification of the relevant organization and the decision-making bodies of scientific journals.
• All journals of Afarand Scholarly Publishing Institute are open access under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Article format and submission guidelines

1. Articles are accepted in both Persian and English.
2. The types of articles accepted by Philosophical Thought are “Original Research”, “Literature Review”, “Book Review” and “Note”.
3. The main file of the article can be submitted in either Word (.doc or .docx) or LaTeX (.tex) format. When submitting the article, a PDF file that excludes the identifying information of the authors should also be submitted.
4. The main file should use A4 paper with 3 cm margins on all sides, typed in 11-point Times New Roman with 1.5 line spacing.
5. The main file should include the first page (a single page), the abstract page (a single page), the text of the article, and the list of references (the PDF file should not include the first page).
   1. First page: the details of all authors, in order of their appearance in the article.
      • For the corresponding author: first name, last name, last degree and field of study, affiliation (group, department/research center, faculty/research institute, university/research institute, city and country), mobile number, work telephone number, work postal address, and email.
      • For the other author(s): first name, last name, last degree and field of study, affiliation (group, department/research center, faculty/research institute, university/research institute, city and country) and email. The order of the authors must be specified.
   2. Abstract page: English title; English abstract (a maximum of 150 words); English keywords (a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 7).
   3. Main text, according to the type of article:
      • Original Research: must include an argument for or against a theory, the analysis of a theory, and so on. Subdivision is at the author’s discretion (up to 10,000 words).
      • Literature Review: must include a complete or partial systematic introduction to the recent literature on a specific topic. Subdivision is at the author’s discretion (up to 10,000 words).
      • Book Review: should include a comprehensive review of the book and a partial or complete critical assessment of its contents. Subdivision is at the author’s discretion (up to 5,000 words).
      • Note: should include a brief argument for or against a theory, a presentation of a theory, a short critique of a bilateral or multilateral discussion in the recent literature, a short critique of an article previously published in Philosophical Thought, and so on. Subdivision is at the author’s discretion (up to 2,500 words).

      Graphs, tables or diagrams, if any, should be placed in the text (with single line spacing above and below), with numbers and captions in 9-point Times New Roman. Use three independent numbering series for graphs, tables and diagrams. The caption of each diagram should describe its content without the need for an in-text description.

      Footnotes should be avoided in the main text as far as possible (except for necessary additional explanations).

      All articles should end with five sections: Acknowledgements, Ethical Approvals, Conflicts of Interest, Authors’ Contribution, and Financial Support (names of individuals should be omitted from the acknowledgements in the submitted article). If a section does not apply (other than authors’ contribution when there is more than one author), include the statement “There is no case for reporting.”

   4. References: use the Harvard style for citations and references. List references in alphabetical order. In the text, cite the first author’s name (followed by “et al.” when there is more than one author) and the year of publication in square brackets. When several references are cited in one bracket, order the years in ascending order from left to right, separated by semicolons (guide). Secondary referencing is not acceptable; only primary references may be cited.
6. The submitting author is the contact person for all journal matters concerning the submitted article (all subsequent communication and notifications will be sent to the submitting author). At submission, the Authors’ Commitment Form, signed by all the authors, must be sent to the journal confirming and introducing the submitting author. A corresponding author must also be named for when the article is accepted and published (the corresponding author is responsible for answering readers’ questions and comments about the published article).

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