Policies
The Student Success Journal is an open access, international, peer-reviewed, scholarly publication exploring the experiences of students in tertiary education. The Journal publishes three issues per year and there are no APCs (article processing charges).
Section Policies
EDITORIALS
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FEATURES
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Features are determined by the Editorial team, often in consultation with the Advisory Board. Features may include, for example, invited papers of a topical nature, interviews with key scholars and practitioners, perspective pieces or exemplary peer reviewed submissions.
ARTICLES
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Research Articles – should comply with the expectations of a research article and have a strong empirical or theoretical foundation and present new knowledge or findings, or report on the application of existing knowledge to a new domain. Articles that focus on discipline-specific initiatives should clearly identify elements that are transferrable to other domains or how the specific initiative makes a contribution to the broader knowledge base. Full papers are required at the time of submission and if accepted by the editorial team will undergo a double, blind peer review. Refereed papers should not exceed twelve (12) pages including title, abstract, body and references.
PRACTICE REPORTS
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Practice Reports – should report on practical initiatives or the early outcomes of research projects. They are an opportunity to focus on the applied aspects of students’ tertiary learning initiatives and innovations. Although a comprehensive literature analysis is not required, it is crucial that Practice Reports clearly show how the topic relates to or builds on existing knowledge and practice. Practice Reports should explain why it was done, what was done, how it was done, and the impact (or expected impact) of the initiative. Importantly, Practice Reports require authors to identify the connection with transferable themes and principles of practice into other contexts. Practice Reports should not exceed nine (9) pages including title, author details, abstract, body and references.
Please download the Student Success Author Guidelines for a full outline of criteria and format requirements here.
Authors can submit and publish at no cost. There are no APCs (Article Processing Charges)
Peer Review Process
All submitted papers should be original, unpublished, and not in consideration for publication elsewhere at the time of submission to Student Success.
All articles will be refereed in a double-blind review process by at least two reviewers with expertise in the relevant subject area. The review time is currently 4-6 weeks.
If your article is already accessible on a pre-print server this may compromise our double-blind review policy - please email the Journal Manager for further information journal@unistars.org
All practice reports will be reviewed by an editorial team prior to being selected for publication.
Suspected plagiarism in a submission:
Student Success uses iThenticate - plagiarism detection software - and may utilise the software if the editorial team or the reviewer/s have concerns about original content.
Student Success's Peer Review process can be found here.
Open Access Policy
Student Success is a free to read, free to publish, institutionally supported journal.
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
Student Success defines open access according to the definition provided by Open Access Australasia:
Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers. Through licensing via an open license (usually a Creative Commons License), freely available outputs can also be legally shared and reused. Hence, open access is more than just free access.
Additionally, the Journal recognises the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) principles and recommendations for open access (updated in March 2022) which note that “…OA is not an end in itself, but a means to other ends, above all, to the equity, quality, usability, and sustainability of research.”
An information page summarising Open Access can be found here
Copyright
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the Journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). This Licence allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors have obtained all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any third-party copyright materials included in submissions.
3. 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, with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. This can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
Editorial Policies:
• Papers must be submitted with the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or thesis) and are not currently under consideration by another journal. If your article is already accessible on a pre-print server this may compromise our double-blind review policy - please email the Journal Manager for further information journal@unistars.org
• The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article's publication has been approved by all the other co-authors. Further correspondence and galley proofs will be sent to the corresponding author(s) before publication unless otherwise indicated.
• It is a condition for submission of a paper that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.
• All articles submitted will also be checked for plagiarism. Authors retain copyright and articles are licenced via Creative Commons to make published articles more readily available and useable. There are no APCs (Article Processing Charges). Authors can submit and publish at no cost.
• Special Editions also require blind peer reviewing and are subject to the same editorial policy.
• All production decisions are made by the Chief Editor in consultation with the Journal Manager. Decisions of the Chief Editor are final and not subject to review or appeal.
Preprints
The Journal will consider submissions already available as a preprint on condition that the author agrees to the below:
- The author retains copyright to the preprint and developed works from it and is permitted to submit to the journal.
- The author declares that a preprint is available within the cover letter or ‘Comments to Editor’ presented during submission. This must include a link to the location of the preprint.
- That the preprint submission is clearly cited and included in the Reference list:
In APA 7th Edition the correct citation and referencing style is as follows:
Citation:
(Author, Year)
Reference:
Author. (Year). Title. Title of the online repository. URL or DOI
- The author acknowledges that having a preprint publicly available means that the journal cannot guarantee the anonymity of the author during the review process, even if they anonymise the submitted files.
- The authors are required to update the information associated with the preprint version to show that a final version has been published in the Journal, including the DOI linking directly to the publication.
Please email the Managing Editor for further information journal@unistars.org
Archiving and Self-Archiving
Authors are permitted (and encouraged) to post their accepted work online in institutional/disciplinary repositories or on their own websites. Pre-print versions (accepted for publication) posted online should include a citation and link to the final published version in Student Success as soon as the issue is available; post-print versions (including the final publisher's PDF) should include a citation and link to the journal's website.
This journal currently utilises 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. The Journal title is included in a digital archive https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/1838-2959# and has a deposit policy with Sherpa Romeo at https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/31050
Ethics and Integrity
This Journal has a Ethics and Malpractice Statement
Student Success has aligned with the ethos and best practice guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for dealing with ethical issues in journal publishing and has adopted the COPE guidelines which the journal members (Advisory Board, editors and the journal manager) have agreed meet the purposes and objectives of the Journal.
A summary of the basic principles and guidelines for peer reviewers, authors and editors are provided.
COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers
Responsible Research Publication: International Standards for Authors
Responsible Research Publication: International Standards for Editors
Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC)*
Definitions
‘AI’ and ‘automation’ are not interchangeable - automation refers to rules based software, and includes tools like spelling and grammar checkers, whereas Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) refers to unique content created by tools using predictions made via machine learning from LLMs (large language models) or SMLs (small language models.)
This policy covers the use of AIGC whether by authors, editors, or peer reviewers. Use of automation is not included in this policy and is permitted by the Student Success Journal.
Authorship
The Student Success Journal is in agreement with the following statement from Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE):
AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. As non-legal entities, they cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts of interest nor manage copyright and license agreements.
Please review COPE’s Full statement on AI authorship.
Student Success policy on the use of AIGC and AI Tools
Below is outlined the Journal’s policy on the use of AIGC and AI tools for authors, editors and peer reviewers.
Appreciating that the field of artificial intelligence is changing rapidly, the Journal will review developments and COPE guidelines for AI use and update this policy to reflect the most current best practice.
Authors:
If authors submitting to the Journal have used AIGC in any portion of a manuscript, including text, data, images, graphics, videos, citations or translations, the tool and its use must be described in detail in the Methods and/or Acknowledgements sections of the manuscript, including prompts used if appropriate, and the full text of the original AIGC be attached as supplemental material. AIGC tools include, but are not limited to, GPT-4, ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and other tools trained on LLMs or SMLs that generate unique content based on predictions. This also applies to AIGC add-ons within software offered by Microsoft, Adobe and others, as well as online applications offered by Google, Zoom, Canva and others.
In accordance with the above COPE statement:
- AIGC tools cannot be listed as authors.
- As with standard manuscript submission, the author is responsible for the accuracy of all information provided by the tool.
Editors:
As it is currently unclear how data ingested in AI tools is stored and reused, sharing any part of the manuscript including text, figures, graphs, and images violates the confidentiality authors expect when submitting manuscripts to the Journal. As such, editors agree not to ingest the manuscript into artificial intelligence tools to evaluate the material or find potential peer reviewers.
Peer Review:
Just as authors are accountable for the quality and integrity of their scholarly work, the Student success Journal holds peer reviewers to the same standard. The Journal does not allow the use of AI tools in the peer review of manuscripts. Among the reasons are:
- AIGC tools are trained on past data whereas the peer review process is concerned with the evaluation of new research and the novel application of methodologies which can only be properly assessed by expert researchers in the field.
- AIGC tools at this point in time can replicate and amplify human bias rather than correct it in the peer review process.
- AIGC tools are often created and owned by private commercial interests and their processes are not transparent or interpretable.
Uploading manuscripts into AIGC tools compromises authors' proprietary rights and confidentiality.
Peer reviewers will be required to acknowledge the Journal’s policy on the use of AI in peer review when accepting manuscripts for review.
*This policy was adapted with kind permission from the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication
Sex and Gender in Research (SAGER Guidelines)
The editors encourage authors to follow the ‘Sex and Gender Equity in Research – SAGER – guidelines’ and include sex and gender considerations where relevant. Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) carefully in order to avoid confusing terms
The SAGER Guidelines (developed by the European Association of Science Editors [EASE]) provide recommendations for reporting of sex and gender information in study design, data analysis, results and interpretations of findings. They are primarily designed to guide authors in preparing their manuscripts. These guidelines are now accompanied by a checklist which authors should review.
Definition of Sex and Gender (taken from Office of Research in Women’s Health, NIH).
Sex - refers to biological differences between females and males, including chromosomes, sex organs, and endogenous hormonal profiles.
Gender - refers to socially constructed and enacted roles and behaviours which occur in a historical and cultural context and vary across societies and over time.
The SAGER guidelines and checklist are endorsed by COPE of which Student Success policies are aligned to.
Suspected plagiarism in a submission:
Student Success uses iThenticate - plagiarism detection software - and may utilise the software if the editorial team or the reviewer/s have concerns about original content.