Journal policies
Editorial policy
UCL (University College London) and UCL Press regard it as fundamental that research should be conducted and published according to ethical guidelines. Users will find further information about the journal’s editorial policies online at:
Editorial policies
Peer review policy
Below you will find details about how the Journal of Experimental Pragmatics undertakes peer review. Our full peer review policies can be found on UCL Press's Journals Editorial Policies webpage at:
Peer review policies
How does the journal operate peer review?
The Journal of Experimental Pragmatics operates an open and transparent peer review process where readers can assess the peer reviewer reports as part of the article’s review history. Articles submitted to the journal are first posted to the preprint server to undergo open peer review before being published officially in the journal after peer review and editorial acceptance.
Please note that all preprint articles are declared as not yet peer reviewed.
The Journal of Experimental Pragmatics requires at least two external peer reviews of a submitted article to be made openly available online before an editorial decision for official publication in the journal can be made. All submissions are managed by an assigned Editor-in-Chief/Editor. Action Editors volunteer to run peer review, overseen by the assigned Editor-in-Chief/Editor, and invite peer reviewers to provide comment of the manuscript. Action Editors and invited reviewers will not possess any potential conflicts of interests to the submitted manuscript (see the Section on reviewer obligations below). However, where this is not possible and in rare circumstances where specific and required expertise or other reasons that are deemed necessary, any decision to publish may require additional review (i.e. more than two reviews) to maintain fair review practice. The Action Editor may also decide to reject a review after considering any and all conflicts of interest and the reviewer will be informed of this decision. The main responsibility for deciding about an article’s acceptance rests with the assigned Editor-in-Chief/Editor.
In addition, as the journal operates open peer review, the names and affiliations of reviewers are openly published alongside their review reports. In special cases, reviewers may request they remain anonymous (for example, where there is legitimate cause for concern of retribution if the review is openly named) and the Editors may agree to this and maintain public anonymity of the reviewer comments. In such cases, reviewers should contact the Editor regarding this before submitting their review.
Who can review for the Journal of Experimental Pragmatics?
Reviewers are invited by an Action Editor based on subject expertise and usually hold a doctorate (PhD/MD/MBBS or equivalent) within the subject. As a general guide, peer reviewers should hold expert knowledge of the specific disciplines to which the manuscript relates to. In subjects or fields where doctorates are less common or reviewers are currently in process of completing one, we recommend these individuals provide via their ORCID profile a demonstrable public record of expertise. Reviewers invited by Action Editors are typically required to have at least three published and peer reviewed records associated with their ORCID profile to demonstrate that reviewers are active and professional researchers.
If you are interested in reviewing for the journal and wish to register your interest with the journal Editors, please contact the editorial office with your details and subject expertise by emailing jxprag@ucl.ac.uk.
Use of AI in your review
Peer reviewers must treat a manuscript that is under review confidentially and must not submit the manuscript through an AI-assisted technology or tool. Submitting any manuscript (as well as any data included in the manuscript) through any AI-assisted technology or tool may incur a breach in confidentiality, proprietary rights and data, including personally identifiable information. Peer reviewers must also not upload their report text through an AI-assisted technology or tool.
Further information about the acceptable uses of AI in UCL Press journals can be found here.
Obligations of peer reviewers
The Journal of Experimental Pragmatics aspires to select and publish, through peer review, research of high quality. To achieve this, the peer review process must be objective, fair and thorough. This peer review policy and commenting code of conduct outlines how peer review and commenting are to be conducted. Please note that this review policy is part of the journal’s Editorial Policies as outlined here.
The Journal of Experimental Pragmatics aims to provide a safe, open, and professional environment for learning and communicating research with integrity, respect, fairness, trustworthiness, and transparency. Open debate and commenting are an important aspect of the scientific endeavour to encourage constructive criticism and high quality discussions of scientific issues that will both enhance understanding and provide new avenues of collaboration within the community.
Reviews and/or comments will be monitored to ensure that they contribute to the scholarly debate. Any reviews and/or comments that appear to be advertising, potentially libellous or legally problematic (including comments revealing any personal and/or sensitive information) will not be published. The journal will not accept comments that are offensive, indecent or contain negative comments of a personal, racial, ethnic, sexual orientation or religious character. All comments must be written in good English; a comment may be rejected if it is deemed unintelligible.
While the journal welcomes open scholarly debate and discussion, it will not tolerate untoward behaviour towards our authors and reviewers via our Comment system or via social media. When providing a review and/or comments in the journal, users agree to these obligations set out here.
- To ensure the highest quality of research in UCL Press publications, reviewers are expected to uphold the following when reviewing:
- Provide clearly written, unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly and/or scientific merits and value of the work, together with a documented basis for the reviewer’s opinion.
- Judge the paper on its merits without regard to personal bias, ethnic origin, race, religion, citizenship, language, political or other opinion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, appearance, age, or economic class, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s).
- Thoroughly address all review criteria provided by the journal.
- Decline to review manuscripts for which the reviewer lacks sufficient time, is not qualified, or has a conflict of interest with any of the authors, including personal or competitive relationships.
- Explain and support judgments adequately so that (Action) Editors and Authors may understand the basis of their comments. Any statement by a reviewer on an observation, derivation or argument that has been previously published should be accompanied by the relevant citation.
- Provide citations to relevant work by other scientists as appropriate.
- Alert the Editor to any significant similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper or manuscript submitted concurrently to another journal. Report any plagiarism or the appearance of plagiarism.
- Never use or disclose unpublished information, arguments or interpretations contained in a manuscript under consideration, except with the consent of the author.
- Never include personal criticism of the author in reviewing a manuscript
Open data policy
Data has the power to revolutionise and disrupt the way societies are governed for the better. This is especially the case with open data, which is free to access, free to use, and can be shared by anyone. That is why Journal of Experimental Pragmatics requires all authors to make all data and scripts on which the conclusions of their paper rely freely available to readers.
What is data?
Data are facts, observations or experiences on which an argument or theory is constructed or tested. Data may be numerical, descriptive, aural or visual. Data may be raw, abstracted or analysed, experimental or observational. Data include but are not limited to: laboratory notebooks; field notebooks; primary research data (including research data in hard copy or in computer-readable form); questionnaires; audiotapes; videotapes; models; photographs; films; and test responses. Research collections may include slides; artefacts; specimens; and samples.
Fair data principles
The Journal of Experimental Pragmatics supports the FAIR Data Principles (https://www.force11.org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples), which means that data should be:
- Findable – making research outputs discoverable by the wider academic community and the public.
- Accessible – using unique identifiers, metadata and a clear use of language and access protocols.
- Interoperable - interoperable standards to encode and exchange data and metadata.
- Reusable – enabling the repurposing of research outputs to maximise their research potential.
Data availability statement
Authors must clearly state in their manuscript where their data are made available at time of submission. In circumstances where ethical and legal issues dictate restrictions on sharing data (including research using personal data), a statement to this effect must be included for clarity. Persistent identifiers (such as DOIs and accession numbers) for relevant data must be provided in the manuscript.
During submission, authors are required to confirm the data availability statement to indicate how fellow researchers can access their data. Authors will be required to select one of the following statements:
- The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the repository: *[source]
- The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
- Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
- All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.
- The data that support the findings of this study are available from * but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of * [source]
* You may add a link here to your data sets and/or software at a standard data repository. We also strongly encourage you to cite your data in the reference section according to the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles.
Citing data and data deposit
Prior to submission, all authors should ensure that their data are either deposited in publicly available repositories (for example on OSF). Authors based at UCL are encouraged to use the UCL Research Data Repository (please see https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/research-support/research-data-management/ucl-research-data-repository.) For further information, including about FAIR data sharing, all authors can find some useful information about when, where, and how to share data as openly as possible, here https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/research-support/research-data-management/best-practices/how-guides/sharing-data.
Handling sensitive and personal data
In circumstances where ethical and legal issues dictate, any restrictions on sharing data (including research using personal data) should always be considered when storing and preserving research data. The journal also does not require public sharing of other sensitive data. Alternatives to public sharing of sensitive or personal data include:
- Deposition of research data in controlled access repositories.
- Anonymisation or deidentification of data before public sharing.
- Only sharing metadata about research data.
- Stating the procedures for accessing your research data in your article and managing data access requests from other researchers.
The Journal of Experimental Pragmatics adheres to the statement: 'as open as possible, as closed as necessary'. Further information about this can be found at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/research-support/research-data.
Data citation
The journal encourages authors to cite any publicly available research data in their reference list. References to datasets (data citations) must include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI). Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style.
Equality, diversity and inclusion
As a part of UCL (University College London, UK), UCL Press and its publication the Journal of Experimental Pragmatics are committed to UCL’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy.
In particular:
UCL defines “equality” as the absence of unjust social hierarchy such as those based on age, disability, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and religion, and “diversity” as the presence of different cultural traditions and identities.
We wish to foster a positive cultural climate where all staff and students can flourish, where no-one will feel compelled to conceal or play down elements of their identity for fear of stigma. UCL will be a place where people can be authentic and their unique perspective, experiences and skills seen as a valuable asset to the institution.
UCL Press and the Editorial Board of the Journal of Experimental Pragmatics aim to foster this positive cultural climate for all authors, reviewers, users and staff of the publication, to discuss, debate and encourage critical thinking on real world problems with the aim of benefitting humanity.