Journal Editorial Policies 

Authorship Criteria
All those who have made a substantial contribution to authorship of a work should be listed as authors. For more information, please see our authorship criteria guidelines.

Peer Review
To maintain high standards of academic rigour all research articles published in Bristol University Press and Policy Press journals undergo double anonymous peer review, where both the referee and the author remain anonymous throughout the process. Items that are not research articles (e.g. editorials or short contributions to special journal sections) may be reviewed internally. All newly submitted research articles are initially reviewed internally to determine whether they should be sent out for peer review or rejected without external peer review. Articles selected for peer review are assigned to an editor who will send them to at least one (but usually two) external reviewers selected from a database of experts. Once the reviews have been received the editor makes a decision to accept or reject a manuscript, or to request revisions from the author in light of the reviewers’ comments. The requesting of a revision does not guarantee the revised paper will ultimately be accepted. Revised submissions are often sent back to the original reviewers, and the views of further reviewers may be sought. Editors may request more than one revision of a manuscript. Please ensure you read our Ethical Guidelines for authors, reviewers and editors.

Post Publication Change Policy
The published version of your article is the version of record and should remain unaltered as far as possible. It may sometimes be necessary to make a post-publication change, especially if the article contains errors that could affect the interpretation of data or the reliability of information included. Requests for post-publication changes will be carefully considered and only made if necessary and in accordance with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

For more information, please see our post publication change policy.

Corrections, Retractions and Editorial Expressions of Concern
On rare occasions it may be necessary for Bristol University Press to publish corrections or retractions of articles published in its journals. Changes to published articles that affect the interpretation of an article, but do not fully invalidate it will be corrected via publication of an erratum at the journal editors’ discretion.

If an occasion arises in which the scientific information presented in a published article is substantially undermined due to error or misconduct it may be necessary for published articles to be retracted. In these circumstances Bristol University Press will follow the COPE retraction guidelines.

If an occasion arises in which there is inconclusive evidence of misconduct journal editors may issue an expression of concern in line with COPE guidelines.

Our policy for managing allegations of research misconduct is based on the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), available at https://publicationethics.org/misconduct.

Name Change Policy
Where an author wishes to change their name after publication, for reasons including (but not limited to) alignment with gender identity, or as a result of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion, we will update and republish each paper published by the author online. We regret that it is not possible to correct names in the print version after an issue has gone to press.

We will communicate updated metadata to our indexing services, but please note that we do not have control over our indexing partners’ policies and the speed of their updates. We do not require any proof or supporting documentation, but welcome it if it can be easily provided. Citation information such as the DOI remains the same, and all previous citations to the paper(s) remain valid.

We recognise that name changes may be sensitive and private to the author concerned. In cases where a forename has changed but the initial remains the same, we will republish papers using only the author’s initial, but if that is not the case, we will replace the name. For privacy reasons, we will not publish a correction notice, and we will not notify co-authors of the change. If authors would like to publish their ORCID identifier on the paper(s), this would be helpful to readers, but we appreciate it may not always be appropriate, and we leave it to the author’s discretion.

We will continuously monitor this policy, and will endeavour to adhere to guiding principles recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Authors should contact bup-journals@bristol.ac.uk to effect a name change.

Copyright and Permissions
Please check the individual journal webpages for information about copyright, permissions and journal contributor agreements.

Where copyright is not owned by the author(s), the corresponding author is responsible for obtaining the consent of the copyright holder. This includes figures, tables, and excerpts. Evidence of this permission should be provided to Bristol University Press.

To request permission to reproduce any part of an article published in a Bristol University Press or Policy Press journal please email bup-info@bristol.ac.uk.

For information on what is permissible use for different versions of your article please see our policy on self archiving and institutional repositories.

Open Access
Bristol University Press is proud to offer a range of Open Access options for authors. Further information about Open Access can be found here.

Advertising
Bristol University Press and Policy Press journals do not accept paid advertising. Journals may occasionally include advertisements for calls for papers or relevant conferences, usually on the basis of a reciprocal agreement.

For further information about advertising please contact pp-marketing@bristol.ac.uk