About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research (EJTIR) is a peer-reviewed open access journal with no article processing charges and no publishing fees. All papers are double blind peer-reviewed.  EJTIR aims to publish high-quality papers on the behavioral, organizational, economic, and/or public policy dimensions of the planning and operations of transport systems.

Our scope (and what we expect from submitted papers):

  • First and foremost, we are a scholarly journal. This implies that we will only consider papers that explicitly contribute to relevant academic literature, as documented in international peer-reviewed journals. We expect the introduction of every paper submitted to EJTIR to contain a review of past work on the paper's topic, which is used to explicitly identify an academic knowlegde gap. In addition, we expect submitted papers to clearly mention in the introduction the aimed for contribution in terms of filling the identified knowledge gap. Note that the large majority of the >70% of papers that are rejected in our desk review-process are rejected because they fail to convincingly argue their contribution to the scholarly literature.
  • We do not only want to contribute to the academic debate on transport and infrastructure, we also want to contribute to practice. We are primarily interested in publishing research that makes a real difference in addressing the immense and growing challenges of today’s transport systems. This means that EJTIR encourages submission of scholarly papers that explicitly aim to support decision-making and policy-making in the field of transport and infrastructure.
  • Transport and infrastructure can be studied from a wide range of perspectives. EJTIR takes a special interest in the behavioral, organizational, economic, and/or public policy dimensions of the planning and operations of transport systems. We are interested in theory, models and methods, as well as novel empirical work; and we consider all modes of transport. Examples of topics that fall outside the scope of EJTIR include papers discussing topics such as supply chain-optimization, traffic flow theory (especially highly technical contributions), optimal asphalt mixtures, vehicle routing problems, technical requirements for vehicle-to-vehicle communication, internal company logistics, data envelopment analysis, or machine learning techniques for traffic predictions may be better suited for other journals than ours.
  • In addition, current transport problems often require that they are viewed from different perspectives. Therefore, EJTIR strongly supports special issues. Our ambition is to publish two special issues each year. We strongly encourage prospective guest editors to contact us with their ideas.
  • We are a European journal. Although papers from every corner of the globe are welcome, EJTIR expects authors whose papers focus on regions outside Europe, to explicitly discuss potential lessons relevant to the European context. In addition, when a submitted paper is based on a case study or data from non-European regions, we demand that its contribution to the broader scholarly literature (in terms of, e.g., theory development or a methodological advance) is particularly noteworthy.

How we are published

We are a so-called Platinum Open-Access journal. Readers pay no fees, and neither do authors. We strongly believe that access to ideas developed with the aim of addressing important transport-related challenges should not be restricted to those individuals and institutions that are able to pay publishers large (subscription) fees. 

We are an internet-only journal. Most scholars would say that the internet has replaced hardcopy material as the foremost scholarly medium of communication and dissemination. We agree with this view. The open-access, internet-only format brings important practical advantages to our authors and readers:

  • There are no Article Process Charges (APC) and Submission Charges for authors
  • Authors can disseminate their published work easily to colleagues around the world, without any formal restriction. They can also freely use their published EJTIR-papers for educational purposes.
  • Authors benefit from the internet-based format as it allows us to drastically reduce turnaround times. Compared to most other journals in our field, EJTIR’s review and publication process is about twice as fast.
  • Readers can freely access our papers from wherever they are: the only requirement is access to the internet. In turn, the accessibility of papers published in EJTIR increases their potential impact. 

Article Processing Charges

Publishing in EJTIR is entirely free, so neither Submission Charges nor Article Processing Charges are required from the authors. The resources needed to run the journal are covered by the institutions where the (associate) editors are employed, mainly in the form of time invested.

Open Access Policy

EJTIR is an open access journal licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone is free to share (to copy, distribute, and transmit the work), to remix (to adapt the work) under the following conditions:

  • The original authors must be given credit
  • For any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are
  • Any of these conditions can be waived if the copyright holders give permission
  • Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights

Copyright Policy

  • Authors retain their copyrights
  • If you are using published images, text or other materials, please be aware of copyright regulations. The TU Delft Copyright helpdesk can provide further information and answer your copyright questions.
  • In case of (alleged or proven) copyright breaches or scientific misconduct (e.g. fabricating data), EJTIR will follow the developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

Review Policy

The EJTIR journal is committed to a transparent review process that adheres to the COPE policy. Editors and reviewers are encouraged to join COPE individually and agree to declare any conflict of interest.

The Editors-in-Chief and the editorial board may contribute to the published content. Still, a rigorous review workflow is implemented to ensure the integrity and quality of the review process. If one of the Editors-in-Chief or an editorial board member is listed as a (co)author, they will not be involved in the review process. They will not access the reviewers' identity in the case of anonymous, single-blind or double-masked reviews. When an Editor-in-Chief is a (co)author, selecting the editor who will handle the paper will fall on the (Co)editor-in-chief or another editor to maintain a fair and unbiased review process.

Review Process

EJTIR distinguishes itself from other journals in terms of the speed of our review process. Normally, our desk review is performed within a week. All submitted papers to EJTIR are subject to critical double-blind peer review by our editors and by external experts in the field. If a paper is sent out for external review, reports from our referees are sent back to the author within three to four months. If applicable, a second review round generally only takes a month or two. After acceptance, the paper will appear online within a week after receiving the formatted paper, as part of the current issue. To facilitate this speedy review process, we demand that authors do not take more than four months to revise their paper. If more time is taken, EJTIR as a rule will consider the resubmitted manuscript a new submission, which implies that the review process is started all over.

Research Data

TU Delft OPEN Publishing strongly supports that the data underlying the journals are archived in a recognised research data repository in line with the TU Delft Research Data Framework Policy and will support data citation. Please visit this page for more information on policies. 

Research Software

TU Delft OPEN Publishing strongly encourages the adoption of the TU Delft Research Software Policy. This policy facilitates best practices on management and sharing of research software and facilitates proper recognition of the contribution of TU Delft researchers to software.

Publication Ethics

Editors, authors, and publisher adopt the guidelines developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the fair data principles. The journal adheres to the COPE Core Practices and the principles of transparency described in the Declaration on transparent editorial policies for academic journals.

Code of conduct

Check TU Delft OPEN Publishing code of conduct and integrity policy.

Similarity Check

A similarity check is part of the TU Delft OPEN Publishing standard publication procedure. Authors submitting their article to the EJTIR should expect their work to go through a similarity analysis at any workflow stage. All articles submitted are checked with iThenticate software. The editor and publisher carefully analyse the reports. In case of suspected plagiarism, the authors will have two weeks to explain.

The journal also checks for AI-generated content. Articles will only be accepted if using AI-generated tools is part of the work.

Use of AI

The use of AI technologies in writing is gaining popularity. When used responsibly and appropriately in the context of human-driven research, it can facilitate innovation. However, authors remain responsible and accountable for the quality and content of their manuscripts, and these responsibilities remain uniquely human. With this in mind, the publisher asks that the authors not list AI as a co-author and disclose any use of AI tools (e.g., generative language-based, such as ChatGPT and others, for generating images, etc.) in the writing of their manuscripts. If applicable, acknowledge how you use AI tools for your article at the bottom of the References section and in the Acknowledgements section. Additionally, please specify the use of AI tools in the cover letter submitted before the peer review process. This policy is subject to review based on new developments.

Complaints

Complaints such as misconduct, authorship dispute or suspected conflict of interest should be brought to the attention of the publisher (publishing-lib@tudelft.nl) or the editorial board.

Author appeal

If an author wishes to appeal an editorial decision, the author may contact the journal's Editors-in-Chief. Their appeal decisions are final. This means that discussing or negotiating the final decision will be without effect and can be ignored.  

Conflict of Interest

All COIs will be handled as follows by the journal in the first instance, then the publisher:

  • Disclosure: Anyone (editors, reviewers, authors and any other relevant parties) involved in the publishing process should disclose any potential conflicts of interest they may have
  • Evaluation: After disclosing the potential COI, it needs to be examined to determine its importance and possible impact on the publication process.
  • Management: An identified COI requires appropriate steps. Those steps may include stepping back from specific duties or decisions, removal from the publication process, or taking other actions to reduce the conflict.
  • Transparency: Any identified conflicts of interest should be transparently disclosed to relevant parties, including readers, authors, and reviewers.
  • COI can be mentioned after the section Acknowledgment of the publication.

Publication notices and changes

Any changes to the published content will be accompanied by a post-publication notice that will be permanently linked to the original content.

Publication notices include errors introduced by the journal (erratum), an author error (corrigendum), adding a (small) document to a published work to provide additional information (addendum), and retraction.

The Editors-in-Chief and the publisher handle publication notices through the following steps:

  • Review the proposed changes to the published content to determine if they are necessary and appropriate.
  • Preparing a post-publication notice that accurately reflects the changes made to the content.
  • Linking the post-publication notice to the original content clearly and prominently.
  • Distributing the updated content and the post-publication notice to relevant parties, including subscribers, indexers, and other databases.
  • Monitoring the impact of the changes on the academic record and making any necessary further updates or corrections.

Authorship

All co-authors must agree to submit the work to the journal. For authors’ disputes, see the “Complaints and Appeals” section.

How to add extra authors before publication:

  • All co-authors must agree to add new (co)authors to the publication
  • Agreement must be collected and sent to the editor with an explanation

Guest Editors/Special Issues

EJTIR requires an agreement between the Guest Editor(s) and the Editors-in-Chief where the Guest Editor(s)’s role is clearly defined. Guest Editors are subject to the same rules as journal editors and adhere to TU Delft OPEN Publishing policies.

Metadata

EJTIR grants you the right to publish the metadata of the series, it's issues and articles under the terms of the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0).

Indexing

EJTIR with 1567-7141 is indexed by Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) of Thomson Reuters, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Mirabel, Directory of Open Access scholarly Resources (ROAD), Scopus, Sherpa Romeo, The Keepers, Google Scholar, WorldCat, ZDB, WIKIDATA, Sudoc and fatcat.

Archiving

This journal utilizes 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. More... 

Disclaimer

The opinions expressed in our published content are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of TU Delft OPEN Publishing.  

The responsibility for the content provided is exclusively of the author(s) concerned. TU Delft OPEN Publishing, EJTIR, the editors and reviewers are not responsible for errors in the contents or any consequences arising from the use of the information.

The opinions expressed in the publications of  EJTIR do not necessarily represent the views of TU Delft OPEN Publishing and the editors.  

We follow an Open Access publishing principle, in which the author(s) are the sole owners of the copyright of the content published. The author(s) of the concerned article are responsible for any omissions or copyright violations. Our responsibility is to remove the concerned article from the journal once the query is raised.

ISSN

Online: 1567-7141

Print: 1567-7133

Publisher

TU Delft OPEN Publishing