About the Journal

Serial title

Footprint

Focus and Scope

Footprint is an academic journal dedicated to publishing architecture and urban research. Architecture and urbanism are the points of departure and the core interests of the journal. From this perspective, the journal encourages the study of architecture and the urban environment as a means of comprehending culture and society, and as a tool for relating them to shifting ideological doctrines and philosophical ideas. The journal promotes the creation and development – or revision - of conceptual frameworks and methods of inquiry. It is engaged in creating a body of critical and reflexive texts with a breadth and depth of thought which would enrich the architecture discipline and produce new knowledge, conceptual methodologies and original understandings. Footprint is peer-reviewed and diamond open access, with no article processing charges and no publishing fees. All papers are double anonymous peer-reviewed. 

Frequency of Publication

The journal uses continuous publication. Papers are published immediately after acceptance in two journal issues per year and archived in this manner.

Article Processing Charges

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

Open Access Policy

Footprint is an open access journal licensed under a CC-BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence. This means that all content is available without paywalls.  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), Footprint will follow the developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Review Policy

The journal follows a double anonymous peer-review process. The authors' and reviewers' identities are not visible to each other. The reviewers communicate with and via the editor, who can view both the reviewers' and the authors' identities (see terminology about peer reviews here). The 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, but a rigorous review workflow is implemented to ensure the integrity and quality of the review process. If one of the Editors-in-Chief or a member of the editorial board is listed as a (co)author, they will not be involved in the review process and will not access the reviewers' identity in the case of anonymous, single-blind or double-blind reviews. In instances where an Editor-in-Chief is a (co)author, the responsibility of 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

  • Unless stated otherwise, all the research articles (this excludes editorials, visual essays and review articles) published in Footprint are reviewed by referees, who are academics asked to read and comment on submitted texts.
  • The referees are ‘experts in their field’, but a PhD degree is not a pre-requirement. However, selecting the most accomplished and established scholars in the fields in question is a desirable practice from which both the journal and the contributors will benefit.
  • Initially, the referees will be selected from the editors’ contacts or approached specifically for this purpose. Editors are welcome to consult the Editorial Board about possible referees. Later, the editors could approach academics who have submitted outstanding papers.
  • A referee will always be selected from a different university than the one with which the submission is affiliated.
  • The refereeing process will be double anonymous: the referee will not know the identity of the author and the author will not know the identity of the referee.
  • Each paper will be refereed by two academics, which will discuss the work with the editor in charge. In special cases, the editor can ask for the opinion of an additional referee.
  • The referees will be asked to fill in a peer-review form. The form includes a numeric scale, which will allow the editors to select the best papers with the highest scores. The editors will not be able to publish a paper with a lower score than a rejected paper, but this system enables the editors to decide what score is acceptable as a minimum in order to allow publication.

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 as 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 Footprint should expect their work to go through a similarity analysis at any stage of the workflow. 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 provide an explanation.

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

Use of AI

The use of AI technologies in writing/summarising is gaining popularity and is expanding. When used responsibly and appropriately in research, it can facilitate innovation. However, authors/editors remain fully responsible and accountable for the quality and content of their manuscripts. With this in mind and with reference to the COPE Position Statement of 13 February 2023, authors are required not to list AI tools as a co-author because these tools cannot take responsibility for the submitted work, and they need to be transparent in disclosing in the materials and methods of the manuscript how the AI tool was used and which tool was used (such as ChatGPT and other generative (language-based) AI tools for generation of images, etc.) in the writing of their manuscripts. If applicable, disclosure needs to take place at the bottom of the References section, in the Acknowledgements section, and separately in the cover letter submitted before the review process. This policy is subject to review based on new developments to include the COPE Position Statement.

Complaints and Appeals

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 Editors-in-Chief of the journal. 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 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 how important it is and its possible impact on the publication process.
  • Management: An identified COI requires appropriate steps. Those steps may include stepping back from certain duties or decisions, removal from the publication process, or take 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 made to the published content will be accompanied by a post-publication notice which 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:

  • Reviewing 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 in a clear and prominent manner.
  • 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 dispute 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

Footprint 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 editors of the journal and adhere to TU Delft OPEN Publishing policies.

Metadata

Footprint 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

Footprint with ISSN 1875-1490 is indexed by Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS), Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, 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...

Authors are allowed to deposit a preprint, a Submitted version, an Accepted version (Author Accepted Manuscript) and a Published version (Version of record) of their work in an institutional or any other repository of their choice.

TU Delft OPEN Publishing is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research. We work in partnership with organizations as well as maintaining our own digital archive.

Disclaimer

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

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

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

We follow and open access publishing principle, in which author(s) are the sole owners of the copyright of the content published, for any omissions, copyright violation author(s) of the concerned article are only responsible. Our responsibility is limited only to removal of the concerned article from the journal once the query is raised.

ISSN

1875-1490 print

1875-1504 online

 

Publisher

TU Delft OPEN Publishing is the digital publisher.

 Jap Sam Books is the print publisher.

 

Sponsor

Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, TU Delft.