About the Journal
The Evolving Scholar is an open access for multidisciplinary, community-driven and open peer-reviewed publications. The Evolving Scholar (ThES) is the result of the collaboration between TU Delft OPEN publishing and ORVIUM - a CERN spin-off in accelerating scientific publishing. ThES is managed by members of the team of TU Delft OPEN, staff of the TU Delft Library and Orvium. The Project Team does not make editorial decisions but can intervene in case of misconduct and conflict.
The content of ThES falls under the expertise and responsibility of the scientific community.
Focus and Scope
The Evolving Scholar (ThES) is an experimental and dynamic environment for TU Delft researchers interested in all aspects of science, technology and applications. ThES is committed to publish multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary content of high quality from all scientific disciplines represented at the TU Delft from aerospace engineering and computer science, to policy and design.
All publications in ThES published by TU Delft OPEN Publishing follow the open peer-review process describes under the Review Policy
ThES is committed to recognising work and giving credits to all involved – authors, reviewers and moderators - in a transparent and fair manner.
Please do contact us if you are looking for a place to publish a specific collection of publications related to a conference or to a topic. ThES welcomes new forms of research and educational outputs (such as registered reports, videos, research data articles, interactive articles) and traditional publications such as research articles, review articles and conference papers. Check the author guidelines for more information.
Article Processing Charges
Publishing in The Evolving Scholar is completely free, so neither Submission Charges nor Article Processing Charge is 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
The Evolving Scholar is licensed under one of the following Creative Commons licenses:
- CC BY 4.0 license. The license means that anyone is free to share (to copy, distribute, and transmit the work), remix (to adapt the work)
- CC BY-ND 4.0 license. This license lets others reuse the work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you.
Note that publishing under CC-BY-NC/SA is allowed under exceptional conditions. For enquiries contact us at publishing-lib@tudelft.nl
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), The Evolving Scholar will follow the guidelines developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
Community
The scientific community oversees and controls the collaborative and interactive review and publication processes. The community, composed of the scientific community (moderators, editors and reviewers) and the wider community (citizens and non-scientific experts), participates freely in the review processes of the research output.
The Community is expected to follow the code of conduct defined by the TU Delft.
ThES is a collaborative platform hence we welcome feedback and new features. Please send your suggestions to publishing-lib@tudelft.nl
To interact with the platform you are invited to join the community. We encourage our users to log in with an ORCID ID (personal or via your institutional account).
1.The role of a Moderator
Screening
Moderators check submissions to ensure adherence to our guidelines and scope. Submissions that do not adhere to our guidelines or are not within scope will be withdrawn or sent back to the authors.
Validating
The Moderator validates that the submission has passed screening.
Upon completion of the peer review process (review status Completed), the moderator approves the final publication.
Resolving
The Moderator intervenes if no agreements between reviewers and authors are reached (reviewer status Waiting Resolution). If no consensus is found, the manuscript is either withdrawn or remains online with the label 'Closed'.
Moderators have the possibility to invite and assign reviewers to review a research output.
2.The role of an Editor-In-Chied of a collection or expert community
The Editor-in-Chief oversees the entire publication process and is responsible for the published content of the collection or the expert community.
Resolving
The Editor intervenes if no agreements between reviewers and authors are reached (reviewer status Waiting Resolution). If no consensus is found, the manuscript is either withdrawn or remains online with the label 'Closed'.
Interested in creating your own collection or expert community within ThES please contact publishing-lib@tudelft.nl
3. The role of an Editor of a collection or expert community
Screening
Editors check submissions to ensure adherence to our guidelines and the scope of the collection or expert community. Submissions that do not adhere to our guidelines or are not within scope will be withdrawn or sent back to the authors.
Validating
The Editor validates that the submission has passed screening.
Upon completion of the peer review process (review status Completed), the moderator approves the final publication.
Editors have the possibility to invite and assign reviewers to review a research output.
Interested in creating your own collection or expert community within ThES please contact publishing-lib@tudelft.nl
4. The role of a reviewer
Reviewers can receive a notification on demand when a new submission matches their expertise. However, it is up to the reviewer to decide to review or not.
Reviewers have the possibility to set their preferences to suit their needs and availability including suggesting reviewers.
The peer review report can be uploaded as an independent document (pdf, docx, rtf) within the system. The reviewer can also decide to use the provided template.
The reviewer will address the following points:
| ASPECT | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|
| General Introduction & Recommendations |
|
| Abstract & Introduction | Do the Research Highlights, Introduction and Abstract clearly identify the need and relevance for this research?
|
| Methodology | Does the Methodology target the main question(s) appropriately?
|
| Data | Do the data observe the FAIR principles?
|
| Results | Are the results clearly and logically presented, and are they justified by the data presented? Are the figures clear and fully described?
|
| Conclusions | Do the Conclusions justifiably respond to the main questions the author(s) posed? Do the Conclusions go too far or not far enough based on the results?
|
| Formulation | Is the manuscript’s story cohesive and tightly reasoned throughout? If not, where does it deviate from the central argument?
|
| Writing | What are the grammar and spelling in the manuscript?
|
| Others | Other itsy-bitsy suggestions.
|
5. The wider community
The wider community (citizens and non-scientific experts) is encouraged to post comments during the entire review process. However, the authors decide whether they take these comments into consideration or not.
Rewards and Recognition
ThES platform will implement soon a reward & recognition system for its users. Its guidelines will be published when the system will be in place.
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 ThES 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/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 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
ThES 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
The Evolving Scholar grants you the right to publish the metadata of the series, its issues and articles under the terms of the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0).
Indexing
ThES with ISSN 2667-2812 is indexed by Directory of Open Access scholarly Resources (ROAD), Sherpa Romeo, The Keepers, Google Scholar, Mirabel and WorldCat.
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 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 maintain our own digital archive.
Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in our published content are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views and opinions of TU Delft OPEN Publishing.
The responsibility of the content provided is exclusively of the author(s) concerned. TU Delft OPEN Publishing, The Evolving Scholar, and the scientific community (moderators and reviewers) are not responsible for errors in the contents or any consequences arising from the use of the information contained in it.
The opinions expressed in the publications of The Evolving Scholar do not necessarily represent the views of TU Delft OPEN publishing and the moderators.
We follow open access publishing principles, 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
2667-2812 online
