About the Journal

Aim & Scope

The Evolving Scholar (ThES) is an open access, multidisciplinary, and community-driven journal that rethinks academic publishing. Established through a collaboration between TU Delft OPEN Publishing and Orvium (a CERN spin-off), the journal provides an innovative platform for open peer review, transparency, and new publication formats.

ThES publishes contributions across all fields of science, technology, design, and policy, with particular emphasis on interdisciplinary and experimental research. While ThES has strong roots at TU Delft, it is open to researchers worldwide and actively encourages international submissions and collaborations.

The journal welcomes both traditional research outputs (articles, reviews, conference proceedings) and innovative forms of scholarly communication, including registered reports, data papers, software articles and interactive works.

 

Article Processing Charges

Publishing in The Evolving Scholar is free of charge, 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.

Diamond Open Access policy

Our journal adheres to the Diamond Open Access model, ensuring that all content is free to read and free to publish. In alignment with Open Science principles, authors retain full copyright of their work under a CC-BY-4.0 license, promoting transparency and collaboration, and reuse while preserving authorship. This license allows anyone to share and adapt the work, provided proper attribution is given and the license terms are clearly communicated. Authors’ moral rights remain protected.

This approach reflects our commitment to equitable access to knowledge and to fostering a diverse, inclusive global academic community. 

Supported by the Delft University of Technology, this model is sustained through institutional resources, with a strong focus on fostering innovation, diversity, and the open dissemination of high-quality research.

Frequency of publication

ThES follows the continuous publication Model, which means that the journal will publish an article for an issue as and when that article is accepted, rather than waiting for all articles intended for that issue to be ready. ThES compiles all articles published within a given year into one volume.

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)

Review Policy

ThES operates under an open and transparent peer review model, designed to promote collaboration, accountability, and trust in scholarly publishing. The review process is coordinated by the Editors-in-Chief of each publishing community, with oversight from the Publishing Oversight Board.

Each publishing community (e.g., a conference or thematic series) within ThES has the flexibility to define the level of openness in the peer review process.  While all communities must adhere to basic principles of academic integrity and fairness, they may choose from the following review configurations:

  1. Open Identity Review: Reviewers and authors know each other’s identities during the review process.

  2. Open Reports: Reviewer comments and editorial decisions are published alongside the article, optionally including reviewer names.

  3. Flexible Transparency: Communities may choose one of the following options

    • reviewer reports are published anonymously
    • reviewer reports are published with the names of the reviewers (with consent)
    • only the names of the reviewers are published, and the reports remain confidential

Each community clearly states its chosen review configuration on its publishing community page.

Review principles

Regardless of the review model selected, all communities must ensure:

  • Rigorous, fair, and timely peer review
  • Reviewers are selected for subject expertise and independence
  • Review criteria are aligned with the scope and values of the community
  • Authors receive constructive feedback and opportunities to revise
  • All decisions are documented through the Orvium platform for traceability

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 the 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 for writing and summarising is becoming increasingly popular. When used responsibly in research, i.e. where ideas, interpretations and conclusions are clearly human-generated, it can facilitate innovation.

However, authors and editors remain fully responsible and accountable for the quality and content of the manuscripts. In line with the COPE Position Statement of 13 February 2023, authors must not list AI tools as co-authors, as these tools cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. They must also be transparent about how the AI tool was used and which tool was used (e.g. ChatGPT and other generative language-based AI tools for image generation) in the writing of their manuscripts, and this information must be included in the materials and methods section of the manuscript.

In order to maintain integrity and transparency and to preserve trust in the scholarly record, authors must disclose any use of generative AI technologies (e.g. ChatGPT, image generators, code assistants) that contributed to the manuscript. This disclosure should be included in the 'Use of AI' section and in the cover letter submitted before the review process. This policy is subject to review based on new developments, including the COPE Position Statement. Read more >

 

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 by 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 Acknowledgement 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
  • The agreement must be collected and sent to the editor with an explanation

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), 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

 

Publisher

TU Delft OPEN Publishing