Editorial Policies

The scientific journal publishes research on the history of engineering (mechanics, chemistry, construction, architecture, design, materials science, economics, computer science, humanities, telecommunications, energetics, electrical engineering) and universities, personalities, engineers, inventors, university lecturers, students, manufacturers and their contribution to the history of engineering in Latvia and in the world.

The authors of articles are researchers and PhD students, scientists, researchers, engineers, educators, museologists, historians and other specialists related to engineering and humanities sciences.

The Journal publishes researches on: History of RP / RPI / RTU and Latvian university education institutions; personalities related to them: teachers, graduates, students; operation of factories and companies; public and political workers; public organizations; the careers and achievements of engineers in various fields.

The main keywords of scientific journal: engineers, inventions, history of technical universities, manufacturing.

Single-blind review process is used in journal.

The corresponding or submitting author submits (by email) the scientific paper manuscript to the journal.

First stage. The Editor-in Chief (EIC) of the scientific journal checks the manuscript’s composition and arrangement against the journal’s Author Guidelines. The quality of the manuscript is not assessed at this point.

Second stage. The EIC checks that the manuscript is appropriate for the journal and is sufficiently original and interesting. If not, the manuscript may be rejected without being reviewed any further.

Third stage. If EIC accepts submitted manuscript, she sends invitations to individual she believes would be appropriate reviewer. The journal uses single-blind peer review (the authors do not know reviewers identity) to avoid bias. Potential reviewer consider the invitation against their own expertise and conflicts of interest. When rejecting the offer, he has the right to recommend another reviewer. The reviewer is given time (up to three weeks) to evaluate the manuscript of scientific publication. If major problems are found at this stage, the reviewer may feel comfortable rejecting the manuscript without further work.

Fourth stage. The review is then submitted to the EIC of the scientific journal, with a recommendation to accept or reject it – or else with a request for revision (usually flagged as either major or minor) before it is reconsidered.

The EIC considers all the returned reviews before making an overall decision. If the reviews differ widely, the editor may invite an additional reviewer so as to get an extra opinion before making a decision. The editor sends a decision email to the author including any relevant reviewer comments (anonymous). If the article is rejected or sent back for either major or minor revision, the EIC should include constructive comments from the reviewers to help the author improve the article.

Fifth stage. If accepted, the article is sent to production.

Scientific journal is published annually once a year in Latvian and English languages.

The time from the submission of the scientific article and its publication is 28 weeks.

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

This journal is published Open Access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0) which allows readers to reuse the content without restriction. Readers are free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search articles and to use them for any other lawful purpose. Open Access allows for unrestricted sharing of scholarly information and helps to promote knowledge throughout the world. RTU supports Open Access as an equitable means of ensuring that scholarly research, usually funded by public institutions, is made available to all.

During submission authors are asked to sign Licence to Publish and signed sent to [email protected] or [email protected].

Authors retain copyright in their articles, but grant RTU Press the right of the first publication.

All authors are responsible for ensuring that:

• the manuscript is their own original work, and does not duplicate any other previously published work, including their own previously published work;
• the manuscript has been submitted only to this journal; it is not under consideration or peer review or accepted for publication or in press or published elsewhere;
• the manuscript contains nothing that is abusive, defamatory, libellous, obscene, fraudulent, or illegal.

Non-compliance with any of the above conditions will be considered misconduct and dealt with accordingly. 

If an author considers that a decision of Rejection was incorrectly made, they may appeal the decision. To appeal a decision the author must email the Editor-in-Chief or the publisher, giving reasons why they think the decision was wrong. The appeal will be considered by a member of the Editorial Board who was not involved in the original decision. There is only one chance to appeal, so it is very important that authors clearly explain the justification for making an appeal.

To increase the impact of your data, we ask authors to make their paper versions available in institutional or suitable repositories (for example, FigShare, Zenodo or another similar repository) without embargo. The repository gives your submitted dataset a persistent and unique identifier (e.g., DOI). With persistent identifier, your data are more easily findable and citable. 

Information about journals repository policy you can find on Sherpa/Romeo webpage.

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce anything (e.g. figure, table, text) that has been previously published or created by another person. On request from the Editorial Office or Publisher they should be able to supply evidence of such permission.

A Conflict of Interest is defined as a situation where personal relationships (e.g. friend, colleague or family), business relationships (e.g. working in a competing company), or financial influences (e.g. funding) will affect the judgement of any person during the publication of the journal.

Authors are required to declare (within the article and to the Editor-in-Chief) any Conflict of Interest (COI) that may have affected their research or decision to submit to the journal.

Reviewers are required to declare if they have any Conflict of Interest (COI) that may affect their judgement of any article they review. The COI may not prevent them reviewing the article, but must be declared to the Editor-in-Chief as soon as it is known.
Editors are excluded from any publishing decision in which they may have a Conflict of Interest (COI).

Authors are responsible for ensuring that their works are unique, and that they fully acknowledge the source of any content which is not entirely the authors’ own. The journal will check articles for plagiarism (i.e. reproducing any content without attribution and permission) using Similarity Check (iThenticate tool) and considers the inclusion of plagiarised content to be misconduct by the authors.

The editors have a right to select which articles to consider for publication and which to accept and/or reject without influence from the publisher or other external bodies.

The journal editors have a duty to treat all submissions confidentially, and to ensure that judgements are made free of bias, and in a timely manner. Decisions on which articles to be published are the responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief who also have a responsibility not to bring the journal into disrepute (by knowingly accepting bad quality or unethical articles or by failing to comply with the journal policies). The appointment of the Editorial Board is the duty of the Editor-in-Chief.

The journal is not charging article submission, reviewing or publication charges for any accepted article.

RTU and the journal follow the recommendations and policies of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) regarding ethical policies and dealing with misconduct and RTU Press Publication Ethics Guidelines. Misconduct includes falsifying data, plagiarising others’ works, and breach of confidentiality. Each case will be considered by the publisher and Editor-in-Chief, and in all cases the author (or reviewer) will be contacted directly. However, the publisher reserves the right to speak directly to the author’s or reviewer’s institution or other appropriate organization if severe misconduct is suspected.

Where an author, reviewer, reader, or other person has a complaint against the journal or editors, they should speak directly to the publisher in the first instance.

The aim of RTU Press is to ensure that the parties involved in the publishing process adhere to RTU Press Publication Ethics Guidelines and, if relevant, declare conflict of interest.
RTU Press Publication Ethics Guidelines are based on adherence to ethical principles set out in “Latvian Council of Science Code of Researcher’s Ethics “, “RTU Code of Ethics of Students and Personnel” and in Codes of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines of Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE).
RTU Press Publication Ethics Guidelines set out the duties and responsibilities of editors, reviewers, authors and RTU Press and set out the process of dealing with cases of unethical behaviour or undisclosed conflicts of interest.
RTU Press Publication Ethics Guidelines are approved and monitored by RTU Ethics Committee (nominated by the Rector of RTU) which provides consultancy and investigates the cases compromising intellectual and ethical standards as well as takes the decisions in accordance with the principles set out in the legal acts of the Republic of Latvia.
1. Duties and responsibilities of Editor-in-Chief of a scientific journal
1.1. Editor-in-Chief ensures that
1.1.1. the journal has clearly defined principles of publishing ethics: the requirements regarding authorship, reviewing process, ethical guidelines, principles of disclosure of conflict of interest;
1.1.2. information on principles of publication ethics is accessible for authors and reviewers;
1.1.3. editors do not allow cases of plagiarism, self-plagiarism, redundant publication and “salami slicing” and see to the authorship issue of papers;
1.1.4. authors, editors and reviewers adhere to the principles of publishing ethics and norms set out in “Latvian Council of Science Code of Researchers’ Ethics”, “RTU Code of Ethics of Students and Personnel” and in Codes of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines of Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE);
1.1.5. authors, editors and reviewers declare conflict of interest.
1.2. Editor-in-Chief should make honest and objective decisions.
The evaluation of manuscript and the decision on publishing should not be biased and influenced by personal reasons (professional, political, ideological, etc.). Possible financial and non-financial conflict of interest
should be assessed and the editor should abstain from the evaluation of the manuscript.
1.3. Editor-in-Chief has the authority to reject a manuscript on grounds of the declared conflict of interest of author, reviewer, or in case the manuscript does not adhere to the of RTU Press Guidelines of Publication Ethics.
1.4. If the Editorial Board of a journal receives a complaint about ethical misconduct the Editor-in-Chief should follow the procedures set out in the RTU Press Guidelines of Publication Ethics and investigate the complaints even if the manuscript has been accepted for publication. Editor-in-Chief should keep all documentation related to the complaints.
1.5. Editor-in-Chief ensures that the selected peer reviewers are free from disqualifying conflict of interests. The publication should not be reviewed by the tutor of a promotional work or by a co-author.
2. Duties and responsibilities of peer reviewers (of journal articles, books and teaching materials)
2.1. Peer reviewer should
2.1.1. assess the academic content, the obtained research results, author’s competence and the scientific significance of the manuscript, and clearly communicate critical comments without being hostile;
2.1.2. ensure that the review is based on the merits of the work and not influenced either positively or negatively, by any financial, or other conflicting considerations or by personal biases (professional, political, religious or ideological);
2.1.3. declare all potential conflicting interests and decline to review the manuscript if he/she is not able to be objective;
2.1.4. notify the editor or publisher if he/she has concerns about ethical aspects of the work or is aware of similarities between the text of the submitted manuscript to another published article;
2.1.5. respect the confidentiality and avoid to use the submitted manuscript for his/her personal benefit;
2.1.6. only agree to review manuscripts which he/she has the subject expertise required to carry out a proper assessment and decline to review if he/she does not have the respective competencies.
3. Ethical guidelines for Authors
3.1. All authors submitting to a RTU Press journal are expected to adhere to the following ethical guidelines:
3.1.1. Authors should adhere to national and international copyright laws and the RTU Press Publication Ethics Guidelines.
3.1.2. Publishing of a manuscript should be agreed with the project manager or leader of the research group and all co-authors.
3.1.3. Using text of publication of another author without reference to the author is qualified as plagiarism and violation of copyright.
3.1.4. Tables, figures or extensive quotations should be reproduced only with appropriate permission from the author or publisher, should be properly acknowledged with reference to the source.
3.1.5. When quoting scientific discoveries, its primary source should be acknowledged. The same research can be used only if the primary source is cited.
3.1.6. Repeated publishing of previously published work is unethical. It does not relate to inclusion in literature overviews.
3.1.7. Authors should ensure that their research is original and has not been published before. Submitting of manuscripts to multiple publishing or simultaneous publishing is considered unethical.
3.1.8. On submission of the manuscript authors should present information about all related and similar publications, including translations, published with other publishers.
3.1.9. Researchers should ensure that only those individuals are rewarded with authorship who have made real and creative and substantial contribution to the research work. Colleagues who have provided technical assistance (e.g. doing standard analysis using standard methods) or to the publication (e.g. prepared figures or did editing) should be listed in the Acknowledgement section. Acknowledgement should be given also to individuals whose comments during the preparation of the manuscript have helped to interpret the results of the research.
3.1.10. Authors should declare all possible financial and/or non-financial conflicts of interest.
4. Responsibilities of RTU Press
4.1. RTU Press is fully committed to ethical publication practice and organizes its work to detect:

• plagiarism;
• self-plagiarism (text recycling of a previously published text);
• redundant publication;
• “salami publication”;
• wrong information about authorship;

4.2. RTU Press monitors the procedure of editors, reviewers and authors declaring possible financial and non-financial conflict of interests in order to ensure the transparency of the publishing process.
4.3. In cases when RTU Press receives complaints or report on ethical misconduct, Head of RTU Press should investigate the complaints and report even if the manuscript has already been accepted for publishing. RTU Press should keep all documents related to complaints.
5. Dealing with cases of suspected misconduct
5.1. In the case of a suspected misconduct, it has to be reported to the Editor-in-Chief of the respective journal or to RTU Press. The reporter should provide grounded proof about the misconduct for it to be investigated.
5.2. Initial investigation is performed by Editor-in-Chief together with RTU Press. Confidentiality should be observed during the process of collecting of confirming proof.
5.3. In case of minor misconduct investigation is not necessary. In any case of discovered misconduct, the author should be given the opportunity to present the explanation.
5.4. In case of a serious breach the Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal in consultation with RTU Press, decides whether to notify the employer of the author or to involve outside experts in further investigation.
5.5. In case of serious misconduct Editor-in-Chief of the journal in consultancy with RTU Press submits the proof of the facts for investigation at RTU Ethics Committee and recommends to take the following steps:
5.5.1. Author or reviewer is given the notice about the misconduct and receives warning in writing;
5.5.2. The scientific journal publishes a notice about the occurred misconduct;
5.5.3. A letter of notice is sent to the employer of the author or reviewer;
5.5.4. The employer of the author or reviewer is sent a letter announcing that the publication is deployed from the scientific journal and the databases indexing it;
5.5.5. Editor-in-Chief in consultancy with RTU Press sets the period of time by which the respective author’s manuscripts will not be accepted for publishing;
5.5.6. A report on the misconduct and consequences is sent to the respective professional organisation and higher institutions for further investigation and action.

See in https://www.rtu.lv/en/research/publications/rtu-press-publication-ethics-guidelines