History of Engineering Sciences and Institutions of Higher Education

Focus and Scope

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.

Section Policies

Articles

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Foreword

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Chronology

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

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.

Publication Frequency

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

The scientific journal 8th issue will be published in October 2024.

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

Open Access Policy

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 alida.zigmunde@rtu.lv or ilze.gudro@rtu.lv.

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

Archiving

Publication Ethics Guidelines

Please read RTU Press Publication Ethics Guidelines

Fees and Charges

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

Plagiarism and Copyright Infringement

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.

Conflict of Interest

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).

Editorial Independence

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.

Editorial Responsibilities

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.

Misconduct

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.

Note that if misconduct is suspected during the review process the manuscript will be held until any concerns have been resolved. If misconduct is confirmed during the review process the manuscript will be immediately rejected. If misconduct is proved after publication then the article will be retracted.

Complaints

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.

Author Appeals

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.

Repository Policy

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.