Editorial Policies & Author Rights

These policies support rigorous, fair, and responsible student inquiry while preserving each author’s freedom to develop the work for future publication.

Developmental review

Submissions normally receive open, developmental feedback from at least three readers drawn from students and teachers. Readers assess clarity, argumentative rigor, engagement with relevant work, accessibility, and fit. Authors may be invited to revise before the editorial team makes a final selection for inclusion. This process is not formal journal peer review.

Preprint status

Foundations is an independent, student-run preprint journal and developmental editorial platform. It is not affiliated with a university, academic publisher, or professional scholarly society. Articles are student preprints, not formally peer-reviewed publications or Versions of Record.

Copyright and display licence

Authors retain full copyright and transfer no ownership to Foundations. Foundations displays a manuscript only with the author’s written consent under a non-exclusive, revocable, non-transferable licence limited to hosting and displaying that submitted version. Foundations will not apply a Creative Commons licence, sublicense, sell, or adapt the manuscript without separate written permission. An author may request withdrawal at any time.

Future submissions

A small number of journals may decline manuscripts previously shared anywhere online. Authors should check every target journal’s current Preprint Policy, disclose the Foundations version when requested, and follow any rules on updating or promoting preprints during double-blind review. Jisc Open Policy Finder may help locate policies, but the target journal’s own current guidance is authoritative. See Jisc Open Policy Finder.

Public anonymity

Authors may ask Foundations to withhold their names from public preprint pages to help preserve anonymity for possible double-blind review. Foundations keeps authorship information privately for correspondence and integrity checks. Withholding a name reduces discoverability but cannot guarantee anonymity once a manuscript has appeared online.

Originality and plagiarism

Authors must distinguish their own contributions from borrowed language and ideas, cite sources accurately, and obtain permission where required. Foundations may decline or withdraw work containing plagiarism, fabricated evidence, misleading attribution, or other serious breaches of scholarly integrity.

Prior sharing

Work previously shared online may be considered when its history is disclosed and the author has the right to share it through Foundations. Any earlier venue or version will be acknowledged when relevant.

Conflicts of interest

Authors, reviewers, and editors should disclose relationships or interests that could reasonably affect editorial judgment. A conflicted reviewer or editor will not participate in the relevant decision.

Versions and withdrawals

Authors may submit revised versions or ask Foundations to withdraw the displayed manuscript. Material changes will be dated. If the work is later formally published, Foundations welcomes the final citation, link, or DOI and will identify that publication as the Version of Record.

Reviewer conduct

Reviewers must respond to arguments rather than identities, offer specific and constructive reasons, respect the author’s intellectual ownership, and keep unpublished work and editorial discussion private unless all participants agree otherwise.

Privacy

Personal information submitted to Foundations is used only for editorial communication, developmental review, public display, and essential record-keeping. Public author pages display names only unless an author affirmatively chooses to provide more information.

AI collaboration

Foundations takes an open approach to AI-assisted scholarship. Authors remain responsible for every claim, citation, and formulation they share. An optional Collaboration Appendix may document how AI assisted, challenged, or redirected the inquiry and may itself contribute intellectual value.