About the Journal

The Northumbria Student Journal is a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal dedicated to the promotion and publication of multidisciplinary student-led research. Devoted to providing a platform for showcasing excellence in intellectual and creative inquiry, the journal features both academic and creative work from across Northumbria University

Submissions are now open for Northumbria University students!

Vision and Scope

The Northumbria Student Journal is a firm believer in the intellectual fervour of students. Established with the aim to nurture student writing and offer them a worthy foray into academic and creative publishing, the NUSJ submissions are peer-reviewed and selected in-keeping with industry standards.

The NUSJ is multidisciplinary in its scope and informative in its publication process. Dealing with a wide array of fields, the journal caters to the nuances of both academic and creative writing by providing valuable peer-reviews and offering instructive guidelines to the authors.

We aspire to be synonymous with the highest standard of student-led writing and publishing, a haven for aspiring scholars and authors.

Peer Review Process

All submissions made to the Northumbria Student Journal are peer-reviewed through a double-blind review process. The process conceals the author’s and the reviewer’s identity from each other to ensure utmost objectivity and professionalism. The NUSJ endorses that good research is informed, unbiased and holistic, and so aims to preserve these qualities in its published material through careful reviewing.

Faculty and students interested in becoming peer reviewers for the journal are welcomed.

Open Access Policy

The Northumbria Student Journal articles are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 license (see more). The authors retain full copyright to the work they produce.

Following the acceptance of a submission you are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Under the following terms:

Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Research Data

Authors are encouraged to make all data, necessary to replicate their findings, publically available at the time of publication. Authors should include a data access statement in their submission and indicate how others may obtain access to their data. Data availability statements will be published as part of the article.

Where ethical, legal or other reasons prevent the sharing of the dataset the authors must detail this and indicate how others may access the data.

Preprints

NUSJ encourages preprinting and will accept articles previously available as preprints. Authors should declare on submission that their manuscript is available as a pre print and provide a link from their preprinted work to the published article in NUSJ.

Copyright

Third party materials

Authors are expected to ensure any third party material used in their submission can be shared under a CC BY license. You should provide proof that the material is in the public domain or available under another compatable open license. If this is not the case you will need to provide written permission from the copyright holder allowing you to use and publish the work.

Author rights retention

Authors retain their copyright in any work submitted.

Ethics and Misconduct

Northumbria Journals is committed to ensuring high ethical standards across all publications, author lists should reflect the roles and responsibilities set out in our submission guidance.

All authors, peer reviewers and editors are expected to declare any conflict of interest relating to any submitted work. This may include financial interests, including employment, funding or personal financial interest. Authors should disclose any membership of relevant organisations.

The publication takes seriously any allegation of misconduct. Cases should be brought to the attention of the editor in chief for investigation.

AI Authoring Tools & Authorship Policy

The advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) authoring tools (eg, ChatGPT, GPT-3) presents academic scholarship with unique challenges. Recently, several stories concerning the attribution of authorship to AI authoring tools have circulated (1). In concordance with the recommendations of other publishers, it is our position that an AI authoring tool does not meet the standards required for authorship as defined elsewhere (2). Specifically, it is recommended that every author be “…accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.” (2). We do not believe that AI Authoring tools meet this standard.

In agreement with the position of the Committee on Publication Ethics (3), we endorse the following recommendation, and suggest that Instructions for Authors be updated accordingly:

Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.

References

Archiving

The journal offers secure digital preservation by utilizing the LOCKSS system. It enables the establishment of a distributed archiving network across participating libraries. This grants libraries the authority to develop enduring archives of the journal, serving preservation and restoration objectives.