Reviewing

The texts to be published in Zapiski Historyczne that are subjected to the full double-blind peer review process include original scholarly articles, review articles, source editions and discussion articles. Book reviews are not examined by external reviewers. Their quality, compliance with the profile of the journal and publication ethics are verified by the editorial staff.

Reviewing process:

1. After a text has been submitted to the editorial staff, it is initially assessed by its members. The text must meet formal criteria, i.e., it must be prepared in accordance with the editorial guidelines, have a volume determined by the guidelines, and contain all the necessary elements (complete metadata, bibliography). A text that does not meet the basic academic and formal requirements is returned to the author with a notification of its rejection or the need to make corrections.
2. After a preliminary assessment, the text is sent for evaluation by at least two independent reviewers who do not belong to the institution to which the author of the text is affiliated.
3. The text is submitted to the process of double-blind peer review. This means that the author of the text does not know the identity of the reviewers, and those reviewers do not know about being given the same text, and do not know the identity of the author of the reviewed work.
4. In order to avoid potential conflicts of interest, reviewers are selected in a way that ensures no personal relationship (e.g. kinship, affinity, legal relationship) between the reviewer and the author of the reviewed work. Moreover, there must be no professional mentor-student relationship or direct scholarly cooperation between the reviewer and the author in the two-year period prior the publication of the text.
5. The review is in a written form and consists of a descriptive part and evaluation marks expressed as percentages. Each review should end with a substantiated argumentation and an unambiguous conclusion on whether the text should be rejected or accepted for publication, which is reflected in the final evaluation mark expressed as a percentage (i.e. the sum of partial evaluation marks).
6. In the case of two negative reviews, the text is rejected by the editorial staff.
7. In the case of one negative and one positive review, the editorial staff may appoint a third external reviewer to prepare another double-blind peer review, or appoint one of the members of the editorial staff to evaluate the text and the validity of the comments contained in both reviews and present them to the editorial staff so that they can make a decision.
8. Obtaining two positive reviews and accepting the text for publication does not remove from the author the obligation to correct any formal or scholarly deficiencies that may be found during editorial work.
9. The final decision on accepting a text for publication or rejecting it is always taken by the editorial staff.

All texts submitted for publication in Zapiski Historyczne are checked for potential plagiarism using the Similarity Check service provided by Crossref and based on the iThenticate text comparison software.