In many aspects of the constitutions, guidelines, access and policies, GLOSSA Contact, sister journal of GLOSSA: General Linguistics (https://www.glossa-journal.org) and GLOSSA: Psycholinguistics (https://escholarship.org/uc/glossapsycholinguistics), follows the practices of our sister journals and the Open Library of Humanities policies. The same applies to our ethics. Below we specially highlight several aspects of particular relevance for GLOSSA Contact. 

Ethical oversight and ethical declarations required of the authors

Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. Where applicable, the studies must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee (for example, the ethics committee of the author's university). Authors are expected to follow their institutional policies for research ethics. For most research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parent or guardian in the case of children under 16).

When reporting such a study, the authors must include an ethics-and-consent statement confirming that the study was approved (or granted exemption) by the appropriate institutional and/or national research ethics committee, including the name of the ethics committee and, where applicable, the reference number of the approval. Such an approval should certify that the study was performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or with comparable ethical standards.

If a study was granted exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be stated (including the reasons for the exemption).

Already at first submission, all information provided in the manuscript and in supplementary materials such as raw data sets should be stripped of identifying details to protect human subjects’ privacy and anonymity.

Peer reviewers are kindly asked to comment on any potential ethical problems perceived within submissions. 

At the time of submission, all authors must disclose sources of funding for the research as well as any conflicts of interest.

Availability of data, scripts, and other research materials should also be described, with links as appropriate. See also the Data policy immediately below. 

Data Policy

In line with the values declared by the Open Library of Humanities, Glossa Contact is committed to a more open research landscape, as well as to facilitating access to research by enabling reproducibility. All original research submitted to Glossa Contact must include a data storage statement. This statement should state how the data supporting the results have been archived, stored, and how they can be accessed if need be. 

Having said this, Glossa Contact acknowledges the unique ethical challenges that working in multilingual settings often brings. When considering how to share the data, we ask the authors to weigh the legitimate interest of the society in having research data openly available and the possible harm that the publication of data might cause to the communities where the authors worked. We encourage the authors to do this evaluation themselves, and to share its results as a part of the submission, even when their applicable legal framework does not require them to obtain a formal ethics committee approval. Glossa Contact retains the right to request to see raw data without however requiring that they be published.

Policy on appeals, complaints, corrections and retractions

Following the practice at the Open Library of Humanities, we will carefully consider complaints, appeals, and requests for correction and retraction, generally in line with the guidance from the Retraction Guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This applies both pre- and post-publication.

Journal Policies on Authorship and Contributorship

Glossa Contact’s guidelines on authorship and contributorship are defined here, in our Authorship policy.