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Journal Policies

MAT is a Diamond Access journal affilliated with the Edinburgh Diamond journal hosting service and hosted on the Library's Open Journal System (OJS) platform. We are committed to following University Library policies, as well as the publication ethics practices specified by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. In addition, these are the processes followed by the MAT journal:

The Peer Review Process

For Research Articles   

Research articles are initially screened by a member of the MAT Editorial Collective to assess whether the piece meets the journal’s relevance and quality thresholds. The author will be informed at this stage whether their article has been rejected or whether it will go on to undergo peer review. In the latter case, the article will usually remain under the oversight of the MAT editor who carried out the initial screening for the duration of the review process. Research articles undergo a double-blind peer review process and are reviewed by at least two reviewers. Some article manuscripts will go through several rounds of external peer reviews

For Section contributions   

Besides Research Articles, MAT publishes several types of Section contributions (Position Pieces, Field Notes, Reviews, Photo Essays). All these submissions are initially screened by the section's editors. Our section editors may work with authors on idea development prior to submission (though this is not a prerequisite for submission) and will be the first and main point of contact for any submitting author. If a section editor considers an idea is promising, the author will be invited to submit their manuscript through the publications system. The section editor will then screen the manuscript and send it out for an external double-blind review to at least one reviewer.

Authors may be invited to suggest reviewers for double-blind external review  throughout the review process. The journal is committed to keeping authors regularly updated about the progress of the review process.   

Authorship Policy 

MAT is committed to inclusive authorship and to recognising all contributions to published articles. We are aware that the process of undertaking research and preparing publications in the field of medical anthropology is often collaborative, involving multiple people in different roles. These might include initial conception and framing of a research project, acquisition of funding, development of methodological approach and research protocols, literature reviews, data collection, analysis, writing of drafts, and feedback and contribution to drafts written by others. In determining and declaring authorship and contributions to an article, we ask that authors follow these guidelines: 

  1. The roles and contributions of all authors should be clearly stated on the Authorship statement in the final accepted manuscript (see Author guidelines). It is the responsibility of authors to determine order of authorship, but we encourage decisions on the order to reflect the degree of contribution. 
  2. When determining co-authors, we ask lead authors to be mindful of the benefits of diversity in authorship and to consider inviting co-authors who reflect diversity in every sense, including (but not limited to) background, career-stage, gender, geography, “ethnicity”, and “race”. All authors will be asked to providea statement of author contribution after the acceptance of a publication.
  3. We encourage collaboration and co-authorship with colleagues in the locations where research is conducted.  
  4. Anthropological research methods, including ethnographic research, often blur the lines between data collection and analysis. Where researchers involved in data collection have made a substantial contribution to the ideas and argument included in an article we encourage their inclusion as authors, even where it has not been possible for them to contribute to the drafting and revising of the manuscript.   
  5. All non-author contributions to the article should be credited in the acknowledgements. These might include some forms of data collection; supervision of a research group or administrative support; writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, or proofreading. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship should be acknowledged individually and their contributions specified. Acknowledgment of contribution to a study does not indicate contributors’ endorsement of data and conclusions. 
  6. All authors must agree to be jointly accountable for the article. 

Corresponding Author Responsibilities 

The corresponding author takes responsibility for all correspondence with the MAT team and any queries following publication.   

Publication Frequency

MAT published two issues a year: in April and September. Additional special issues and special sections may be published up to two times per year.  

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content under a CREATIVE COMMONS licence, on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Authors are not charged any APCs (Article Processing Charges) or other publication fees.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. More information on Creative Commons licences.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
  4. Authors are required to make sure submitted content does not infringe third-party copyright. Authors must obtain permission to reproduce any third-party material for online – and print, if applicable – publication in perpetuity. It is also the authors’ responsibility to include any acknowledgements requested by copyright holders, and to mark clearly third-party material used with permission, material that has separate licensing terms, and material used under exceptions or limitations to copyright. More information is available from the UK's Intellectual Property Office and Creative Commons.

Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse articles published in this journal, provided that reuse is in line with the article’s Creative Commons licence and attribution to the author(s) and the published article is maintained. Please note that these terms do not extend to any material that has separate licensing terms specified or any material that is identified as being the copyright of a third party. Permission to reproduce third-party material must be obtained directly from the copyright holders concerned.

Indexing

Each Research Article, Position Piece, Photo Essay, Field Notes, and Book Review published at this journal is assigned a unique DOI code. MAT is currently indexed by the DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals, the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE), the Anthropological Index Online, the Anthropological Literature database (hosted by Harvard University), CABI, JournalTOCs, ERIH PLUS, and Sherpa Romeo. The editors are in the process of applying to have the journal indexed and included by further indexers including PubMed and Web of Science. This webpage will be updated as further approvals are made. 

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.

Take Down Policy

Journals on the University Library’s platform are strongly encouraged to make every effort to ensure that published content does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws.

Should you discover content in this journal that you believe to be illegal, or infringes any of your statutory rights, you may contact the Scholarly Communications team at the University Library, who will review the complaint.

On receipt of your complaint, the Scholarly Communications Team will:

  1.  Make an initial assessment of its validity
  2.  Acknowledge receipt of the complaint by email
  3.  For all but spurious complaints, cease access to the item that is subject to complaint
  4.  Refer the complaint to the University's Legal Advisor for comment and advice
  5.  Seek to verify your identity and authority as complainant.

When the Service Manager has verified the authenticity of your complaint and has been advised that it is ostensibly legitimate, the article will be removed from public access, leaving behind the article abstract.

If the Legal Advisor confirms that it does not breach any law then the item will be reinstated.

Please contact:

Scholarly Communications Team, Edinburgh University Library
Floor F East, Argyle House
3 Lady Lawson Street
Edinburgh
EH3 9DR

Email: edinburgh.diamond@ed.ac.uk

Please note the Library is staffed 9–5pm Monday–Friday

Journal Sponsorship

This open access journal is supported by:  

MAT does not accept any advertising.  

Privacy and Consent Policy

The data collected from registered and non-registered users of this journal falls within the scope of the standard functioning of peer-reviewed journals. It includes information that makes communication possible for the editorial process; it is used to inform readers about the authorship and editing of content; it enables collecting aggregated data on readership behaviours, as well as tracking geopolitical and social elements of scholarly communication.

This journal’s editorial team uses this data to guide its work in publishing and improving this journal. Data that will assist in developing this journal platform (Open Journal Systems – OJS) may be shared with its developer Public Knowledge Project (PKP) in an anonymized and aggregated form, with appropriate exceptions such as article metrics. The data will not be sold by this journal or PKP nor will it be used for purposes other than those stated here.

Registered users

Users who register with this journal, including authors and peer reviewers where applicable, consent to their personal information being stored in the University’s journal hosting platform (OJS) and processed by the platform and journal editorial teams.

Authors

Authors who make a submission to this journal consent to the personal information they supply as part of the submission being stored in the University’s journal hosting platform (OJS) and processed by the platform and journal editorial teams. Authors who make a submission have the responsibility to ensure that all contributors have read this Privacy and Consent policy and consent to having their personal information that is supplied as part of the submission process being stored in the University’s journal hosting platform (OJS) and processed by the platform and journal editorial teams. Authors published in this journal are also responsible for the human subject data that figures in the research reported in the journal.

Website visitors

The University’s journal hosting platform (OJS) collects anonymised usage log data, including IP addresses, pages visited, date visited, browser information, and geographical data. This information is not used to identify visitors personally and it is not used for any purpose other what is described here. The platform also uses cookies to manage session history and provide a better user experience – more details can be found on the Cookies information page.

Rights of the Individual

Those involved in editing this journal seek to be compliant with industry standards for data privacy, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provision for “data subject rights” that include (a) breach notification; (b) right of access; (c) the right to be forgotten; (d) data portability; and (e) privacy by design. The GDPR also allows for the recognition of “the public interest in the availability of the data,” which has a particular saliency for those involved in maintaining, with the greatest integrity possible, the public record of scholarly publishing.

All users whose details are stored in the University’s OJS installation can exercise their rights of the individual, as they are detailed in the GDPR.

If you have a user account and wish to have it deleted, please email Edinburgh University Library at edinburgh.diamond@ed.ac.uk.