Policies

Who Can Submit?

Anyone may submit an original article to be considered for publication in JOTE provided he or she owns the copyright to the work being submitted or is authorized by the copyright owner or owners to submit the article. Authors are the initial owners of the copyrights to their works (an exception in the non-academic world to this might exist if the authors have, as a condition of employment, agreed to transfer copyright to their employer).

Copyright & Permissions

All articles published in JOTE are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Authors retain all copyrights without restrictions, and agree to the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license for their work as a condition of publication.

End users' rights under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license are outlined here. For all other purposes, permission must be obtained from the author.

Open Access

JOTE is committed to providing truly open access information for the public to benefit from knowledge shared by authors who publish in JOTE.  JOTE is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of all articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.

Review Process

Each manuscript submitted to JOTE will be reviewed by at least one member of the Editorial Board to determine if it aligns with the mission, aims, and scope of the journal. Those manuscripts approved for further consideration will undergo an anonymous review by two to three reviewers who are experts in occupational therapy education and/or occupational science education. Authors can expect reviews to be completed within approximately 10-15 weeks. Authors will receive their reviews along with a letter from the editor stating the decision from review: accepted, accepted with minor changes, major changes required, or rejected. Rejected articles are not eligible for resubmission to JOTE unless specified by the editor. When the decision is to revise, authors should make the recommended changes and resubmit the manuscript within 30 days or the date specified by the editor to continue toward publication. An extension may be requested. The Editor and Editorial Board make the final decision regarding publication of papers and reserve the right to refuse manuscripts for publication.

If you are interested in becoming a reviewer for JOTE, please email your name, educational research interests/ expertise, and CV or resume to journaloteducation@gmail.com.  JOTE authors are automatically added to the reviewer list. 

Publication Ethics

JOTE takes instances of plagiarism, copyright infringement, and other ethical breaches related to publication very seriously. The journal may use Similarity Check, a multi-publisher initiative, to selectively screen article submissions for originality. Similarity Check uses the iThenticate software, which checks submissions against millions of published research papers (the Similarity Check database), documents on the web, and other relevant sources. These submitted papers are not retained in the Similarity Check system after they have been checked. Read more at Crossref's Similarity Check & Researchers page. When ethical breaches related to publication occur, JOTE reserves the right to take action including but not limited to the following: publishing a correction, retracting an article, or presenting the matter to relevant academic bodies or institutions.

Artificial Intelligence: Author Guidance and Disclosure

AI tools to improve language, grammar, spelling, punctuation, or structure do not require disclosure by authors or reviewers.

Authors must disclose if they used AI to produce content for the manuscript, including references, text, and images, to compile literature or sources, or to translate materials as part of the research process. Authors must disclose if they used AI in any way that impacted the research methods, including analysis, results, and conclusions. The use of AI to code or analyze data should be carefully detailed. The use of AI in these instances should be disclosed in the cover letter during submission as well as described in the manuscript, including a description of how AI was used and what tools were used. Authors are responsible for all material submitted so should carefully vet the submission for accuracy. Authors are responsible to confirm there is no plagiarism in their submission, including in text and images produced by AI.

If the editor becomes aware that AI was inappropriately used in the preparation of a submission, the editor reserves the right to reject the submission at any time during the publishing process.  

Charges & Fees

JOTE levies no submission charges, or charges or fees for publication of accepted articles.