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Author Guidelines

Central European Public Administration Review - CEPAR publishes original scientific papers on theoretical and practical issues in the development and function of public administration. All articles are published only in English. Papers should report significant advances of the state-of-the-art and the results should represent substantial progress toward improving our understanding of the public administration. Papers will be evaluated for the relevance and significance of the contribution, novelty, scientific approach rigor, clarity and understandability. First evaluation is done by editorial board, all those papers passing the first screening will proceed to the double-blind peer review process.

Before submitting a manuscript, an author is requested to read these guidelines and publication ethics policy regarding processing and publication of the manuscript. The author has the right to complaint and ask for the explanation if he perceives any misconduct in any applicable policies and ethical guidelines.
Further information about author's complaint process can be found <here>.

1. FURTHER SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:
Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting or, if already registered, can simply log in and begin the five-step process. Additional queries and information: cepar@fu.uni-lj.si
The papers filename should be the short-abbreviated title (e.g., Local.doc).

CEPAR is an open access journal and does not charge readers or their institutions for access to the journal articles. The open access supports the rights of users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles provided they are properly acknowledged and cited. There is no article processing fee charged to the authors and all articles are immediately available on the journal website once published. Permitted reuse is defined by the following user license:  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND). The authors retain the copyright in addition to the scholarly usage rights and the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Public Administration receives the publication and distribution rights.

All the published articles are rigorously double blind peer-reviewed and screened with plagiarism detection tools (Turnitin); content match of less than 20% is considered acceptable. Reviews are delivered promptly. Accepted papers are published in approximately three to six months from submission.

The submission policy for previously published conference papers (simultaneous submission): Authors may submit previously published conference paper ONLY if the the paper has been substantially revised (this generally means that at least 30% of the paper is a material not previously published).

Under no circumstances shall a paper be simultaneously submitted to a second publication while still under review elsewhere, without a letter of notification to the Editor-in-Chief. Failure to adhere to this policy is cause for rejection of the manuscript.

IMPORTANT NOTES:
1.    Please follow the Editorial policy and ethics of CEPAR and Instructions for the Reviewers which represent the major criteria for the final review of your paper.
2.    Self-citations are discouraged. 
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2. ARTICLE FORMATTING
Papers should include a Title (recommended length is up to 12 words), an Abstract (appropriately structured as set out below and up to 500 words), Keywords (up to 6), JEL classification codes, and the following sections if possible (as suggested by IMRaD format): Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, References and/or Appendices (if needed). Appendices are permitted, but limited to information that is not essential for the general understanding of the research presented in the main manuscript.

The paper must be formatted on A4 paper – portrait layout – with the following margins: left, right, top: 2.5 cm; bottom: 3 cm. Do not add page numbering.

>>PAPER TEMPLATE<<

1. TITLE:
The title describes the content of the paper.
The article's title should be followed by:
a) the full name of the author/authors;
b) the name of the institution/institutions,
c) country
d) email address(es)
e) personal ORCID Identifier (please register here, if you don't have an ORCID Identifier yet).

Note that the data on authors will be removed from the manuscript prior to the peer-review process.

2.  ABSTRACT – KEY WORDS, JEL:
The article must also include: a) an abstract; b) key words: up to 6 (small letters), and c) a JEL (Journal of Economic Literature) code – https://www.aeaweb.org/econlit/jelCodes.php
An abstract is the integral part of the paper. It gives a brief summary of the paper and defines its content. Please note that abstract should be structured, set out under 5-8 sub-headings:

  • Purpose (mandatory);
  • Design/methodology/approach (mandatory);
  • Findings (mandatory);
  • Academic contribution to the field (mandatory);
  • Research limitations/implications (if applicable);
  • Practical implications (if applicable);
  • Social implications (if applicable);
  • Originality/significance/value (mandatory).

Abstract does NOT contain: tables, figures, bibliographic information.

3. TITLE AND SUBTITLES:
Main Title – size 12 – bold
Section titles  – size 12 - bold
Subsection titles and content – size 10 – regular

4. NUMBERING – SECTIONS AND SUB-SECTIONS:
Please follow the below example:
1 Public administration reform in Germany
1.1 Issues

5. FORMAT, FONTS, AND SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL:
An article must be submitted only in MS Word format (*.doc, *.docx) with single spacing, without special or highlighted characters. Do not indent paragraphs. Sections should be titled and numbered with Arabic numerals from the introduction to the conclusion.

Figures and tables mentioned in the article should be included in the text. They should be titled and numbered with Arabic numerals. Do not use different types of formatting for different rows or columns unless you would like to differentiate between headings and body text. The journal is published in black and white, so the original of figures and graphs should not be in colour. If the figures or tables of other authors are used in the article, give the reference below the figure or table or as a footnote. Equations should be numbered in brackets to the right of the equation.

Do not use tabs, headers, or footers. Do not use bullets or numbering, but use non-automatic Arabic numerals.

The tables and other graphs can also be submitted separately in other formats – JPG, TIFF, XLS, etc. If images are rasterized, 300dpi original (not interpolated) resolution should be used.

Use TIMES NEW ROMAN font.

6. LANGUAGE:
The journal publishes papers only in English.
Final manuscript should be between 6,000 and 9,000 words in length. This includes all text including references and appendices.
Authors are responsible for the language editing of the submitted article.

7. DATES:
Always use the form: day – month – year
Example: 10 February 2020

8.       RULES OF CITATIONS AND REFERENCES:
These rules are representing the requirements for the acceptance of the article. All references need to be numbered. Authors should use approximately 20 % of references indexed in the database Web of Science or Scopus.
All in-text citations and reference lists should be formatted following the examples presented below. These guidelines should, wherever there is doubt about the standard to be used in issues not considered here, be supplemented by the Harvard Reference Style Guide.

>>Citation of Research Data:
The author of the manuscript is obliged to cite the research data in the same way as other sources: within the text or under graphs, tables and in the list, where he lists the sources and literature used in the article. The same should apply when the author presents research data of his research in a manuscript. Author should follow the recommendations regarding the citation of data by the repository where they submitted the data.

The reference to the data source should, therefore, include the following information:

  1. author or authors of research data,
  2. publication year of the research data in the data repository,
  3. title of the study and its resulting data,
  4. a persistent identifier (PID) used by the repository.

Sources must be numbered and listed in alphabetical order by the author surnames or by the publication title in the case of anonymous authors. Units of referenced sources must not be grouped/divided by specific resource types. The examples of sources listed below are grouped by type to facilitate the preparation of your bibliography.

- Example – citation (also for research data):
(Klun, 2020, p. 7) or (Klun, 2020, pp. 7-9) for single-author publications,
(Rakar and Tičar , 2017, p. 7) for two authors,
(Aristovnik et al., 2016, p. 7) for three and more authors.
Citations to multiple works are combined as follows: (Kovač, 2020, p. 7; Pečarič, 2019, p. 70; Nemec, 2001, p. 101).
Author of GenAI model, year of the version used.

The references section should include a complete list of all citations in the manuscript and vice-versa, all reference items listed should be cited in the manuscript.

- Example of a reference item in the reference section:
Bouckaert, G. and Werner, J. (2020). European perspectives for public administration : the way forward. Leuven: Leuven University.

-Example of a reference of a research data:
Social Science Data Archive. (2020).  After Using our research data. At<http://adp.fdv.uni-lj.si/eng/uporabi/po_uporabi/>, accessed 1 May 2020. 

- Example – footnote reference:
If your paper is a revised version of the paper presented at certain previous conference or the part of a certain project, please add a footnote following the example:
This article is a revised version of the paper entitled ‘The future of public administration', presented at the TED conference, Ljubljana, 30 January–1 February 2019.
Or:
This article is a result of the project 'Administrative law in action', No. 123/2018, supported by the Slovenian Research Agency.

- Books:
Last name, First initial. (Year published). Title. Edition. (Only include the edition if it is not the first edition) City published: Publisher.

Example: Kovač, P. and Bileišis, M. (eds.) (2017). Public Administration Reforms in Eastern EU Member States. Ljubljana, Vilnius: Faculty of Administration of University of Ljubljana, Mykolas Romeris University Lithuania.
 
- Print Journal articles:
Last name, First initial. (Year published). Article title. Journal, Volume (Issue), Page(s).

Example: Magliari, A. (2019). Intensity of Judicial Review of the European Central Banks's Supervisory Decisions. Central European Public Administration Review, 17(2), pp. 73-88. https://doi.org/10.17573/cepar.2019.2.04.
 
- Chapters in compilations and edited volumes:
Last name, First initial. (Year published). Chapter title. In: First initial. Last name, ed., Book Title. City: Publisher, Page(s).

Example: Jovanović, T. (2019). Public sector accounting, auditing and control in Slovenia. In V. Vašiček and G. Roje, eds., Public sector accounting, auditing and control in South Eastern Europe. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 123–153.
 
- Documents of international organizations:
EU Documents
Directive 7/23/EC, OJ L 181, 9.7.1997, p. 1.
Regulation (EC) no. 2027/95
 
- Other Documents:
For all other documents, follow the official style as used by the organisation itself.

-  Internet (url):
When articles, books, or official documents are accessed via the internet, the reference should be formatted as described above; Full URL. where the document is posted should be listed as well as the date when it was accessed.
Example: Popescu, I. (2019). Land use planning. At <http://www.primariaclujnapoca.ro/>, accessed 1 April 2019.

- National Official Documents:
For all national official documents, follow the official style as used by the relevant national body itself.

- The use of AI (Artifical Inteligence) model:
Author of the GenAI model used. (year of the GenAI model used). Name of GenAI model used (Version of GenAI model used) [Type or description of GenAI model used]. Web address of the GenAI model used.
Example: OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT (April 20 version) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/ 

 Last revision: 1 August 2024.

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  • The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
  • The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
  • Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
  • The text is single-spaced; uses a 10-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.
  • The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines.
  • If submitting to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions in Ensuring a Blind Review have been followed.

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