About Journal

Journal goals and scope

RIC is dedicated to promoting the distribution of important scholarly work at all levels: faculty/researchers, policymakers, economic professionals and other leading intellectuals studying innovation and competitiveness both on the micro and macro levels. The Journal is interested in both theoretical and applied research with an emphasis on topics in international trade, factors conditions, demand conditions, firm strategy, structure and rivalry, human resource endowments, R&D capabilities, new technology adoption, managerial and organizational factors, models and process of innovation, innovation law and policy, innovation networks, technical change, marketing innovation, clusters and networks and other topics falling within the field of economics of innovation.

  • RIC is not tied to any particular strand of theory, academic discipline, or subject of research in the field of economic science investigating the economics of innovation and competitiveness.
  • RIC will endeavor to provide concise and accessible reviews on the most important technical and socio-economic factors driving information technology industries.

In pursuit of its program, RIC will try to explain what is happening in the race for global innovation advantage, explain the economic decline in the most developed economies of the 21st century, change and dynamics in the innovation and innovation policies worldwide, building innovation advantage in order to overcome barriers to innovation.

Open access

Articles are available online to a wide audience. There is no publication fee for the online open-access publication.

There is no subscription fee for the Journal's online version. The online version of this Journal is open-access. The content is freely available without charge to the user. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, as long as they cite the source.

Financing

Journal is published with the help of the Ministry of Science and Education.

Author's fees

There are no article submission/ publication fee charges for authors. 

Copyright

Copyright allows authors to protect original material. We use Creative Commons licenses when publishing: Attribution (CC BY).

Others can distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon this work, even commercially, as long as they credit the original creation.

Subscribers are allowed to reproduce parts of the article but only with appropriate reference to the paper/ journal. Other forms of resale, derivative work, publication, or compilations as well as translations are not allowed without credit to the authors and publisher.

Authors are allowed to use their published articles for personal promotion in academic society (such as uploading the paper to academic social networks or formal databases). If authors wish to replicate parts of their paper published in RIC, they have to include the appropriate reference.

Copyright Agreement

Upon the paper's acceptance, the authors will be asked to sign a Copyright agreement. With the signed agreement, the authors guarantee that:

  • that their article is original, has not been formally published previously, and is not currently under consideration for publishing
  •  the authors have taken due care and attention to ensure the integrity of the research reported in this article
  •  the article does not misrepresent any facts
  •  if the authors have any competing interests or other conflicts that may bias their article (e.g., financial support), those are fully disclosed to the editors and within the article
  •  their article contains no violation of any existing copyright or other third-party right or any material of a libelous, confidential, or otherwise unlawful nature
  • the authors have obtained permission for and acknowledged the source of any illustrations, diagrams, or other material included in the article of which authors are not the copyright owners
  •  the authors will indemnify and keep indemnified the editor and the publisher against all claims and expenses (including legal costs and expenses) arising from any breach of this warranty and the other warranties on their behalf in this agreement
  • all co-authors of this article are aware of and in agreement with the terms of this agreement and that the submitted manuscript has been approved by these authors.

By signing the agreement, the corresponding author agrees on behalf of any co-authors to their work being published in the Review of Innovation and Competitiveness, Open Access, and licensed under a Creative Commons License 4.0.

For authors that are not copyright owners in the work (for example government employees), please contact us at fet-ric@unipu.hr to make alternative agreements.

Ethics in publishing

Peer - reviewed process is the base of the current academic community. It reflects the quality of the papers and their authors’ knowledge. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. So, it is important to agree regarding the standards of expected ethics in publishing. The submitted paper must be the original authors' work.

Duties of authors: originality of the submitted paper, authorship of a submitted paper, acknowledgment of sources, avoiding disclosure and conflicts of interest (including any financial, personal, or other relationships that could inappropriately influence or be perceived to influence other persons or organizations negatively), avoid fundamental errors in papers, avoid multiple/ concurrent submissions and publications, respect reporting standards.

Submitted paper must have not been previously published (except in the form of an abstract or conference abstract), and not submitted for publication elsewhere. Also, the submitted paper must be approved by all authors (if there is more than one author). If the paper is accepted, it will not be published anywhere else in the same form in any language without the consent of the copyright holder. By submitting the paper, the authors accept all stated terms.

Duties of reviewers: contribution to editorial decision, check the originality of the paper, check the quality of the paper, submit quality and useful comments for authors, objectivity, confidentiality, and avoid conflict of interest. The duties of reviewers are explained in detail in The Guide for Reviewers. Along with the review request, the reviewers will receive an anonymized paper and Review form. The reviewers may choose the following evaluation and recommendation for the paper: Excellent, accept as is; Good, accept with minor revisions; Acceptable, revisions required; Encourage resubmission after the work is more developed; and Reject. The reviewers are asked to assess the paper category: Original scientific paper; Preliminary scientific paper; Scientific Review; Not a scientific paper. In addition, the reviewers are asked to evaluate the following elements of the paper: Title adequacy, Abstract adequacy, Appropriateness of the article structure, Clarity of writing, Readability, Clarity of hypotheses/ research goal, Soundness and appropriateness of methodology, Appropriateness of result/ findings presentation, Legitimacy of conclusions, Theme popularity, Contribution to the field, Adequacy of literature review. Besides the stated, reviewers are encouraged to provide insightful and specific comments for the paper's improvement.

Duties of editors: making fair publication decisions, assigning reviewers, promptly notifying the authors of the reviewer’s opinion, involvement in final paper publication adjustments but not more than 10% of the submitted paper, confidentiality.

Double-blind peer review

Review of Innovation and Competitiveness uses double-blind review, which means that the identities of the authors are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa. To enable this, it is necessary to distinguish the Submission template and the Final paper template. The submission Template should be submitted without the author’s name (there is a cover letter template that authors should fill in with personal data). The accompanying Cover letter should contain complete authors' information (authors' full names, institutions, institutional address, and e-mail of the corresponding author). The final paper template should be submitted after the author is notified about paper's acceptance by the editors. For details, check the templates - pack. Before submitting the paper, please read The Guide for Authors.

The publication process

Paper preparation

The first step is to properly prepare the manuscript according to the Journal Template and Guide for Authors. In case of ambiguity, please check previously published papers.

In order to ensure double-blind peer-review, papers must not be published as a pre-print or working paper online. If a pre-print or working paper was published online, we cannot guarantee double-blind review, hence must reject such papers.

Paper submission

The prepared manuscript, along with the Cover letter, should be submitted via e-mail to fet-ric@unipu.hr. For e-mail subject/title, please write RIC submission - paper title.

First decision

The authors may expect to receive the first decision on the manuscript in a week (on average). After the first decision, the paper will be assigned a code. In 2020, the rejection rate in this stage was 13.33 %, and in 2021 it was 11.11%.

Review process

If the paper fits the scope (first decision) and is prepared according to the Template and Guidelines, it will be forwarded to the review process. If the paper is not prepared according to the Template and Guidelines, it will be sent back to the authors with the request for proper paper preparation and will be forwarded to the review process after providing the adjusted version of the paper.

After receipt of the reviewers' comments, the authors will receive an e-mail with both reviewers' comments and evaluations. If the two reviews differ by much, the paper will be forwarded to the third reviewer (and the authors will receive an e-mail after three reviews have been obtained).

In 2020, 100 % of the submitted papers (with assigned codes) were forwarded to the second round of reviews. The time from the submission to the online publication varies and depends on the paper's quality, the time required for obtaining the reviews, the necessary revisions, and the time required for the authors to provide those revisions. If both reviews are negative i.e., suggest rejection or rejection and resubmission, the paper will not be processed further. For any other reviewer recommendation except for "Excellent, accept as is" and "Good, accept with minor revisions", the paper will be sent back to the reviewer for the second round of review after the authors provide a revised paper.

The average submission/publication time in 2022 was 88 weeks.

Editorial decision

The papers will be accepted for publishing after receiving two positive reviews and confirmation from the Editors. The authors may still be asked by the Editors to provide some changes.

For all papers submitted in 2021 and after, no more than two rounds of reviews will be provided and the final decision on the paper will be made by the journal Editors.

The rejection rate after the review process was 40 % in 2020, and 28 % in 2021.

Publishing paper online

Upon the paper's acceptance, the authors will be asked to provide a signed Agreement. After the authors provide a signed agreement, the paper will be forwarded to production. The average time between the acceptance and publishing of the paper online is two weeks. The average submission - publication time was 62 weeks in 2021 and 82 weeks in 2022.

Printed issue

Since 2019, Review of Innovation and Competitiveness publishes one issue per year with continuous online-first publishing of individual papers. The print issue is published at the end of the year.


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