AIM AND SCOPE

The Intergovernmental Research and Policy Journal (IRPJ) is a unique interdisciplinary peer-reviewed and open access journal published by an academic intergovernmental institution (EUCLID) with other intergovernmental organizations in mind.

Its aim is to disseminate research that may have policy implications for intergovernmental bodies, which are specifically listed as “tags” in the header of each article.

IRPJ authors can be assured that their research will be widely visible on account of the trusted Internet visibility of its “.int” domain which virtually guarantees first page results on matching keywords (.int domains are only assigned by IANA to treaty-based organizations and are recognized as trusted authorities by search engines).

In addition to its “.int” domain, IRPJ is published under an approved ISSN for intergovernmental organizations (“international publisher”) status (used by United Nations, World Bank, European Space Agency, etc.)

IRJP is associated and affiliated with:

1. EUCLID (Euclid University), with headquarters in Bangui and Banjul
2. IOSD (International Organization for Sustainable Development)

JOURNAL FEATURES

IRPJ also offers the following features:

• Fast review time, with the objective to review and possibly approve submissions within five business days
• Minimal processing fees with waivers for designated countries
• Ongoing publication of approved articles to ensure optimal submission-to-publication timeframe, with quarterly publication of official issues
• Dedicated editors to work with Ph.D. students.

PUBLICATION SCHEDULE

For individual articles: ongoing approval and publication

For official (compiled) IRPJ issues: Quarterly (March 31, June 30, September 30 and December 20)

ARTICLE PROFILES

Authors must carefully read and comply with the author guidelines, which include:

• Using the approved Word template
• Specifying a thematic category (see below)
• Specifying a list of relevant intergovernmental organizations (from ICANN list, which is not absolutely comprehensive)
• Making reference to intergovernmental implications in recommendations and/or conclusions.

THEMATIC CATEGORIES

Submitted articles must be assigned to one of our approved thematic categories, namely:

• International Public Health (relevant to WHO, PAHO, UNICEF, etc.)
• Diplomacy and International Affairs (relevant to UN, EU, ECOWAS, etc.)
• Global Economics and Sustainable Development (including Climate Change) (relevant to IMF, WB, UN, etc.)
• Mediation and Interfaith Studies (relevant to UN, UNESCO, OIC, etc.)
• International Public Administration (relevant to CAFRAD, IMF, WB, ECOWAS, EU, etc.)
• Islamic Finance and Economics (relevant to OIC, IMF, WB, ECOWAS, etc.)
• International Law and Treaty Law (relevant to UN, etc.)

OPEN ACCESS STATEMENT

IRJP complies with the Budapest Open Access Initiative’s definition of Open Access. Accordingly, the journal allow readers to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of its articles and allow readers to use them for any other lawful purpose.

CONTENT LICENSING

At IRPJ, the entire content of all present and past journals is immediately and permanently accessible online free of charge and published under the CC-BY license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original authors and the source are credited.

IMPACT FACTOR(S)

Like DOAJ, IRPJ does not believe in the value of impact factors, discourages their use on journal web sites, does not recognise partial impact factors, and advocates other alternative measure of use such as article level metrics.

There is only one official, universally recognised impact factor that is generated by Thomson Reuters; it is a proprietary measure run by a profit-making organisation. This runs against the ethics and principles of open access, for which reason DOAJ and IRPJ are impact-factor agnostic. IRPJ does not collect metadata on impact factors. IRPJ does not intend to display impact factors on its home page as it and DOAJ perceive this as an attempt to lure authors in a dishonest way.

SUMMARY

In summary, IRPJ is:

• A peer-reviewed, editor-managed and open access academic journal
• An interdisciplinary journal with a unique and specific emphasis on intergovernmental policy
• Highly ‘search-findable’ an indexed through its intergovernmental domain and Scholastica publishing platform
• Able to offer a short turnaround time for possible approval and publication while maintaining a set schedule of quarterly issues.