ISSN 1546-9212

Author’s Rights

Authors and contributors retain the rights to their intellectual and creative work published in Slayage under Creative Commons (CC-BY) licensing. Creative Commons is a form of copyright protection for open-access publications. Slayage requires users to notify the Editors of Slayage and the original author(s) of their intention to distribute, adapt, translate or republish Open Access content.

Authors may republish their work in any other form or forum (book, edited collection, etc.). We ask only that (1) the Editors of Slayage be informed of the intent to republish and (2) that previous publication of the article in Slayage is acknowledged in the subsequent publication.

In the case that a third party contacts the journal’s Editors, the Editors, after making a good faith effort to contact the author(s) and failing to do so, grant permission for the third party to reprint the article in question, at the Editors’ discretion. Should the Editors succeed in contacting the author(s) in regard to such a request, the decision will belong to the author(s). Authors are free to update their contact information with the Editors.

Citations

*Please note that Slayage has been published under four subtitles: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies (through volume 7, issue 2), The Journal of the Whedon Studies Association (through Winter 2014/Spring 2015), The Journal of Whedon Studies (Summer 2015 to  2020), and The International Journal of Buffy+ (-2025). The journal currently publishes with no subtitle. If referencing with subtitle, please make sure to cite the subtitle used at the time of publication (as found on the article pdf).   


Re-use of Open Access Content under Creative Commons CC-BY licensing in the form of citations must comply with the following terms.

  • Full attribution must accompany any re-use and include the following information about the original work:​

​​​Author(s). “Article Title.” Journal Title, volume number, issue number, date of publication, page numbers (from Slayage 16.2 and  onward), URL. Access date.

Example (MLA Style)

Rambo, Elizabeth L. “Third-Culture Kid Identity Paradigms in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Episode ‘Lies My Parents Told  Me’.” Slayage: The Journal of Whedon Studies, vol. 16, no. 1 [47], Winter/Spring 2018, https://www.whedonstudies.tv/uploads/2/6/2/8/26288593/rambo_-_slayage_16.1.pdf. Accessed 2 August 2019.

  • Creative Commons license terms for re-use do not apply to any content (such as graphs, figures, photos, excerpts, etc.) not original to the Open Access article and further permission may be required from the rights holder. The obligation to research and clear permission lies solely with the party re-using the material.
  • Re-use of a work must not imply or otherwise suggest sponsorship or endorsement by Slayage: The International Journal of Buffy+, the author(s), or other third party.
  • Creative Commons licenses do not negate the moral rights of authors, including but not limited to the right to attribution and the right that a work not be subjected to derogatory treatment that threatens the honor or reputation of the author(s).​

Ethics

Slayage Statement on Publication Ethics and Malpractice 

(adapted from the Publication Ethics and Malpractice statement of the journal Mythlore) 

The authors, journal editors, peer reviewers, and publisher of Slayage will be guided in their mutual work by the standards developed by “The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which provides resources on the topic of professional publishing standards at publicationethics.org.  

1.  Authorship, Contributorship, and AI Policy:  
When submitting a work (article, note, letter, review, or other work) to Slayage, the author or authors warrant that this is their original work, and that any substantial contributors to the paper are listed as co-authors. For multiply-authored papers, co-authors are expected to work out order of authorship amongst themselves. All authors and their email addresses should be provided to the editors, although one author may be designated as the primary contact during the editing process. Others who have contributed in a less substantial role, such as advisors, readers, referees, or commenters, may be acknowledged if desired in footnotes or acknowledgment statements. Your work must properly cite and quote the work of others, in accordance with the directions in our House Style Sheet. Slayage will not accept work written or illustrated in any part by generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), and they cannot be credited as authors. Authors must disclose any use of GenAI or LLMs as tools in their work in their cover letter, and in any methods section that might be included in their paper. The editor will determine if additional acknowledgment is needed in the text of the paper or elsewhere. AI tools that make suggestions to enhance original work, such as tools to improve word choice, grammar, or sentence structure on a small scale, are considered assistive AI tools, and do not need to be disclosed in cover letters. The detection of AI “hallucinated” quotations or items in the works cited list will be grounds for rejection; see section 4 below on Data Sharing and Responsibility. The creator of any submitted content is ultimately responsible if there is any legal challenge to its publication. 

2.  Complaints and Appeals:  
Complaints and appeals may be addressed to the editor in chief. If warranted, these complaints will be discussed with the journal’s editorial board and/or with the board of the Association for the Study of Buffy+. Guidance may be sought from the flowcharts, guidelines, and cases archived at The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) site or through the discussion boards at the Council of Editors of Learned Journals as appropriate.  

3.  Conflicts of Interest: 
​Authors should declare any potential conflicts of interest or competing interests relevant to their submission.  

Slayage procedure for article submission by an editor or member of the editorial board: 

  1. Should the lead editor submit an article to the journal, the co-editor will assign anonymous reviewers to the anonymized submission; i.e., there will be a double anonymous peer review process. 
  2. Should the co-editor, an associate editor, an assistant editor, or a member of the editorial board submit an article to the journal, either the editor or the co-editor will assign anonymous reviewers to the anonymized submission; i.e., there will be a double anonymous peer review process.
  3. Should the submission be accepted for publication, a non-submitting editor will supervise the editing process, including revision and copy editing.
  4. If the submission is published, a Statement of Competing Interest will be published at the end of the article; for example, “Statement of Competing Interest: Although the author of this article is the editor of the journal, the article was submitted to another editor and put through double anonymous peer review without any involvement of the author in the review process.” 

4.  Data Sharing and Reproducibility:  
Slayage is multidisciplinary but often publishes literary or other humanities criticism, so we are unlikely to frequently need to share data to ensure the reproducibility of results. However, articles in relevant fields are expected to share data in this journal. Furthermore, we consider accurate and fair quotation of sources to be the philosophical equivalent of the ethical requirement to share data. To that end we expect authors to quote accurately without misrepresenting the original intent of their sources, and the editorial staff makes every effort to check every single word of quoted material for accuracy and context.  

5.  Ethical Oversight:  
In the event that a submitted article involves research with human subjects (for example, surveys or interviews), these studies should have been approved through appropriate ethics or research approval boards at the author(s)’ institution, and such approval footnoted within the article.  

6.  Intellectual Property:  
The copyright for each individual item belongs to the author or authors under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license. Under Rights for Authors and our publication agreement form, we spell out what Slayage may do with the item, which includes publishing the item in print and electronic format and providing the text to commercial databases for inclusion and indexing. If any third party requests reprint rights from the editor, they will be referred to the author or authors unless a good faith effort to reach the author(s) fails, in which case the editor in chief makes the decision; authors are therefore advised to keep contact information updated. See above:  http://www.buffystudies.org/authors-rights–citation.html. 

7.  Post-publication Discussions and Corrections:
Informal discussions may take place on the Association’s various social media pages and are monitored for adherence to our code of conduct. 

​In the exceedingly unlikely event that formal corrections need to be made, these will be acknowledged in an opening Editorial of the next published issue of the journal and a note will be attached to the article in our repository. These may consist of correction notices, addressing minor errors such as spelling or citation corrections; retraction notices for major issues that cannot be addressed by a correction; and removal notices, for substantial issues such as gross copyright infringement or post-publication discovery of violation of our AI policy. In all cases the editors and board will be advised by COPE’s guidelines.  

Slayage (ISSN 1546-9212) is an open-access, anonymized peer-reviewed, MLA-indexed journal and a member of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).  All content is freely available in downloadable full-text PDF format. There are no submission or publication fees.