For authors

What Theoria publishes

Theoria is published four times a year — in March, June, September and December. The journal publishes original scholarly articles in philosophy, primarily in Serbian and English, as well as review articles, translations of philosophical texts, critical discussions of philosophical works and reviews of philosophical books.

Texts in Serbian are submitted and published in the Latin script. All manuscripts undergo a double-blind peer-review procedure.

A manuscript must constitute the authors’ original contribution, must not have been published previously and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Structure and technical requirements

The author’s first and last name should appear in the upper left-hand corner before the title of the paper. The title should be written in capital letters.

The title should be followed by an abstract of80–150 words and3–8 keywords. At the end of the main text, before the bibliography, the author’s first and last name and institutional or other affiliation should be stated.

If the paper is written in Serbian, the author’s name, paper title, summary and keywords in English should appear after the bibliography. If the paper is written in English, the corresponding information should be provided in Serbian.

Notes should appear as footnotes rather than endnotes. Italics should be used for emphasis rather than bold type, except for section headings and subheadings.

In papers written in Serbian, foreign authors’ names should be transliterated, and on first occurrence the name should also be given in its original form in parentheses.

File format

• Microsoft Word document:.doc or .docx;
• Times New Roman, 12 pt;
• 1.5 line spacing;
• no page numbering;
• maximum 35,000 characters including spaces, i.e. up to 1.5 author’s sheets.

References

Full bibliographic details should be given in the reference list. In the main text, the shortened form(author year: page) should be used.

Authors’ responsibilities

Before submitting a manuscript, authors should make sure that the following conditions have been met:

• the manuscript is original, has not been published previously and is not under consideration elsewhere;
• all and only those who made a significant contribution to the paper are listed as co-authors;
• the contributions of other persons are acknowledged in an appropriate note or acknowledgements section;
• if the work was produced within a research project, the title and project code and the full name of the funding institution are stated;
• if a version of the paper was previously presented at a conference, the relevant details are given;
• all reproduced text, equations, figures, data and tables are clearly identified and properly referenced;
• the References section contains only works actually cited in the manuscript;
• any financial or other significant conflict of interest that could influence the results or their interpretation is disclosed.

By submitting a manuscript, authors agree to comply with the editorial policy of Theoria.

Double-blind review

Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two reviewers. Reviewers work independently. The identities of reviewers are unknown to the authors, and the identities of authors are unknown to reviewers.

Reviewers are selected according to their relevant expertise. They may not be affiliated with the same institution as the authors or have been recent co-authors of the authors. Author-nominated reviewers are not taken into consideration.

Review process

Before peer review, the editorial team conducts an initial assessment of whether the manuscript is suitable for the journal in terms of form and thematic scope.

Under normal circumstances, peer review takes no more than four weeks. In technically demanding cases it may take up to three months. According to the journal’s established policy, the period from submission to publication averages approximately 90 days.

Resolving disagreements

If authors raise serious and well-founded objections to a review, the editorial team examines whether the review is objective and meets academic standards. If there is doubt about its quality or objectivity, additional reviewers are appointed.

An additional reviewer may also be appointed when the reviewers’ recommendations are conflicting or otherwise irreconcilable. The final decision on acceptance is made exclusively by the Editor-in-Chief.

Ethical standards

Any individual or institution may report a suspected breach of ethical standards or other irregularity to the editor or editorial team and provide credible information for the purpose of initiating an investigation.

During such proceedings, evidence is treated as confidential, and persons concerned are given an opportunity to respond to the allegations.

In handling ethically problematic conduct, the editorial team follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Plagiarism

Theoria does not publish plagiarized work. Plagiarism includes taking another person’s ideas or words without clear attribution, including verbatim or near-verbatim copying and deliberate paraphrasing intended to conceal the source.

The same applies to equations, data and tables reproduced without appropriate attribution. A manuscript showing clear indications of plagiarism is rejected. If plagiarism is discovered after publication, the article is retracted in accordance with the journal’s retraction policy.

Retraction policy

A published article may be retracted in cases of plagiarism, false authorship, duplicate publication, deliberate data manipulation, copyright infringement or other serious misuse. Retraction may also be required when an article contains serious and numerous errors that cannot be adequately corrected by a correction notice.

A retraction is published as a separate editorial item. In doiSerbia, a link is established between the original article and the retraction notice, while the original document remains available with its status clearly marked.

Conflict of interest

Authors must disclose all potential financial or other conflicts of interest relevant to the content of the article, the manner in which the research was funded and, where applicable, the role of any sponsor in preparing the article.

Use of Artificial Intelligence and Automated Tools

Authors

• Authors must disclose any substantive use of generative AI or other automated tools in preparing a manuscript, except for ordinary spelling, grammar, language editing and formatting assistance.
• Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, references and arguments in the submitted work.
• AI systems and automated tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
• Generative AI output should not be cited as an authoritative scholarly source.

Reviewers and editors

• Unpublished manuscripts and confidential editorial material must not be uploaded to public generative-AI systems.
• Reviewers and editors must not use generative AI to generate peer-review reports or editorial decisions.
• Ordinary language editing of a review may be acceptable only where confidentiality is preserved and the reviewer remains fully responsible for the assessment.
• Any automated tools used by the journal for integrity checks must remain under human editorial oversight.

Thematic and Special Issues

Thematic and special issues may be prepared with guest editors, who are selected on the basis of appropriate scholarly expertise. The Editor-in-Chief and the journal retain responsibility for the scholarly and ethical standards of every issue.

Manuscripts submitted to thematic and special issues undergo the same double-blind peer-review process and editorial standards as regular submissions. A manuscript authored by a guest editor or editorial team member is handled independently by another qualified editor, without the author taking part in the editorial decision.

Contributions by guest editors must not predominate in a special issue and may account for no more than 25% of its research content.

Open access

Theoria is published as an open-access journal. All published content is freely available immediately upon publication, with no embargo period; no registration or subscription is required to read it. Published issues are archived in the digital deposit of the National Library of Serbia and in the doiSerbia Repository.

Author fees

The journal does not charge fees for manuscript submission, processing or article publication. There are no hidden charges.

Copyright and licensing

Authors retain copyright over published articles and grant the publisher a non-exclusive right to publish and distribute the article.

Published articles are distributed under theCreative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Reuse is permitted under this licence: the work may be copied, redistributed, transformed and built upon for non-commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given, a link to the licence is included and any changes are indicated.

Self-archiving

Authors may deposit the unreviewed version of the manuscript (preprint), the peer-reviewed version (postprint) and the published version in institutional or subject repositories, on personal websites, institutional websites and academic networking platforms.

The full bibliographic description of the published article should be provided, together with links to the article’s DOI and the applicable licence.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in published articles do not necessarily reflect those of the editor or members of the editorial team. Authors assume legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in their work.