Summit Journal Policies

AIMS AND SCOPE

Summit Journal is the official, award-winning publication of AFIRE, the association for international real estate investors focused on commercial property in the United States. Readers stand at the intersection of real estate, institutional investing, data science, and economics.

Published multiple times per year in digital and print formats, Summit features articles and original ideas and research from investors, executive leaders, and academics from around the world, focused on the research and analysis of real estate capital markets, cross-border issues, policy, demographics, technology trends, and management topics.

AFIRE (the Association of Foreign Investors in Real Estate) is the publisher of Summit Journal.

Summit is a free, open access trade journal.

ISSN 2689-6257 (Print) / ISSN 2689-6257 (Online)

OPEN ACCESS STATEMENT

Summit Journal is committed to full “open access.” All articles, including reprints, are available to all readers immediately upon publication (without registration on the site and embargo period).

Open access means free availability of journal content on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution and the only role for copyright in this domain should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

The benefits of the open access include increased citation and usage, rapid publication, faster impact with permissive licenses, and copyright retention by the author.

Authors are committed to publish and/or reprint their articles under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC 4.0.

Papers published and/or reprinted in Summit Journal are released under a CC-BY-NC license and may shared as described in our copyright policy. AFIRE asks that authors share pre-print, post-print, and published versions of the paper using the following statements.

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COPYRIGHT POLICY

All contributors to Summit Journal retain rights over their work. Contributors sign a publication agreement which grants AFIRE non-exclusive rights to print, publish, reproduce, adapt, distribute, perform, display, broadcast, modify, and prepare derivative works of the work, individually or in a collection, in any medium or form of communication, now existing or hereafter developed, without any duty of accounting or compensation.

These rights include the the nonexclusive worldwide right to use the work, or any part thereof, and Author’s name in any other publication of or by AFIRE and for publicity and public relations purposes in any medium or form of communication now existing or hereafter developed, without any duty of accounting or compensation.

Contributors also share these same non-exclusive rights and are committed to publish or reprint their articles under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC 4.0.

CC BY-NC 4.0 allows for the sharing (copying and redistributing in any medium or format) and/or adaptation (remixing, transforming, or building) of the journal materials as long as (A) the use is for non-commercial purposes; (B) a link to the license is provided; and (C) appropriate attribution is given, as long as the attribution is reasonable and does not suggest that the licensor endorses you or your use of the materials.

PEER REVIEW/EDITORIAL REVIEW STATEMENT

Peer review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript as it progresses through the publishing process. Summit Journal’s editorial board serves as AFIRE’s editorial review (de facto peer review) committee and assesses submitted manuscripts for the integrity, validity, and significance of their insights and research.

Summit Journal utilizes a transparent editorial review process, where, if the article is published, the reviewer comments are published online alongside the article, in accordance with the journal’s open access, ethics, and other policies.

Summit Journal’s implementation of a transparent editorial review process is an extension of the journal and the association’s ethics policies and house rules to promote transparency and accessibility. Articles published through the journal’s review process are also intended to serve an educational purpose in helping facilitate training and research into emergent forms of transparent peer and editorial review.

Manuscripts submitted to Summit Journal are assessed by the editorial team editors. All published articles are reviewed. Overall editorial responsibility for the journal is with the editors, with editorial board members acting as reviewers.

SELF-ARCHIVING POLICY

The author may deposit a pre-print version of the paper (manuscript by the author, submitted to the journal, before editorial review and without any editorial amendments) to any platform anytime with acknowledgement to AFIRE and Summit Journal. Acknowledgement should be made as follows: “This is a pre-editorial-reviewed version of the paper submitted for publication to Summit Journal, published by AFIRE.”

The author may deposit a post-print version of the paper (accepted version of the manuscript after editorial review and content amendments, but before copyediting, typesetting, and proof correction) to the author’s personal website, provided that it is non-commercial, and to the repository of the author’s institution with acknowledgement of the AFIRE and Summit Journal. Acknowledgement should be made as follows: “This is an accepted editorial-reviewed version of the paper. The published version of the article is available at AFIRE:  https://www.afire.org/summit/.”

The author may deposit a published version of the paper (final edited and typeset version that is made publicly available by AFIRE and can be considered an article) to any institutional repository and distribute and make it publicly available in any way with acknowledgement to AFIRE and Summit Journal. Acknowledgement should be made as follows:”This is a published version of the paper, available at AFIRE at http://dx.doi.org/[DOI of the article].”

 

ETHICS

All manuscripts submitted to Summit Journal are subject to the journal’s transparent peer review process.

AFIRE and Summit Journal recognize the need for scrupulousness and adherence to the best publishing practices and principles of publication ethics (COPE). Therefore, all processes related to the review and publication of articles shall be as clear and transparent as possible.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

The editorial board (reviewers), authors, and editors constantly interact at different stages of writing, processing, peer reviewing, editing, and publishing the article. During this process, various situations may arise when a person cannot give proper respect to the actual or potentially conflicting interests of both parties.

A conflict of interest can be based on financial relations (such direct conflicts of interest are usually easy to identify), ideological, religious, and intellectual differences, academic gain, competition, and rivalry.

If there is a conflict of interest before the article publication, whether it has been editorial board, authors, and editors, then Summit Journal shall provide a “conflict of interests” statement in the article.

The editor may also request and publish related documents so that the reader has complete information and can judge for himself the possibility and nature of the impact of the conflict of interest on the published results.

As of August 2021, there have been no conflicts of interest identified by the editorial board, authors, and editors.

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

Before reviewing the manuscript, reviewers shall understand the peer review process of the journal. All reviewers shall follow and apply “A Short Guide to Ethical Editing for New Editors” developed by COPE.

If there are circumstances, facts, or actions that may affect the transparency of the article assessment, the reviewer should refuse to review the manuscript. If there is a potential conflict of interest, the reviewer should report this to the editors.

AUTHORS

When submitting the manuscript, authors must exclude a possible conflict of interest or attest it to the journal by filling out the appropriate form when sending the manuscript to the journal, which excludes the possible data manipulation. The authors are fully responsible for disclosing all relationships, facts, actions, and influence of third parties that may affect their research.

EDITORS

Editors of the journal retain authority for determining articles that do or do not get published.

The editors of the journal cannot submit their own articles to the peer review process for this journal.

Articles published by the editors will be clearly marked and distinguishable from the articles submitted by independent authors, which are processed through the journal’s transparent peer review process.

Reviewers and editors should act in the interests of the journal and make decisions based on the reliability of the work reliability and its importance for the reader. Editors shall now not use information obtained when working with manuscripts for private gain.

PLAGIARISM STATEMENT

AFIRE, the publisher of Summit Journal, advocates for adherence to the principles of ethics and integrity in research and authorship. Plagiarism in all its forms (defined below) is unacceptable and will lead to immediate rejection of the article, and possible sanctions.

All manuscripts are screened for originality. AFIRE utilizes Scribbr for all plagiarism reviews. By submitting their manuscripts to the journal authors are agreeing to any necessary originality checks the manuscript may undergo during the publication process.

AFIRE defines plagiarism as the use another author’s work without permission or citation, including:

LITERAL COPYING

Copying the work word-by-word, in general or in parts, without permission or citation of the source.

SUBSTANIAL COPYING

Replicating a substantial part of the work without permission or citation of the source. The quantity and the quality of the copied content are applied in determining what is substantial. Quality is measured by the relative value of copied text compared to the whole of the original work.

PARAPHRASING

Copying made without literal or substantial replication, based on phrasing of the original work. With citation or source attribution, paraphrasing is permitted. Without, it is considered plagiarism.

EDITORIAL CONTACTS

Gunnar Branson, Publisher, Summit Journal
CEO, AFIRE
gbranson@afire.org | +1 202 312 1401 | LinkedIn

Benjamin van Loon, Editor-in-Chief, Summit Journal
Communications Director, AFIRE
bvanloon@afire.org | +1 202 312 1405 | LinkedIn