About Libertas Academica

Libertas Academica is the publisher of 83 international, peer reviewed scientific, technical and medical journals.  Libertas is principally a publisher of open access journals that apply the CC-BY-NC license for published articles, although the Clinical Medicine Reviews series operates under the traditional subscription or pay-per-view model.  Learn more about copyright and authors' and readers' rights here.

We operate an article reprints service offering printed reprints and a range of services for the pharmaceutical and medical communications industries.  Libertas offers English proof reading  and article promotion services.  We also offer a supplements publication service and institutional memberships.

Principles of Operation, Ethics, & Editorial Conduct

Libertas distinguishes itself by focusing not on publishing a high volume of papers but by combining individualized author service with editorial integrity and procedural efficiency.  At every stage authors will be introduced to the staff member responsible for their paper and will receive procedural explanations and regular status updates.  The progress of authors’ papers is continually monitored by staff, and a staff member is always available to answer authors' questions.  This is reflected in our consistently positive author testimonials.   

Libertas is a member of OASPA, ALPSP, IPG, COPE, UKSG, and is a DOAJ Publisher Member and a HINARI Publisher Partner. We use CrossCheck plagiarism detection and contribute to CrossRef, the scholarly DOI linking organisation.  

All articles published by us are archived by CLOCKSS, which provides permanent archiving for electronic scholarly journals, as well as the LOCKSS initiative.  Additionally, journals that appear in Pubmed have content archived in PMC.  Libertas is a Project Counter registered vendor and visibility statistics are calculated using its Code of Practice R3. 

Libertas journals apply ICMJE URM (International Council of Medical Journal Editors Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts).  Libertas also applies the OASPA Code of Conduct, the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers, and the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers Code of Conduct.

All articles are subject to blind peer review by a minimum of three expert reviewers drawn primarily from the applicable journal's editorial board.  Reviewers may also be drawn from the journal's volunteer peer reviewer pool, and where necessary from Pubmed.  Editorial decisions are made by independent editors in chief or associate editors. The editorial process to this first editorial decision takes three to four weeks following acceptance of papers for peer review.

In the open access business model many editorial decisions result in a fee payment to the publisher.  Because of this we maintain a strict distinction between editorial decisions, made by editors in chief or associate editors, and business decisions.  Libertas does not make nor attempt to influence editorial decisions.  Editorial decision makers receive no incentives to make decisions leading to fee payments.

While the needs of authors and readers often overlap, we also provide services specifically provided for readers such as high-quality, standards-compliant RSS feeds, referencing tools, archiving in multiple external archives, links to downloadable PMC XML and HTML, sharing and commenting tools, and a range of new article notification services including email updates and social media channels.  

Location

Our head office is located in Auckland, New Zealand in the GMT +12 time zone.  Our contact details are available here.  Key external service providers are located in the United Kingdom, India and New York, USA.  Editorial decision-makers (editors-in-chief and associate editors) are located in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and Asia.