About the Journal

Focus and Scope

From its inception, Acta has published the highest quality scholarly work in all major European languages (English, German, French and Italian). The Norwegian Research Council has traditionally supported Acta. The journal aims to be a forum to international scholarly discussions. In addition, a fundamental aspect of its mission is to promote younger Norwegian art historians and classical archaeologists.

History of the Journal

ACTA was established in 1962, publishing both monographs and articles at irregular intervals. In 2004, ACTA became a journal and is published annually. From the start, ACTA has been an internationally oriented publication, with articles in English and Italian. Contributions are of high academic quality, and deal with original and central empirical, methodological, theoretical and interpretative issues in or relevant to the archaeology and art history of the Mediterranean region.

Peer-Review Process

The ACTA editors make an initial appraisal of each individual submission within four weeks. If the topic and quality level of the paper are appropriate to the editorial policies of the journal, the manuscript will be sent to two reviewers.
The editors select reviewers based on competence on the topic, suggestions by the author and previous experience in reviewing manuscripts for ACTA. The peer-review process, however, is double-blind, whereby both referees and authors are kept anonymous.
The editors of ACTA are committed to ensuring integrity in the peer-review process.
Reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript within four weeks. If the review is positive but the manuscript needs to be revised, the author has four weeks to resubmit the revised article.
The final decision is made by the editors/editorial board.

Publication Frequency

This journal is published once a year.

Open Access Policy

ACTA is an international, open-access journal that simultaneously publishes a paper and an electronic version.
This journal does not charge APCs or submission charges.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  • Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Policy

ACTA is an open-access academic journal with double-blind peer review. Its Code of Conduct is inspired by the ethical rules of conduct and standards indicated by COPE in the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors at the following web page: https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines.
All the parties involved – authors, peer reviewers, bodies of the Journal – must agree on the standards of expected ethical behaviour.

Decision to publish 
The Journal accepts only original works, written in compliance with copyright and not subjected to evaluation by other journals at the same time. ACTA Journal uses peer review as an essential model of selection of articles, which can be waived only in exceptional cases and giving notice of it at the time of publication. The rules relating to the review process are available at the following address: <https://journals.uio.no/acta/about>.
ACTA Journal condemns plagiarism and copyright infringement, promotes research independence, requests and promotes the publication of original papers, not plagiarized, not submitted elsewhere and based on rigorous data. ACTA Journal aims to follow COPE core practices.

Duties of the editors
The editors evaluate at any time manuscripts in an objective and fair way focused on their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

ACTA Journal editors comply with the provisions in force on defamation, violation of copyright and plagiarism. The editors avoid any conflict of interest and discrimination.

The editors and the editorial staff of ACTA will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the authors, reviewers, and potential reviewers, editorial advisers and the publisher as appropriate.

Any unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s own research without express written consent by the author.

If the editors of ACTA Journal discover or receive a complaint on serious errors, conflict of interest, plagiarism in a published article, they will promptly notify the author and take the necessary actions to clarify the issue. If necessary, the article will be withdrawn and a retraction or Erratum will be published, according to COPE guidelines.

Duties of the reviewer
The double-blind peer-review system assists the editors in making editorial decisions, authors in improving their manuscript.

Any appointed reviewer who feels unqualified to review the assigned manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible in the proposed timeframe should notify the editor and renounce participating in the review process.

Any manuscript received for review must be treated as a confidential document; not shown to or discussed with anyone except as authorized by the editors.

Reviews should be conducted objectively, and referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. Reviewers have the responsibility to alert the editor of any potential conflicts of interest and if necessary, their evaluation for that manuscript.

Reviewers should identify any relevant published work that has not been cited by the author. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should promptly report to the editors any overlap or similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper.

Duties of the authors
Authors of original research should write an accurate account of the work performed and an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying ideas and data should be represented accurately in the paper. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.

The author should submit original work and should confirm that the manuscript is not under consideration or has been accepted for publication elsewhere. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.

If necessary to the understanding of the research, authors will be asked to provide raw data in connection with their manuscript for editorial review. They also should be prepared to provide public access to such data, and in any event, they should be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

Authors should identify and cite publications that have been influential for their research.

It is the author’s responsibility to ascertain rights to use drawings and photographs. In submitting photographs and drawings the author should indicate from whom permission to reproduce has been obtained

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution or interpretation of the reported research. All those who have made significant contributions to the research should be listed as co-authors. The author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Authors are expected to disclose any substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their research. All sources for financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Authors should notify promptly ACTA Journal editors if a significant error in their publication has been identified, and it is their duty to cooperate with the editor to publish an erratum, addendum, corrigendum notice or to retract the paper, where this is deemed necessary.