Updated Journal Policies and Implementation of the New Manuscript Template

06-09-2026

Effective Date: 6 September 2026

Dear Authors, Reviewers, Editors, and Readers,

ATHENA: Journal of Social, Culture and Society is pleased to announce a comprehensive update to its journal policies, editorial procedures, author guidelines, and manuscript template.

These updates are part of the journal's continuing commitment to strengthening editorial transparency, research integrity, publication quality, open-access practices, and responsible scholarly communication in accordance with recognized international standards for academic publishing.

Authors, reviewers, and readers are encouraged to review the updated journal information and policies available on the ATHENA website.

1. Updated Focus and Scope

ATHENA is an international peer-reviewed journal dedicated to scholarly research concerning social, cultural, and societal issues.

The journal welcomes original and academically rigorous research within areas including, but not limited to:

  • Anthropology;

  • Communication;

  • Cultural Studies;

  • Education;

  • Gender Studies;

  • Human Geography;

  • Linguistics;

  • Literature;

  • Media Studies;

  • Political Science;

  • Psychology;

  • Sociology;

  • Law;

  • Music; and

  • other interdisciplinary research addressing relevant social, cultural, and societal issues.

Manuscripts must demonstrate a clear relationship to the journal's aims and scope. Submissions that fall substantially outside the journal's scope may be declined during the initial editorial screening.

2. Publication Frequency

ATHENA: Journal of Social, Culture and Society publishes four issues per year:

  • January

  • April

  • July

  • October

Articles may be processed and published online according to the journal's established editorial and production workflow.

3. Peer Review Process

All submitted manuscripts are subject to an initial editorial assessment before entering peer review.

The editorial process includes:

  1. submission and administrative screening;

  2. scope and manuscript suitability assessment;

  3. originality and publication-ethics screening;

  4. editorial desk review;

  5. assignment to qualified independent reviewers;

  6. double-blind peer review;

  7. author revision, where required;

  8. editorial evaluation of the revised manuscript;

  9. final editorial decision; and

  10. copyediting, proofreading, production, and publication.

Normally, manuscripts selected for external review are evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise.

Editorial decisions may include:

  • Accept Submission;

  • Revisions Required;

  • Resubmit for Review; or

  • Decline Submission.

The final decision regarding publication remains the responsibility of the journal's editorial team.

4. Open Access Policy

ATHENA is an open-access journal.

Published scholarly content is made freely available to readers without subscription or access charges. Readers may access, read, download, and use published articles subject to the applicable Creative Commons license.

The journal supports broad dissemination, scholarly visibility, repository deposit, preservation, and responsible reuse of published research.

5. Copyright and Licensing

Copyright in articles published by ATHENA remains with the author(s).

Authors are not required to transfer copyright ownership to the journal or publisher.

Upon publication, authors grant ATHENA a non-exclusive right of first publication and authorize the journal and its publisher, CV. Media Digital Publikasi Indonesia, to publish, preserve, index, distribute, and disseminate the article as part of the scholarly record.

Effective under the updated licensing policy, articles are published under the:

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)

Under CC BY 4.0, users may share and adapt published material for any purpose, including commercial purposes, provided that appropriate attribution is given to the original author(s) and source.

The journal is progressively ensuring consistency of licensing information across journal policies, article metadata, and publication materials.

6. Publication Ethics and Research Integrity

ATHENA is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics and research integrity.

Authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher are expected to comply with internationally recognized principles of responsible scholarly publishing.

The journal does not tolerate practices including:

  • plagiarism;

  • fabrication or falsification of data;

  • duplicate publication;

  • simultaneous submission;

  • inappropriate image or data manipulation;

  • citation manipulation;

  • authorship manipulation;

  • ghost, guest, or honorary authorship;

  • undisclosed conflicts of interest;

  • fraudulent or misleading research practices; and

  • other forms of research or publication misconduct.

Suspected ethical concerns may be investigated by the editorial team, and appropriate editorial actions may include correction, expression of concern, rejection, withdrawal, or retraction, depending on the circumstances.

7. Authorship and Author Contributions

Authorship must accurately reflect substantial scholarly contributions to the submitted work.

All listed authors must:

  • have made an appropriate intellectual or scholarly contribution;

  • approve the submitted manuscript;

  • approve the final version intended for publication; and

  • accept responsibility for their respective contributions to the work.

Authors are required to provide an Author Contributions Statement.

Where appropriate, ATHENA encourages the use of the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) to transparently describe individual contributions.

8. Conflict of Interest Disclosure

Authors must disclose any financial, professional, institutional, personal, or other relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research or its interpretation.

A Conflict of Interest Statement must be included in the manuscript, including a declaration when no conflict exists.

Reviewers and editors are also expected to disclose relevant conflicts that may affect their ability to evaluate a manuscript objectively.

9. Funding Disclosure

Authors must disclose all financial support associated with the research and/or preparation of the manuscript.

The funding statement should identify:

  • the funding organization;

  • applicable grant number; and

  • other relevant financial support.

Where no external funding was received, authors must include an appropriate No Funding Declaration.

10. Acknowledgements

Individuals, institutions, organizations, technical personnel, or other contributors who assisted the research but do not satisfy authorship criteria may be recognized in the Acknowledgements section.

Acknowledgement does not constitute authorship and should accurately describe the nature of the assistance received.

11. Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use Disclosure

ATHENA recognizes that generative artificial intelligence and AI-assisted technologies may be used responsibly for certain research and manuscript-preparation activities.

Authors must transparently disclose relevant use of:

  • generative AI systems;

  • large language models;

  • AI-assisted writing tools;

  • automated translation systems;

  • AI-assisted coding tools;

  • AI-assisted visualization tools; or

  • other comparable technologies.

AI systems and AI-assisted tools cannot be listed as authors.

Human authors remain fully responsible for:

  • the accuracy of the manuscript;

  • originality;

  • factual verification;

  • citations and references;

  • interpretation of findings;

  • research integrity; and

  • the final published content.

The new manuscript template therefore includes a dedicated Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use Statement.

12. Disclosure Statements Required in the New Template

To strengthen transparency, the new ATHENA manuscript template contains a dedicated Disclosure Statements section.

Authors must complete the applicable statements concerning:

  • Funding

  • Conflict of Interest

  • Author Contributions

  • Acknowledgements

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use Statement

Where a particular item does not apply, authors should provide the appropriate declaration, such as “The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare” or “The authors received no financial support for this research.”

Authors should not remove required disclosure headings without providing the applicable declaration.

13. Originality and Plagiarism

All manuscripts must represent original scholarly work.

Submitted manuscripts may be screened using appropriate similarity-detection and editorial assessment procedures.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that:

  • all sources are appropriately cited;

  • quotations are properly identified;

  • previously published material is appropriately acknowledged;

  • third-party materials are used with appropriate authorization where required; and

  • the manuscript has not been simultaneously submitted to another journal.

Similarity results are evaluated in context and do not replace editorial assessment of research integrity.

14. Corrections, Retractions, and Post-Publication Integrity

ATHENA is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record after publication.

Where significant errors, ethical concerns, or research-integrity issues are identified, the journal may issue appropriate post-publication notices, including:

  • corrections;

  • errata;

  • expressions of concern; or

  • retractions.

Editorial actions will be determined according to the nature and seriousness of the issue.

15. Author Self-Archiving and Dissemination

Authors retain copyright in their articles and may archive, distribute, and reuse their works in accordance with the applicable license and journal policies.

Authors are encouraged to acknowledge ATHENA as the original place of publication and include the article DOI or official article URL when redistributing the published version.

16. Indexing, Metadata, and Long-Term Scholarly Visibility

ATHENA is committed to maintaining accurate and transparent publication metadata to support scholarly discovery, citation, indexing, preservation, and interoperability.

The journal maintains publication information including:

  • article title;

  • author names and affiliations;

  • abstracts and keywords;

  • publication dates;

  • volume and issue information;

  • Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs);

  • licensing information;

  • references; and

  • other relevant bibliographic metadata.

The journal will continue to improve its editorial and technical practices to support reliable scholarly indexing and long-term accessibility.

Mandatory Use of the New ATHENA Manuscript Template

In conjunction with these policy updates, ATHENA: Journal of Social, Culture and Society is implementing a new manuscript template.

Effective from 6 September 2026

All new manuscripts submitted on or after 6 September 2026 MUST use the new ATHENA manuscript template.

Manuscripts submitted from this date that do not follow the new template may be:

  • returned to the author for technical correction;

  • requested to be reformatted before editorial evaluation; or

  • delayed from entering the peer-review process until the required formatting has been completed.

The new template has been developed to improve:

  • manuscript consistency;

  • article readability;

  • bibliographic and metadata quality;

  • transparency of author information;

  • disclosure of funding and conflicts of interest;

  • transparency of individual author contributions;

  • responsible disclosure of AI-assisted technologies;

  • presentation of figures and tables;

  • citation and reference consistency;

  • licensing transparency; and

  • overall publication quality.

Authors are therefore strongly advised to download the latest version of the ATHENA manuscript template directly from the official journal website before preparing or submitting a manuscript.

Templates obtained from previously published articles, personal archives, third-party websites, or older journal communications should not be used for submissions made on or after 6 September 2026.

Important for Previously Submitted Manuscripts

Manuscripts formally submitted before 6 September 2026 may continue to be processed under the format applicable at the time of submission unless the Editorial Office specifically requests migration to the new template.

However, authors who are requested to undertake substantial revisions may be asked to adopt the current template in order to ensure consistency with the journal's latest publication standards.

Commitment to Transparency and Quality

These updates are intended to provide authors, reviewers, editors, readers, libraries, indexing services, and other stakeholders with clear and accessible information concerning how ATHENA operates.

The journal will continue to periodically review its editorial policies and technical practices to strengthen:

transparency, accountability, research integrity, open access, editorial independence, responsible peer review, copyright clarity, and long-term scholarly accessibility.

We kindly ask all authors and reviewers to familiarize themselves with the updated policies before submitting or evaluating manuscripts.

Thank you for your continued support of ATHENA: Journal of Social, Culture and Society.

Editorial Team
ATHENA: Journal of Social, Culture and Society
ISSN: 2985-3605
Publisher: CV. Media Digital Publikasi Indonesia