Guide for Authors

Outline

Urban and Regional Planning Review (URPR) is an interdisciplinary and open access journal for urban and regional planning, established by three academic institutes in Japan, the City Planning Institute of Japan (CPIJ), the Japanese Institute of Landscape Architecture (JILA) and the Japanese Association for Planning and Public Management (JAPPM). It is a peer-reviewed online journal firstly published in 2014.

Manuscripts for URPR may be theoretical or contain empirical research outcomes, written in English, not only by academics but also professional planners. They are expected to have original content and should not have been previously published, nor be under simultaneous consideration by another academic journal.
Objectives, research methodologies, and conclusions must be logically consistent, and the conclusion in particular must highlight not only previously unknown findings but also new themes for further research in urban and regional planning.

Accepted manuscripts will be published on the J-Stage.

Confirmations for Submission

Authors should check following confirmation items before submission. Further details will be asked to author(s) at the submission website.

Corresponding author
In principle, the manuscript is submitted by the corresponding author. Otherwise, the person who submits already obtained the consent of the corresponding author before submission.

Co-authors, etc.
The manuscript obtained consent from all those who have contributed in advance, regarding whether or not the name of each co-author should be displayed, their order, and the notation in the acknowledgments. The corresponding author also obtained consent from all co-authors regarding their responsibility for the contents of the manuscript.

Copyright and licenses
To published as Open Access articles, URPR uses Creative Commons (CC) licenses, which allow users to use, reuse and/or build upon the material published in the journal without charge or the need to ask prior permission from the publisher or author.
The copyright belongs to CPIJ and the following license agreements are available for authors:

Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license
Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derives (CC- BY-NC-ND) license

For more information concerning these licenses, please visit the Creative Commons website.
Once selected, authors cannot revoke Creative Commons user licenses. The URPR Editorial Board recommend authors check if their funding body requires a specific license.

Ethics, etc.
In conducting any of the surveys described in the submitted manuscript, research ethics has been properly upheld. In particular, for those that correspond to human research or those that require informed consent, the necessary procedures were completed before submission.

Conflict of interest
If at least one of the authors is in a state of conflict of interest in relation to the contents of the submitted manuscript, it will be clearly stated after the publication is decided.

Double submission, etc.
There is no double submission, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, fabrication, or theft other than the author's own academic dissertation (graduation thesis, master's thesis, doctoral dissertation).

English proofreading
If all or part of the manuscript is written by a non-native speaker, English proofreading was already carried out before submission.

Indication of grants
If the cost of all or part of the research in the manuscript is covered by any grant, the specific name(s) of the grant(s) will be stated clearly in the manuscript after the publication is decided.

Infringement of the rights of others
The author does not infringe copyrights or any other rights of others.

Proof by the corresponding author regarding the above
If any doubt is raised by the journal or by a third party, the above confirmations can be made in a form that can be clearly proved in writing or by the statements of the persons concerned.

Writing manuscript

Your manuscript must be written in accordance with [Guidelines for authors submitting papers to URPR], which can be also used as the template of your manuscript for URPR.

Review of manuscripts

URPR submission website accepts manuscript twice a year (usually in June and in December).
The URPR Editorial Board determines whether your manuscript is accepted or rejected based on the established peer review process and notifies you of the result within four months from the deadline. URPR operates a single anonymized review process. In reviewing a manuscript, particular consideration will be given to the following factors.

Academic background and objective: Is the manuscript academically positioned by reviewing the relevant papers in the organized way? Is the objective clearly indicated in the manuscript?
Materials, methods and data reliability: Is the materials and methodology of the research set properly set according to the objective. Is the data used in the research reliable?
Logical interpretation: Is the discussion logically and objectively interpreted?
Originality or useful conclusion: Does the conclusion include academically original or socially useful discussion?
Writing, organization and formatting: Is the manuscript well organized and formatted written in the academic English?

If the manuscript is requested to be revised for the approval, author(s) should respond appropriately to all the requests and submit the revised manuscript within four weeks from the notification.
The Board checks whether the revised manuscript is appropriately revised and notify you the final result within around four to five weeks from the acceptance of the revised manuscript. Minor corrections may be requested again for the revised manuscript. If so, author(s) should respond appropriately to all the requests again.
The Board notifies the acceptance finally and published in J-Stage website in the next month.

Submission of manuscripts

Initial and revised manuscripts must be submitted via the journal's online submission system, Editorial Manager (https://www.editorialmanager.com/urpr/default.aspx )
Final manuscript must be submitted via email in Word and PDF format.