Focus and Scope of the Journal

Collectanea Theologica is a scholarly quarterly of Polish theologians, established in 1920. The main objective of Collectanea Theologica is to present the current state of theology in Poland and its place in theology worldwide. The journal covers a rich spectrum of theological problems, ranging from biblical issues to the current pastoral and liturgical challenges. Collectanea Theologica is a Catholic journal, and it is mainly devoted to Catholic theology, but it also displays ecumenical openness to theologians of other Christian denominations.

The quarterly goes to all theological libraries in Poland and some significant foreign libraries.

According to the profile of the journal, the basic languages of publication in the journal are Polish and English. Texts written in English are preferred.

Expectations Concerning the Submitted Texts

Collectanea Theologica is nowadays regarded as one of the leading scholarly general-theological journals in Poland. Therefore, the submitted text should be not only good, but excellent in their content and form. In line with the original intention of the editorial board, the articles, especially those published in English, should take part in international theological disputes. Therefore, their level should meet the requirements of participating in scholarly discussions in the international realm. It is not sufficient merely to describe source texts in order to make them better known to Polish readers. The submitted texts should, as a rule, contain the formulation of a research problem (preferably, an important and/or actual one), the present state of question in international research, against this background: an original way to solve the problem, conclusions, abstract, and an adequate bibliography. The intended recipients of the texts are professors and enthusiasts of theology in Poland and throughout the world.

The abstract is not a simple summary. It should briefly point to the research problem, the way of solving it, and proposed solutions thereof (not disclosing everything). It should intrigue a professor of theology and persuade him/her to read the whole article.

From the year 2025 onwards, the preferred format of footnotes and attachement bibliography should be conformed to that described in the Chicago Manual of Style (Author Year, Page):

https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-2.html

Peer Review Process

Reviews are made in accordance with the principle of mutual anonymity of the reviewer and the author of the article (double-blind peer review), as well as the principle of avoiding the conflict of interests of the reviewer and the author of the article. Reviews are made free of charge.

Publication Frequency

Collectanea Theologica is a quarterly. New releases appear in each quarter of the year. The paper version of the journal is its original version. The journal is accessible on-line in open access. The journal can be purchased at the Publisher: https://wydawnictwo.uksw.edu.pl/44-collectanea-theologica. Earlier issues are available on-line in the database BazHum: http://bazhum.muzhp.pl/czasopismo/389/. The earliest issues of the journal, under the original name "Przegląd Teologiczny", are available in the database of Lower Silesian Digital Library: https://www.dbc.wroc.pl/publication/4033#structure.

Principles of ethics

Rules of ethics in Collectanea Theologica

The rules of ethics regarding publishing in the Collectanea Theologica journal are based on the following standards:

(a) Code of Ethics of a Researcher, developed by the Commission for Ethics in Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences (https://instytucja.pan.pl/index.php/kodeks-etyki-pracownika-naukowego),

(b) Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE: www.publicationethics.org),

(c) Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (PERK – Elsevier: https://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics).

1. Responsibility and rights of authors

Any authorship or co-authorship of a scholarly publication must be based on a creative and significant contribution to research, meaning a significant participation in initiating a scholarly idea, creating concepts and designing research, significant participation in data acquisition, analysis and interpretation of results, and significant contribution to intellectual design and writing an article. All those who have made a significant contribution to the creation of an article should be listed as its co-authors. The intellectual contribution of other people who have made a significant impact on the published research should be appropriately marked. Obtained financial support, as well as other types of assistance, should also be appropriately marked. The order of the names of the co-authors of a publication depends on the co-authors themselves.

The use of the publications of other authors, as well as the authors’ own publications should be properly documented in footnotes and in bibliography. All forms of plagiarism or auto-plagiarism, so the use of other sources without their adequate acknowledgement in the scholarly apparatus, are unacceptable. Hidden or apparent authorship is also unacceptable. In such cases, the editorial board of the journal has the right to refuse to publish the article, withdraw an article that has already been published, request publication of clarifications and apologies, or take appropriate disciplinary and legal steps.

The authors usually receive information concerning accepting their texts for publication or rejecting them within two months. The authors have the right to take a substantive stance to the corrections suggested by the reviewers and provide the editorial board with their opinion.

2. Responsibility and rights of reviewers

The submitted articles, preliminarily qualified by the editorial board for the reviewing process, are submitted for review to two independent reviewers who have at least a PhD degree, and there is no conflict of interest between them and the author or the authors, for example, because of the work in the same academic unit, close scholarly cooperation, official dependence, or close personal relationships (relationship to the second degree, marriage). If such a conflict of interest occurs, the reviewers should inform the editors of the journal. The principle of mutual anonymity of the reviewers and the authors of the submitted article shall be preserved (double-blind peer review). In case the group of specialists in a given scholarly speciality is very narrow, there may be an exception to the above-mentioned rules.

Reviewers should refuse to review any submitted article that is significantly beyond their scholarly experience and competence.

A review must have a clear conclusion of the reviewer, allowing the admission of the article for publication, not allowing it to be published, or allowing it to be published after necessary corrections, notified to the editor and the author.

Reviewers should inform the editorial board about any possible similarity of the reviewed article to any previously published content, not acknowledged in the scholarly apparatus to the article.

Reviewers are required to keep confidential all information provided to them by the editorial board. The reviewers may not use the data or concepts contained in the articles provided to them before they are published, even if the reviewed article has not been accepted for publication, without the authors’ written consent.

Reviews are made free of charge.

3. Editorial responsibility and rights

The submitted texts are subject to an initial review performed by the editors of the journal. This assessment concerns in particular the compliance of the submitted text with the profile of the journal, its general substantive level, and the presence of the required formal elements.

The final classification of the text for publication is made by the editor-in-chief on the basis of his analysis of the reviews and the final version of the text sent by the author (after taking into account the corrections suggested by the reviewers). An important factor influencing the decision of the editor-in-chief is the amount of space available in the basic version of the journal. The editor-in-chief, before making a decision, may consult the members of the editorial board of the journal.

The members of the editorial board may not use the data or the concepts contained in the submitted texts before their publication without the authors’ written consent, even if the reviewed text has not been accepted for publication.

The editor-in-chief of the journal is the appeal authority in matters related to the ethics of the authors, the reviewers, and the members of the editorial board of Collectanea Theologica.

Open Access Policy

Editorial policies in relation to the journals published at Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw (UKSW) is based on the Libre Open Access standard. This means that all articles published in journals at the UKSW are available, i.e. they are immediately available and free of charge for reading, downloading, and sharing.  It also means that published articles cannot only be read, but also reused by others. Libre Open Access articles may be placed on any website, used for lectures, or may be included in so-called readers without authorization of the author or publisher. However, a proper reference to the author and license must always be included.

Policy regarding copyrights

The copyright of published articles is retained by the authors.

Licences

Articles published in journals published at UKSW are under the terms of the Creative Commons license CC BY-ND 4.0 International, which permits:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format; for any purpose, even commercially, under the following terms:
• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• No Derivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.
• No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Policy regarding depositing different versions of materials

Authors are allowed to deposit: 1) submitted version, 2) accepted version, and 3) published version of their articles in an institutional or other repository of the author’s choice without embargo.

Publication Fees Policy

Authors do not bear any costs associated with the publication of their articles, i.e. article processing charges (APCs), language editing fees, colour charges, submission fees, page charges, membership fees, print subscription costs, other supplementary charges.  Authors also do not receive any financial gratification for the published articles.

Journal History

The journal was founded in 1920 in Lviv at the Theological Faculty of Jan Kazimierz University and called “Przegląd Teologiczny” (“Theological Review”). Since 1931, it has been published under the Latin name “Collectanea Theologica”. The periodical was the first and the most significant theological journal in the reborn and independent Poland, aimed at developing and disseminating religious and theological knowledge; in the years 1924–1946, it was issued by the Polish Theological Society. The systematic publication of the journal was interrupted in 1939 by the Second World War. The publication of the journal was resumed in 1949. Since then, the periodical has been published systematically, first edited by the professors of the Major Metropolitan Seminary in Warsaw, since 1955 by the staff of the Academy of Catholic Theology, and since 1999 by the staff of the Theological Faculty of Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw.