Političke Perspektive

About Političke Perspektive

Overview

Političke perspektive (English parallel title: Political Perspectives), subtitled časopis za istraživanje politike ("journal for political research"), is a regional peer-reviewed academic journal devoted to the study of politics. Launched in 2011, it is published jointly by the Faculty of Political Sciences of the University of Belgrade (Univerzitet u Beogradu – Fakultet političkih nauka), the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Zagreb (Fakultet političkih znanosti), and the Serbian Political Science Association (Udruženje za političke nauke Srbije). This cross-border, inter-university publishing arrangement makes the journal a distinctive platform for political research in Southeast Europe.

The journal was conceived as a regional publication that is not disciplinarily confined: although its focus is political science, it deliberately welcomes contributions from closely related disciplines — law, sociology, philosophy, economics, communication studies and others — whose authors share an interest in the scholarly and professional study of politics. The guiding idea is to emphasize expert and academic research on politics in all its dimensions, giving the journal an interdisciplinary profile that sets it apart from more narrowly specialized periodicals.

Političke perspektive is an open-access journal that charges authors no fees of any kind. It appears twice a year, in June and December, and publishes peer-reviewed texts in English, Croatian and Serbian. All manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review by domestic and international reviewers, and submissions are screened for plagiarism. The journal is hosted on Hrčak, Croatia's portal of scientific and professional journals, where it has been included since August 2015, and editorial operations run through the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform. Articles carry DOIs under the journal's 10.20901/pp prefix.

Aims and Scope

The journal's stated mission is to advance the scholarly investigation of politics in the broadest sense. While political science stands at its center, Političke perspektive explicitly refuses narrow disciplinary boundaries: the editors encourage the publication of work from different political-science subdisciplines and from a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches, provided the work meets the criteria of scholarly relevance and quality. Papers from neighboring disciplines are welcome when they address political phenomena with analytical rigor.

The journal's coverage areas, as listed in its Hrčak record, span philosophy, sociology, political science, law and economics. In practice, published content has addressed political theory, comparative politics, public policy, governance, welfare-state transformation, electoral and party politics, political metaphor and discourse, democratic institutions, European integration and regional politics in Southeast Europe. The journal thus serves both as a venue for general political-science research and as a forum for scholarship on the politics of the post-Yugoslav region and its European neighborhood.

The journal publishes original scientific articles, review articles, reports from scientific conferences, professional articles, responses to published articles, translations of relevant works into Serbian, and book reviews. This range of formats allows the journal to function as a full-service scholarly forum: a place for new empirical findings, for synthetic overviews of research fields, for professional debate and for engagement with the international literature through translation.

Publication Details

Političke perspektive is published by three institutions: the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Sciences (Belgrade, Serbia), the Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb (Zagreb, Croatia), and the Serbian Political Science Association. The journal's print ISSN, recorded in its official imprint, is ISSN 2217-561X. It has been published continuously since 2011, beginning with volume 1, issue 1.

Since 2021 the journal has appeared twice a year, in June and December. Manuscripts are accepted in English, Croatian and Serbian, reflecting the journal's regional character and its ambition to reach both domestic and international readerships. The journal is catalogued by the National Library of Serbia and is available in full text through the Hrčak portal, which has hosted it since 25 August 2015.

The journal assigns DOIs to its articles under the prefix 10.20901/pp, ensuring persistent identification and citability of published work. Editorial correspondence is handled through two addresses: perspektive@fpn.bg.ac.rs (Belgrade) and perspektive@fpzg.hr (Zagreb).

Open Access Policy and Licensing

Političke perspektive is an open-access journal: all published content is freely available to readers. The journal's Hrčak record confirms its open-access status and its policy of imposing no charges on authors — there are no article processing charges (APCs), no submission fees, no review fees and no other fees required to complete the publication process.

Authors retain their copyrights. After publication, authors may deposit their work — in the form of the submitted manuscript, the accepted author version or the published article — in any repository, provided they indicate that the work was published in Političke perspektive. This author-friendly rights policy supports the widest possible dissemination of the journal's content.

Peer Review Process

Every manuscript submitted to Političke perspektive is first evaluated by the editorial board and then sent for double-blind peer review — described in the journal's documentation as external, double, and double-blind review, conducted by both domestic and international reviewers, applying to scientific and professional papers. The identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other throughout the process.

Before being sent out for review, all manuscripts are screened for plagiarism using PlagScan software. Reviewers assess the scholarly relevance, originality, methodological soundness and quality of the work and propose a categorization for each paper; the final decision on categorization and on acceptance, revision or rejection is made by the editorial board on the basis of the reviews. The journal's publication ethics and malpractice statement, grounded in the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) best-practice guidelines for journal editors, defines the standards of ethical conduct for authors, editors, reviewers and publishers.

Editorial Information

The journal's editorial leadership, as recorded in its official imprint, includes an editor-in-chief and deputy editor supported by an editorial board, alongside an international advisory board and a regional advisory board that bring together prominent political scientists from institutions across Europe and beyond. The imprint lists Dušan Spasojević as editor-in-chief (glavni urednik) and Ana Petek as deputy editor, with editorial board members including Đana Luša, Dušan Vučićević, Dario Čepo and Nikola Beljinac; the international advisory board has included scholars such as Florian Bieber, Xavier Bougarel, Valerie Bunce, Nenad Dimitrijević, Jasna Dragović-Soso, Chip Gagnon, Eric Gordy, Stef Jansen, Denisa Kostovicova, Kevin Deegan Krause and Keichi Kubo.

The journal maintains two editorial offices: the Faculty of Political Sciences in Belgrade (Jove Ilića 165, Belgrade; perspektive@fpn.bg.ac.rs) and the Faculty of Political Science in Zagreb (Lepušićeva 6, Zagreb; perspektive@fpzg.hr). Serbian-language copyediting and proofreading and graphic design are credited in the imprint, and the journal is printed in a small print run while being fully available online.

Indexing and Abstracting

Političke perspektive is hosted on Hrčak (hrcak.srce.hr), the Croatian national portal for scientific and professional journals, where it has been included since August 2015. Through Hrčak, the journal's full texts, metadata, author guidelines, ethics documents and imprint are openly accessible, and articles receive Hrčak identifiers alongside their DOIs.

The journal's referencing guidelines follow the American Political Science Association citation style (author–date model), aligning it with the conventions of the international political-science community. Inclusion of DOIs in references is mandatory for sources that have them, which supports the journal's integration into the networked scholarly record.

Article Types

Političke perspektive publishes the following categories of contributions:

• Original scientific articles — papers presenting previously unpublished, original research in complete form.
• Review articles — concise and critical surveys of a research area or part of one, including the author's original view of the state of the discipline, approach or topic.
• Conference reports — scientific papers presenting new research results that require rapid publication, not necessarily enabling full verification or complete interpretation.
• Professional articles — expert contributions addressing matters of professional relevance.
• Responses to published articles — rejoinders and debates engaging with the journal's content.
• Translations — translations of relevant works into Serbian, bringing international scholarship to regional readers.
• Book reviews — reviews of recent scholarly books.

The proposed categorization of each paper is made by the reviewers, with the editorial board taking the final decision on the basis of the reviews received.

Submission Guidance

Manuscripts are submitted to the editorial office as Word documents through the journal's Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform on Hrčak. Authors should consult the journal's author guidelines — available in Serbian and English versions on Hrčak — for detailed requirements on manuscript structure, language, formatting and referencing.

Key requirements include writing in Croatian, Serbian or English using standard academic formatting; providing a title page with the article's full title and an abstract in both Croatian and English (approximately 900 characters) stating the purpose, goals, methods and most important results, accompanied by five to six keywords; and following the journal's referencing rules, which are based on the American Political Science Association author–date style with mandatory DOI inclusion where available.

Authors should be aware that all manuscripts are screened for plagiarism before review and that the review process is double-blind, so submissions should be prepared in a way that does not reveal the authors' identities in the main manuscript file. There are no fees at any stage. Because the journal publishes only twice a year, authors should plan for an editorial timeline consistent with a biannual schedule, while conference reports and other timely contributions may be fast-tracked when the editorial board judges rapid publication to be warranted.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Političke perspektive?

Političke perspektive (English: Political Perspectives) is a regional, peer-reviewed, open-access academic journal for political research, subtitled "časopis za istraživanje politike." It has been published since 2011 and appears twice a year.

Who publishes the journal?

The journal is published jointly by the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Sciences, the University of Zagreb – Faculty of Political Science, and the Serbian Political Science Association (Udruženje za političke nauke Srbije).

What is the journal's ISSN?

The print ISSN recorded in the journal's official imprint is 2217-561X. Articles carry DOIs under the prefix 10.20901/pp.

In which languages are manuscripts accepted?

English, Croatian and Serbian.

How often is the journal published?

Twice a year — in June and December (since 2021).

Is the journal open access? Are there fees?

Yes, the journal is fully open access, and there are no charges to authors at any stage — no APCs, submission fees or review fees. Authors retain their copyrights and may deposit their published work in any repository.

What is the peer review process?

All manuscripts are evaluated by the editorial board and then subjected to double-blind peer review by domestic and international reviewers. Submissions are screened for plagiarism with PlagScan software before review.

What disciplines does the journal cover?

The focus is political science, but the journal is not disciplinarily confined: it welcomes work from law, sociology, philosophy, economics, communication studies and other neighboring disciplines that address politics. Listed coverage areas are philosophy, sociology, political science, law and economics.

Where is the journal available?

The journal is hosted in full text on Hrčak, Croatia's portal of scientific journals, where it has been included since August 2015. Editorial operations run through the Open Journal Systems platform on Hrčak.

How do I submit a manuscript?

Manuscripts are submitted as Word documents through the journal's OJS submission platform on Hrčak. Authors should follow the published author guidelines, prepare a bilingual (Croatian/English) title page and abstract, use the APSA-based referencing style with DOIs, and anonymize the manuscript for double-blind review.

The Journal's Place in Political Science Publishing

Političke perspektive fills a distinctive role in the ecosystem of political-science journals. Most high-profile political science periodicals are published in English by large commercial publishers and oriented toward debates centered on Western Europe and North America. A regional, multilingual, open-access journal published jointly by two public universities in Southeast Europe offers something different: a venue where scholarship on the politics of the Balkans, post-socialist transformation, European integration from the perspective of candidate and new member states, and democratic theory informed by the region's experience can be published without paywalls and without author fees.

The journal's trilingual policy — English, Croatian, Serbian — is itself a scholarly statement. It allows authors to write in the language in which their argument is strongest while remaining accessible to international readers through English-language contributions and bilingual abstracts. The practice of publishing translations of relevant international works into Serbian further serves the journal's mission of connecting regional scholarship with global debates in both directions.

The joint Belgrade–Zagreb publishing arrangement is historically significant. Political science as a discipline developed in both cities' faculties through the socialist and post-socialist periods, and a shared journal institutionalizes academic cooperation across a border that has not always been easy to cross. The international advisory board, drawing scholars from Graz, Paris, Cornell, Goldsmiths, UCL, Manchester, the LSE, Wayne State and Waseda, signals the journal's ambition to meet international standards while remaining rooted in its region. For early-career researchers in Southeast Europe, the journal offers a rigorous but accessible first international-quality outlet with no financial barriers.

Guidance for Readers, Authors and Librarians

For readers: The Hrčak portal provides the complete full-text archive, searchable by author, title and keyword, with each article carrying a DOI under the 10.20901/pp prefix. Because the journal publishes in June and December, those are the natural moments to check for new content. The bilingual abstracts make it possible to survey even the Croatian- and Serbian-language articles for relevance before reading in full.

For prospective authors: Frame the manuscript's contribution in terms that speak to both regional specialists and general political scientists — the journal's reviewers are drawn from domestic and international pools. Follow the APSA-based referencing style carefully, include DOIs for cited sources where they exist, and prepare the required bilingual title page and abstract. Anonymize the manuscript thoroughly for double-blind review, and run a final plagiarism self-check before submission, since all manuscripts are screened with PlagScan. With no fees and open access, there is no financial risk in submitting.

For librarians: The journal's print ISSN is 2217-561X; it is available in full text, open access, through Hrčak, where it has been hosted since 2015. It is a suitable addition to collections supporting political science, Southeast European studies, public policy and international relations.

Does the journal publish book reviews and translations?

Yes. Book reviews (prikazi knjiga) and translations of relevant scholarly works into Serbian are regular categories alongside original and review articles, conference reports, professional articles and responses to published pieces.

Which citation style should authors use?

The journal follows the American Political Science Association (APSA) author–date citation style, with some modifications detailed in its referencing guidelines. Including the DOI in each bibliographic entry is mandatory for sources that have one.

Frequently Asked Questions About Publishing in the Journal

What makes a strong submission?

Manuscripts that make an original scholarly contribution, engage seriously with the relevant theoretical and empirical literature, and present their methods and evidence transparently. Because the journal addresses both regional specialists and the wider political-science community, framing the research question so that its broader significance is clear strengthens a submission considerably.

Can I submit in English if I am not from the region?

Yes. The journal explicitly publishes in English alongside Croatian and Serbian, and its reviewers include international scholars. Submissions from outside Southeast Europe are welcome, particularly when they engage with the journal's thematic interests or offer comparative perspectives relevant to the region.

How does the review timeline work?

After an initial editorial screening and plagiarism check, manuscripts go to double-blind review by domestic and international reviewers. Authors should allow time consistent with a biannual publication rhythm — issues appear in June and December — and should respond to revision requests promptly to keep the process moving.

Are there any costs for authors?

No. The journal charges no submission fees, article processing charges, review fees or any other fees. Open access is provided at no cost to authors, and authors keep their copyrights.