Meander

Guidelines for Authors

In accordance with our mission of propagating knowledge about ancient culture among Polish readers, the language of publication in “Meander” is Polish.

1. We accept only original articles, translations, literary works, reviews and memoirs that have not been published elsewhere. We ask authors to send their submissions as an e-mail attachment to the editorial board’s email address: meander@uw.edu.pl, we will however also accept submissions in other forms. The editorial board does not return the submitted materials. All scholarly works published in “Meander” undergoe external review and all publications a thorough editing process. The review process is described in detail at https://journals.pan.pl/meander/ in the „Peer-review Procedure” section. The author will receive an author’s copy and an electronic version of their article (in pdf format). Please remember to leave a contact address (preferably an e-mail address).

2. The font in the main text should be Times New Roman, 12 pt, 1,5 spacing. Quotes from modern authors should be placed in quotation marks, words in foreign languages and Latin quotations in the main text should be in italics, Greek words and quotations do not need to be italicized. Please use Unicode for the Greek. Longer quotations (Latin, Greek, and translations) should be placed in a separate paragraph and written in a smaller font (10 pt), without quotations marks. Footnotes should be placed below the main text. In the main text try to refrain from using abbreviations and digits. The text should include short abstracts and key words in Polish and English. An argumentum in Latin is also welcome but not mandatory.

3. References should take the following form:

Th. A. Schmitz, Moderne Literaturtheorie und antike Texte. Eine Einführung, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2002, p. 126–154.
M. Cary, H. H. Scullard, Dzieje Rzymu. Od czasów najdawniejszych do Konstantyna, trans. by J. Schwakopf, vol. II, Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, Warszawa 1992, p. 424–440.
K. Kumaniecki, Nad prozą antyczną, [in:] O sztuce tłumaczenia, ed. by M. Rusinek, Wrocław 1955, p. 99–109.
M. Campbell, Three Notes on Alexandrine Poetry, Hermes 102, 1974, p. 38–46.

The name of the publishing house can be omitted if the referenced work was published more than 50 years ago. Please avoid the abbreviations “f.”, “ff.”, referencing instead the exact pages or verse numbers. References to works that have already been quoted should take the form: Campbell, op. cit., s. 42. If more than one work by a given author has been referenced, “op. cit” should be replaced with an abbreviated form of the title. Please include a bibliography containing all the works mentioned in the footnotes.

4. References to ancient works should be reasonably abbreviated, as is the common practice:

Hom. Il. I 1; Pind., fr. 58 Snell-Maehler; Soph. Oed. Col. 103; Pl. Men. 70 b – 73 c; Aristot. Metaph. IV 1007 a 21–26; Cic. De or. III 93–95; Quint. Inst. VIII 6, 44.

"Meander" online:


Tables of contents from 1946 to 2008 are available in the Baza Czasopism Humanistycznych i Społecznych Muzeum Historii Polski [Polish History Museum’s Database of Humanities and Social Sciences Journals]: https://bazhum.muzhp.pl/

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Publication Ethics

“Meander” follows the guidelines of publishing ethics as laid out in the COPE Code of Conduct ( https://publicationethics.org/core-practices). “Meander” does not collect any fees from authors.


Authorship and contributorship

We accept only original articles which have not been published elsewhere nor are under consideration for publication elsewhere at the time of submission. If the author is submitting a paper based on their previous work, they must diligently acknowledge this fact in the appropriate footnote. All authors of the submission must be clearly stated, with the appropriate affiliation – by “author” we customarily mean the person who significantly contributes to the guiding idea, structure, analysis, conception and writing of the submission and takes responsibility for its entire content or a particular section. If there are two or more authors of the submission, a corresponding author shall be named, whose responsibilities include signing the relevant agreements, responding to queries about the submission, communicating with the editorial board, and manuscript corrections and proofreading.
Persons whose contribution does not meet the criteria for authorship but whom the author(s) would like to thank can be listed in the first footnote.


Conflict of interest or competing interests

Any possible conflicts of interest or competing interests which may exert undue influence on the review or publication process in “Meander” should be made known to the editors by authors and reviewers.
The editorial board makes every effort to ensure that no conflict of interest arises during the review process. The reviewer is chosen from a research institution different from the author’s and the review process is double blind (the reviewer does not know the identity of the author and vice versa).
Information about funding, where necessary, should be included in the first footnote of the article.


Policies on data sharing and reproducibility

All articles published in “Meander” from 2021 onward are published in the form of the so-called Gold Open Access, under The Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en). Authors are encouraged to place articles published in the journal in open repositories, under the condition that a link to the journal’s website is provided.
For articles published before the year 2021, the copyright policy is different from the above. Nevertheless, access to these articles is free from fees or any other access restrictions. Permissions for the use of texts published in „Meander” may be sought directly from the Editors, by writing an e-mail to: meander@uw.edu.pl.


Intellectual property

We are deeply committed to ensuring scholarly conscientiousness of the papers published in our journal and respect for the scholarly norms elaborated throughout the centuries of studies on Antiquity. We strongly encourage authors to heed carefully the guidelines for quoting or otherwise referencing the works and ideas of others; the scope both of verbatim quotes (placed in brackets) and of referencing the work of other scholars (introduced in a clear manner by statements such as “According to X…”, “As noted by Y…”) must be distinctly designated and an appropriate footnote containing a precise bibliographical entry of the work referenced must be supplied. Apart from exceptional, appropriately annotated cases, it is not allowed to use second-hand quotations; it is assumed as a general rule that the author has direct knowledge of all the works referenced in their paper. All sources used by the author(s) must be referenced. Failure to appropriately acknowledge the work of another constitutes plagiarism and will not be tolerated (see next section).


Ethical oversight

The editorial board is committed to the upkeep of ethical standards and will not allow any papers written with the use of unethical practices to be published. The editors have the responsibility to check for potential cases of plagiarism or citation manipulation and will diligently do so. If such practices are detected – in particular the use of plagiarism – the article will be disqualified from being published in “Meander” and the author will be asked for an explanation. Articles that are proven to have been created with the use of aggravated unethical practices after their publication can be removed from the journal’s website.

We treat seriously any allegations of misconduct or malpractice, major and minor, whether they arise pre- or post-publication. In case of a breach of ethical standards, the editors will react with severity appropriate to the magnitude of the transgression. Potential sanctions that may be applied in such cases range from a letter to the author to contacting the author’s employer or institution. Authors are always given the opportunity to answer to any accusations of misconduct.

Given that the focus of “Meander” is broadly speaking Classical Antiquity, the editors do not foresee submissions which would raise other ethical concerns (e.g. publications on vulnerable populations, research using animals, confidential data, etc.).


Complaints and appeals

The editorial board of “Meander” takes pains to resolve all potential complaints and appeals for the benefit of all those involved. The first point of contact in case of complaints or appeals should be the editorial board (at meander@uw.edu.pl) or the editor-in-chief ( jan.kwapisz@uw.edu.pl). If the complaint concerns the editor-in-chief, it should be addressed to the Head of the Committee on Ancient Culture of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Should complaints regarding reviewers or the review process arise on the part of the author(s), the editors will do what they can to solve the issue, including by sending the article to an additional reviewer, when necessary. The editorial board is represented by the editor-in-chief, appointed by the Committee on Ancient Culture of the Polish Academy of Sciences and accountable before the Committee in accordance with the Committee’s regulations.


Post-publication discussions and corrections

“Meander” welcomes post-publication discussions in the form of letters to the editor.

Corrections or responses (e.g. to reviews) are published as soon as possible (preferably in the next volume) in accordance with Polish press law (Dz.U. 2018 poz. 1914, https://isap.sejm.gov.pl/isap.nsf/DocDetails.xsp?id=WDU20180001914).

Peer Review Process

All research papers submitted to “Meander” undergo a review process as follows:

1. The editorial board approves the article for external review. If the article is not deemed to be of enough merit, the editorial board can reject it without the external review process taking place (desk rejection). Articles should be prepared according to the guidelines for authors available online or on the third page of the cover of every issue of “Meander”. Failure to comply with the guidelines may result in returning the article to the author for corrections at an earlier stage.

2. Every paper approved for review is sent to an independent reviewer who is not associated with the author’s research institution. The reviewers are experts in their respective fields, chosen according to the subject matter of the submitted article. The editorial board informs the author about submitting their article for review.

3. The review process is anonymous, the identity of both the reviewer and the author is concealed (double blind review).

4. The reviewer recommends the article for publication, correction, or rejection.

5. Basing on the review, the editorial board decides to accept the article, return it to the author for correction, or reject the article. The editorial board discloses the content of the review to the author and informs them of the outcome regarding their text, suggesting necessary corrections if need be. In some cases, especially if there arises the need for far-reaching corrections, the editorial board can have the article reviewed again, by a second reviewer, after its resubmission.

6. If the review process is taking more than three months and the author has not heard about its outcome, they should contact the editorial board. Please do not enquire about your article before that time.

7. Accepting the article for publication does not mean it will be published exactly in the form it was submitted as all papers undergo a thorough editing process (with the author’s permission).

8. Materials which are not of a strictly scholarly nature – such as reviews, obituaries, interviews, reports, literary works – are not in general submitted to external review, but they may be if the need arises.