Journal History

Launched in 2020: The website and first issue went live on the 27^th April 2020, but subsequently discontinued due to Covid.

A new editorial team met at the start of the 2022/23 academic year to plan the journal’s migration to OJS. This team oversaw two publications before handing over to the 24/25 team bringing with it significant changes to the Journal.

The Michaelmas 24/25 edition will include short stories and poetry for the first time as well as several smaller special editions.

Focus and Scope

The Heretic is a student-led journal for undergraduate Divinity students at the  University of St Andrews to showcase their  original academic and narrative work as well as having it peer reviewed for the public domain. A main edition is published biannually alongside ad-hoc special editions with both forms focusing on theological reflection. To date, contributions have included commentaries on biblical themes; studies of the work of important theologians in history;  and responses to prominent in practical and  postcolonial theology. The journal is financially supported by the School of Divinity of the University.

Publisher

The School of Divinity at the University of St Andrews.

Review Policy

These are peer reviews by an Editorial Board member, articles are distributed by the Editor in Chief, also the Journal Manager, according to the reviewer’s subject specialty. The reviews are published anonymously alongside the original article.

Copyright

Authors of each article retain their copyright and agree to a separate License to Publish with The Heretic.

Open Access Policy

Unless otherwise noted all content published by The Heretic is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0), which allows liberal reuse of the final published work as long as appropriate attribution is made. For more information please follow this link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Privacy and Consent Policy

The data collected from registered and non-registered users of this journal falls within the scope of the standard functioning of peer-reviewed journals. It includes information that makes communication possible for the editorial process; it is used to inform readers about the authorship and editing of content; it enables collecting aggregated data on readership behaviours, as well as tracking geopolitical and social elements of scholarly communication.

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

This journal’s editorial team uses this data to guide its work in publishing and improving this journal. Data that will assist in developing this journal platform (Open Journal Systems – OJS) may be shared with its developer Public Knowledge Project (PKP) in an anonymized and aggregated form, with appropriate exceptions such as article metrics. The data will not be sold by this journal or PKP nor will it be used for purposes other than those stated here.

Registered Users

Users who register with this journal, including authors and peer reviewers where applicable, consent to having their personal information stored in the University’s journal hosting platform (OJS) and processed by the platform and journal editorial teams. Authors published in this journal are also responsible for the human subject data that figures in the research reported in the journal.

Those involved in editing this journal seek to be compliant with industry standards for data privacy, including the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provision for “data subject rights” that include (a) breach notification; (b) right of access; (c) the right to be forgotten; (d) data portability; and (e) privacy by design. The GDPR also allows for the recognition of “the public interest in the availability of the data,” which has a particular saliency for those involved in maintaining, with the greatest integrity possible, the public record of scholarly publishing.

All users whose details are stored in the University’s OJS installation can exercise their rights of the individual, as they are detailed in the GDPR. If you have a user account and wish to have it deleted, please email journal-hosting@st-andrews.ac.uk