Indian Journal of Neighbourhood Studies

Foundational Document

Table of Contents

1. Aims and Scope
2. Editorial Statement
3. Editorial Framing
4. Section Structure
5. Submission and Research-Integrity Requirements
6. Peer Review Policy
7. How to Submit
8. Editorial Team
9. Support Structure
10. Ethics
11. Author’s Declaration
12. Author’s Responsibilities
13. Corrections, Retractions and Editorial Discretion
14. Ethical Dispute
15. Indexing
16. Launch Announcement
17. About Chanakya University
18. About the Subhas Chandra Bose Chair of International Relations

1. Aims and Scope

The Indian Journal of Neighbourhood Studies (IJNS) is a quarterly, peer-reviewed e-journal dedicated to advancing interdisciplinary scholarship on the multiple meanings, dimensions, and dynamics of India’s neighbourhood in contemporary regional and international affairs. It examines India’s neighbourhood as the tangible community of neighbouring states, each with its own borders, sovereignty, and national identity — and, within that framework, as a space also shaped by historical interactions, political contestations, economic flows, cultural exchanges, ecological interdependencies, and everyday practices across borders.

IJNS seeks to fill a significant gap in existing scholarship by treating neighbourhoods as analytical frameworks in their own right, rather than as derivative extensions of foreign policy analysis, area studies, or security studies. It encourages contributions that examine how neighbourhoods are imagined, negotiated, and transformed by states, institutions, and non-state actors, including borderland communities, migrant networks, and regional formations.

The journal welcomes research from within India and abroad that combines theoretical innovation with empirical depth, and deepens understanding of the forces shaping India’s neighbourhood and the country’s engagements with it. It encourages comparative and transregional perspectives, methodological pluralism, and contributions that bridge academic scholarship with practitioner insight, while remaining attentive to grounded realities across South Asia and its extended neighbourhood.

IJNS publishes original research, policy essays, neighbourhood briefs, field reports, archival and historical studies, oral histories, infographics, and book reviews that illuminate long-term structural change as well as immediate developments in India’s neighbourhood.

2. Editorial Statement

The Indian Journal of Neighbourhood Studies is founded on the premise that India’s neighbourhood is not simply a strategic periphery, but a constitutive space shaping its political imagination, developmental trajectories, and global engagements.

The journal seeks to move beyond state-centric and security-driven frameworks that have traditionally dominated the study of the region. Instead, it foregrounds neighbourhoods as dynamic, variegated, and lived spaces, where formal diplomacy intersects with informal networks, local histories, ecological systems, and everyday negotiations of power and identity.

IJNS aims to serve as a forum for scholarship that is analytically rigorous, empirically grounded, and conceptually innovative. It particularly encourages contributions that challenge established orthodoxies, recover marginal perspectives, and bring diverse methodological approaches into conversation.

As an innovative feature of the journal, the Infographics and Oral Histories initiative will bring together data-driven visualisation and lived experience to illuminate India’s neighbourhood in ways that conventional scholarship cannot. As an e-journal, IJNS will also make use of multimedia, including audio and video embeds or links.

At the same time, the journal remains attentive to policy relevance, seeking to bridge the gap between academic research and practitioner insights. It aspires to cultivate a scholarly community that is both India-anchored and globally engaged, contributing to wider debates in international relations, regional studies, and global political thought.

3. Editorial Framing

• Brings together conceptual, empirical, and policy-oriented contributions.
• Does not offer a single, unified framework — invites multiple perspectives on the neighbourhood as an evolving, variegated space.
• Positions IJNS at the intersection of policy relevance and conceptual inquiry.
• Foregrounds borderlands as a critical vantage point, alongside field-based, ethnographic, and subnational approaches that complement official archives.
• A platform open to scholars and practitioners from within India and abroad.

4. Section Structure

5. Submission and Research-Integrity Requirements

• Submit an anonymised manuscript and a separate title page containing the article title, author names, affiliations, corresponding-author details, and ORCID iDs.
• Include a 150–200-word abstract stating the research problem, approach or method, principal findings or argument, and original contribution, followed by five to seven keywords.
• Use in-text citation with references in Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition (author–date). Submit in Microsoft Word with consecutively numbered tables and figures, complete captions, sources, and permissions where applicable.
• Provide declarations on funding, conflicts of interest, research ethics or consent, and data availability, where applicable.
• Ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures, or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere.
• Disclose any use of generative AI or automated tools in writing, translation, coding, data analysis, or image preparation. Authors remain fully responsible for accuracy, citations, originality, and integrity.
• All manuscripts will be screened using plagiarism-detection software, with a permissible similarity index of up to 15 per cent, subject to editorial scrutiny. The use of AI tools must comply with Chanakya University norms and be appropriately disclosed.
• Manuscripts must be original, unpublished, not under review elsewhere, and compliant with recognised publication-ethics standards.

6. Peer Review Policy

• Research Articles: Double-blind peer review, normally by two independent reviewers.
• Other submissions: Editorial review with external expert consultation where appropriate.
• The Editors may waive the requirement of double-blind peer review for select invited contributions.

Process:

• Initial editorial screening (including desk rejection where necessary).
• External review.
• Decision: Accept / Minor / Major / Reject.

Indicative timeline: 4 weeks for first decision.

7. How to Submit

Submissions will be accepted through the IJNS Online Submission Portal.

Editorial correspondence may be addressed to [email protected]. Please use the subject line: “IJNS Inaugural Issue – [Section Name]”. For queries, write to [email protected] with copy to [email protected].

8. Editorial Team

9. Support Structure

• Reviewers’ Panel
  • A curated, rotating pool of experts across disciplines and regions.
• Administrative & Editorial Office/ Production and Management Hub

  Scientific Research Solution Pvt Ltd. (SCIRESOL)
  #208, Treasury Layout
  Mysuru-570026, Karnataka, India
  e-mail: [email protected]   Web: www.sciresol.com

  • Contact point for authors, reviewers, and readers; manages the submission portal and communications.
  • Coordinates copyediting, typesetting, proofs, and online publication.

10. Ethics

The Indian Journal of Neighbourhood Studies is committed to the highest standards of academic integrity, publication ethics, and editorial responsibility. The journal follows the principles and best practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). It expects authors, reviewers and editors to adhere to the principles of honesty, transparency, fairness, accountability and respect for scholarly norms.

The journal does not tolerate plagiarism, duplicate or simultaneous submission, data fabrication or falsification, citation manipulation, inappropriate authorship practices, undisclosed conflicts of interest, or the misuse of confidential copyrighted or AI-generated material.

11. Author’s Declaration

By submitting a manuscript, authors declare that:

• The submission is original, unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere.
• All sources have been appropriately acknowledged and cited.
• All listed authors have made a genuine scholarly contribution and have approved the submission.
• Any actual or potential conflict of interest has been disclosed.
• Any material use of AI tools has been disclosed.
• The manuscript complies with applicable ethical, legal and professional standards.
• Authors remain solely responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and ethical compliance of their work.

12. Author’s Responsibilities

Authors are expected to maintain the highest standards of scholarship, disclose any conflicts of interest, respond constructively to reviewer comments and notify the editorial team if a significant error is identified in a submitted or published manuscript.

13. Corrections, Retractions and Editorial Discretion

The journal reserves the right to reject, suspend review of, withdraw, correct or retract any submission or published article where concerns relating to academic misconduct, ethical non-disclosure, plagiarism, AI misuse or other breaches of publication ethics arise. Corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions will be handled in accordance with COPE guidelines and established scholarly practices.

14. Ethical Dispute

Any dispute concerning authorship, plagiarism, research ethics, AI use, publication misconduct, or related matters shall be referred to the Chanakya University Research Ethics Committee. The Committee’s decision shall be final.

15. Indexing

• Early goal: Indexing in Google Scholar.
• Medium-term goal: Indexing in Scopus / UGC CARE/ DOAJ.

16. Launch Announcement

Chanakya University announces the launch of the Indian Journal of Neighbourhood Studies (IJNS), a flagship initiative of the Subhas Chandra Bose Chair of International Relations.

IJNS is among the first academic initiatives to systematically theorise and empirically examine India’s neighbourhood as a lived, relational, and variegated space. The journal is envisioned as a platform for rigorous, interdisciplinary scholarship on India’s neighbourhood and its wider regional dynamics, dedicated to rethinking how the region shapes, and is shaped by, the political, economic, and social processes around it. It invites scholars and practitioners to join in that endeavour.

The inaugural issue, “Rethinking the Neighbourhood,” will bring together conceptual and empirical contributions from India and beyond.

17. About Chanakya University

Chanakya University was founded in 2022 under an Act of the Karnataka State Legislature and has grown quickly as a multidisciplinary institution. Its 116-acre campus near Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport is taking shape with the backing of several leading technology partners. The University already runs six Schools, eight Centres of Excellence, and two Chairs, and has established itself as a serious centre for teaching, research, and engagement with public policy. Dr. S. Somanath, former Chairman of ISRO, is its Chancellor. The University sets out to combine India’s intellectual traditions with scholarship and research of international standard, equipping its graduates with wisdom (jnāna), will (ichhā), and the capacity to act (kriyā) so that they may meet difficult developmental questions in a way that holds together Indian inheritance and universal human values.

18. About the Subhas Chandra Bose Chair of International Relations

The Subhas Chandra Bose Chair of International Relations was created to study global affairs from an Indian vantage point. Rooted in the country’s strategic culture, its purpose is to inform India’s growing international profile and constructive role through original thinking and careful inquiry. The Chair works to advance interdisciplinary scholarship, to deepen the expertise of advanced students and researchers across the core fields of international relations, to articulate an Indian conceptual vocabulary for the discipline, and to cultivate partnerships and a wider community of scholars committed to sound analysis and considered policy. Established within the School of Law, Governance and Public Policy at Chanakya University, the Chair has a primary focus on Asia, with particular attention to India’s neighbourhood.

Indian Journal of Neighbourhood Studies is a flagship initiative of the Subhas Chandra Bose Chair of International Relations, Chanakya University, Bengaluru.