Articles, published in the Contemporary Military Challenges do not reflect the official viewpoint of the Slovenian Armed Forces nor the bodies in which the authors of articles are or were previously employed.

The publication is indexed in bibliography databases COBISS.SI.

Referee procedure

The referee procedure ensures that all articles published in the Contemporary Military Challenges abide by Slovenian standards and the rules of good writing. The procedure is anonymous a standard form is filled in. A referee receives an article without the indication of the author and vice versa. Normally, the referee procedure is carried out by two referees. However, if their opinions differ, a third referee is included.

Publication ethics and malpractice statement

• Mission statement

The mission, vision, aims and editorial policy of the Contemporary Military Challenges (CMC) are published in the Work Programme of the Editorial Board of the Contemporary Military Challenges discussed and adopted every year by the Editorial Board for the following twoyear period. The document is published on the publication’s website.

One of the CMC Editorial Board's tasks is to publish the publication in accordance with the agreed international standards and editorial strategy as well as to stimulate critical and innovative scientific and professional thought among members of the Slovenian Armed Forces as well as more broadly in Slovenia and internationally.

Papers, published in the Contemporary Military Challenges, do not reflect the official policy of the Slovenian Armed Forces nor the authors’ respective organisations.

• Duties of the Editors and members of the Editorial Board

The editors are responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted will be published, based on the validation of their quality. The Editorial Board will reach the final decision about the publication of the papers.

Editors and the Editorial Board should follow the agreed standards, mission, vision, as well as goals and CMC’s editorial policy with the aim to achieve the highest standards in the field of preparation and publication of scientific and professional publications.

• Duties of Editors

Editors work in conjunction with reviewers and Editorial Board members.

Fair play: Editors evaluate submitted manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit without regard to the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, origin, citizenship or political philosophy.

Confidentiality: Editors and Editorial Board members will not disclose any information about authors or the contents of manuscripts for any other purpose and to anyone other than the persons directly involved in the publication procedures until the publication has been printed and available to public.

• Duties of reviewers

Contribution to editorial decisions: Peer review assists editors in making editorial decisions and, through editorial communications with authors, may assist authors in improving their manuscripts towards the best possible quality.

Promptness: Reviewers are to complete peer reviews within an agreed deadline. In the event that a reviewer feels it is not possible for him/her to complete review of manuscript within stipulated time then this information must be communicated to the editor. Any invited referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript should immediately notify the editors and decline the invitation to review.

Confidentiality: Any manuscripts received for review are confidential documents and must be treated as such; they must not be shown to, shared or discussed with others. This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.

Standards of objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate. Observations and recommendations must be formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can use them for improving the manuscript.

Conflicts of interest: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for the reviewer’s personal advantage or as reviewer’s own.

Referees who have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript and the work described therein should not conduct the review.

• Duties of Authors

Reporting standards: Authors of original research should present an accurate and objective account of the work performed and the results. The manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour.

Originality and plagiarism: Authors should thoroughly follow the selected international citation style and mark clearly in which parts they are citing or paraphrasing other authors and which their own findings, conclusions and suggestions. Where sources or authors of certain parts of manuscript cannot be referenced, because the work has not yet been published, other forms of sources must be referenced in a consistent manner. Additionally, authors should obtain statements by the persons or sources referenced agreeing with the publication of their statements, interviews or other forms of gathered information. The  bibliography should include only the works used in the paper. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.

Multiple publication: Papers describing essentially the same or very similar research in several publications will be considered as hyper production or selfplagiarism, which is unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.

Authorship of the manuscript: Only persons who have substantially contributed to the research and/or the production of the manuscript should be listed as authors. Prior to the submission of the article, the corresponding author should verify that all co-authors have seen and approved the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication.

Conflicts of interest: Authors should disclose all sources of financial support for the project discussed in the paper and state who is the owner of the results of the project. They should submit the owner’s approval of the publication of results. It is important that the editors be notified about possible conflicts of interest that might have an important impact on the contents of the article, the findings or suggestions from the article or to other individuals, groups or bodies related to the contents of the paper.

Fundamental errors in published works: If authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the editors and cooperate with them to either correct the paper or to appropriately react.

CONTEMPORARY MILITARY CHALLENGES

20 years od military professional and scientific publication

Liliana Brožič

This September will mark the 20 years since the first issue of the Slovenian Armed Forces General Staff's own publication was published. At the time the publication was titled Bilten Slovenske vojske (Slovenian Armed Forces Bulletin). The publication was initiated by the then Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant General Iztok Podbregar whose wish was that all Slovenian Armed Forces members who had attended various courses in Slovenia and abroad share the acquired knowledge in written form. In this way, the knowledge and understanding of different topics would be preserved, disseminated and at the same time available also to the younger generations.

In the dictionary of standard Slovene, the word “bilten” (bulletin) is described as a “brief official release or notice”. The history has known “war bulletins” or “informative materials”. In the companies and institutions, the publications intended for this purpose were usually called “newsletters”. The core mission of the Slovenian Armed Forces Bulletin was therefore to inform Slovenian Armed Forces employees.

During the ten years which followed, Evgen Primožič diligently coupled his regular work and tasks with the editing and publishing of the Bilten Slovenske vojske (Slovenian Armed Forces Bulletin). During this time, with the help of the executive editor and the editorial board, he facilitated the necessary operational procedures to create, publish and preserve the publication. By 2008, 24 issues with 209 articles were published on a total of 3,769 pages.

Later on, an important decision was made to publish the titles and abstracts of articles both in Slovene and English as well to appoint managing and executive editors and the editorial board. From the first issue onwards, both technical and substantive designs of the publication met the main criteria for the development of the publication into a piece of scientific and professional military literature.

DOWN THE PATH OF CHANGE

Significant changes occurred as early as in 2007. It is then that lecturers from the George C. Marshall Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, published their articles in the Bilten Slovenske vojske (Slovenian Armed Forces Bulletin) for the first time. In 2008, anonymous peer reviews were introduced to significantly improve the quality of the published articles. Peer review is an evaluation of a text by qualified members of a profession within a relevant field. Its main purpose is to evaluate the article from a technical and substantive point of view and to suggest possible improvements to the article. The anonymity of reviews is important because the reviewer can evaluate the article more objectively when he/she does not know the identity of the author of the text. In order to ensure maximum objectivity of the reviews, an article is evaluated by two reviewers. When their opinions differ importantly, or are perhaps even contradictory, the article is additionally evaluated by a third reviewer. The introduction of the reviews brought additional work for the reviewers and all others who intensely sought to upgrade the Bulletin quality to help it grow into a scientific and professional publication of the Slovenian Armed Forces over the following two years. 2008 was an important year when the design and layout of the publication were renewed.

The basic design-related messages, such as the image of Rudolf Maister, the inscription ZNANJE ZMAGUJE (Knowledge Wins), and the military green colour were preserved, but in a more sophisticated manner. In 2008 alone, 53 articles were published in four issues, which makes an average of 13 articles per issue. In 2009 and 2010, 42 and 45 articles were published per year respectively. The period between 2008 and 2010 was the most fruitful in terms of the production of defence and military related scientific and professional texts. This can be significantly attributed to the fact that both the reviewers and authors of articles were financially compensated for their work. The global financial crisis, which followed, also affected the Slovenian Armed Forces Bulletin, both in terms of the reduced printing funds and in terms of a special decision of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia banning the conclusion of copyright contracts with its employees. The lack of finances also affected the authors and reviewers from other institutions. The size of individual issues also gradually reduced and eventually averaged from five to seven articles per issue.

ACHIEVING QUALITY RESULTS

The first and most important success in the effort to achieve a good-quality publication was the inclusion of the then Slovenian Armed Forces Bulletin in the PAIS International database in 2010. In 2011, the Slovenian Armed Forces Bulletin was renamed Contemporary Military Challenges. With the gradual introduction of changes, the publication was no longer of a brief informative nature, which reflected both in the content and size of each copy of the issue. The publication was becoming more and more professional and scientific. One of the criteria for ranking in an international database was that one third of the published articles are classified as scientific. Table 1 shows that in this respect quality was never a problem. The fact that the shares of authors from other Slovenian institutions and authors from abroad have increased over the years proves that this is a quality publication also interesting to foreign authors. Unfortunately, on nine occasions in the past twenty years, we were not able to obtain any articles by authors from the administrative part of the Ministry of Defence.

WHY WRITE ARTICLES?

The Slovenian Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence employ a large number of people with specific, especially military knowledge, which is put in writing very rarely or not at. This means that the interested external public is unable to access various pieces of technical information on a wide range of military topics. Consequently, the exchange of knowledge within the military and the Ministry of Defence is less intensive than it could be. Security-, defence- and military-related knowledge is very important and rapidly changing, so its flow is paramount. Not many publications in Slovenia are dedicated to defence-, security- and military-related topics. According to the Defence Act military professional literature in the defence system has to be developed. No other institution in Slovenia is tasked with such mission. For this reason, the Ministry of Defence used to publish the publication Vojstvo (The Military). Additionally, the Strategic Studies Centre used to publish a high-quality publication titled Zbornik študij (Journal of Studies). Revija SV (SAF Magazine), which you are now reading and has a very long tradition, is still being published. In the Slovenian Armed Forces, military professional literature is developed through the publications Vojaškošolski zbornik (Military Schools Journal) and Vojaška zgodovina (Military History), while Sodobni vojaški izzivi (Contemporary Military Challenges) are intended for more demanding authors and readers. All of the above-mentioned publications are periodicals, but there are also other publications, which are published occasionally, such as journals commemorating various occasions, monographs and manuals. Writing an article for a publication is not as easy as posting on Facebook or some other social network. It requires some time and effort. However, by publishing an article we prove to ourselves and to others that we have knowledge and courage. We, the editors of periodicals at the Ministry of Defence gladly offer encouragement, assistance, advice and directions to all the interested future writers for them to share their knowledge with others and help increase the quantity of Slovenian military and scientific literature. Who is going to develop the defence and military profession, if not the Slovenian Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence?