In the journal’s own words, their policy is:

Acknowledgements

 

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

 

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

In other words, they are requiring you to

1. Acknowledge everyone who deserves to be acknowledged, and

2. not acknowledge anyone who has not explicitly approved for you to acknowledge them.

Well honestly, if this had been the Journal of the Kafka Society of America, or the Proceedings of the Institute of Catch-22, I might be inclined to accept that it makes a remote bit of sense for them to have rules that can make it logically impossible for you to publish your paper. I might even congratulate the administrators of the journal for their dark sense of humor.

For any other journal with an expressly non-ironic mission, I’d go with Curt F.’s advice in the comments to find a journal managed by more sensible, logical people.

Think of it this way: if you’re having this much trouble before you’ve even submitted your paper, who knows what Kafkaesque nonsense awaits you further down the road in dealing with these people?

In the journal’s own words, their policy is:

Acknowledgements

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

In other words, they are requiring you to

1. Acknowledge everyone who deserves to be acknowledged, and

2. not acknowledge anyone who has not explicitly approved for you to acknowledge them.

Well honestly, if this had been the Journal of the Kafka Society of America, or the Proceedings of the Institute of Catch-22, I might be inclined to accept that it makes a remote bit of sense for them to have rules that can make it logically impossible for you to publish your paper. I might even congratulate the administrators of the journal for their dark sense of humor.

For any other journal with an expressly non-ironic mission, I’d go with Curt F.’s advice in the comments to find a journal managed by more sensible, logical people.

Think of it this way: if you’re having this much trouble before you’ve even submitted your paper, who knows what Kafkaesque nonsense awaits you further down the road in dealing with these people?

In the journal’s own words, their policy is:

Acknowledgements

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

In other words, they are requiring you to

1. Acknowledge everyone who deserves to be acknowledged, and

2. not acknowledge anyone who has not explicitly approved for you to acknowledge them.

Well honestly, if this had been the Journal of Kafka Studies, or the Proceedings of the Institute of Catch-22, I might be inclined to accept that it makes a remote bit of sense for them to have rules that can make it logically impossible for you to publish your paper. I might even congratulate the administrators of the journal for their dark sense of humor.

For any other journal with an expressly non-ironic mission, I’d go with Curt F.’s advice in the comments to find a journal managed by more sensible, logical people.

Think of it this way: if you’re having this much trouble before you’ve even submitted your paper, who knows what Kafkaesque nonsense awaits you further down the road in dealing with these people?

In the journal’s own words, their policy is:

Acknowledgements

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article who does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

In other words, they are requiring you to

1. Acknowledge everyone who deserves to be acknowledged, and

2. not acknowledge anyone who has not explicitly approved for you to acknowledge them.

Well honestly, if this had been the Journal of the Kafka Society of America, or the Proceedings of the Institute of Catch-22, I might be inclined to accept that it makes a remote bit of sense for them to have rules that can make it logically impossible for you to publish your paper. I might even congratulate the administrators of the journal for their dark sense of humor.

For any other journal with an expressly non-ironic mission, I’d go with Curt F.’s advice in the comments to find a journal managed by more sensible, logical people.

Think of it this way: if you’re having this much trouble before you’ve even submitted your paper, who knows what Kafkaesque nonsense awaits you further down the road in dealing with these people?