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Guide for Editors

This guide outlines the roles, responsibilities, and expectations of Associate Editors and Editorial Board Members serving journals published under this platform. Editors play a critical role in maintaining scholarly quality, academic integrity, and ethical standards.

Manuscript Handling Workflow

Editors are responsible for managing manuscripts assigned to them throughout the peer review process. This includes:

  • Assessing the initial suitability of submissions for the journal
  • Identifying and inviting qualified, independent reviewers
  • Monitoring reviewer responses and review timelines
  • Evaluating reviewer comments critically and objectively
  • Making reasoned recommendations to the Editor-in-Chief regarding acceptance, revision, or rejection
  • Ensuring compliance with ethical standards and editorial policies

Criteria for Initial Screening

During the initial assessment stage, editors should evaluate manuscripts for:

  • Relevance to the journal’s scope and academic focus
  • Minimum scholarly and scientific quality
  • Clarity and readability of the English language
  • Compliance with ethical standards
  • Absence of plagiarism or unethical overlap
  • Basic methodological soundness

Reviewer Management

Editors are responsible for selecting reviewers who:

  • Possess appropriate subject-matter or methodological expertise
  • Are independent from the authors and their affiliated institutions
  • Can provide objective, constructive, and timely evaluations

Editors should avoid selecting reviewers who:

  • Are close collaborators or institutional colleagues of the authors
  • Have co-authored publications with the authors within the past three years
  • Have declared or apparent conflicts of interest

Decision-Making Guidelines

Editorial recommendations should be based on a balanced assessment of:

  • Originality, novelty, and scholarly significance
  • Methodological rigor and validity of models or analytical approaches
  • Verification and validation of results, where applicable
  • Internal consistency and reliability of data
  • Overall contribution to the relevant field of research

Editorial decisions must be free from personal, institutional, or commercial influence and grounded solely in scholarly merit.

Ethical Oversight

Editors play a key role in identifying and addressing potential ethical issues. Editors must investigate or report concerns relating to:

  • Plagiarism or redundant publication
  • Data fabrication, falsification, or manipulation
  • Authorship disputes or inappropriate authorship practices
  • Undisclosed conflicts of interest

When necessary, cases may be escalated to the Editor-in-Chief or referred to the journal’s ethics or compliance body, in accordance with COPE guidelines and international best practices.

Communication Standards

Editors are expected to maintain professional and respectful communication with authors and reviewers at all times. Editorial correspondence should be:

  • Professional and courteous
  • Clear and transparent
  • Timely and responsive

Editors must ensure the confidentiality of manuscripts and peer review materials and must not disclose information to unauthorized parties.