Editorial Policy

Editors

Journal management defines the rights and responsibilities of the editors under the terms of COPE (The Committee on Publication Ethics). Our editors are responsible for accountability, fairness, confidentiality, disclosure, and conflict of interest.

The editors ensure that the submitted articles are either accepted, corrected, revised, clarified, rejected, or retracted only after conducting an in-depth double-blind peer review. The decision shall be fair without any bias or prejudice regarding the authors' origin, affiliation, religion, or ethnicity.

The editors shall cooperate with investigations protecting the integrity of all publications. If a valid concern arises regarding a manuscript, the editors shall consider an appropriate decision for retraction or correction.

Reviewers

The journal follows a double-blind peer review procedure. Reviewers register on the journal platform upon which the editors select according to their competence in the scientific field.

The submitted manuscripts are processed internally and exchanged among the authors, editors, and reviewers until finally published or rejected. The reviewers check the manuscript in terms of originality, scientific quality, importance, completeness, properness, and language level. Then, they recommend to the editors for acceptance as it is, with minor or major revisions or rejection. In most cases, reviewers make direct comments on the manuscript using Microsoft              Word's markups and send this version to the journal's online platform, where it reaches the author and the editors.

A reviewer guideline is provided on the journal website.

Authors

The authors are defined as the contributors to a manuscript in content, research, data analysis, design, drafting, and revising. They are held accountable for all aspects of the paper regarding accuracy, integrity, originality and importance. Authors will not be able to withdraw their article after publication. They can demand a correction on the published paper in cases of a typo.

Authors can request a name change for their former publications on issues such as marriage, gender transition, religious reasons, etc. Excessive self-citation, seemingly forced efforts among some authors for citations, and unnecessary references not mentioned within the body text are considered inappropriate and unacceptable.

An author guideline is provided on the journal website.

Procedure

  • The author registers and submits the manuscript via the online form provided on the journal website;
  • The editors do an initial thorough review and send an initial acceptance letter to the author;
  • The editors send the manuscript to the reviewers via the journal's online platform;
  • The reviewer sends the report to the author and the editors via the system;
  • Authors make a minor or major revision according to the report and send the final version to the editors via the system;
  • Editors send the manuscript to the production team for publication (or reject the article if the reviewer suggests so);
  • The author pays the APC if accepted for publication (The APC for this journal is €220);
  • The journal manager sends a receipt of payment to the authors.

Deadlines

The journal publishes three issues per year.

  • Publishing Dates

    • Issue 1: April 15
    • Issue 2: August 15
    • Issue 3: December 15

  • Submission Deadlines

    • Submissions for each issue are due one month prior to the publishing date.

Distribution

The journal is published electronically on the journal website on the announced dates as paginated PDF files.

Having a print ISSN, the journal also provides a print-ready paginated version of the complete issue as A full PDF document, including the generic pages with credits and publisher/owner information, table of content, and the articles with page numbers. The complete issue is made ready for local printing.

Communication among scientist

The journal does not publish the authors' personal information other than their names and affiliations. However, their email addresses are recorded within the journal automation system for communication purposes.

Codes for research involving animal and human participants

Authors shall demand approval from a relevant licensing committee before the research where required. When conducting research on minors such as school students, authors shall request permission from their parents or guardians. Authors shall remove the research participants' names and other personal identifiers from the manuscript. They need to include the consent statements in the manuscript. Extra care shall be exerted by the editors whenever vulnerable cases are in matter. Authors and editors shall pay attention to sex-gender sensitivity within the manuscript where necessary.

Conflict of interests

Authors shall declare a conflict of interest statement to avoid potential bias and help readers form their judgment.

Data and material availability

The journal keeps copies of the published materials on relevant archiving databases.

Duplicate materials

Manuscripts published in the journal must be original and not published elsewhere fully or partly.

Plagiarism

According to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary, plagiarizing is "to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own: use (another's production) without crediting the source [… or] to commit literary theft: present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source."

The journal applies zero tolerance to plagiarism. The manuscripts go through a similarity check via iThenticate software, and only those with originality are accepted for further review.

Misconduct

Misconduct is a violation of journal policies and publication ethics. The journal management will investigate any such case according to COPE Guidelines.

Journal Manager