General responsibilities of the publisher, editors and editorial policies

• Fair play

Submitted manuscripts are evaluated for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. 

• Confidentiality

The Editor-in-Chief and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

• Publication decisions

-         The handling Editor-in-Chief of the journal is responsible for deciding which of the submitted articles should be published. The Editor-in-Chief may be guided by the policies of the journal’s Editorial Board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The Editor-in-Chief may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

-         Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance to the merit of the journal. Editors should not reverse decisions to accept submissions unless serious problems are identified with the submission. New editors should not overturn decisions to publish submissions made by the previous editor unless serious problems are identified.

-         Editors should strive to ensure that peer review at their journal is fair, unbiased and timely. Editors should have systems to ensure that material submitted to the Journal remains confidential while under review. Editors should not reveal the identity of reviewers to authors and vice versa. Identifying information should be stripped from submitted manuscripts so that reviewers and authors cannot access any information about each other.

-         Citation of published works with the primary purpose of increasing the number of citations to the cited author or to articles published in a particular journal is considered manipulation of citations and constitutes unethical behavior.