Purpose and Scope
This policy protects the independence of editorial judgment across Treata Scholars journals. It applies to editors, editorial boards, publisher personnel, journal owners, sponsors, commercial teams, guest editors, and others who may interact with editorial decision-making.
Editorial independence does not mean absence of governance or accountability. It means that decisions about scholarly content should be based on scientific, editorial, ethical, and journal-scope considerations rather than inappropriate commercial, political, institutional, personal, or reputational pressure.
Editorial Authority and Accountability
Editors are responsible for the fair and consistent application of journal scope, editorial criteria, peer-review standards, and relevant publishing policies. Decision authority should be assigned clearly so that authors, reviewers, and staff understand who is accountable for consequential editorial judgments.
Editors should be able to explain the substantive basis for decisions within reasonable limits of confidentiality and should not delegate accountability to reviewers, algorithms, or administrative staff.
Separation from Commercial Considerations
Article-processing charges, advertising, sponsorship, subscriptions, institutional agreements, marketing objectives, traffic goals, or other revenue considerations must not improperly determine whether an individual manuscript is accepted, rejected, corrected, or retracted.
Operational staff may administer fees and services, but editors should be protected from incentives or pressure that would compromise independent scientific judgment.
Owner, Publisher and Institutional Influence
Publishers, owners, institutions, societies, or sponsors may establish legitimate journal strategy, scope, governance, budgets, and appointments. They should not direct individual editorial outcomes for reasons unrelated to the journal’s stated scientific and ethical criteria.
When a serious governance dispute affects editorial independence, responsibilities and escalation routes should be documented.
Peer Review and Decision-Making
Peer-review reports inform editorial judgment but do not determine it automatically. Editors should assess reviewer expertise, reasoning, conflicts, consistency, and the manuscript itself rather than deciding solely by majority recommendation.
Additional review may be appropriate when reports conflict materially, lack necessary expertise, raise unresolved integrity issues, or do not provide a sufficient basis for decision.
Conflicts, Recusal and Editors’ Own Work
Editors must disclose and appropriately manage interests that could affect their judgment. When recusal is required, the manuscript should be assigned to an independent editor with suitable authority.
Submissions authored by editors, editorial-board members, publisher staff, or closely connected individuals must not receive preferential treatment. The handling process should preserve independent assessment and should be described transparently where appropriate.
Special Issues and Guest Editors
Special issues, collections, supplements, and guest-edited content remain subject to the journal’s core standards for editorial independence, peer review, conflicts, integrity, and decision-making. Guest editors should have defined responsibilities and appropriate oversight.
Sponsorship or thematic collaboration should not permit external parties to control acceptance decisions or suppress legitimate editorial action.
Research Integrity and Editorial Action
Editors may pause review, request documentation, seek specialist advice, contact institutions, or take other proportionate steps when credible integrity concerns arise. An allegation is not itself a finding, and editorial action should be based on evidence and the needs of the scholarly record.
Where external investigations are relevant, editors may consider their findings while retaining responsibility for publication decisions within the journal.
Artificial Intelligence and Editorial Tools
Automated tools may support tasks such as screening, matching, metadata checks, or workflow prioritization, but they must not be treated as autonomous decision-makers. Editors remain responsible for interpreting outputs and for ensuring that confidentiality, privacy, fairness, and journal policy are respected.
Material editorial decisions should not be justified solely by an unexplained algorithmic score or automated flag.
Appeals, Complaints and Consistency
Authors should have access to a defined route for eligible editorial appeals and complaints. An appeal is not an automatic second round of peer review; it should identify a substantive reason why the decision or process may warrant reconsideration.
Complaints about process, conduct, conflicts, or independence should be handled through an appropriate route that avoids asking the person whose conduct is challenged to be the sole adjudicator of the complaint.
Journal Implementation and Version Control
This policy is publisher mandatory. Journals may define editorial roles, decision thresholds, desk-assessment procedures, special-issue governance, and escalation routes according to their discipline and structure, but these arrangements must preserve the independence principles set out here.
Material changes should be versioned and preserved. Governance documentation should make clear how editorial authority and recusal operate at the journal level.
Version Control
Version 1.0. This page is the canonical publisher-level policy text for the current version. Material revisions should receive a new version or effective date, and superseded versions should remain identifiable so that the policy applicable at an earlier point in the publication lifecycle can be determined.