Purpose and Scope
This policy governs how Treata Scholars creates, updates, publishes, preserves, and applies publisher-level policies and journal-specific configurations. Its purpose is to prevent silent policy replacement and to make the rules applicable to a publication at a given time reasonably identifiable.
It applies to Master Publishing Policies, professional guidelines, journal policy profiles, approved journal configurations, and material policy notices.
Canonical Source Principle
Each publisher policy should have one authoritative canonical source. Journal pages may link to or summarize an inherited publisher policy, but they should not maintain uncontrolled duplicate copies that can drift from the approved text.
Where a journal has a permitted local configuration or stronger requirement, the journal page should identify that setting without rewriting the publisher policy as though it were a separate master standard.
Policy Identification
Material publisher policies should have a stable identifier, title, version, owner, and status. Treata policy identifiers support governance and cross-referencing but do not by themselves imply external accreditation or endorsement.
Journal-specific configurations should also be traceable to the policy they configure.
Statuses and Lifecycle
Policies may move through defined lifecycle states such as Draft, Approved, Active, Superseded, and Retired. Only appropriately approved content should be represented publicly as an active Treata policy.
Superseded does not mean erased. Earlier versions may remain necessary for understanding historical submissions, decisions, contracts, or published articles.
Version Numbers and Effective Dates
Material changes should receive a new version or otherwise identifiable revision and an effective date where appropriate. Minor typographic corrections that do not change meaning may be recorded without creating unnecessary policy fragmentation.
Changes affecting author obligations, reviewer responsibilities, editorial authority, rights, fees, access, or integrity procedures should not be introduced silently.
Publisher, Default and Journal-Specific Rules
Treata distinguishes publisher-mandatory requirements, publisher defaults that may be configured, and journal-specific settings. A journal may strengthen mandatory requirements where appropriate but should not weaken publisher-mandatory protections through an undocumented local exception.
Defaults may be replaced only within the configuration authority allowed by the governing policy.
Policy Inheritance
A new journal should inherit active publisher-mandatory policies from the canonical source rather than receiving manually copied text. Publisher defaults should populate the journal profile where appropriate, while journal-specific fields must be completed before they are publicly claimed.
Central policy updates should propagate to inherited references without overwriting approved journal-specific settings that remain valid.
Overrides and Exceptions
An override should be explicit, authorized, scoped, and traceable. It should identify the journal or context to which it applies and should not create ambiguity about which rule governs.
Exceptions to mandatory requirements should not be created informally through webpage editing or operational convenience.
Historical Preservation
Superseded policy versions should remain preserved in a form that allows Treata to determine what requirements applied at an earlier date. Public display may distinguish current from archived versions to prevent readers from mistaking historical text for active policy.
Where technically feasible, archived policy pages should retain stable URLs or clear version identifiers.
Change Governance and Review
Policy changes should be reviewed by the appropriate Treata governance role according to subject matter and significance. Policies affected by rapidly evolving technology, law, or standards may require more frequent review.
Review does not require revision when the existing policy remains appropriate; a documented review cycle can confirm continued validity.
Journal and Article-Level Applicability
The policy applicable to a manuscript may depend on submission date, decision stage, publication date, or a specifically stated transition rule. Treata should avoid retroactively imposing new obligations where doing so would be unfair or impracticable, while retaining the ability to act when necessary to protect the scholarly record.
Article-level notices, licenses, and rights should remain historically accurate even when publisher policy later changes.
Technical Implementation Principle
Public policy states what participants must follow; internal publishing systems determine how those requirements are enforced operationally. Database flags, permissions, audit logs, workflow rules, evidence stores, and automated checks belong to the platform’s functional and compliance specification rather than cluttering the public policy text.
The technical system should nevertheless preserve the policy identifier and version applicable to relevant journal and manuscript events where feasible.
Journal Implementation and Version Control
This policy is itself publisher mandatory and forms part of Treata’s governance architecture. Journal managers and editors should use approved policy sources and configurations rather than creating untracked local policy copies.
Material revisions to this policy should follow the same versioning and preservation principles that it establishes.
Version Control
Version 1.0. This page is the canonical publisher-level text for the current version. Material revisions should be versioned and dated, while superseded versions remain identifiable so historical applicability can be determined.