Instruction for editors
Editor roles and responsibilities
- Providing guidelines to authors for preparing and submitting manuscripts
- Providing a clear statement of the Journal’s policies on authorship criteria
- Treating all authors with fairness, courtesy, objectivity, honesty, and transparency
- Establishing and defining policies on conflicts of interest for all involved in the publication process, including editors, staff, authors, and reviewers
- Protecting the confidentiality of every author’s work
- Establishing a system for effective and rapid peer review
- Making editorial decisions with reasonable speed and communicating them in a clear and constructive manner
- Being vigilant in avoiding the possibility of editors and/or referees delaying a manuscript for suspect reasons
- Establishing clear guidelines for authors regarding acceptable practices for sharing experimental materials and information, particularly those required to replicate the research, before and after publication
- Establishing a procedure for reconsidering editorial decisions
- Describing, implementing, and regularly reviewing policies for handling ethical issues and allegations or findings of misconduct by authors and anyone involved in the peer review process
- Informing authors of solicited manuscripts that the submission will be evaluated according to the journal’s standard procedures or outlining the decision-making process if it differs from those procedures
- Developing mechanisms, in cooperation with the publisher, to ensure timely publication of accepted manuscripts
- Clearly communicating all other editorial policies and standards