Publishing Process

Compare each journal’s Aims & Scope, topics, audience, and scope boundary. The central question—not isolated keywords—should guide selection.

Choose a supported article type, prepare complete files and metadata, and include applicable authorship, funding, conflict, ethics, consent, data, preprint, trial, and AI declarations.

The manuscript and supporting information are provided through the configured submission system once available.

The submission may be checked for file usability, metadata completeness, declarations, policy information, and material needed for responsible editorial assessment. A technical check is not acceptance.

An editor considers scope, originality, methods, reporting, ethics, integrity, relevance, and likely contribution. Work may be declined without external review when it is out of scope, insufficiently developed, ethically unsuitable, unreliable, or unlikely to benefit from review.

Qualified reviewers may assess the work’s methods, reporting, interpretation, relevance, and contribution.

An editor considers the manuscript, reviews, and applicable policies before communicating a decision.

Authors respond point by point, identify changes, and explain reasoned disagreements. Further review, additional revisions, or checks may follow; a revision request is not a promise of acceptance.

Editors may return revised work to previous or additional reviewers, seek specialist advice, or assess the response editorially according to the nature of the revisions.

A final editorial decision confirms that the manuscript can move into publication preparation, subject to required production checks.

After acceptance, final files and declarations are confirmed. There is no submission fee. The applicable APC becomes payable only after formal acceptance and is handled independently of the editorial decision.

The accepted work is prepared for publication, which may include copyediting, typesetting, figure and file preparation, licence and metadata checks, and queries to authors.

The corresponding author reviews proofs for production errors and answers queries. Proofs are not normally an opportunity to rewrite the accepted work or add unsupported results.

Following final checks, the article is published online through continuous publication and may be organized into a volume and issue without implying a fixed schedule.

The public record presents available bibliographic metadata, licence information, files, authorship, and DOI where assigned. The published article becomes the Version of Record.

Material errors or integrity concerns are assessed under the corrections and retractions policy. Notices are linked transparently to the Version of Record where appropriate.