Editor Guidelines

Roles and Responsibilities of Editor/Editorial Board Members

Editors are primarily responsible for maintain the reputation and the integrity of the journal.

  • Editor should maintain a bird’s eye view on avoiding erroneous information. On identifying the error, editor must take measures to rectify it immediately by publishing addendum.
  • Editor must comply with the policy guidelines provided by the publisher related to reviewing and editorial policy.
  • Editors must closely monitor the journal for ensuring the fairness, timeliness, thoroughness, and civility of the process.
  • Editor is responsible for the overall growth and progress of the journal; hence s/he is responsible for the timely release of the issue.
  • Editor takes measures to add all the significant developments in the field for the growth of the journal.
  • Can discuss the controversies also to clear the doubts centering particular scientific phenomena or practice. E.g., Surrogacy, Clinical Trials, Gene Editing etc.

Editor’s role towards Scientific Community

  • Editor must make ensure that the content and the author information present in the manuscript should be legible.
  • Must evaluate the manuscript whether or not it is falling within the scope of the journal.
  • Must maintain the integrity of the journal by suggesting the corrections, dealing with retraction, supplemental data etc.
  • Taking efforts to attract recent and relevant research to cater to its reader’s interest.
  • Should take steps to discourage unethical practices like plagiarism and violation of copyrights.
  • Should take measures to promote discussion and debate on prominent scientific developments and its implications on the society.

Towards the Journal

  • Editor’s decisions are final related to acceptance or rejection of the article for publication upon receiving the review comments.
  • Editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without any bias towards race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
  • Editor or any Editorial staff should maintain confidentiality related to the submitted manuscript, names and affiliations of the author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate depending on the need and stage of processing.

Standard Scheme of Editorial Processing of the Manuscripts

  1. Initial submission of the manuscript by the corresponding author.
  2. Registration of the manuscript details and generation of the manuscript number.
  3. Responding to the author with the receipt and acknowledgement within 72 hours.
  4. Verification of compliance with the scope of the Journal.
  5. The Editor-in-Chief sends the manuscript it to the editorial manager/editorial assistant manager.
  6. Determination of the article type: Review, Research, Short Communication, Case report, survey study, expert opinion, letter to the Editor.
  7. Preliminary quality evaluation of the article. Non-duplicity(Plagiarism checking) and originality.
  8. Screening for potential and active reviewers and assignment to the reviewers.
  9. The Managing Editor screens for at least 3 independent reviewers.
  10. Securing the review comments within 21 day time frame.
  11. Upon the receipt of reviewer comments in the system, the Managing Editor can either make a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief, based on the reviews and his/her own opinion, or start a discussion among the reviewers if there is some disagreement. The discussion involves all reviewers, the Managing Editor and the Editor-in-Chief.
  12. Based on the review comments, final decision (Accept/Re-review/Minor revision/Major revision/rejection) is taken in consultation with the editorial board and editor in chief. Final disposition of the manuscript would be any one of the following:
    Accepted:Can be published as it is for the time being with minor typos or artifacts.
    Accept with minor revision: The manuscript will have to be slightly revised following the reviewers' comments, but there will not be any additional round of review. The Action Editor and/or the Editor in Chief are responsible for verifying the implementation of modifications.
    Revise and resubmit: It is agreed that the topic is worth publishing, but the paper requires major revisions before it can actually be published. The revised paper will not be considered as a completely new submission, though: if a revised version is sent within 6 months, it will most probably be handled by the same Action Editor.
    Rejected: The paper is out of scope, or does not contain any substantial contribution, or may be simply too difficult to understand. In any case, the same work should not be resubmitted without substantial improvisation.
  13. After an agreed decision has been reached, the authors are notified by the Editor-in-Chief or the Managing Editor.
  14. Revision of the manuscript, application of style sheet, assignment of the DOI number within 7 days.
  15. Copy editing of the manuscript and generation of the Author-proof.
  16. Generation of the galley proof and approval by the author(s).
  17. Hosting on the website with volume and issue number and year of publication.
  18. Archiving of the article in the database.