Editorial Policies

1. Editorial Independence and Scope Control

The Journal maintains full editorial independence. Editorial decisions are based solely on the manuscript’s scholarly merit, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, and relevance to the Journal’s aims and scope. Commercial interests, sponsorship, and author or institutional status do not influence editorial outcomes. The Editor-in-Chief (EiC) is responsible for final decisions and ensures consistent enforcement of policies, including measures to prevent scope drift and to maintain the Journal’s research standards.

2. Archiving and Long-Term Accessibility

The Journal is committed to long-term preservation and accessibility of the scholarly record. Articles are maintained with stable URLs and are intended to remain available permanently. Where applicable, authors are encouraged to deposit data and code in trusted repositories and include persistent identifiers.

3. Policy Updates

Editorial policies may be updated to reflect evolving best practices in research integrity and scholarly publishing. The Journal will maintain a versioned policy record and the effective date of the most recent update.