SEIPID Journal Compliance Guidelines (SJCG)

Journals must ensure secure transmission of user and submission data through HTTPS protocols supported by a valid SSL certificate. Secure environments are essential for maintaining author confidentiality, reviewer anonymity, and protection of editorial communications throughout the publication lifecycle.

Websites should further demonstrate consistent uptime and operational reliability. Persistent broken links, inaccessible content pages, or incorrect redirections may compromise discoverability and are indicative of inadequate infrastructure maintenance.

Journal websites should be designed to support intuitive navigation and content discoverability for authors, reviewers, readers, and indexing services. Core information—including editorial boards, publication policies, submission guidelines, contact information, and archival access—must be logically structured and accessible through clearly defined navigation pathways.

Where applicable, policy statements and operational guidelines should be hosted on dedicated standalone pages to enable traceability, citation, and external verification.

Journals must employ a clearly identified online editorial management system capable of supporting the full manuscript lifecycle, including submission intake, peer review coordination, editorial decision-making, revision management, and final publication.

Such systems may include recognised platforms (e.g., Open Journal Systems) or professionally developed institutional workflows, provided they ensure:

Journals should publicly disclose their long-term content preservation strategy, including mechanisms for safeguarding published material against data loss, platform failure, or institutional discontinuity.

Implementation of recognised digital preservation systems—such as LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, PKP Preservation Network, institutional repositories, or national library archives—is recommended to ensure permanent accessibility of the scholarly record.

Journal websites should demonstrate acceptable performance benchmarks, including reasonable page-load speeds and compatibility across desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. Compliance with contemporary web performance indicators (e.g., Core Web Vitals) supports usability, accessibility, and search engine indexing readiness.

Published scholarly content should be presented in distraction-free environments. Intrusive advertising or non-scholarly promotional materials embedded within article-level pages may compromise readability and diminish the perceived integrity of the scholarly record.

To support automated harvesting by indexing platforms, journals should maintain structured, machine-readable metadata formats (e.g., XML, JATS, or equivalent). Proper metadata structuring enhances interoperability with citation tracking services, discovery engines, and digital preservation networks.

Article landing pages should implement canonical URL declarations to ensure a single persistent reference point for indexing and citation tracking systems. Each published article and issue must be hosted on a unique, permanent, and resolvable landing page within the journal website. Article-level pages should include essential descriptive metadata (e.g., title, author names and affiliations, abstract, keywords, publication dates, and reference lists) and provide direct access to the full-text content.

Where articles are published in languages other than English, journals are encouraged to provide English-language titles, abstracts, and keywords. Author names, affiliations, and reference lists should be presented in Roman script to facilitate accurate indexing and interoperability across global discovery systems.

Article-level pages should provide exportable citation metadata (e.g., RIS, BibTeX) to facilitate interoperability with reference management software and citation tracking services.

Journals should support persistent contributor identification (e.g., X-PEN ID, ORCID, or equivalent), allowing author disambiguation across publications and platforms.

Journals should support metadata harvesting via recognised protocols (e.g., OAI-PMH or equivalent) to enable automated indexing and repository integration.

Journal websites should be properly indexed in general-purpose search engines (e.g., Google, Bing, Yandex) to ensure global discoverability of the journal as a publishing entity. Core pages—including the homepage, editorial board, policies, submission guidelines, and archive listings—should be publicly accessible and optimised for search engine indexing.

Journals should maintain updated XML sitemaps and appropriately configured robots.txt files to support systematic crawling of both journal-level and article-level content by search engines and academic discovery platforms.

Article-level pages should implement structured metadata tags (e.g., schema.org, Dublin Core, or equivalent citation meta tags) to ensure compatibility with indexing services and citation tracking systems.

References should be structured in machine-readable formats to enable citation graph construction and bibliometric tracking by automated discovery engines.

Implementation of search engine optimisation (SEO) best practices—such as descriptive page titles, meta descriptions, canonical URLs, and semantic HTML structure—is recommended to enhance visibility, indexing efficiency, and discoverability of scholarly content.

Journals should maintain valid serial identifiers to support global cataloguing, institutional registration, and long-term traceability of scholarly outputs.

Assignment of electronic and/or print ISSNs enables participation in national and international bibliographic systems and facilitates subject classification across indexing platforms. Registration through the ISSN Portal is recommended to ensure title uniqueness and prevent duplication across the scholarly publishing landscape.

The publication model of a journal defines its operational reliability and temporal structure within the scholarly record. Transparent disclosure of publishing characteristics—including format, release schedule, founding year, and language policy—supports indexing compatibility, subject classification, citation tracking, and repository integration.

Journals should clearly state their publication format (e.g., Online-only, Print, or Hybrid) and adopt a stable release schedule (e.g., Quarterly, Biannual, Continuous Publishing). Irregular or inconsistently declared publication frequency may disrupt indexing workflows, issue-level cataloguing, and citation-based evaluation systems.

Newly established journals are encouraged to adopt realistic publication frequencies aligned with editorial capacity and reviewer availability. Overly ambitious schedules that cannot be consistently maintained may result in delayed issues, archival fragmentation, or metadata inconsistencies affecting long-term discoverability.

The year of founding and first published issue should be publicly disclosed to support chronological indexing, archival verification, and citation-window tracking. Journals operating under continuous publishing models should ensure that issue-level or volume-level structuring remains clearly defined for bibliographic consistency.

Journals should further declare the primary language(s) of publication and ensure that indexing metadata—including titles, abstracts, and keywords—are available in English where possible to support international discoverability. Language of publication and language of metadata should remain stable across issues to avoid classification conflicts in discovery systems.

A journal should clearly define its academic mission and disciplinary scope in order to establish thematic consistency, editorial direction, and reviewer alignment. A well-articulated aims and scope statement informs prospective authors of the journal’s research priorities and assists editorial teams in maintaining content relevance across published issues.

Journals are encouraged to specify their subject domains, accepted article types, and methodological orientation where applicable. Broad or undefined scope statements may lead to inconsistent manuscript selection, reviewer mismatch, and fragmentation of disciplinary identity over time.

The stated scope should accurately reflect the type of scholarship the journal intends to curate. Submissions falling outside the declared scope should be appropriately redirected to maintain thematic integrity and support the development of a coherent academic profile.

Journals should maintain clear and verifiable editorial communication channels to ensure operational transparency throughout the manuscript handling process. Publicly accessible contact information allows authors, reviewers, and institutional stakeholders to engage with the journal in a structured and accountable manner.

Editorial correspondence should be conducted through functional professional email addresses associated with the journal’s domain or publishing institution. Use of informal or temporary communication channels may compromise continuity of communication and reduce confidence in editorial governance.

Disclosure of editorial office location and technical support contacts is recommended to facilitate responsible communication, issue resolution, and administrative traceability across publication workflows.

Journals should publicly disclose the identity of the publishing organisation responsible for operational management, financial administration, and long-term stewardship of published material. The publisher shall be clearly identifiable as the legal or institutional entity accountable for maintaining publication continuity, archival preservation, and policy enforcement.

Publisher information should include the legal or institutional name of the publishing body and its registered or operational address. Journals operating under scholarly societies, universities, research institutes, or private publishers are encouraged to provide official organisational websites to support governance transparency.

In accordance with established scholarly publishing best practices, editorial decision-making authority should remain independent of the publisher’s financial, commercial, or administrative interests. Acceptance or rejection of submitted manuscripts must be determined solely on the basis of academic merit, methodological integrity, and relevance to the journal’s stated scope, without influence from revenue considerations, sponsorship arrangements, or publication fees.

Journals are encouraged to maintain a functional separation between editorial oversight and business operations. Where applicable, the roles of Editor-in-Chief, Editorial Board, and Publishing Management should be distinctly defined to ensure that manuscript handling, peer review outcomes, and publication scheduling are not subject to publisher intervention.

The publisher shall be responsible for implementing and enforcing journal policies related to ethical oversight, corrections, retractions, appeals, and post-publication updates. Clear governance frameworks should be established to address disputes, complaints, or allegations of editorial misconduct in a transparent and accountable manner.

Public disclosure of publisher governance structures—including organisational affiliations, operational responsibilities, and communication channels—is recommended to support institutional trust, author confidence, and long-term stability of the scholarly publishing process.

Journals should maintain an editorial board composed of subject-relevant scholars who actively contribute to manuscript evaluation, reviewer nomination, and policy development. Board composition should reflect disciplinary alignment with the journal’s stated scope to ensure meaningful editorial oversight.

Best practice recommends institutional diversity across editorial and advisory board membership. Excessive concentration of board members from a single institution, department, or research group may compromise perceived independence and is generally discouraged in scholarly publishing environments.

International or cross-institutional representation—where feasible—supports broader peer review networks and reduces the likelihood of editorial bias or insular review practices.

Editorial board appointments should correspond to clearly defined functional roles within the manuscript lifecycle, including reviewer coordination, subject screening, and editorial recommendation.

Honorary or symbolic board listings that do not involve active editorial engagement are discouraged. Editorial membership should reflect genuine scholarly participation rather than reputational endorsement alone.

Journals are encouraged to publicly distinguish between editorial, advisory, and guest editorial roles to ensure transparency in decision-making responsibilities.

The size of the editorial board should be proportionate to the journal’s disciplinary coverage, submission volume, and publication frequency. Broad-scope journals or those operating across multiple subfields may require larger editorial teams to ensure appropriate reviewer matching and subject-area expertise.

Conversely, smaller or emerging journals should ensure that board membership reflects realistic operational capacity rather than inflated listings intended to signal prestige.

Editorial board members should be identifiable through verifiable academic affiliations and publicly accessible scholarly profiles. Journals are encouraged to provide institutional email addresses and professional profile links (e.g., X-PEN ID, ORCID, faculty directory) for listed editors.

Use of names without documented consent or inclusion of inactive or fictitious editorial members constitutes serious academic misrepresentation and may result in evaluation restriction or delisting within the SEIPID ecosystem.

Reviewers should be selected on the basis of demonstrated subject-matter expertise relevant to the submitted manuscript. Assignment of reviewers from the same institution as the author(s), recent collaborators, or individuals with supervisory relationships should be avoided where possible to reduce potential bias.

Author-suggested reviewers—if permitted—should be independently evaluated by the editorial team prior to assignment. Journals are encouraged to maintain reviewer selection autonomy to prevent undue influence on evaluation outcomes.

Research articles should ordinarily be evaluated by a minimum of two independent reviewers prior to editorial decision. Where reviewer recommendations conflict, additional expert consultation may be sought to ensure balanced assessment.

Final acceptance decisions should be informed by reviewer recommendations and supported by documented editorial reasoning.

Editorial decisions should be based exclusively on scholarly merit, methodological soundness, and relevance to the journal’s stated scope. Financial considerations, publication charges, or sponsorship arrangements should not influence manuscript acceptance or rejection.

Where editorial discretion overrides reviewer recommendations, a documented justification should be maintained for internal audit and governance purposes.

Reviewers and editors should disclose any conflicts of interest that may affect impartial evaluation of submitted work. Individuals with financial, institutional, or personal affiliations with the author(s) should recuse themselves from the review process.

Manuscript content under review should be treated as confidential and not used for personal or professional advantage prior to publication.

Journals should maintain secure records of reviewer reports, editorial decisions, author revisions, and communication logs for an appropriate retention period to support internal quality assurance and external compliance audits.

Journals should maintain publicly accessible procedures for handling appeals, corrections, retractions, and ethical complaints arising from the peer review or post-publication process.

Implementation of structured procedures for addressing misconduct, authorship disputes, or data reliability concerns supports long-term credibility of the publication record.

Submitted manuscripts should undergo similarity assessment prior to editorial acceptance to identify uncredited reuse of text, data, or figures. Journals are encouraged to establish internal thresholds and editorial judgement frameworks for evaluating similarity reports.

Duplicate submission, redundant publication, and simultaneous submission to multiple journals should be discouraged as they compromise the integrity of the scholarly record.

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial intellectual contributions to the conception, design, analysis, or interpretation of the submitted work. All listed authors should approve the final manuscript prior to submission.

Journals are encouraged to request disclosure of individual author contributions to prevent ghost authorship, honorary authorship, or undisclosed third-party involvement.

Authors should disclose financial, institutional, or personal interests that may influence interpretation of research findings. Funding sources, sponsorship arrangements, and third-party involvement should be transparently reported within the manuscript.

Editors and reviewers should similarly declare conflicts of interest prior to participating in manuscript evaluation.

Journals should encourage authors to maintain accurate, complete, and verifiable records of underlying research data. Fabrication, falsification, or selective omission of findings constitutes serious academic misconduct.

Where applicable, authors may be requested to provide supporting datasets, methodological protocols, or analytical documentation during editorial or post-publication review.

Journals should require authors to disclose any use of generative artificial intelligence tools employed during manuscript preparation, data analysis, or image generation.

AI systems should not be credited as authors. Authors remain responsible for verifying accuracy, originality, and integrity of all submitted content.

Research involving human participants, animals, or personal data should demonstrate compliance with relevant ethical review procedures. Evidence of institutional ethics approval and informed consent should be obtained where applicable.

Journals should maintain documented procedures for issuing corrections, retractions, or expressions of concern in response to post-publication ethical issues.

Withdrawn or corrected articles should remain part of the scholarly record with appropriate notices to ensure transparency of publication history.

Journals should adopt a clearly defined licensing model that specifies what readers and third parties may do with published content—such as reading, downloading, sharing, translating, adapting, text-and-data mining, and commercial reuse—subject to the chosen licence.

Use of standard open licences is strongly recommended because they are globally understood and legally interoperable. Where Creative Commons licences are used, the selected licence (e.g., CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-ND) should be stated clearly with a short explanation of what it allows and restricts.

If a custom or proprietary licence is used, it should provide an equivalent clarity: it must explicitly define reuse permissions, attribution requirements, and any restrictions (e.g., non-commercial use only, no derivatives, or share-alike). Licences should avoid vague wording such as “free to use” without specifying legal conditions.

Best practice is to ensure licensing terms are consistent across article landing pages, PDFs, and metadata, so that readers do not encounter conflicting rights statements.

Journals should display copyright and licensing information in places where users actually consume content: on the article landing page and inside the article PDF/HTML. Rights statements should be easy to find and written in clear language (including the licence name and a short permission summary).

Journals should ensure that “Open Access” claims are not contradicted by restrictive notices such as “All rights reserved” on the same article. If an article is licensed for reuse, the rights statement must reflect the licence permissions accurately.

For third-party materials (figures, tables, photographs, instruments, datasets, copyrighted scales, or substantial quoted content), journals should require: (a) proper attribution, (b) evidence of permission where needed, and (c) clear labelling when third-party items are excluded from the article’s main licence.

Best practice is to include a brief reuse guidance note—for example: how to cite properly, how to request permissions when needed, and how to handle reuse of third-party items—so readers and authors do not unintentionally breach copyright.

Editorial and peer review decisions should be based solely on academic merit and methodological quality, independent of APC payment status. Best practice recommends that editorial staff involved in manuscript evaluation are not responsible for financial transactions or billing.

Payment requests should be issued only after an editorial decision has been formally communicated to the author, and should not influence acceptance outcomes.

Journals are encouraged to provide waiver or discount mechanisms to support authors from low-resource settings, early-career researchers, or institutions lacking dedicated publication funding.

Eligibility criteria for waivers or reduced fees should be publicly stated, and waiver decisions should be handled independently of editorial review outcomes. Requests for financial assistance should not influence reviewer assignment, editorial judgement, or acceptance decisions.

Journals should maintain clear refund or cancellation policies in cases of manuscript withdrawal, editorial rejection after payment, or publication errors. Conditions under which APCs are refundable or non-refundable should be publicly documented.

Billing disputes should be managed through transparent administrative procedures to ensure fairness and prevent financial miscommunication between authors and publishers.