Review is organized so that a manuscript is assessed by people able to judge it, and so that the decision rests with the editors rather than with any other interest.
All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal’s scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
Editorial decisions are independent of fees, services, membership, and editorial or reviewer roles.
Where double-blind review is requested, when double-blind review is requested, editors must ensure that author-identifying information is not shared with reviewers. For double-blind manuscripts, reviewers must not attempt to identify the authors.
Research involving young people is assessed against the consent requirements approved for the study and its jurisdiction.
Research involving human participants must demonstrate appropriate ethics approval from an institutional review board or equivalent ethics committee.
For participants who are legally minors for the procedures studied, document parental or guardian permission and age-appropriate assent as required by the approved protocol and applicable law; describe any ethics-approved waiver.
Participants legally able to consent for themselves, including eligible 18- and 19-year-olds, provide informed consent under the approved protocol.
Identifiable information must be protected, and privacy safeguards must be clearly described in the manuscript.
Interventional clinical trials must be registered in an accepted public trial registry at or before the first participant provides consent for enrollment. The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported in the manuscript.
The financial terms are written down so that an author can read them before submitting rather than after acceptance.
Authors should contact the editorial office promptly and wait for written confirmation before submitting the work elsewhere.
Manuscripts withdrawn within 3 days of submission are not subject to a withdrawal charge.
Manuscripts withdrawn more than 3 days after submission incur a withdrawal charge equal to 30% of the journal’s APC.
Authors must receive official withdrawal confirmation before submitting the manuscript to another journal.
The complete fee terms are set out on the Article Processing Charges page, which carries this withdrawal policy in full.
This journal’s content is committed to Portico, a not-for-profit digital-preservation archive run by ITHAKA (the organization behind JSTOR). As articles are deposited they enter Portico’s permanent archive, so the scholarly record stays available for the long term — even if a title one day ceases to publish. Read our preservation policy.