Editorial Policies

Our editorial process commits to editorial independence. We seek to be fair, transparent, and encourage intellectual excellence against clearly articulated disciplinary standards:

• Submitted articles are evaluated according to their intellectual merit, without regard to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship, political philosophy, or institutional affiliation of the author(s)
• Editorial decisions on manuscripts submitted to our journals are based on independent, anonymized peer review reports
• We commit to an editorial process that is not compromised by financial or political influence
• We actively seek and encourage submissions from underrepresented segments of the global scholarly communication ecosystem
• We provide clear and transparent processes for appeal of editorial decisions
• We do not tolerate abusive behavior or correspondence towards our staff and others involved in the publishing process on our behalf.

Authorship and Co-Authorship

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who participated in certain substantial aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.

Author Responsibilities

We establish the following general rules for the corresponding author’s responsibilities:

• Manuscript correction and proofreading
• Handling the revisions and re-submission of revised manuscripts up to the acceptance of the manuscripts
• Provision of raw data upon which the paper is based, for editorial review and public access to such data whenever possible. If the data is not published with the paper, authors should be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable amount of time after publication
• Authors should ensure that they have written an entirely original work, and if they have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited and quoted. Articles found to have plagiarized material will be withdrawn from consideration for publication
• Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior, and it is unacceptable. Manuscripts must only be peer reviewed by one journal at a time
• Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be made. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work
• Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
• When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his or her own published work, it is the author's obligation to promptly notify the publisher and cooperate with Common Ground’s editorial team to correct or retract the article.