Editor Guidelines

Editor Guidelines – Journal of Advanced Homoeopathic Studies (JAHS)

1. Role of Editors

Editors are entrusted with upholding the highest standards of editorial integrity, peer review, and scholarly publishing. They are responsible for:

  • Ensuring that all manuscripts undergo fair, unbiased, and timely peer review.

  • Maintaining the academic quality and ethical standards of the journal.

  • Safeguarding the confidentiality and integrity of the editorial process.

2. Editorial Responsibilities

a. Manuscript Handling

  • Conduct initial screening to assess relevance, originality, and compliance with author guidelines.

  • Reject manuscripts at the editorial level if they clearly fall outside the scope of JAHS or fail to meet basic quality requirements.

  • Assign manuscripts to qualified peer reviewers based on expertise.

  • Ensure double-blind peer review is strictly maintained.

b. Decision Making

  • Base editorial decisions solely on the academic merit of the work (not influenced by authors’ race, gender, institution, or funding source).

  • Consider reviewer recommendations but retain final responsibility for acceptance, revision, or rejection.

  • Provide clear, constructive feedback to authors.

c. Ethical Oversight

  • Detect and act upon ethical concerns including plagiarism, data fabrication, duplicate submission, or conflict of interest.

  • Follow COPE flowcharts for handling suspected misconduct.

  • Ensure human and animal studies comply with ethical approvals and consent requirements.

3. Confidentiality

  • Editors must not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than authors, reviewers, and editorial staff.

  • Editors must not use unpublished data or ideas from a submitted manuscript for personal research or gain.

4. Conflict of Interest

  • Editors must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where they have a personal, financial, or professional conflict of interest.

  • In such cases, another editor or guest editor will handle the manuscript.

5. Editorial Independence

  • JAHS maintains editorial independence from its publisher and sponsors.

  • Editorial decisions cannot be influenced by advertising revenue, institutional affiliation, or external pressure.

6. Timeliness & Communication

  • Editors should ensure timely processing of manuscripts to avoid unnecessary delays.

  • All editorial communication with authors and reviewers should remain professional, transparent, and respectful.

7. Archiving & Record Keeping

  • Maintain a complete editorial record of all decisions, communications, and revisions in the journal management system.

  • Ensure articles are archived according to the journal’s archiving policy (LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, PKP PN).

8. Continuous Improvement

  • Editors should actively engage in capacity building, staying updated on:

    • Advances in peer review practices.

    • Publication ethics (COPE, ICMJE, WAME).

    • Open access and indexing requirements (DOAJ, Scopus, PubMed).

  • Attend editorial training and workshops when possible.

9. Handling Complaints & Appeals

  • Authors have the right to appeal editorial decisions.

  • Appeals must be reviewed by an independent editorial board member not previously involved in the manuscript.

  • Complaints against editors will be handled by the Editor-in-Chief or the publisher in line with COPE guidelines.