Editorial Guidelines
These guidelines govern the duties, authority, and workflow of DEPLOY editors. All editors are bound by the COPE Core Practices.
1. Roles
- Editor-in-Chief: sets journal direction and policy, makes final decisions on all manuscripts, handles disputes and ethics cases, appoints board members.
- Managing Editor: runs the OJS workflow, publication schedule, correspondence, and production.
- Section Editor: handles manuscripts in their field: selects reviewers, monitors review, recommends decisions.
- Layout Editor: prepares PDF galleys, pagination, and DOI embedding.
2. Workflow and Target Timeline
- Submission check: day 0.
- Similarity screening: days 1-3.
- Desk review: days 3-7.
- Reviewer assignment: days 7-10.
- Peer review: 3-4 weeks.
- First decision: days 35-45.
- Revision: 14 days (minor) or 30 days (major).
- Copyediting, layout, proofreading, publication, DOI registration.
3. Decision Principles
Decisions rest solely on scholarly merit: novelty, methodological soundness, validity of results, and contribution to the field. The author's race, gender, belief, nationality, institution, seniority, or political view must never influence a decision. Where two reviewers disagree sharply, a third reviewer is appointed. Editors may depart from reviewer recommendations but must explain their reasoning to the authors.
4. Conflict of Interest
Editors must recuse themselves where they are an author or co-author, share an institution with the authors, have a supervisor-student relationship within five years, have co-published or collaborated within three years, or hold a financial interest. Manuscripts authored by editors are handled independently by another editor, with no author access to review files.
5. Confidentiality
Editors must not disclose information about a submission to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, and journal staff, and must not use unpublished material for their own research without the authors' written consent.
