Editorial Responsibilities and Decision Policy

Editor Guidelines

Editors play a critical role in maintaining the scientific quality, integrity, transparency, fairness, and reputation of the International Journal of Multidisciplinary Open Research and Advancement (IJMORA). Editors are entrusted with evaluating manuscripts, coordinating peer review, making editorial recommendations, protecting publication ethics, supporting authors and reviewers, and ensuring that published research meets the journal’s quality standards.

Editorial decisions should always be based on scientific merit, originality, relevance, methodological quality, ethical compliance, and contribution to knowledge. Personal beliefs, institutional affiliations, nationality, gender, race, religion, political views, funding source, or commercial interests must never influence editorial judgment.

Editorial Independence

Editors must exercise independent academic judgment and make decisions solely on scholarly merit and journal standards.

Fair Evaluation

All manuscripts should receive objective, impartial, and evidence-based assessment regardless of author background or affiliation.

Research Integrity

Editors are responsible for protecting publication ethics, scientific integrity, and transparency throughout the publication process.

Quality Assurance

Editors help maintain the scientific quality and credibility of the journal by ensuring rigorous editorial and peer review standards.

Initial Editorial Assessment

Before peer review, editors should evaluate whether the manuscript fits the journal scope, demonstrates sufficient originality, presents scientifically sound methods, provides meaningful results, and complies with journal policies. Editors should identify obvious concerns related to plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated data, image manipulation, authorship disputes, ethical approval deficiencies, citation manipulation, and conflicts of interest.

Technical screening reports, plagiarism checks, AI-risk indicators, language evaluations, and metadata reviews are intended to support editorial assessment. These tools are advisory and should never replace human editorial judgment.

Reviewer Selection and Management

Editors should select reviewers based on expertise, publication record, research background, subject knowledge, and absence of conflicts of interest. Reviewers should have sufficient experience to evaluate the scientific quality and validity of the submitted work.

Select qualified subject experts.
Avoid conflicts of interest.
Consider reviewer workload and availability.
Protect reviewer confidentiality.
Monitor review quality and professionalism.
Replace reviewers when necessary.

Author-suggested reviewers may be considered but are not mandatory. Editors retain full authority regarding reviewer invitations and reviewer selection.

Editorial Decisions

Editorial decisions should be based on manuscript quality, originality, significance, methodology, reviewer recommendations, ethical considerations, and journal scope. Editors should provide clear reasoning for decisions whenever possible.

Desk Reject
Send for Peer Review
Minor Revision
Major Revision
Accept with Minor Editorial Changes
Accept for Publication
Reject after Review

Editorial decisions must never be influenced by APC payments, waiver eligibility, institutional status, nationality, or commercial considerations.

Revision Handling

When authors submit revised manuscripts, editors should evaluate whether reviewer comments and editorial concerns have been adequately addressed. Authors should provide a detailed response-to-reviewers document explaining modifications and justifications.

Additional peer review may be requested when revisions are extensive, controversial, incomplete, or technically complex.

Publication Ethics and Research Integrity

Editors play a key role in identifying and addressing ethical concerns. Suspected misconduct should be handled confidentially, professionally, and fairly according to journal policies and accepted publication ethics practices.

Plagiarism and duplicate publication.
Fabricated or falsified data.
Image manipulation.
Authorship disputes.
Citation manipulation.
Peer review manipulation.
Undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Research ethics violations.

Conflicts of Interest

Editors should decline handling manuscripts where personal, financial, institutional, professional, collaborative, or academic relationships could compromise objectivity. Potential conflicts should be disclosed and managed appropriately.

Special Issues and Guest Editors

Guest editors may assist with topic development, manuscript promotion, reviewer suggestions, and editorial coordination. However, all special issue manuscripts remain subject to IJMORA publication policies, peer-review standards, ethical requirements, and journal governance.

Guest editors must not make decisions on manuscripts where conflicts of interest exist. Oversight may be transferred to another editor or senior editor when necessary.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

Editors may use AI-assisted tools for administrative support, language evaluation, technical screening, workflow efficiency, metadata review, and preliminary assessment support. However, editorial decisions must always be made by qualified human editors.

AI-generated recommendations should be treated as advisory only and should never replace scientific evaluation, peer review, ethical assessment, or editorial judgment.

Confidentiality Requirements

Editors must maintain confidentiality regarding submitted manuscripts, reviewer identities, editorial discussions, unpublished research findings, reviewer reports, and all confidential publication records.

Manuscript content should not be shared outside authorized editorial processes without permission.

Corrections, Retractions and Editorial Actions

Editors may recommend corrections, expressions of concern, editorial notices, withdrawals, or retractions when substantial errors, ethical concerns, misconduct allegations, or unreliable findings are identified before or after publication.

All actions should be documented and handled transparently while preserving the integrity of the scholarly record.

Editorial Contribution Benefits

IJMORA recognizes the important contributions of editors and editorial board members. Depending on journal policy, editors may be eligible for editorial recognition programs, certificates of contribution, recommendation letters, reviewer and editor awards, publication support benefits, APC waivers, publication vouchers, and other professional recognition initiatives.

Editor Certificate

Editors may generate verifiable certificates for completed editorial contributions. Certificates may include editorial activity records, editorial position, contribution period, certificate identification number, verification code, and public verification functionality where available.

Final Editorial Statement

Editors serve as guardians of research quality and publication integrity. By accepting editorial responsibilities within IJMORA, editors agree to uphold the principles of fairness, confidentiality, transparency, objectivity, scientific rigor, and ethical publishing.