Ecurater Journals

For Editors

For Editors

eCurater’s Editorial board is a distinctive team of expert individuals committed to its mission of producing multidisciplinary scientific information of universal relevance. Editors are responsible to administer peer review process, conduct content quality checks, make recommendations on acceptance or rejection of a paper to ensure top rated publications. eCurater has set the following directives for editors based on COPE Code of Conduct. Editors are thus recommended to adhere to the set guidelines to ensure the publication of legitimate manuscripts.

Roles and Responsibilities

Based on the peer review reports, editors at eCurater should evaluate the quality of manuscript and make sure that it satisfies the objectives of the journal. The list below provides the roles of an editor.

Selection of Competent Reviewers

  • Editors can select at least two pertinent reviewers who can assess the submission with utmost transparency
  • The selection of reviewers can be made based on their expertise in the said field of study using wide range of sources like bibliographic databases. This ensures potential reviewers to be on board to report on the manuscript
  • Editors have the right to suspend those reviewers who constantly produce poor quality or delayed reports

Monitoring Review Process

  • Editors should ensure unswayed evaluation of manuscripts. Each contribution assigned to them must be evaluated based on its merits disregarding any personal, political, gender based, religious or regional influences
  • Editors should encourage reviewers to openly disclose any competing interests much ahead of the beginning of the review process. In case of any conflicts of interest, the manuscript can be assigned to another potential reviewer
  • Editors should recommend reviewers to maintain confidentiality and anonymity during the review process. Editors themselves are to maintain maximal confidentiality about the information being reviewed and should not share it with any third party
  • Editors should encourage reviewers to mention any sort of misconduct identified with respect to the submission such as inappropriate data manipulation, plagiarism, invalid citations etc. in their review reports. (See Publication Ethics for detailed information)
  • Editors should ensure an effective and timely review process

Final Decision About Publication

  • After receiving the peer review reports, editors can make recommendations to accept or reject a paper based on their own perspective on paper’s significance, reliability, relevance, originality and validity of study
  • Any submission that doesn’t fall within the limits of the journal’s scope and objectives can be rejected by the editors
  • The Editor-in-chief or the publisher should immediately be notified of any identified misconduct with regards to the manuscript or the authorship

Handling Complaints

  • Editors must be prompt in responding to the complaints regarding any suspected misconduct or unethical submission by taking necessary action and by swiftly correcting the flagged errors. Editors are ought to be decisive based on the evidence collected with reference to the allegations

Handling a Manuscript

As the final decision of accepting or rejecting a manuscript solely relies on the editors, the following guidelines will assist the editors in their decision-making process. Follow the below mentioned step-by-step guide to handling a manuscript to streamline the process of decision making.

Step 1 - Accepting to Edit a Manuscript

At eCurater, Editors will be allotted with manuscripts based on their area of expertise and potentiality. An editor should accept to edit an assigned manuscript only if he is comfortable with the topic of study. If the paper is far from the editor’s field of study, he can recommend another editor from the board to shoulder the task. Also, the editors should mention any suspected conflict of interest and can decline handling the manuscript in the very initial stage.

Step 2 - Understanding Conflicts of Interest

In order to ensure non influential scientific judgement, editor should be aware of the factors that seed the conflicts of interest while handling a manuscript. The following points will highlight the scenarios that germinate potential conflicts:

  • The editor must notify if he has co-authored with the author of the paper or shares any work history or relationship with the author. Any sort of collaboration with the author will be considered as conflict and should be declared by the editor
  • In any such case wherein, the editor shares any kind of personal, financial, academic, professional, institutional, regional or political relationship with the author, it stands as a potential conflict of interest and the Editor-in-chief or the publisher should be notified the same
  • In case of any previous discussion on the paper with the author, it should be declared before handling the manuscript
  • Editors can consider appointing another reviewer if they find any potential conflict arising with the current reviewer and if they feel that the review report is aimed at furthering the reviewer’s personal interests

Step 3 - Initial Assessment

Once the conflicts of interest are assessed and if the editor finds none, then the next step is to assess if the paper is suitable for publication. Editors should quickly review the title and abstract to gauge if the paper suits the scientific scope of the journal. In case of any discrepancies, the paper can be rejected outright. In other case, the paper can be sent for the streamlined peer-review process.

Step 4 - Recruiting Peer Reviewers

Editors should select at least two impartial, unbiased, qualified, experienced, professional individuals to review the manuscript. If authors have specified any referees not be involved in the process, do avoid involving them in the review process. Editors should consider potential conflicts while choosing the reviewers. Based on the publication history of the reviewer, an editor can assess the experience and expertise of the reviewer. Editors can choose post- doctoral researchers or professors or industry experts as the reviewers. Editors can choose the reviewers from their broad academic network or they can take the aid of the references mentioned in the manuscript or they can find the reviewers on the platforms that provide abstracting and indexing services. During the process of reviewer recruitment, however, confidentiality of manuscript information should be strictly maintained.

Step 5 - Final Recommendations 

After receiving the reviewers’ reports, the editor must evaluate them as each of the reviewers will make any one of the following recommendations: 

  • Publish Unaltered
  • Consider after Minor Changes
  • Consider after Major Changes
  • Reject

If there is no error sighted in the manuscript, then the editor can choose “Publish Unaltered”. If the manuscript can be made fit for publication after making a few minor changes to it, then editors can invite authors to revise the manuscript and resubmit the same. In such a case, editors have to choose “Consider after Minor Changes”. Also, if a reviewer’s hand is to be involved in making changes to the manuscript and after necessary modifications by the reviewer along with author’s consent, if a manuscript can be published, then editors have to use “Consider after Major Changes”. If all or most of the reviewers suggest a rejection of the manuscript, then the paper should be rejected outright. If the manuscript is not technically sound and if there are issues concerning the validity and logical analysis of the question under study, then it can result in rejection of the paper.

Step 6 - Confidentiality and Anonymity  

Right from the point of receiving the manuscript until its publication, editors should not communicate the manuscript’s information to anyone other than the author, reviewer, the Editor-in-chief and the publisher. No peer discussion should be made on these lines. Editors should not communicate the information regarding the reviewers to the authors. eCurater follows a review procedure wherein the reviewers know the author’s identity, but the authors do not know who the reviewer is. So, editors should maintain the anonymity of the reviewers. Also, if the editor comes across any issues concerning publication ethics and misconduct that include plagiarism, redundancy, authorship disputes, manipulation of data and figures, they should flag them immediately to the publisher.

Publication Ethics

eCurater is a member of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) and thus adheres to the COPE Guidelines. Any suspected case of misconduct and unethical steps in the entire process from submission to publication will be handled using COPE Flow Charts. For detailed guidelines on publication ethics, please visit our Publication Ethics page

Special Issues

One-time submissions which focus on a specific contemporary topic that the journal occasionally invites to submit are termed as Special Issues. Editorial team can also submit proposals for Special Issues. For more information, visit our Special Issues page . Editors at eCurater are consulted to verify if a particular topic of a Special Issue falls within the scientific scope of the journal. Editors are asked to assess the contemporary relevance of the topic, its suitability to the journal to further proceed with its call. A team of 2-4 Guest Editors led by one Lead Guest Editor evaluates the Special Issues. Editorial team at eCurater should verify if the Guest Editors possess ample proficiency in handling the submissions. Editors at eCurater should ensure zero conflicts of interest within the Guest Editors’ team.