How we publish, in full.

Open access and licensing

Every article is open access from the moment it is published. There is no embargo, no paywall, and no requirement to register in order to read.

Articles are published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. Anyone may copy, redistribute, adapt and build upon the work, including commercially, provided the original is credited. Authors retain copyright and grant us a licence to publish; we do not require a transfer of copyright.

Peer review

Every research article is externally peer reviewed. The model differs by journal and is stated on each journal's page: double-anonymised, single-anonymised, or open.

On a double-anonymised journal the platform generates the anonymised copy itself, stripping document metadata, acknowledgements and grant numbers. A reviewer's account cannot retrieve author identity by any route, and the original file is not offered as a fallback if anonymisation fails — the manuscript waits instead.

How a manuscript moves

1. The editorial office checks format, similarity and completeness, usually within two working days.
2. An associate editor either sends it for review or declines it without review. A decline at this stage reflects scope and priority, and we say so rather than implying a judgement on quality.
3. Reviewers are invited. Anyone with a recorded conflict is blocked, and an editor who overrides that has the override recorded against their name.
4. The editor-in-chief takes the decision, taking the associate editor's recommendation into account. Reviewer reports are appended to the letter.
5. Revisions return to the original reviewers where the decision was major revision.

Conflicts of interest

Reviewers must decline where they have collaborated with an author in the last three years, share an institution, or have a competing interest of any other kind. Authors may name reviewers to exclude, with a reason, and we honour reasonable requests. Editors who submit to their own journal have the manuscript handled independently and cannot see its record.

Fees and waivers

Nothing is charged to submit, and nothing is charged while a manuscript is under assessment. An article processing charge is raised only on acceptance; the amount is on each journal's page.

Corresponding authors in Research4Life Group A countries receive a full waiver automatically, with no request required. Anyone else may request a waiver or a reduction, at submission or on acceptance.

Waivers are decided by the publisher, not by editors. The request is not visible anywhere in the editorial record, and the editors handling a manuscript cannot see payment status at any point. This is enforced by the system: payment records are not returned to an editorial account.

Publication ethics

We follow the COPE flowcharts when handling allegations of misconduct, including plagiarism, image manipulation, data fabrication, duplicate submission, authorship disputes and undisclosed competing interests.

Allegations are put to the authors before any conclusion is reached, and where the work was done at an institution we refer the matter to that institution rather than adjudicating it ourselves. We do not name individuals publicly during an investigation. Where an investigation is unresolved but readers should know it is underway, we publish an expression of concern.

Submissions are screened for text similarity and for image duplication. A machine flag is a prompt for a person to look, never grounds for rejection on its own.

Authorship and contributions

Authorship follows the ICMJE criteria. Every listed author receives a confirmation request when the manuscript is submitted, and the manuscript does not enter assessment until all of them have confirmed. This is deliberate: gift and ghost authorship usually survive because nobody was asked.

Contributions are recorded using the CRediT taxonomy and published with the article. Changes to the author list after submission require written agreement from every author, including any being removed.

Data and code availability

Every article carries a data availability statement. Where data cannot be shared — patient confidentiality, a legal restriction, a third-party agreement — the statement must say so and say why. "Available on request" is accepted only with a named contact and a commitment we can hold you to.

Data and code should be deposited in a repository that issues a persistent identifier. During review, an anonymous access link is required so reviewers can check without identifying themselves.

Generative AI

Large language models cannot be authors: they cannot take responsibility for the work. Use of generative AI in producing a manuscript must be described in the methods or acknowledgements, including language editing.

Reviewers must not paste manuscripts into a third-party AI service. A manuscript under review is confidential, and doing so is a disclosure.

We run automated detection but treat it as advisory only. It is not reliable enough to reject on, and we do not.

Corrections and retractions

Published articles are never edited in place and never removed. Where something is wrong, we publish a separate, citable notice with its own DOI, linked to the article in both directions, and mark the article accordingly.

Notice	Used when
Correction	An error introduced by us
Corrigendum	An author error that does not invalidate the findings
Addendum	Material added; nothing previously published is invalidated
Expression of concern	A serious doubt is unresolved and an investigation is underway
Retraction	The findings are unreliable, whatever the cause

A retraction states the grounds and who reached the decision, and says whether the authors agreed. Where authors did not respond, the notice says that rather than implying assent. Retracted articles remain online, marked, because removing them would break every citation pointing at them and hide the record rather than correct it.

Archiving and preservation

TODO — confirm your preservation arrangement before applying to DOAJ — CLOCKSS, LOCKSS, Portico and the Internet Archive Scholar are the usual routes, and DOAJ asks which

All article metadata is deposited with Crossref, which preserves it independently of us. Full text and metadata are available for harvesting so that a third party can mirror the corpus without asking permission.

Ownership, revenue and advertising

Scientara Publishing, Inc. is an independent publisher, founded in 2026, registered at TODO — registered business address, required by the Principles of Transparency. It is not owned by, and does not act on behalf of, any society, funder or commercial sponsor.

Revenue comes entirely from article processing charges. We do not sell advertising, do not sell reader data, and do not accept sponsorship of individual articles or issues. Nothing about how a manuscript is handled depends on where the money comes from.

Privacy

We hold what publishing requires: names, affiliations, email addresses, ORCID identifiers, manuscript files and correspondence. Reviewer identities are held confidentially and are disclosed only where the journal's model and the reviewer's own choice permit.

Data is stored in the European Union and processed under the GDPR. Correspondence bodies are deleted after 24 months; the record that a message was sent, to whom and when, is kept for the editorial audit trail. To ask what we hold about you, write to editorial@scientara.org.

Complaints and appeals

Appeals against a decision go to the editor-in-chief of the journal, in writing, setting out what you believe was misjudged. Appeals are answered, and where an appeal shows the review was inadequate we will arrange further review.

Complaints about the conduct of a journal, an editor, or the publisher go to editorial@scientara.org and are acknowledged within five working days. If we do not resolve it to your satisfaction, COPE accepts complaints about its member publishers directly.