Confidentiality in peer review

The journal maintains the confidentiality of all unpublished manuscripts. Editors and reviewers will not:

1. disclose a reviewer’s identity unless the reviewer makes a reasonable request for such disclosure
2. discuss the manuscript or its contents with anyone not directly involved with the manuscript or its peer review
3. use any data or information from the manuscript in their own work or publications
4. use information obtained from the peer review process to provide an advantage to themselves or anyone else, or to disadvantage any individual or organization.

Reviewers will not reveal their identity to any of the authors of the manuscript or involve anyone else in the review (for example, a post-doc or PhD student) without first requesting permission from the editor.

Conflicts of interest in peer review

A conflict of interest exists when there are actual, perceived, or potential circumstances that can influence an editor’s ability to act impartially while assessing a manuscript. Such circumstances may include having a personal or professional relationship with an author, working on the same topic or in direct competition with an author, having a financial stake in the work or its publication, or having seen previous versions of the manuscript.

Members of the journal’s Editorial Committee and reviewers undertake or are asked to declare any conflicts of interest while handling manuscripts. An editor or reviewer who declares a conflict of interest is unassigned from the manuscript in question and is replaced by a new editor or reviewer. Editors try to avoid conflicts of interest while inviting reviewers, but it is not always possible to identify potential bias.

Self-archiving (Green Open Access) policy

Self-archiving, also known as Green Open Access, enables authors to deposit a copy of their manuscript in an online repository. The journal encourages authors of original research manuscripts to upload their article to an institutional or public repository immediately after publication in the journal within the bounds of the Creative Commons license applied to the article (see the Copyright section for more details).

Long-term digital archiving

J-STAGE preserves its full digital library, including the journal, with Portico in a dark archive. If the material becomes unavailable at J-STAGE, it will be released and made available by Portico.