Journal of Advanced Therapeutic Science
Editorial Policies
How editorial decisions are reached, how the published record is maintained, and what the journal expects of the work it publishes.
These policies govern every manuscript, whichever route it arrives by and whoever submits it.
01
Assessment
Peer review
All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal's scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.
- Model. Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
- Decision criteria. Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
- Author anonymization. Authors requesting double-blind review prepare the reviewer manuscript accordingly; the requirements are set out in the Instructions for Authors.
02
Governance
Editorial independence
Editorial authority rests with the journal's editors, who oversee peer review and uphold publication ethics.
- Scholarly grounds only. Decisions rest on the criteria above. They are independent of the article processing charge, of membership, and of any paid service, and they are not made on commercial grounds.
- Route neutrality. The approved submission routes are alternative ways of delivering the same manuscript, so the route a manuscript arrives by does not change how it is assessed.
- Roles confer no advantage. Reviewing or editing for the journal confers no advantage in the review or acceptance of that person's own work.
- Recusal. Editors recuse themselves from decisions on their own submissions, and those manuscripts are handled independently.
03
Integrity
Publication ethics
Authors are responsible for the integrity of the work they submit, and the journal assesses each manuscript against the standards below.
Originality and prior publication
Submitted work must be original and not under consideration elsewhere. Duplicate or redundant publication of the same results is not accepted. Manuscripts are screened for textual overlap, and a similarity report is assessed editorially in context rather than against a fixed threshold.
Authorship and contribution
Every listed author must have contributed substantively to the work and must approve the submitted version. Changes to authorship after submission require the agreement of all authors. Contributors who do not meet authorship criteria are acknowledged instead.
Conflicts of interest
Authors, reviewers and editors disclose financial and non-financial interests that could be seen to bear on the work. Disclosure is made at submission and is available to the editors handling the manuscript.
Research involving people and animals
Studies involving human participants require approval from the responsible ethics committee and informed consent; studies involving animals require the corresponding institutional approval. The approving body and the approval reference are reported in the manuscript.
Trial registration
Interventional clinical trials must be registered in an accepted public trial registry at or before the first participant provides consent for enrollment. The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported in the manuscript.
Concerns about published or submitted work
Concerns raised about a manuscript or a published article are examined by the editors, who may consult the authors, the reviewers and the responsible institution before deciding what action the record requires.
04
The record
Corrections and the published record
Published articles remain available, and the record is amended in the open rather than revised silently. Where an article requires change, the journal issues a linked notice so that a reader arriving at the original also reaches the correction.
- Correction. Issued where an error affects the record but not the findings of the work.
- Retraction. Issued where the findings are no longer reliable. The article remains accessible and is marked so that its status is clear on the article itself.
- Expression of concern. Issued where a substantiated concern is under examination and readers should be aware of it before the examination concludes.
05
Rights
Copyright and license
Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, and authors retain copyright.
Under that license anyone may read, redistribute, translate, adapt and build on the article, including commercially, provided the original work is properly attributed. Authors do not transfer their rights to the publisher, and no further permission is required for reuse that meets the license terms.
Material reproduced from another source remains subject to its own rights; authors obtain permission for such material before submission. Fee terms, including the withdrawal policy, are set out on the Article Processing Charges page.
06
Evidence
Data and research materials
Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement.
The statement says where the data supporting the findings can be found and on what terms — a repository and accession where one is used, the supplementary files where the data are supplied with the article, or the conditions under which the data may be obtained where access is restricted for legal or ethical reasons.
Authors are encouraged to deposit data and analysis code in a repository appropriate to their field, and to cite them so that the evidence behind a result can be examined alongside it.
07
Recourse
Complaints and appeals
An author who considers a decision mistaken may appeal it. An appeal is sent to the editorial office, states the grounds, and responds to the specific points raised in review; the editors then decide whether the manuscript should be reconsidered.
Complaints about the conduct of the editorial process, and concerns about a published article, follow the same route and are examined by the editors.
Appeals and complaints are separate from manuscript submission and should not be sent through a submission route. Write to the editorial office at [email protected].
Related guidance
Where these policies are applied
Authors, reviewers and editors each act on a different part of this page. The guidance written for each of them sets out what it means in practice.
Digital preservation
This journal’s content is committed to Portico, a not-for-profit digital-preservation archive run by ITHAKA (the organization behind JSTOR). As articles are deposited they enter Portico’s permanent archive, so the scholarly record stays available for the long term — even if a title one day ceases to publish. Read our preservation policy.