The Journal of Computers, Mechanical and Management is committed to editorial independence and to transparent handling of submissions in which the author has any editorial, advisory, or reviewing relationship with the journal. This page describes the principles, operational protocol, and public commitment that govern such submissions.
Editorial decisions on every submission are made on the basis of scholarly merit, methodological soundness, and scope-fit alone, as assessed through external peer review. The publisher, AAN Publishing, plays no role in editorial decisions on individual submissions. The Editor-in-Chief and the editorial team operate independently of any commercial, organisational, or personal interest of the publisher, and the publisher recognises and supports this independence as a condition of the publishing relationship.
The journal recognises that members of the editorial team and the active reviewer pool may, in the course of their own scholarly work, submit manuscripts to the journal. To prevent any actual or perceived conflict of interest, the journal applies the following protocol to every such submission, in alignment with COPE guidance on editorial conflicts of interest (see COPE — A Short Guide to Ethical Editing) and with current best practice in scholarly publishing.
An editorial submission, for the purpose of this policy, is any manuscript on which one or more of the authors holds at least one of the following roles at the time of submission:
The journal commits to keeping the proportion of articles authored by editorial team members and active reviewers below 15 per cent in any rolling 12-month period. This figure is monitored by the Editor-in-Chief on a per-issue basis and reported transparently in the journal's annual editorial summary.
This 15 per cent threshold is applied at the level of articles, not authors: an article is counted as an editorial submission if any one of its authors holds an editorial role or is an active reviewer at the time of submission. The threshold is intentionally below the DOAJ 25 per cent reference value to provide a clear margin against random variation.
The journal publishes an annual transparency note in the first issue of each calendar year, stating the proportion of editorial submissions in the preceding year and the actions taken to maintain editorial integrity. This note is also archived under the News and Announcements section.
All editors complete an annual conflict-of-interest declaration covering personal, financial, institutional, and intellectual interests. Editors recuse themselves from any submission in which they have a competing interest with the authors, including but not limited to recent co-authorship (within five years), shared institutional affiliation, doctoral supervisory or supervisee relationship, or financial interest.
AAN Publishing, the publisher of the journal, plays no role in editorial decisions on individual submissions. The publisher is responsible for the journal's hosting, technical infrastructure, financial administration, and indexing-application coordination. The publisher does not have access to the OJS editorial workflow for individual submissions, and does not see manuscripts or peer-review reports prior to publication. Any attempt by the publisher to influence editorial decisions on individual submissions would be a breach of this policy and grounds for the editorial team to disclose the breach publicly. Publisher details are available on the Publisher page.
Concerns about editorial independence or about the handling of any specific submission may be raised confidentially with the Editor-in-Chief at editor@jcmm.co.in. Complaints that cannot be resolved at editor level may be escalated to COPE under the COPE complaints process.
This policy is reviewed annually and was last revised on 25 April 2026.
The journal's Article Processing Charge will move from USD 250 to USD 1,000 for manuscripts submitted from 1 October 2026 onwards. Submissions received on or before 30 September 2026 (23:59 UTC) will continue to be processed at USD 250. A tiered waiver scheme based on the World Bank country classification applies from 1 October 2026.
