Editorial Submissions Policy

This policy governs the handling of manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Computers, Mechanical and Management by members of the editorial team and the active reviewer pool. The full statement, including the journal's public commitment on the proportion of editorial submissions, is on the Editorial Independence page; this page summarises the operational protocol.

Scope

The policy applies to any manuscript on which one or more authors holds, at the time of submission, a role as Editor-in-Chief, Honorary Editor, Publication or Managing Editor, Associate Editor, Section Editor, or Proofing Editor of the journal, or is in the active reviewer pool (defined as having completed a review for the journal in the preceding 24 months).

Operational protocol

  1. The submission is assigned to an editor who is not the author, is not in a direct reporting line with the author, and does not share an institutional affiliation with the author.
  2. The author-editor is fully recused from any editorial discussion, decision, or workflow access concerning the submission. The author-editor's OJS workflow access to the submission is removed.
  3. The submission undergoes double-blind external peer review by reviewers who are not part of the journal's editorial team and who declare no conflict with the author-editor.
  4. The acceptance, revision, or rejection decision is made by the independent handling editor on the basis of the external reviews.
  5. Every published article that is an editorial submission carries a transparency declaration in its acknowledgements or methods section noting the independent handling.
  6. The journal retains a complete OJS workflow record for every editorial submission for audit purposes.

Public commitment

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. Annual reporting of this proportion is published in the first issue of each calendar year.

Full details, including the rationale for the 15 per cent ceiling and the audit and reporting mechanisms, are on the Editorial Independence page.