4. Responsibilities of editors

1. Editors shall strive to meet the needs of readers and authors; constantly improve the journal; ensure the quality of the material they publish; champion freedom of expression;
2. Editors shall have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article on the basis of objective academic criteria (such as originality, importance, clarity, etc.);
3. Editors shall accept the right of authors to appeal against their decisions;
4. Editors have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept;
5. Editors shall publish submission and acceptance dates for articles, description of the peer review process, and to provide continually actualised guidance to authors on everything that is expected of them (including guidance about authorship criteria);
6. Editors shall be reasonably certain of accepting articles;
7. Decisions of acceptance of the articles cannot be reversed by editors without serious reasons; new editors shall not overturn decisions to publish submissions made by previous editors without serious reasons;
8. Editors promote the publication of corrections or retractions of the text if errors or inaccuracies occur in the text;
9. As regards reviewers and the peer review process, editors are obliged to provide peer-review guidance; require the disclosure of any reviewer’s conflict of interests; preserve the anonymity of reviewers; to ensure that the material submitted to ELM Scholarly Press remains confidential while under review.
10. As regards members of the editorial board, editors shall provide new editorial board members with guidelines on everything that is expected of them and keep existing members updated on new policies and developments;
11. Editors shall maintain integrity of the academic record; editors are also willing to preclude business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards;
12. Editors are always prepared to monitor and safeguard all issues of publishing ethics and promptly communicate with authors/reviewers/readers in cases of possible errors in publishing of the texts; suspected misconducts (authorship complaints, plagiarism, fabrication of data, research standards violations, research result misappropriations, etc.). This communication will follow (and will be continually updated by) the rules on Elsevier and COPE websites (PERK, Retraction Guidelines, Flowcharts);
13. Editors are always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.