Editorial Policy
Following editorial policies established in the light of instructions by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) help Savvy Science Publisher to maintain the high quality of publications and comply with the Best Practice Guidelines of the committee and follow its Code of Conduct.
Being an author:
Authorship in an article is a credit for a researcher’s contributions at some stage in the work till final presentation of the article. For articles submitted to Savvy Science Publisher journals authorship may be shared by the researchers who have made significant contributions to the conception or design of the research study; or have taken part in the attainment, analysis, or interpretation of data generated or used in the study; or have participated in the creation of new software required for the study ; or have drafted the manuscript presenting the work or participated in revision of the manuscript for its final submission to the journal. Savvy Science Publisher encourages the collaborative work among colleagues and all who have fulfilled the above criteria of authorship may be included as co-authors in the manuscript. However, in case of more than one author, at least one of them should be assigned as corresponding author as described in detail below. All other participants who assisted in the generation of the manuscript in other ways may be acknowledged in the acknowledgement section.For studies where multi-region collaboration has been involved we advise that researchers carefully consider the contributions and authorship criteria to ensure appropriate equity in research collaborations.
Savvy Science Publisher neither requires that all authors of a research paper should sign the cover letter upon submission, nor we intent to impose an order on the list of authors. Submission of Savvy Science Publisher journals means that all authors have approved the submitted content of the article or any subsequent revision, and that any question related to the work will be appropriately replied. It also means that all authors have agreed to the order of the authors’ list. If any changes are made to the authors’ list after submission has been made to the journal, such a change must be approved by all authors. However, it should be kept in mind that no change of authors’ list, including addition or deletion, is acceptable after the manuscript has been accepted by the journal. No responsibility lies on Savvy Science Publisher to investigate the authorship disputes before or after publication and in case of arising of any matter the relevant institutional authority should be approached.In cases where we sense any incessant dispute regarding the authorship matter, Savvy Science Publisher reserves the right of not publishing that article even after its acceptance by the editors.
Savvy Science Publisher urges its authors to follow COPE’s guidelines for all authorship matters which can be approached at 2003pdf12_0.pdf (publicationethics.org)
Corresponding Author - Responsibilities:
If the article is submitted by a group of researchers, at least one of them should be identified as the corresponding author by an asterisk with his/her name and his contact information and email is required to be presented in the published article.
The corresponding author (submitting author in case of single-authored articles) is solely responsible for communicating with the journal’s team and for managing communication between co-authors. In cases of large collaborative team there may be two corresponding authors. At the time of submission, the corresponding author ensures that all authors have been included in the authors’ list in an order agreed by all of them, and all have approved the submission of final version of the article.
After acceptance of the article, the proof will be sent to the corresponding author, who deals with the journal on the behalf of all co-authors; Scientific Reports will not necessarily correct errors after publication if they result from errors that were present on a proof that was not shown to co-authors before publication. The corresponding author is responsible for checking the accuracy of all content in the proof including the names and spelling of co-authors and for ensuring that their current addresses and affiliations are mentioned.
Being a corresponding author does not mean that he/she is the most senior among the authors; however, after publication of the article it represents him/her as the point of contact for any query about the published content.
Guest Edited Collections/Special Issues/Thematic Issues:
All journals of Savvy Science Publisher have the policy to publish Guest Edited Collections of articles related to a particular/newly emerging topic of interest in the relevant fields via open access.
All manuscripts submitted to such a Collection will be subject to the standard journal editorial policies. An article processing charges will apply only to the manuscripts that are accepted by the editor of the journal/Guest editor(s) of that collection for publication after a double-blind peer review.
All Guest edited Collections are open for submissions from authors all around the world – and not by invitation only – provided that the manuscripts fall within the scope of the thematic Collection.
Manuscripts submitted to an open Special Issue may not be considered by the editors for inclusion in the issue especially if they fall outside the scope of the Collection. However, the authors will be timely notified about this editorial decision by Savvy Science team and such manuscript may be considered as a regular submission to the relevant journal by Savvy Science after getting authors’ consent.
Guest Editors of Special/ Thematic issues may be one from the editorial board members of the journal or they may be the other renowned professionals from the relevant field serving only for their special issue. These Guest editors are involved in soliciting papers, and in writing an introductory Editorial for their special issue. In addition, they may manage some or all of the submissions to the Collection through the peer review process, on the condition that all standard editorial policies of Savvy Science Publisher particularly those for competing interests are followed.
It is noteworthy that Savvy Science journals’ in-house editors reserve the right to assume responsibility for the management of a Special Issue at any stage of publishing process.
Editorial Processes:
The editorial board members of Savvy Science Publishers journals actively participate in the progress of the journals. Collectively, they form a strong body of experienced professionals of the field with valuable input for the research propagation. They are regularly kept informed about timely, fair and unbiased peer review process of their journals. All editors put their utmost efforts to ensure that the publication material submitted to the journals remains confidential throughout the publishing processes and proficient scholars of the fields are chosen for timely peer reviewing of articles that are under their consideration. The professional views of experts in the field are sought by the editors on the content of the submitted articles. These editors are periodically kept updated about the journals’ policies and progress as well as the technological advances adopted by the journal to assist the editorial process. The editorial members are regularly asked for their valuable advices to bring further improvements in publishing process.
Editors are supposed to be vigilant about the review process and in case of any unfair conduct suspected during the review process, they are directed to follow:
If in-house internal EBMs of any journal cannot reach to any conclusion about a case, the EIC of the journal will be approached who has the authority to involve some external scholar/professional for guidance after consulting with the journal’s internal EBMs. EIC may refer any unusual case to COPE, provided no guidelines are already available to resolve such issue.
If a case of suspected misconduct during submission of an article is brought to editors’ attention they are advised to follow the guiding rules of COPE rather than simply rejecting the submitted articles. While mentioning this, it refers to both published and unpublished articles submitted to Savvy Science Publisher journals. Further guidance may be found at
For alleged misconduct in published articles, COPE’s guidelines are followed accordingly. To resolve such issues, editors may first seek a reply from the respective authors regarding the suspected misconduct. In case of unsatisfying answers, authors’ employers, institution or a related regulatory body may be approached by the editors for investigation.
Dedicating their precious time Savvy Science editors take regular feedback from the journals’ relevant staff to be certain that the case of any alleged misconduct has been fully resolved. If a proper investigation into alleged misconduct is not being carried out, editors may take the needful steps to involve other members/EIC in order to obtain a resolution to the problem.
Peer Review Process:
All submissions to Savvy Science journals are subject to a double-blind peer review (means that the identities of authors and reviewers remain undisclosed to each other). At least two review reportswill be collected for every manuscript that has been approved by the handling editor for its suitability and peer review. The handling editor of the manuscript will carefully select the reviewers who fulfill the following criteria:
- Hold a PhD degree and/or be a recognized expert in the respective field;
- Not have co-authored publications with the author(s) for the last 3 years;
- Not currently affiliated with the same institution as the author(s).
These practices help Savvy Science editors’ to be certain that there are no conflicts of interests and unbiased reviews are obtained.
Reviewers will be asked to give their comments within two weeks, although they may be given an extra time for review if requested well in advance by them. The relevant details for reviewing process can be found at the journals’ Peer Review Policy.
Final Decision authority:
The handling editor of each Savvy Science Publishers Journal is responsible for finally deciding which of the submitted articles should be published. However, this decision is duly guided by the journal’s editorial policies, publishing ethics and the peer reviewers’ reports on the submitted article. The Editor-in-Chief may also be contacted while making this decision. EIC has the authority to confer with other editors of the journal or reviewers while making this decision, certainly keeping in view that no conflict of interest is present in contacting them.
A confidential process:
Savvy Science Publisher considers the submitted manuscripts and all communication with authors and reviewers as confidential. Our editors and reviewers are bound to keep confidential all details of the editorial and peer review process on submitted manuscripts. Savvy science publisher follows a double blind review policy and if any reviewer wishes to seek advice from colleagues while assessing a manuscript, the reviewer must take prior permission from the editor handling the submission for doing so and ensure that confidentiality is maintained. Reviewers are supposed to provide the names of any such colleagues to the journal with their final review report. Editors must also not disclose information about manuscripts (including their receipt, content, status in the reviewing process, criticism by reviewers, or ultimate fate) to anyone other than the authors and reviewers. Any requests to use the materials for legal proceedings should not be considered without authors’ permission.
Editors must be very clear in informing the reviewers that manuscripts sent for review are privileged communications and the private property of the authors. Therefore, no reviewer and editorial staff member is allowed to publicly discussing the authors’ work or appropriating their ideas before the manuscripts’ final publication. Reviewers are not allowed to make copies of the manuscript for their record keeping or share it with others, except where a special permission has been granted by the editors. Reviewers are supposed to return or destroy copies of manuscripts after submitting their review comments. Editors should also not keep copies of rejected manuscripts. Reviewer comments are never to be published or otherwise publicized without permission of the author, reviewer, and editor.
Even for finally published articles neither any correspondence with the journal’s team, nor reviewers' reports or any other confidential material should be published, disclosed or otherwise publicized without prior written consent by Savvy Science Publisher.
Authors are also expected to abide by the policy of treating all communication with Savvy Science Publisher as confidential.
License agreement and author copyright policy:
Articles are published by Savvy Science Publisher under a CC BY license (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License). This license allows for maximum dissemination and re-use of open access materials. Under this license, users are free to share (copy, distribute and transfer) and remix (adapt) or reproduce the article for non-commercial purposes provided that they attribute the article in a proper manner, and the credit to the original authors and source of publication(Savvy Science Publisher) is clearly mentioned via the DOI link to the article archived in our journals.
Our authors retain the copyright of their articles in our journals and are at liberty to use their articles, in full or in part, for scholarly but non-commercial purposes.All Submissions to Savvy Science journals must be the original work, the copyright to which is not previously owned by anyone, elsewhere.Corresponding author(s) holds the responsibility to check for possible copyright conflict with the copyright holder of any published work. As long as these issues are properly considered and dealt by the authors Savvy Science Publisher always welcomes genuine and innovative work putting a strong encouragement for cross- disciplinary approaches.
OPEN ACCESS Policy:
Savvy Science Publisher believes in the openness of knowledge sharing globally. Therefore, we opted the open access model for publication of all articles helping the global readers approach the ongoing research and latest advancements in their field without any financial barriers. Once the article is published in our journals all interested audience can immediately access the complete article at the journal website without any requirement of subscription charges or institutional login. Authors, too, get benefitted as open access brings their efforts in propagating the research before the research world in minimal possible time as well as increases the readership of their valuable research work disseminating the knowledge to every corner of the world.
No Parallel Publication:
When a manuscript is submitted to Savvy Science Publisher journals for publication it must be original and parallel submissions of same material, in whole or in part, elsewhere are not allowed. This also includes that article should not be published earlier in any language other than English as translations are not considered as the original work. Similarly, if any related article is under consideration somewhere else, authors must disclose any such information in their cover letter at the time of the original submission to Savvy Science Publisher’s journal.
Posting of same manuscript on authors’ institutional or personal website prior to publication by Savvy Science Publisher Journals also falls under this restriction and should be avoided. No preprints are allowed in the same way.However, publication of meeting abstracts- before the full contribution is submitted to Savvy Science Publisher- is allowed. Nevertheless, such abstracts should be included with the submission to Savvy Science journal and referred to in the cover letter accompanying the manuscript. If a figure, published earlier o elsewhere is being re-usedin the article, authors should provide a documentation explicitly mentioning that the previous publisher or copyright holder has granted permission for the figure to be re-published. In case of any doubt, authors may seek advice from the editor handling their article.
If any malpractice of preprints or posting on any website practice is identified at any time, Savvy Science Publisher reserves the right to reject the article immediately due to authors’ unethical behavior; though a notification to the authors will be sent properly.
Policy on Plagiarism:
According to the ORI (Office of Research Integrity), plagiarism includes, "theft or misappropriation of intellectual property and the substantial unattributed textual copying of another's work". Complete or partial copying of text from any other published material or authors’ own previously published work without proper attribution to the original source; and misquoting of original ideas, authorship, text or results all comes under the practice of Plagiarism; and all such attempts are prohibited by Savvy Science Publisher. In simpler words, no “cut-and-pasted” are allowed.
It is noteworthy that all articles submitted to Savvy Science journals are subject to plagiarism check (copying of any material) on submission via professionally-recognized software tools. Any submission with plagiarized material exceeding the acceptable percentage of 19% will not be considered for publication.
While avoiding the copying of large portions of text in whole, due caution must be practiced similarly to ensure appropriate attribution and citation when paraphrasing or summarizing the other’s work is required. “Self-plagiarism” i.e. text-recycling of author’s own previously published work should also be attentively avoided as this may lead to Duplicate/Redundant publication, and proper citation to the previous work may prevent the authors from this to happen.
Our authors are instructed to assure the journals’ editors about following this policy by providing due credit to any previously published work or directly quoted material whether in the text form, images, data or ideas. Articles may be highly susceptible to major revisions, or even rejection, if their amount of similarity index to other articles in the database is found greater than the allowed limits. In extremely rare happening of detection of plagiarism post-publication, Savvy Science Publisher deals with such cases on individual bases and reserves the right to retract the article from its website simultaneously issuing a note of retraction at the website along with the reason, and informing the authors’ institutions about their decision to do so; or to amend the original publication depending on the degree of plagiarism and overall impact of the published study.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI):
Savvy Science Publisher is well aware of ongoing developments in Artificial Intelligence area, these advancements will be closely monitored and our related policies will be regularly reviewed and updated as appropriate.
When authors use generative AI or and AI-assisted method in preparing the manuscript, they should only use these AI technologies to check grammar and spelling and improve the readability of the language in the manuscript. Large Language Models (LLMs), such as Chat GPT, are not encouraged by Savvy Science Publisher to be used by the author while preparing any section of the manuscript in whole. Such models do not currently satisfy Savvy Science Publisher’s criteria of authorship as the accountability cannot be effectively applied to these models. Since no clear guideline/policy defines or limits the use of AI, author is ultimately responsible for all content of the manuscript that was prepared by AI. If an assistance has been taken from AI, the author should include a statement (either in the Method section or as a separate heading if Method section is not present in the article) disclosing their use of AI in manuscript preparation.
As the legal issues relating to AI-generative images are still broadly unsettled, Savvy Publisher does not allow AI use for generating the images in a manuscript and strictly follows the existing copyright policy for the use of images. If non-generative machine learning tools have been used to manipulate, combine or enhancing the original illustrations, they should be clearly disclosed by the author on submission of the article to Savvy Science Publisher. Exception to this policy are images that are prepared for a piece of publication specifically discussing about AI, however these too will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis.
Digital Data Archiving:
Savvy Science Publisher is well aware of the importance of scholarly work published by its journals and owns the responsibility of ensuring the online presence of each published article. The published content of all of Savvy journals has been deposited and archived in LOCKSS through the PKP Preservation Network. Also, the published articles will be included in the list of indexing agencies wherein the respective journals are listed.
We also allows our authors to have a substantial self-archiving policy by which authors are free to self-archive their accepted manuscript in any institutional/disciplinary/state repository immediately after its first online publication in our journals. However, it requires that proper acknowledgment is given to Savvy Science Publisher journals as the original source of publication. For this, a link may be provided with the self-archived article to the original article present in the archives of Savvy Science Publisher journals.
Research Data Policy and Data Availability Statements:
If the article submitted to Savvy Science Publisher journals entails some research where some data has been generated/analyzed, the authors are urged to share this data, unless this is prohibited due to some justified reasons. Such data sharing is especially stressed if this data significantly effects the conclusion of the study and will bring easiness in comprehending, evaluating or extending the published research by the readers.
Additional supplementary files may be provided to share such data or the digital object identifiers (DOIs) or data accession numbers may be provided in the submitted article if the data is deposited in a data repository. Providing a web link to datasets may also be opted for this purpose. Authors may choose from any commonly available repositories for depositing their research data.
It is the authors responsibility to blind all the data in respect to authorship at the time of article submission, if that data will be required for peer review of their article because Savvy Science Publisher journals follow the policy of double blind review. Authors may request for such blinding to the data repositories which offer these author-blinding services.
Whenever the research involves data usage, a statement of Data availability/unavailability is mandatory to be mentioned in the article. Following templates may be used accordingly for such statements:
- The datasets generated and/or analyzed during this study are available in the [NAME] repository, [Persistent Web Link to DATASETS/DOI/Data Accession Number]
- Authors are unable to publicly present the datasets generated and/or analyzed during the present study due to [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] however, it may be provided by the corresponding author on reasonable request.
- The data used/generated during this study is available in the form of supplementary material in this article.
Acknowledgements:
The acknowledgement section can be used to thank anyone important in carrying out or presenting the scholarly work who does not qualify for authorship criteria. However, relevant financial funding should not be specified here but in the “Conflict of Interest” section.
The acknowledgement section should not be used to list contributors who meet our criteria for authorship as outlined above.
Authors are advised to make sure that acknowledgements are brief, and do not contain thanks to anonymous persons (including referees or editors), unnecessary words, and overly-expressed comments.
Disclosure of Financial Support:
If any financial funding has been provided by the institutional or state authorities for the research project reported in the article, it should be disclosed by a statement at the end of the article. To determine whether the funding is worth-disclosing authors must see if the results included in the publication are original and the direct result of experimentation or analysis supported by the grant; or, if the grant financially supports the publication of the article. In both of these conditions, the source of grant/ financial support should be disclosed clearly along with the grant number (if required by the granting source).
Some of the ways to present this statement may be;
A.B.C. discloses support for the research of this work from Funder(s) [grant number(s) xxxx], while D.E.F. discloses support for publication of this work from Funder(s) [grant number(s) xxxx].
This article received funding from Funder(s) [grant number(s) xxxx] for carrying out the research study and/or publication of the article.
Post Publication Policies:
Savvy Science Publisher continues to serve the research community while maintaining the integrity of the scientific record; to meet this goal we strive to investigate the concerns raised with us by authors and readers. Authors remain the primary participant for resolving the raised concerns and are given the opportunity to respond to these concerns whereas, Savvy Science Publisher may request them for original unprocessed data, and access the relevant professionals during an investigation.
The type and the level of significance of the raised issue determines the course of action taken to resolve the concern and any of the following outcomes may be resulted:
- A manuscript that is still under consideration when the issue raised may be rejected and returned to the author.
- If the article has already been published by Savvy Science journals, we may either issue a correction/Addendum, an Editorial Expression of concern; or retract the article or the author’s institution may be informed.
However, investigations may take plenty of time to reach resolution depending on the complexity of the concern, and the necessity of obtaining original data and consulting with experts. Therefore, to alert our readers, while an investigation is under way about a published article, Editor’s Notes and/or Editorial Expressions of Concern are issued with the concerned published content.
Article Correction:
If an author discovers a scientifically significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work especially those that may affect the interpretation of data or reliability of the information presented in the article, the author's becomes responsible for promptly notifying the journal editor, and is supposed to cooperate with the editor to correct the error. A correction for a published article will only be considered after receiving approval and instructions from the EiC of the journal The Editor of the journal will determine the impact of the change in the article and decide on the appropriate course of action. An Author Correction may be published to correct such error.
Publisher Correction: A Publisher Correction may be published by Savvy Science if any of its journals has made some significant error that has the potential to affects the scientific integrity of the published article, the publication record, or the reputation of the author(s) or of the journal.
When making corrections to articles, in the majority of cases the original article (PDF) is corrected and is bi-directionally linked to and from the published amendment notice, which details the original error. If the changes made to the original article may affect data in figures, tables or text (e.g., when changes are in data points or curves) the amendment notice will reproduce the original data. When it is not possible to correct the original article cannot be amended due to any reason, the article will remain unchanged but will contain bi-directional links to and from the published amendment notice.
All corrections are made according to the COPE Guidelines given on https://publicationethics.org/case/how-correct-published-paper
Addendum: if some significant additional information is found to be crucial to the reader’s understanding of the article after its publication, an addendum/appendix is published and the original article is marked in Savvy Science archives.
If a published article is under investigation for any reason, its PDF file may be accompanied by either of the below notices according to the COPE recommendations:
Editor's Note: a notification notifying readers if the journal has initiated an inquiry is raised about a published article
Editorial Expression of Concern (EEoC): a statement published for readers’ attention when serious concerns are raised regarding the integrity of the published article.
Once the investigation is complete, Editor’s Notes and EEoCs will be followed by publishing of another amendment, such as correction, retraction or removal.
Article Retraction:
In rare cases of serious issues discovered after the publication of an article like errors in the conducting/analyzing/reporting of the study; Breaches in professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, data falsification and fabrication by the authors, Savvy Science Publisher reserves the right to retract the published article. The original article will however, be visible on the journal’s website- marked as “retracted”- with a brief retraction statement bi-directionally linked to the PDF version of the original article available to the readers.
Article Removal:
In exceptional circumstances, where Savvy Science may face any unusual case of findings any of its published article defamatory, unlawful in any form, infringing on a third party’s privacy or other legal rights, or imposing serious and immediate risks to health if practiced, or on receiving a clearly stated court/state order; it reserves the right to remove such article- either temporarily or permanently. The title of the removed article and its authors’ names (bibliographic metadata) will be retained at the journal’s website however, and a short declaration note will be available to the readers for briefly knowing the reasons for the removal.
Appeals & Complaints:
If authors wish to ask for the reconsideration of their rejected article they may send their appeals via email addressing the handling editor of their article at appandcomplaints@savvysciencepublisher.com
However, priority is always given to the active/current submissions, therefore, working and consideration of appeals is supposed to take longer. Final decisions on appeals will rest with the relevant editorial team.
If appeals are successful, authors will be informed about how their manuscript will be further handled, once again.
complaints about the failure of processes, such as long delays in handling papers or time to taken a review, may also be send to appandcomplaints@savvysciencepublisher.com, Complaints will be given attention by the editor who handled the paper along with the journal’s editorial staff (as necessitates)and a course of action will be decided. The complainant will be given appropriate feedback. Also, the relevant members of journal’s team Feedback is provided with the feedback comments to bring improvement in their processes and procedures.
Data Fabrication and Manipulation:
Savvy Science Publisher condemns the deliberate manipulation of research findings/data with the intention of producing false impression of the research.
Image manipulation, removal of conclusively unsupportive results, changing/adding/deleting actual graph points etc., all fall in the category of data fabrication- the list is not exhaustive- and none of such attempts are permissible in submitted articles. However, authors are given the liberty of proper technical manipulation of a complete image/graph for the purpose of better readability, provided that such manipulations are clearly mentioned in the cover letter accompanying the submitted article. Please note that partial manipulation (involving only some parts of illustrations leaving the others as such) is strictly prohibited. Editors are instructed to follow COPE guidelines to handle any falsification of data according to the:
- Suspected fabricated data in a submitted manuscript
Though we strive hard to prevent the publication of any false/fabricated data, in rare cases if data fabrication is brought to notice after the article is published, the editors will deal with these issues following COPE’s guidelines; for further information please see:
- Fabricated data suspected in a published article (publicationethics.org)
Ensuring the Integrity of the Academic Record:
Savvy Science Publisher is committed to ensure that the content published by its journals is academically reliable. However, if a case arises where serious mistakes are revealed after publication of the article, our team members are instructed to work promptly for taking necessary steps in order to maintain the integrity of academic record. Both authors and publisher are the participants of this process according to the COPE’S respective guidelines.
For details, see:
https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/ethical-concerns-published_research.pdf
If our editors and investigating team reaches to the conclusion that any serious error/statement has been revealed in any article published in Savvy Science Publisher journals, we reserve the right to follow our post publication policies as described above and constructed in the light of COPE guidelines.
https://publicationethics.org/postpublication
Direct Marketing:
Presently, Savvy Science Publisher is not engaged in any direct marketing activities. However, we keep working to update our activities and hence, this policy may be amended in future.
