The editors of RoMaya Journal are the guardians of the journal's academic integrity and publication quality. This page outlines the roles, responsibilities and ethical principles our editors follow, and summarises our editorial process. All editors are expected to follow the
COPE Core Practices and the journal's Editorial and Publication Policies
(RJ-POL-01).
Core Responsibilities of Editors
- Publication Decisions: Editors evaluate manuscripts on their originality, significance, methodological soundness and fit with the journal's aims and scope. Reviewer recommendations are advisory and are weighed on the quality of their reasoning, not counted mechanically. The final decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief, or, for manuscripts authored by the Editor-in-Chief, with the designated Associate Editor.
- Fair Play: Manuscripts are evaluated for their intellectual content without regard to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship or political philosophy of the authors.
- Confidentiality: Editors do not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers and the publisher, as appropriate. Editors must not upload manuscripts or reviewer reports to generative AI tools, and must not use AI to make or draft editorial decisions.
- Managing Conflicts of Interest:
- Editors are not involved in processes concerning their own work or the work of authors with whom they have a close financial, institutional, personal or collaborative relationship.
- An editor who identifies a potential conflict with an assigned manuscript notifies the Editor-in-Chief immediately and withdraws; the manuscript is reassigned by the Editor-in-Chief.
- Unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript is not used in an editor's own research without the author's express written consent.
The Editorial Workflow
- Technical and Preliminary Check (Editorial Office, within 7 days): Required files, anonymisation, scope and similarity are checked. The journal's similarity limits are 15% overall and 3% from any single source.
- Desk Evaluation (Field Editor, within 14 days): The manuscript is scored using the Field Editor Evaluation Form (200 points). Manuscripts scoring 150 or above proceed to peer review; others are desk-rejected with a written justification.
- Reviewer Assignment (Section Editor): At least two independent external reviewers are assigned. Each reviewer holds a doctorate in a relevant field. No reviewer is at the same institution as any author or has had a co-authorship, joint project, supervisor–student or thesis-jury relationship with any author in the last five years. Wherever possible, at least one reviewer is affiliated outside the authors' country. Reviewers have 21 days, with one 7-day extension on request.
- Statistics and Language Editing: Quantitative studies are reviewed by the statistics editor, and all manuscripts are language-edited before acceptance.
- Decision Making: Decisions follow the decision table in the Editorial and Publication Policies. A third reviewer is assigned where recommendations conflict. A manuscript may go through at most three revision rounds, and authors answer every reviewer point in the Amendment Sheet. Decisions are communicated to authors with clear and constructive justification.
- Acceptance and Production: The Editor-in-Chief completes a pre-acceptance check before a manuscript is accepted. The corresponding author approves the final proof within 5 working days before publication.
- Appeals: Authors may appeal a decision once, within 30 days, by a reasoned letter to the editorial office. The appeal is assessed by an editor who was not involved in the original decision.
- Step-by-step checklists for each role are given in the Editorial Workflow Guidelines (RJ-GDL-01).
Manuscript Submissions by Editors
Editors may submit their own work to the journal. A manuscript authored by the Editor-in-Chief is handled entirely by an Associate Editor appointed by the Editorial Board, who takes the final decision; the Editor-in-Chief has no access to the reviewers' identities, the reports or the editorial discussion of that manuscript. Manuscripts by other editors are handled by an editor with no connection to the work. Such manuscripts undergo the same double-blind peer review with at least two external reviewers, none of whom may be a member of the Editorial Board, and the published article carries a note stating that it was handled independently. Articles authored by Editorial Board members should not exceed 10% of the articles published in a calendar year. Full details are given in Section 7 of the
Editorial and Publication Policies (RJ-POL-01) and in the
Editorial Workflow Guidelines (RJ-GDL-01), available on the Documents page
.RoMaya Journal welcomes internationally recognised academics who are experts in their fields to its editorial board. If you are interested in joining, please send your CV and a brief letter of intent to info@romayajournal.com.
