Editorial Policies
Manuscript Submission and Peer-review Process
The Journal of Sustainable Economies (JSE) welcomes submission of unsolicited as well as invited manuscripts. The journal may also call for manuscripts related to its aim and scope as part of a special issue. All submissions are subject to initial screening by the Editor-in-Chief (EIC). The initial screening process focuses on the fit of the manuscript's topic with the focus of JSE. Lack of fit, as well as lack of scientific rigor or very unprofessional writing, may also lead to a desk rejection by the EIC. If the EIC rejects a manuscript, a detailed letter will be sent to the author(s) explaining the reasons for this action.
Following initial screening, the EIC will assign two independent reviewers who have expertise in the manuscript's content area. Reviewers will assess the manuscript's theoretical basis, appropriate use of methods (if empirical methods are used), discussion of implications, and overall contribution to the field of sustainable economies. To facilitate the review process, author(s) are asked to provide two or three potential peer reviewers, who are not collaborators, but who are familiar with the manuscript's content area. There is no guarantee that the names submitted by the author(s) will be selected. The peer-review process usually takes four to six weeks.
Reviews are double-blind. That is, JSE maintains the anonymity of the author(s) as well as the peer reviewers. If there is a potential conflict of interest affecting the ability of peer reviewers to provide an unbiased review of the manuscript, peer reviewers must disclose the conflict of interest (see Conflicts of Interest Policy). The main goal of the peer review process is to add scientific value to the manuscript. Reviewers are required to submit their comments in a document that includes notes for the editor, and specific recommendations for the author(s).
Author(s) are asked to include detailed responses to the reviewers' recommendations in "Notes to Reviewers." Please copy, paste, and number reviewer recommendations into "Notes to Reviewers" and then provide explanations of changes made or reasons for not making changes to the original manuscript. Please include both a clean copy and a "track changes" copy upon submission of revisions.
The manuscript may be accepted at any stage of the submission and review process. Decisions to reject, revise, or accept are made based on reviewer recommendations and the EIC's evaluation. In case of rejection, author(s) have the right to submit an appeal outlining reasons for believing that reviewers and/or the EIC have erred in rejecting the paper. The reasons should be compelling, detailed, and specific. The EIC will consider the appeal and determine whether resubmission to the originally assigned reviewers or to additional, new reviewers is warranted.
Special Issues Policy
JSE may publish special issues or themed collections curated by guest editors. The following standards apply to all special-issue content:
- The Editor-in-Chief (EIC) retains final responsibility for the content of the entire journal, including every special issue. All special-issue topics must fall within the journal’s aims and scope.
- Special-issue articles receive the same editorial oversight as regular papers, including external double-blind peer review by at least two independent reviewers, and are clearly labelled as part of a special issue upon publication.
- Guest editors’ credentials are verified and approved by the EIC before a special issue is commissioned.
- The EIC or designated editorial board members oversee guest editors throughout proposal, review, and publication stages.
- Manuscripts submitted to a special issue by the guest editor(s), or in which a guest editor is an author, are handled under an independent review process managed by the EIC or an assigned handling editor with no conflict of interest.
- Papers authored by guest editor(s) must not exceed 25% of the total articles published in that special issue.
What Happens After Submitting a Manuscript?
The Journal of Sustainable Economies uses Manuscript Manager (MM) to manage the peer-review process. Here's an overview of the steps your manuscript will follow:
- Initial Check: The editorial office team will first conduct a technical review of your manuscript, focusing on aspects such as format, anonymity, similarity score, etc. Should any issues be identified, the manuscript will be returned to you for necessary revisions. At this stage, the status in MM will be "With Editorial Office." If the manuscript is returned to you, the status will change to "Suspended".
- Assignment to Editor: Your manuscript will be assigned to the journal's Editor. At this stage, the status in MM will be "With Editor."
- Potential Rejection: In some cases, the Editor may determine that your manuscript does not meet the journal's aims or scope and should not be considered further. In such instances, you will be promptly notified of the rejection and may receive recommendations for alternative journals.
- Peer Review: If your manuscript aligns with the scope and criteria of the Journal of Sustainable Economies, the Editor will select and contact reviewers who are experts in the field. Please note that peer review is a voluntary process and may take some time. The Editor will actively follow up with reviewers to ensure timely responses. During this period, the status will be "In Review."
- Decision: Once the Editor has received the requisite number of reviews, the status will change to "Decision Pending". The manuscript may receive one of the following decisions:
4.1. Reject: The manuscript is not suitable for the journal, either due to lack of alignment with the journal's scope or insufficient quality. It will not be considered further.
4.2. Reject with Resubmission: The manuscript is not accepted in its current form but shows potential. Authors are encouraged to make substantial revisions and resubmit as a new submission.
4.3. Major Revision: Significant changes are required for the manuscript to be reconsidered. Authors must address substantial feedback before resubmission.
4.4. Minor Revision: The manuscript is generally well-received, but minor adjustments are needed. Authors should make the necessary revisions and resubmit.
4.5. Conditional Acceptance: The manuscript is nearly ready for publication, pending minor final adjustments. Once these are made to the satisfaction of the Editor, it will be accepted.
4.6. Accept: The manuscript meets all criteria and will be published as is or with minimal copyediting.
Disclosure Policy and Conflicts of Interest
JSE's disclosure and conflict of interest policy is designed to ensure that author(s)' manuscript content, as well as external reviewers' evaluations of such manuscripts, are not biased by certain pre-existing relationships. In this regard, author(s) must explicitly identify any potential conflicts (such as personal relationships or financial dependencies that may affect their actions). Likewise, external reviewers must disclose all conflicts of interest and recuse themselves from reviewing a given manuscript if they believe a conflict may exist, e.g., knowledge of one or more of the authors based on a prior professional relationship. If a conflict of interest is declared, the EIC will judge whether the reviewer is eligible to conduct the review.
Upon initial submission, author(s) are asked to disclose sources of funding. Author(s) must identify all affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity that has a financial interest or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. Examples of financial dependency include: employment, advisory, fees, ownership of shares or financial options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending and royalties. This list is not exclusive. Relevant conflicts of interest (or lack thereof) must be made public in the "Disclosure" section of the manuscript for all listed authors.
Editorial Endogeny Policy
JSE actively monitors and minimises endogeny—the concentration of published research in which editors, editorial board members, or assigned reviewers are authors—to protect editorial independence and the integrity of peer review.
The proportion of published research papers in which at least one author is an editor, editorial board member, or reviewer assigned to that manuscript must not exceed 25% in either of the journal’s latest two published issues. Where the journal uses a continuous-publication model, endogeny must not exceed 25% in the last calendar year (minimum five research articles per year).
Editors and board members who are authors must declare their role at submission. Such manuscripts are handled by an independent editor without conflict of interest and undergo the same rigorous external peer-review process as all other submissions. The EIC monitors endogeny metrics and may decline additional editor-linked submissions in an issue when the threshold is approached.
Citation Ethics and Prevention of Citation Manipulation
The Journal of Sustainable Economies (JSE) is committed to upholding the highest standards of academic integrity and ethical publishing. Citations must be included solely to acknowledge relevant prior work and to support the theoretical, methodological, and empirical foundations of a manuscript.
The following practices are considered unethical and are not permitted:
- Excessive self-citation by authors that is not clearly justified by the manuscript's content.
- Targeted citation of a specific individual, group of authors, institution, or journal without clear scholarly relevance.
- Citation stacking or coordinated citation practices intended to artificially inflate citation metrics.
- Adding citations for strategic, promotional, or metric-related purposes rather than for genuine academic contribution.
- Coercive citation practices by reviewers or editors, including requests to add irrelevant citations.
Editors and reviewers are instructed to assess reference lists for relevance, balance, and scholarly necessity. The journal reserves the right to request the removal or justification of citations that are deemed excessive, irrelevant, or potentially manipulative.
Authors are responsible for ensuring that all cited works are directly relevant to their manuscript and that the reference list reflects a balanced and fair representation of the literature. Where clusters of citations to the same author or research group appear, authors may be asked to provide a clear academic justification.
Failure to comply with this policy may result in editorial actions, including requests for revision, manuscript rejection, post-publication correction, or other measures deemed appropriate by the Editor-in-Chief. This policy aligns with the ethical standards of COPE and best practices recommended by major indexing and abstracting services.
AI and Automated Tools Policy
For authors
- Authors must disclose the use of generative AI or other automated tools in preparing the manuscript when used beyond straightforward language correction, editing, and formatting.
- Authors are responsible for checking the validity, accuracy, and integrity of any output produced by automated tools used in their research or manuscript preparation.
- Automated tools cannot be credited as authors and generative AI cannot be cited as a source.
- Undeclared use of generative AI may result in rejection or post-publication correction.
For peer reviewers and editors
- Peer reviewers and editors must not use generative AI to create review reports or editorial decisions, due to risks including breaches of confidentiality, superficial feedback, bias, and inaccurate content such as fabricated references. Light editing or rewriting of one’s own text may be acceptable if disclosed to the editorial office when relevant.
- Reviewers and editors must treat all manuscript materials as confidential and must not upload them to public AI tools.
For the journal and publisher
- JSE uses iThenticate to screen submissions for text similarity. Any routine use of automated integrity tools by the journal is overseen by editorial staff (human in the loop).
- Automated outputs related to plagiarism detection, figure checks, or reviewer suggestions are verified by an editor or qualified staff member before editorial action is taken.
- The publisher discloses use of established third-party tools (including iThenticate and Manuscript Manager) that support editorial workflow and integrity screening.
Post-acceptance
The Journal of Sustainable Economies supports the free availability of articles to the public under CC BY 4.0. The journal encourages authors to post copies of their published articles in PDF format on their websites, blogs, or institutional repositories at any time without embargo. Whether distributed on the web or in printed form, JSE requests that author(s) refer to the journal's website via a link to the Version of Record (see the Open Access Policy and repository policy on this website).
Publication policies for the Journal of Sustainable Economies support compliance with public-access requirements of major funding agencies. Authors are responsible for ensuring compliance with their funder’s conditions. For self-archiving rights, see the journal’s Open Access Policy.
Ensuring the Right to Privacy – Human Subjects/Studies Review
The right to privacy must include individual research participants and others who were sources of information. Thus, it is very important that all research involving human subjects be submitted to and approved by the Human Subjects/Studies Organization or Committee within lead author(s)' organization. Compliance with this requirement must be stated in the manuscript. Such compliance is not required for conceptual manuscripts or empirical manuscripts that do not involve collection of data from human subjects. Please note that data collection from human subjects may involve qualitative (e.g., focus groups) or quantitative (e.g., cross-sectional surveys or experiments). Also, author(s) should check with the Human Subjects organization in the case of secondary data collected by third parties to determine whether review and approval are required. If author(s) decide that including identification information is important for scientific purposes, permission from their institution's Human Subjects/Studies Review organization or committee must be obtained. Furthermore, author(s) must disclose such information in a manner that is fully compliant with requirements set forth by the Human Subjects/Studies organization.
Use of Unpublished Data & Personal Communications
Author(s) can cite an accepted manuscript that has not yet been published on the JSE website. Note that, with the exception of Masters' theses, PhD dissertations, and university-affiliated "Working Papers," citations of unpublished data should not appear in the list of references. Author(s) should not cite personal correspondence unless necessary scientific information is provided and is not available in public sources. In such cases, the source and nature of the information resources should be declared and identified as personal correspondence in the reference section of the manuscript.
Plagiarism, Duplicate Publication and Scientific Misconduct
All articles submitted to the Journal of Sustainable Economies are screened for plagiarism and text similarity using iThenticate. Author(s) must guarantee that the submitted manuscript has not been previously published or under review for possible publication elsewhere. Author(s) are also required to certify that their work is original and does not contain substantially similar content from other publications.
JSE considers use of others' ideas or words that are protected as intellectual property, whether published or unpublished, without citation or permission, as scientific theft and misconduct. If such conduct is suspected, the person(s) involved will be asked to show that this did not occur, and in the event of failure to respond or respond satisfactorily, referral to the appropriate legal authority will occur. The publisher has the full right to act according to the decisions of the legal authority with the measures it deems appropriate, such as retraction or withdrawing the publication of the article if required.
In-house Production
Accepted manuscripts are processed for publication as rapidly as possible. Author(s) will be informed of post-acceptance stages such as professional copyediting and final proof review and approval. As part of this process, JSE will provide author(s) with specific target dates for initial publication.
Copyright and License
All articles published in JSE are open access and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Articles can be downloaded, shared, and reused without restriction, provided that the original authors are cited correctly. “All rights reserved” does not apply to published article content.
Author(s) retain copyright of their work, with articles licensed to Luminous Insights for publication and distribution. The applicable copyright and license notice is included on the first page of each article. For full terms, see the journal’s dedicated Copyright and License policy page.
Copyright in the JSE website (design, layout, and non-article content) is separate from article copyright and is held by Luminous Insights Publishing. Website terms do not restrict reuse of articles in accordance with CC BY 4.0. Article copyright and licensing terms do not contradict the journal’s open access policy.
Under CC BY 4.0, you are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Under the following terms:
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Any data related to the article (including but not limited to any reference lists) is distributed according to the Creative Commons public domain Waiver of Dedication.
You may share (copy and redistribute the materials in any medium or format) and adapt (remixing, transforming, and building on materials) for any purpose (even commercially), provided that you follow the licensing terms that include making correct attribution and not creating any other restrictions.
