Editor's Guidelines
This guide defines the responsibilities, best practices, and ethical standards for editors of the Annals of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (ACGH). It encompasses roles ranging from screening submissions, managing peer review, ensuring ethical compliance, promoting publication quality, and guiding special issues.
1. General Expectations
All editorial team members—ranging from Editor-in-Chief to Associate and Guest Editors—are expected to uphold the journal’s standards for scientific rigor, fairness, timeliness, and ethical integrity. ACGH aims for transparency and academic excellence in all aspects of the editorial process.
2. Workload & Review Volume
Editors are generally expected to handle or review approximately 10 manuscripts annually, alongside other duties such as participation in editorial meetings, policy review, and strategy development.
3. Manuscript Screening & Assignment
Editors should ensure that incoming submissions are within the journal’s scope, meet minimum quality thresholds, and present original research. Submissions that fail initial checks—including plagiarism or redundancy—must be swiftly declined to maintain author respect and journal integrity.
After screening, manuscripts should be assigned to appropriate peer reviewers based on expertise, avoiding conflicts of interest. The timeliness of this assignment is essential to preserve editorial efficiency.
4. Monitoring Quality & Ethical Integrity
Throughout the editorial process, editors must vigilantly guard against ethical violations such as plagiarism, duplicate publication, or inappropriate authorship. Reports of misconduct should be investigated according to COPE guidelines, and actions—such as retraction or correction—must be transparently recorded.
5. Editorial-Correspondence & Reviewer Management
Editors act as the primary liaison with reviewers. They must ensure that reviews are constructive, objective, and timely. For reviews falling short of standards, editors should provide feedback and, when necessary, solicit alternative reviewers to maintain review quality.
Post-review decisions should be judicious: accepting strong manuscripts, inviting revisions when necessary, or rejecting those unable to meet standards even after revisions.
6. Decision-Making & Transparency
Editors must base decisions solely on scientific merit, originality, and clarity—unaffected by institutional or personal bias. Reviews should summarize key strengths and weaknesses, providing transparent justification for decisions.
7. Confidentiality & Conflict Management
Manuscript content and reviewer identities must remain confidential. Editors must recuse themselves from decisions if any conflicts—professional, personal, or institutional—are present. In such cases, another editor should oversee the manuscript to preserve impartiality.
8. Engagement with Authors
Editors should communicate clearly with authors, especially regarding required revisions or policy clarifications. They must also manage ethical issues with sensitivity—informing authors of concerns and offering an appropriate response or appeal mechanism.
9. Special Issues & Guest Editor Collaboration
For Special Issues, editors must ensure that proposals align with ACGH’s scope and quality criteria. Guest Editors collaborate closely, inviting submissions, managing peer review, and making decisions under overarching journal policies.
10. Continuous Policy Review & Innovation
Editors participate in regular policy reviews and stay up to date with evolving editorial standards, open access, and ethical frameworks (e.g., ICMJE, COPE). They also help refine manuscript presentation, metadata standards, and inclusive practices to enhance journal integrity and impact.
11. Upholding Accessibility & Archiving Standards
Editors must ensure published manuscripts are archived properly (via CrossRef/DOI, repositories) and adhere to CC-BY licensing. Withdrawn or retracted content is preserved ethically for the scholarly record.
Last updated: 2025-09-02