Essachess – Journal for Communication Studies requests authors and reviewers prior to submitting or agreeing to review a manuscript provide a conflict of interest statement, to warrant no such conflicts exist.

The authors have to declare funding sources (if any).

The members of editorial team and editorial board must declare any conflicts of interest prior to joining the editorial team or editorial board.

Editors and journal staff are not involved in editorial process and decisions about their own research work submitted to the journal. Essachess – Journal for Communication Studies handles submissions from editors and members of its editorial board as following:

-       editors and editorial team and board are not allowed to take part to publication process and decision when they are authors or have contributed to a submitted manuscript.

-       for ensuring a fair peer review in editorial team in the case of a submission from editors and members of editorial board, the journal requests the author do not communicate directly with the editor-in-chief. The author should communicate directly only with the assistant editor in charge.

-       for ensuring a fair peer review in editorial team in the case of a submission from editors and members of editorial board, the journal requests any author will not be given special treatment.

All articles after their submission go through an initial pre-screening by ​the editorial board members/journal editors or an external expert in case of submission from a member of the board. In this process, it is decided if the article qualifies for a peer review or not.  During the initial screening, journal editors/editorial board member​ check the following: the manuscript fits the journal scope, the manuscript is of satisfactory quality, and the manuscript is compliant with the journal instructions for authors. Within 4-5 weeks of submission, the initial prescreening is scheduled to be completed.

Once a manuscript passes the initial screening, it is sent for double-blind peer review. All submissions eligible for a double-blind peer review process will be forwarded to at least two peer reviewers based on their relevance and expertise in the field of the article. The reviewers may be either members of the journal's editorial board or external referees.​

Based on the reviewers’ reports the ​journal editor​s/ editorial board member/ external editor will decide about acceptance without any changes/ acceptance with minor revisions/ acceptance after majors revisions (conditional acceptance)/revision and resubmission (conditional rejection)/rejection of the article. If necessary the ​journal editor​s/editorial board member​/external editor consult a relevant reviewer for making a decision of acceptance/ rejection/ further revision (maximum 2 rounds of revision may be allowed). 

The editors of the journal (the Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor-in-Chief) are responsible for final acceptance/ rejection of the article on the basis of external reviewers’ reports but, a third party expert opinion is also sought in this regard, as appropriate.

Duties of Editorial Board/Journal Editors

1. The editorial board/journal editors must evaluate manuscripts only for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, religious belief, sexual orientation, citizenship, ethnic origin or political philosophy of the authors.
2. The editorial board/journal editors must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
3. The editorial board/journal editors has the right to disclose any conflicts of interest.
4. The editorial board/journal editors keeps the identity of reviewers of an article hidden from the author/s of the paper, and from any other external instance. The evaluators do not know the identity of the author and vice versa.
5. During peer review, any suspicious activity should be resolved with diligence. The editorial board/editors are encouraged to look https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/recognising-peer-review-manipulation-cope-infographic.pdf and COPE flowchart in cases of suspected reviewer misconduct in this regard.
6. Editorial board/journal editors are tasked with managing competing interest issues in accordance with COPE's directives, which can be found at : http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Discussion_document__on_handling_competing_interests.pdf

Duties of Authors

1. Authors must certify that their manuscripts are their original work.
2. Authors confirm that their paper is their own; that it has not been copied or plagiarized, in whole or in part, from other works.
3. Authors should acknowledge all sources of data used in the research and cite publications that have been influential in research work.
4. Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere.
5. Authors have read and accepted the principles of publication ethics published on the journal’s website.
6. When submitting articles authors accept the journal’s policy of providing a double-blind, anonymous review. Hence the author's name, affiliation and email address have been removed from the article to ensure anonymity of the review.
7. Authors have submitted a title page that includes only the manuscript title, the author list (names, affiliations, emails), and the corresponding author’s contact information. 
8. Authors have submitted a document with the completely anonymized manuscript.
9. Authors have included in their submission an ORCID number.
10. ​A​uthors ​h​ave formatted ​the manuscript according to the guidelines made available at the journal’s website. The text complies with the stylistic and bibliographic requirements specified in the Author Guidelines, which can be found in the ​A​uthor Guidelines section of the journal.
11. If an author discovers significant error or inaccuracy in her/his published work, she/he has the obligation to notify the journal editor and also to cooperate with the editor to retract or if it’s possible to correct the article.
12. Authorship should be composed to those who have made a significant contribution to conception, structure or interpretation of the article. Any other person who has made significant contribution for the article must be listed as co-authors. Authors also ensure that all the authors have seen and agreed to the submitted version of the manuscript and their inclusion of names as co-authors.
13. ​Authors have obtained the necessary copyright​ for drawings, illustrations, cartoons, etc. for which the copyright is held by the third party​.

Duties of Reviewers

1. Reviewers must keep all the information pertaining to the manuscript confidential and be treated as privileged information. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
2. Review of submitted manuscripts must be done objectively and the reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
3. Reviewers have the right to identify relevant published work that has not been cited in the manuscript by authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation.
4. Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.
5. COPE guidelines must be followed by all reviewers, which can be viewed further at https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers-cope.pdf

Copyright

The Journal holds the rights to the articles it publishes. ​E​ssachess - Journal for Communication Studies uses a CC BY-NC license for published articles.

Contact

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