Journal Management Quality Policy
The Journal of Child and Youth Psychology (JCYP) is committed to managing its scholarly publishing processes in accordance with the principles of scientific quality, editorial independence, ethical integrity, transparency, impartiality, timely processing, and continuous improvement.
The journal’s quality approach extends beyond the scientific quality of published articles and covers the management of the entire editorial workflow, from submission to publication and post-publication processes, in a manner that is consistent, traceable, fair, and open to improvement.
Scientific Quality
Publication decisions are based on scholarly criteria.
Publication decisions are based on scholarly criteria.
Editorial Independence
Decisions are made independently of external influence.
Decisions are made independently of external influence.
Transparency
Policies and editorial processes are publicly available.
Policies and editorial processes are publicly available.
Continuous Improvement
Performance is monitored and processes are improved.
Performance is monitored and processes are improved.
1. Core Quality Principles
JCYP adopts the principles of scientific quality, editorial independence, impartiality, transparency, confidentiality, accountability, and continuous improvement in journal management.
- Scientific quality: Published work should be original, methodologically sound, ethically appropriate, and consistent with the journal’s aims and scope.
- Editorial independence: Decisions on manuscripts are based solely on scholarly and editorial criteria.
- Impartiality and equality: Manuscripts are evaluated independently of the personal, institutional, geographical, or similar characteristics of the authors.
- Transparency: Journal policies and editorial processes are published openly.
- Confidentiality: Information obtained during submission, peer review, and editorial decision-making is protected.
- Accountability: Roles, authority, and responsibilities are clearly defined.
- Continuous improvement: Journal performance is regularly evaluated and editorial processes are improved accordingly.
2. Editorial Independence
Editorial decisions are based solely on scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, and relevance to the journal’s aims and scope.
The publisher, institution, sponsor, advertiser, or any other person or organization may not influence editorial decisions regarding individual manuscripts.
If an editor has a conflict of interest involving an author, co-author, colleague, or other relationship, the manuscript is handled by another authorized editor without the involvement of the conflicted editor.
3. Editorial Screening
Manuscripts submitted to the journal undergo editorial screening before being sent for external peer review.
Main elements considered during editorial screening include:
- Relevance to the journal’s aims and scope,
- Scientific and academic adequacy,
- Basic methodological appropriateness,
- Ethical requirements,
- Compliance with author guidelines and formatting requirements,
- Originality and text similarity,
- Availability of required declarations and documents.
Manuscripts that are not considered suitable for peer review may be returned to the authors or rejected before external review, with an appropriate explanation. Editorial screening criteria are applied consistently to all submissions.
4. Quality Assurance in Peer Review
Peer review is a central component of the journal’s scientific quality assurance system. Research and review articles considered for evaluation are subject to a double-blind peer-review process involving at least two independent experts in the relevant field.
Reviewer selection considers factors including:
- Subject expertise,
- Academic competence,
- Impartiality,
- Absence of conflicts of interest,
- Quality and timeliness of previous reviews.
Reviewers are expected to provide scientific, well-reasoned, constructive, and respectful assessments. Reviewers who repeatedly provide delayed, superficial, or scientifically inadequate evaluations may be assigned less frequently or removed from future reviewer selection.
5. Consistency in Editorial Decisions
Decisions to accept, revise, or reject manuscripts are made by considering scientific quality, methodological rigor, reliability of findings, contribution to the literature, ethical compliance, peer-review reports, and relevance to the journal’s aims and scope.
Reviewer reports are important inputs to editorial decision-making; however, responsibility for the final decision rests with the handling editor.
The journal seeks to apply comparable evaluation standards to manuscripts of similar quality and nature. The editorial board may periodically review decision-making processes to improve consistency.
6. Timely and Efficient Process Management
JCYP aims to avoid unnecessary delays while maintaining scientific quality throughout the editorial process.
Key process indicators regularly monitored include:
- Time to initial editorial screening,
- Peer-review duration,
- Total evaluation time,
- Post-acceptance publication preparation time.
Where delays are identified, improvements may be made to editorial workflows, reviewer pools, or task allocation. Authors are informed when unusual or significant delays occur.
7. Ethics and Research Integrity
Scientific and editorial quality are not considered separately from publication ethics. Where appropriate, submissions may be assessed for ethics approval and informed consent, plagiarism and duplicate publication, authorship and contribution, data integrity, conflicts of interest, artificial intelligence use, and manipulation of the peer-review process.
Suspected cases are evaluated in accordance with recognized principles of publication ethics and research integrity, and authors may be asked to provide additional documentation when necessary.
8. Transparency and Accessibility
The journal’s aims and scope, editorial board, peer-review model, publication ethics policy, open-access and licensing terms, fee policy, artificial intelligence policy, complaints and appeals procedures, and contact information are published clearly and kept up to date on the journal website.
The journal website and editorial processes are designed to be as clear, accessible, and user-oriented as reasonably possible.
9. Complaints, Appeals, and Feedback
Authors, reviewers, and readers may submit comments, appeals, or complaints regarding editorial processes, decisions, or published content to the journal’s editorial office.
Such submissions are handled impartially, as promptly as reasonably possible, by individuals without relevant conflicts of interest and in accordance with the journal’s policies and publication ethics principles.
Where an editor is directly involved in a complaint or appeal, the matter should, whenever possible, be handled by another editor or an authorized body.
10. Post-Publication Quality Assurance
The journal’s responsibility for quality does not end when an article is published. Reports of errors, ethical concerns, or potential research-integrity issues involving published articles are evaluated appropriately.
Post-publication actions may include:
- Corrections,
- Editorial notices,
- Expressions of concern,
- Retractions.
The purpose of such actions is to preserve the accuracy, integrity, and reliability of the scholarly record.
11. Performance Monitoring and Continuous Improvement
JCYP regularly monitors appropriate performance indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of journal management.
- Submission numbers and trends,
- Editorial screening and peer-review times,
- Acceptance and rejection rates,
- Reviewer invitation response and completion rates,
- Publication times,
- Article views and download data,
- Ethical concerns and complaints,
- Feedback from authors, reviewers, and readers.
Quality indicators are used not merely to demonstrate performance, but to identify areas requiring improvement.
Findings are reviewed by the editorial board and may lead to improvements in policies, workflows, guidance documents, responsibilities, or other aspects of journal management.
12. Development of the Editorial Board
Maintaining a qualified and active editorial board that reflects the journal’s scholarly scope is an important component of quality assurance.
The editorial board may be periodically evaluated in terms of alignment of expertise with the journal’s scope, academic competence, participation in assigned responsibilities, and national and international diversity.
The journal supports the development of editors’ and reviewers’ knowledge and awareness regarding current publication ethics, research integrity, peer review, and scholarly publishing practices.
13. Quality Commitment
The Journal of Child and Youth Psychology is committed to monitoring the changing requirements of scholarly publishing, improving its editorial processes in line with internationally recognized good practices, and maintaining scientific quality, ethical integrity, transparency, and reliability as core values of journal management.
This policy is reviewed periodically in response to journal performance, stakeholder feedback, technological developments, and changes in international scholarly publishing standards.
