Editorial Process

Last updated: 28 August 2025

This Editorial Process applies to journals published by TECHFORUM PUBLISHING GROUP. It explains how manuscripts are received, screened, reviewed, revised, accepted, prepared, published, and assessed after publication.

Authors should also consult the aims and scope, Guide for Authors, publication-ethics policies, and any journal-specific instructions provided on the website of the journal to which they submit.

All journals published by TECHFORUM PUBLISHING GROUP operate under the Diamond Open Access model. Authors are not charged submission fees, article processing charges, publication fees, page charges, or mandatory open-access fees.

Published articles are freely and permanently available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). Research manuscripts are normally evaluated through a single-blind peer-review process. Reviewers are informed of the authors’ names and affiliations, while reviewer identities normally remain confidential.

The standard editorial workflow is:

Manuscript submission
Administrative and technical screening
Initial editorial assessment
Assignment to a handling editor
Single-blind external peer review
Editorial decision
Author revision and re-evaluation
Final acceptance
Copyediting, typesetting, and proof review
Open-access publication
Post-publication oversight

1. Manuscript Submission

Manuscripts must be submitted through the submission method specified on the website of the relevant journal. The corresponding author is responsible for providing complete and accurate submission information and for communicating with the journal on behalf of all co-authors.

A submission should normally include:

the complete manuscript in an editable format;
a title page containing the full names and affiliations of all authors;
the corresponding author’s email address;
an abstract and appropriate keywords;
all tables, figures, captions, and supplementary files;
a cover letter;
an author-contribution statement;
a competing-interests declaration;
a funding statement;
a data-availability statement;
ethical approval and informed-consent information, where applicable;
a generative AI declaration, where applicable;
clinical-trial registration information, where applicable;
permissions for copyrighted or third-party material; and
any reporting-guideline checklist required for the study design.

By submitting a manuscript, the corresponding author confirms on behalf of all authors that:

the work is original;
the manuscript has not been published previously in substantially the same form;
the manuscript is not simultaneously under consideration by another journal or publisher;
all authors have approved the submitted version;
all individuals who qualify for authorship have been included;
all necessary ethical approvals, participant consents, institutional permissions, and copyright permissions have been obtained;
all funding sources and competing interests have been disclosed;
all data, results, citations, references, figures, and tables are presented honestly and accurately;
any substantive use of generative AI or AI-assisted technology has been disclosed; and
the authors accept responsibility for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and lawful publication of the work.

Authors may suggest qualified reviewers or identify individuals whom they prefer not to review the manuscript. Authors should provide a reasonable explanation for an exclusion request. Editors are not required to select suggested reviewers or approve requested exclusions.

Suggested reviewers must be independent of the authors and must not have close personal, institutional, supervisory, collaborative, financial, or professional relationships with them. The editorial office may verify suggested reviewers’ identities, affiliations, expertise, email addresses, publication histories, and possible conflicts of interest.

After a manuscript is received, the journal will normally issue an acknowledgement and assign a manuscript reference or identification number. Receipt of a manuscript does not mean that it has passed technical screening, entered peer review, or been accepted for publication.

2. Administrative and Technical Screening

The editorial office conducts an initial administrative and technical check before the manuscript is considered by an academic editor.

This screening may examine whether:

the required manuscript files have been submitted;
the manuscript is readable and complete;
the title page and author information are accurate;
the abstract and keywords are present;
tables and figures are complete, cited, numbered, and readable;
supplementary files are clearly identified;
funding, competing-interest, contribution, ethics, consent, data, and AI declarations are included;
permissions for third-party material have been supplied;
the manuscript generally follows the journal’s structure and formatting requirements;
in-text citations and references generally follow APA style, 7th edition;
every in-text citation appears in the reference list;
every reference-list entry is cited in the manuscript; and
DOIs and other bibliographic information are sufficiently complete.

A manuscript that does not satisfy the technical requirements may be returned to the corresponding author for correction before academic assessment. The authors should address the requested technical changes and resubmit all corrected files.

Technical screening is not peer review and does not evaluate the full scholarly quality of the manuscript. Successful completion of the technical check does not guarantee external review or acceptance.

The journal may use authorized tools to support similarity screening, reference checking, image-integrity assessment, metadata verification, or other technical checks. The results of automated tools are treated as indicators requiring human evaluation and are not used alone to make final editorial decisions.

Where apparent plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated references, inappropriate image alteration, missing ethical approval, misleading authorship, or another significant concern is identified, the manuscript may be referred directly to the Editor-in-Chief or publisher for further assessment.

3. Initial Editorial Assessment

A manuscript that passes administrative screening is assessed by the Editor-in-Chief or a suitably qualified handling editor.

The initial editorial assessment considers:

relevance to the journal’s aims and scope;
appropriateness of the article type;
originality and scholarly significance;
clarity of the research question or objective;
adequacy of the methodology;
credibility of the analysis and results;
support for the conclusions;
quality and completeness of reporting;
ethical and legal compliance;
quality and relevance of the references;
readability and organization;
availability of sufficient information for scholarly evaluation; and
overall suitability for the journal’s readers.

A manuscript may be declined without external peer review when it:

falls outside the journal’s aims and scope;
does not present a sufficiently original or meaningful contribution;
contains fundamental methodological weaknesses;
does not provide sufficient evidence to support its principal claims;
contains serious ethical, legal, authorship, data-integrity, or publication-integrity concerns;
substantially duplicates previously published work;
is incomplete, unintelligible, or unsuitable for reliable evaluation;
does not comply with essential submission requirements;
contains promotional, defamatory, fabricated, or misleading material; or
is otherwise unsuitable for publication in the journal.

A desk-rejection decision will normally identify the main reason why the manuscript has not been sent for peer review. The journal is not required to provide a full reviewer-style report for a manuscript declined during initial editorial assessment.

Language problems alone will not necessarily result in rejection where the scholarly content can be evaluated and the language can reasonably be improved. However, a manuscript may be returned or declined where language or presentation problems prevent editors and reviewers from understanding the methods, results, or conclusions reliably.

The editor may request preliminary clarification, missing documentation, original data, unmodified figures, ethics information, statistical details, or revised files before deciding whether the manuscript should proceed to external review.

4. Editor Assignment, Conflicts, and Confidentiality

Manuscripts selected for further evaluation are assigned to an editor with appropriate subject or methodological expertise.

Editors must disclose and avoid financial, personal, academic, institutional, professional, or intellectual conflicts that could affect, or reasonably appear to affect, their independence.

An editor will normally recuse themselves where:

an author is a family member, close associate, student, supervisor, collaborator, or recent collaborator;
the editor and an author work within the same institution, department, or research group;
the editor has a direct financial or commercial interest in the research;
the editor has participated substantially in the manuscript or underlying study;
the editor is involved in directly competing research;
the editor has an active dispute with an author; or
another circumstance could reasonably call the editor’s impartiality into question.

Where a conflict exists, the manuscript will be reassigned to an independent editor.

Manuscripts submitted by the Editor-in-Chief, a journal editor, an editorial-board member, a guest editor, or an employee of the publisher may be considered, but they must be handled independently. The submitting individual must not select reviewers, access confidential reviewer identities, participate in editorial discussion, or influence the final decision.

Editors must treat submitted manuscripts as confidential scholarly communications. Unpublished text, data, images, code, methods, results, reviewer reports, and editorial correspondence must not be shared with unauthorized individuals or used for personal, professional, competitive, or commercial advantage.

Editors must comply with the publisher’s Generative AI Policies. Confidential submissions, review reports, personal data, and unpublished research material must not be uploaded to public or external generative AI systems where confidentiality, data retention, security, and model-training practices cannot be assured.

Editorial decisions must be independent of the authors’ nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, disability, age, institutional affiliation, geographical location, political position, professional status, or ability to pay.

Publisher ownership, sponsorship, advertising, institutional relationships, journal metrics, or commercial considerations must not influence the scholarly decision on an individual manuscript.

5. Single-Blind Peer Review

Research manuscripts that pass initial editorial assessment normally undergo evaluation by at least two qualified and independent reviewers. Additional reviewers may be invited where reports conflict, specialized expertise is required, or important methodological, statistical, ethical, or technical questions remain unresolved.

Under the single-blind peer-review process:

reviewers receive the authors’ names and affiliations;
authors do not normally receive the reviewers’ names;
reviewer identities are protected by editors and journal staff;
review reports are transmitted to authors without identifying information; and
reviewers must not contact authors directly concerning the manuscript.

A reviewer’s identity may be disclosed only where the reviewer has expressly agreed, disclosure is required by law, or disclosure is necessary for an appropriately authorized research-integrity investigation.

Reviewers are selected according to:

subject expertise;
methodological competence;
relevant publication or professional experience;
independence from the authors and research;
absence of disqualifying conflicts of interest;
ability to provide a fair and constructive evaluation;
reliability and timeliness; and
verified professional identity.

Reviewers are asked to assess matters such as:

originality and significance;
relevance to the journal;
clarity of the objective, research question, or hypothesis;
appropriateness of the research design;
quality and transparency of the methodology;
accuracy of the analysis;
validity of the results and conclusions;
ethical and legal compliance;
quality of reporting;
data, code, and material availability where relevant;
clarity of tables, figures, and supplementary material;
quality and relevance of citations and references; and
changes necessary before publication could be considered.

Reviewers must maintain confidentiality, disclose conflicts of interest, provide respectful and evidence-based comments, and avoid coercive citation requests. Reviewers must not require authors to cite the reviewer’s publications, the journal’s publications, or other sources unless the citations are directly relevant and academically justified.

Reviewer recommendations are advisory. The editor is responsible for evaluating the reasoning, evidence, relevance, and quality of each report. Editorial decisions are not made by counting reviewer recommendations mechanically.

Where reports differ substantially, the editor may:

evaluate the strength and relevance of the arguments in each report;
request clarification from one or more reviewers;
invite an additional independent reviewer;
consult a statistical, methodological, ethical, or technical specialist; or
request a focused revision addressing the disputed matters.

Editorials, letters, book reviews, corrections, invited commentaries, and similar non-research content may undergo editorial review rather than full external peer review. The evaluation process will be appropriate to the article type and will remain subject to the journal’s ethical and quality standards.

6. Editorial Decisions

After considering the manuscript, reviewer reports, author declarations, journal policies, and any specialist advice, the handling editor or Editor-in-Chief will make an editorial decision.

Possible decisions include:

Accept: The manuscript is suitable for publication subject only to routine production checks or minor non-substantive corrections.
Minor revision: Limited changes are required, but the central methodology, analysis, and conclusions are generally acceptable.
Major revision: Substantial clarification, additional analysis, restructuring, methodological explanation, or correction is required before the manuscript can be reconsidered.
Reject and invite resubmission: Fundamental changes are required, and a substantially revised manuscript may be considered as a new submission.
Reject: The manuscript is unsuitable for publication or contains problems that cannot reasonably be resolved through revision.

A decision letter should clearly communicate:

the editorial decision;
the principal reasons for the decision;
the reviewer comments considered relevant to the authors;
mandatory revisions and optional suggestions;
any ethical, reporting, methodological, or technical requirements;
instructions for preparing a revision; and
the applicable revision deadline, where relevant.

Editors review reports before forwarding them to authors. Abusive, discriminatory, threatening, personally insulting, defamatory, irrelevant, or identifying material may be removed. The scholarly meaning of an appropriate reviewer comment will not be altered without a valid reason.

A revision decision does not guarantee eventual acceptance. An acceptance decision will be made only when the editor is satisfied that the manuscript meets the journal’s scholarly, methodological, ethical, legal, and reporting requirements.

Acceptance will not be influenced by the authors’ ability to pay because TECHFORUM PUBLISHING GROUP does not charge authors for submission, peer review, acceptance, publication, or open access.

7. Revision and Re-Evaluation

Authors invited to revise should submit the revised files within the period stated in the decision letter. Where additional time is required, the corresponding author should contact the editorial office before the revision deadline.

A revised submission should normally include:

a clean revised manuscript;
a marked or tracked-changes version, where requested;
a detailed point-by-point response to every editor and reviewer comment;
updated tables, figures, supplementary files, data, or code where necessary;
updated funding, competing-interest, contribution, ethics, data, or AI declarations where necessary; and
any additional documentation requested by the editor.

The point-by-point response should:

identify each reviewer or editor comment clearly;
explain the action taken;
identify where the manuscript was changed;
provide evidence or references where appropriate; and
explain respectfully why a requested change was not made, where applicable.

Authors are not required to agree automatically with every reviewer suggestion. A scientifically justified alternative or a clear evidence-based explanation will be considered by the editor.

Major revisions may be returned to the original reviewers, sent to new reviewers, or evaluated by a specialist adviser. Minor revisions may be assessed directly by the handling editor where further external review is unnecessary.

Editors should avoid unnecessary review rounds. A manuscript should not be returned repeatedly to reviewers for formatting issues or minor matters that can reasonably be evaluated editorially.

Reviewers assessing a revised manuscript should normally focus on:

whether their principal concerns have been addressed;
whether the authors’ explanations are scientifically reasonable;
whether the revision introduced new errors or inconsistencies;
whether unresolved issues affect the validity or interpretation of the work; and
whether the revised manuscript is now suitable for publication.

New major requirements should not ordinarily be introduced during a later review round unless the issue was created by the revision, important information has newly emerged, or the matter is essential to the reliability or integrity of the article.

Where a revision is not received within the required period and no extension has been agreed, the journal may close the submission. A manuscript submitted after closure may be treated as a new submission.

8. Acceptance, Production, and Publication

A manuscript is accepted only after the responsible editor has determined that:

the manuscript makes an adequate scholarly contribution;
the methods and analysis are appropriate;
the results are reported accurately;
the conclusions are supported by the evidence;
material reviewer and editor concerns have been addressed;
ethical and legal requirements have been satisfied;
authorship and contribution information is complete;
funding and competing interests are declared;
data and generative AI statements are included where required;
tables, figures, citations, and references are sufficiently complete;
permissions for third-party material have been obtained; and
no unresolved integrity concern remains.

After acceptance, the manuscript enters production. Production may include:

copyediting;
language and consistency checks;
APA citation and reference checks;
formatting and typesetting;
table and figure preparation;
metadata preparation;
DOI registration;
author and affiliation verification;
licence and copyright confirmation;
proof generation; and
pre-publication quality control.

The corresponding author will normally receive page proofs for final review. Proof corrections should be limited to:

typesetting and formatting errors;
incorrect author or affiliation information;
factual mistakes introduced during production;
equation, symbol, table, or figure errors;
incorrect citations, references, links, or metadata; and
other necessary corrections that do not alter the accepted study substantially.

Substantial post-acceptance changes to the authorship, methodology, data, analysis, results, conclusions, figures, or declarations require editorial approval. The editor may request an explanation and confirmation from all affected authors.

An acceptance decision may be reconsidered before publication if serious concerns arise regarding plagiarism, authorship, data integrity, image manipulation, ethical approval, peer-review manipulation, legal risk, duplicate publication, or the reliability of the findings.

After final quality control, the article is published as the version of record. It is made freely and permanently available under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0).

Authors retain copyright in their published work and grant TECHFORUM PUBLISHING GROUP the non-exclusive rights necessary to publish, distribute, identify, preserve, and archive the article.

No submission fee, article processing charge, publication fee, open-access fee, or routine production fee is payable by the authors.

9. Appeals, Withdrawals, Complaints, and Post-Publication Review

Authors may appeal an editorial decision where they believe that a material factual error, procedural failure, reviewer conflict, overlooked evidence, or serious misunderstanding affected the outcome.

An appeal should:

identify the manuscript clearly;
state the specific decision being challenged;
explain the material error or procedural concern;
provide relevant evidence; and
avoid merely repeating arguments already considered during peer review.

An appeal does not guarantee reconsideration, additional peer review, reversal of the decision, or acceptance.

Where practicable, an appeal will be considered by the Editor-in-Chief or another qualified editor who was not responsible for the original decision and who has no relevant conflict of interest.

The appeal outcome may:

uphold the original decision;
request clarification from the original editor or reviewers;
obtain an additional independent assessment;
invite a revised or resubmitted manuscript;
reverse the original decision where a material error occurred; or
refer an ethical, procedural, or legal matter to the publisher.

Complaints concerning editorial conduct, confidentiality, discrimination, delay, reviewer behaviour, conflicts of interest, journal procedure, or publication ethics should be submitted to the relevant journal or publisher with sufficient supporting information.

An editor must not make the final determination of a complaint concerning their own conduct. Complaints involving the Editor-in-Chief will be referred to an appropriate independent representative of TECHFORUM PUBLISHING GROUP.

Authors may request withdrawal of a manuscript before publication by providing a written explanation. The corresponding author should confirm that all co-authors have been informed and agree with the withdrawal request.

A manuscript should not be submitted to another journal while its withdrawal remains unresolved. After formal publication, an article cannot be treated as an unpublished withdrawal. Post-publication concerns will instead be managed through a correction, addendum, expression of concern, retraction, or removal notice, as appropriate.

Publication does not end the journal’s responsibility for the scholarly record. Credible concerns raised after publication will be assessed fairly and may involve requests for:

author explanations;
original or de-identified data;
unmodified image files;
analysis code;
ethics or consent documentation;
authorship information;
institutional findings; or
independent specialist advice.

Depending on the nature and seriousness of the issue, the journal may publish:

a minor update;
a formal correction;
an author-name or affiliation correction;
an addendum;
an expression of concern;
a retraction; or
a removal notice in exceptional legal, privacy, or safety circumstances.

Published content will not be altered silently when a change affects the accuracy, interpretation, attribution, or integrity of the scholarly record. Corrections, retractions, and related notices will be linked transparently to the affected article.

TECHFORUM PUBLISHING GROUP aims to handle manuscripts efficiently and without unnecessary delay. However, review and publication times may vary according to manuscript complexity, reviewer availability, revision requirements, ethical or integrity checks, and production needs. The publisher does not guarantee a particular decision or publication date.

TECHFORUM PUBLISHING GROUP
Allee 1
45143 Essen
Germany

Editorial enquiries, appeals, complaints, and withdrawal requests may be submitted through the publisher’s official Contact page or the editorial office of the relevant journal.

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