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Publisher Policies

Transparent, COPE-compliant policies governing all aspects of HM Publishers' publishing operations — applicable across all journals.

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1. Open Access Policy

HM Publishers is a Diamond Open Access publisher. All articles published in HM Publishers journals are:

  • Freely available online immediately upon publication, with no embargo period whatsoever.
  • Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, permitting unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
  • Published without any Article Processing Charges (APCs), submission fees, or page charges to authors.
  • Accessible without subscription, registration, login, or any payment by readers worldwide.

HM Publishers supports the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) and the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. Authors retain full copyright of their published work under the CC BY 4.0 licence.

2. Peer Review Policy

All research articles, systematic reviews, and case studies submitted to HM Publishers journals undergo double-blind peer review. Under this process:

  • The identities of both authors and reviewers are withheld from each other throughout the entire review process.
  • All submissions are assessed by a minimum of two independent peer reviewers with relevant subject expertise.
  • Reviewers are selected based on expertise and confirmed absence of conflicts of interest with the submitted manuscript.
  • Editorial decisions (Accept, Minor Revision, Major Revision, Reject) are communicated with reviewer comments within a target of 8–12 weeks.
  • Editors retain full authority over accept/reject decisions and are not influenced by any commercial or operational interests of the publisher.
  • All reviewers agree to our Reviewer Code of Conduct prior to accepting a review invitation.

3. Authorship and Contributor Roles (CRediT)

HM Publishers follows the ICMJE criteria for authorship. All listed authors must have:

  • Made substantial contributions to the conception, design, execution, or analysis and interpretation of the work;
  • Participated in drafting the work or critically revising it for important intellectual content;
  • Approved the final version to be published; and
  • Agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

All original research articles must include a CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) author statement detailing each author's contribution using the 14 standardised CRediT roles. Honorary or guest authorship and ghost authorship are not permitted and will be investigated per COPE guidelines. Changes to authorship after submission require written justification signed by all listed authors and approval by the Editor-in-Chief.

4. Plagiarism and Data Integrity

All submitted manuscripts are screened using Turnitin and iThenticate similarity detection software prior to peer review. Manuscripts with a similarity index exceeding 15% (excluding references and quoted material) are returned to authors for revision or rejected outright.

The following forms of research misconduct will result in immediate rejection and may be reported to authors' institutions, funding bodies, and relevant ethics organisations:

  • Plagiarism of any form, including unattributed copying from any published or unpublished source
  • Self-plagiarism, duplicate submission, or redundant publication without disclosure
  • Fabrication or falsification of data, results, or images
  • Manipulation of images or figures beyond internationally accepted scientific adjustment standards
  • Undisclosed use of generative AI to fabricate data, references, literature citations, or experimental results
  • Citation manipulation including coercive citation and false attribution

5. Corrections, Retractions and Expressions of Concern

HM Publishers maintains permanent, transparent records of all published corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern, clearly linked to the original articles via CrossMark.

  • Corrigendum: Issued for author-introduced errors that do not affect conclusions or data integrity.
  • Erratum: Issued for errors introduced by the publisher during the production process.
  • Expression of Concern: Published when an investigation is underway but incomplete, and readers may need to be aware of potential problems with a published article.
  • Retraction: Published when investigation confirms major errors, fraudulent data, plagiarism, duplicate publication, or other serious misconduct. Retractions do not remove the original article; a retraction notice is permanently appended.

All corrections and retractions follow COPE's Retraction Guidelines. Formal appeals against editorial decisions may be submitted in writing to the Editor-in-Chief within 60 days of the decision, with a full written explanation and supporting evidence.

6. Conflicts of Interest

HM Publishers requires all parties — authors, reviewers, and editors — to disclose all relationships that could be construed as potential conflicts of interest at the time of submission or review assignment.

  • Authors must declare all financial relationships (grants, employment, consultancies, patent ownership, honoraria, equity holdings) and non-financial competing interests relevant to the submitted work.
  • Reviewers must decline to review any manuscript in which they have a conflict of interest with any of the authors, their institutions, or their competing work.
  • Editors must recuse themselves from all editorial decisions in which they have a competing interest and must not use submitted manuscripts for personal research purposes prior to publication.

Declared conflicts of interest are published as part of the article's disclosure statement. Undisclosed conflicts discovered post-publication are investigated per COPE guidelines.

7. Digital Preservation and Long-Term Archiving

HM Publishers is committed to permanent long-term preservation of all published content through multiple independent archiving services registered with the Keepers Registry (ISSN International Centre):

  • CLOCKSS (Controlled LOCKSS): A distributed, geographically redundant dark archive for scholarly content. In the event of publisher discontinuation, archived content is automatically triggered for open public release.
  • LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe): A distributed digital preservation network operated by Stanford University Libraries.
  • PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN): Free preservation service for OJS-hosted journals, integrated directly into our publishing platform with continuous automated deposits.

All articles receive permanent CrossRef DOIs (prefix 10.55529), ensuring persistent citability regardless of URL changes. Authors may self-archive all versions of their manuscript (preprint, accepted manuscript, and published PDF) without embargo under the CC BY 4.0 licence at any time.

8. Generative AI Policy

HM Publishers aligns with consensus guidance from COPE, ICMJE, and major publisher associations on the use of Generative AI and Large Language Model (LLM) tools in academic publishing:

  • AI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot) may be used to assist in manuscript preparation — including grammar correction, language editing, and summarisation — but this use must be disclosed in the Methods or Acknowledgements section of the submitted manuscript.
  • AI tools cannot be listed as authors. Authorship requires the capacity for accountability, which AI tools cannot provide. Any manuscript listing an AI tool as an author will be rejected without review.
  • AI tools must not be used to fabricate data, generate false citations, invent experimental results, or produce any fraudulent academic content.
  • Authors are fully responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of all AI-assisted content submitted to HM Publishers journals.
  • Peer reviewers must not upload submitted manuscripts to AI services in ways that could compromise confidentiality of unpublished work.

9. Advertisement Policy

HM Publishers does not accept paid advertising in any of its journals in print or online form. HM Publishers does not permit any advertiser or commercial entity to influence editorial decisions, article acceptance, or publication priority. The publisher's revenue model is based entirely on institutional support and grant funding, not on advertising or APC revenue.

10. Manuscript Withdrawal Policy

Authors may request withdrawal of a submitted manuscript at any time before acceptance without penalty. Withdrawal requests must be submitted in writing by the corresponding author and countersigned by all co-authors to the Editor-in-Chief.

Withdrawal of a manuscript after acceptance is strongly discouraged and will be considered only in exceptional circumstances (e.g., discovery of a significant error). Approved post-acceptance withdrawal notices are published as a public record. Retraction of a published article follows the process described in Section 5. HM Publishers does not charge withdrawal fees at any stage.