Editora Alumni IN • Scientific Journals

Publishing Ethics & Editorial Policies

Editora Alumni IN is committed to the highest standards of research and publication integrity across all of its journals. These policies are binding for editors, reviewers, authors, and publisher staff, and are aligned with the COPE Core Practices, the DOAJ criteria, the joint Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (COPE / DOAJ / OASPA / WAME), the ICMJE Recommendations, and the Web of Science Core Collection quality criteria. They are proprietary to Editora Alumni IN, developed by our editorial direction with the support of our Ethics Committee, and reflect the Brazilian research and regulatory context in which our journals are edited.

These Publishing Ethics & Editorial Policies were prepared with the support of the Ethics Committee of Editora Alumni Publicações Científicas and are maintained under a policy of continuous updating, with revisions published as international standards and best practices evolve.

Publisher: Editora Alumni IN • CNPJ 42.065.021/0001-35 • Guarulhos, São Paulo, Brazil • Continuously updated • Last revision: July 2026

Table of Contents

1. Ethics and Responsibilities of Authors

Submission of a manuscript implies that all named authors have read and agreed to its content, have approved its submission, and accept collective and individual responsibility for the integrity of the work. Where a paper is co-submitted, all authors bear joint responsibility for its scientific content and for compliance with these publishing-ethics policies.

1.1 Responsibilities of Authors

• Reporting standards. Authors of original research must present an accurate account of the work performed and an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data must be represented faithfully. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.
• Originality. Authors must ensure that the work is entirely original and that the work and/or words of others are appropriately cited and quoted (see Section 5).
• Multiple, redundant or concurrent submission. Manuscripts describing essentially the same research must not be submitted to more than one journal, nor published in more than one journal. Acceptable secondary publication (e.g., translations) follows the ICMJE conditions, with full transparency and cross-referencing.
• Acknowledgement of sources. Proper acknowledgement of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have influenced the reported work and that give readers appropriate context.
• Data access and retention. Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study for editorial review and should be prepared to make it publicly available where practicable, and to retain such data for a reasonable period after publication (see Section 9).
• Disclosure and hazards. Authors must disclose all sources of funding and any competing interests (Section 6), and provide statements of compliance where the work involves hazards, human participants, or animals (Section 18).

1.2 Authorship & Author Contributions

Authorship is limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the work. Editora Alumni IN adopts the four cumulative ICMJE authorship criteria: (1) substantial contribution to conception/design or acquisition/analysis/interpretation of data; (2) drafting or critically revising the work for important intellectual content; (3) approval of the final version; and (4) accountability for all aspects of the work.

• Journals require a CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy, ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022) statement describing each author's contribution.
• Contributors who do not meet all authorship criteria must be listed in the Acknowledgements with their consent.
• Ghost, guest, and gift authorship are prohibited and constitute misconduct, as is the sale or purchase of authorship (paper mills), addressed under the United2Act initiative.
• Changes in authorship (addition, deletion, or reordering) after submission require written justification to the editor and the signed agreement of all authors, including any added or removed. After acceptance, changes follow the COPE authorship flowcharts.
• An ORCID iD is required for all authors at submission. For Brazilian authors, journals also encourage linking to the Currículo Lattes (CNPq).

1.3 Pre- and Post-publication Corrections

When authors discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their own submitted or published work, they have an obligation to notify the journal editor promptly and to cooperate in issuing a correction or retraction. Before publication, corrections are incorporated into the version of record; after publication, they follow the graded mechanisms set out in Section 12 (Correction, Retraction, Expression of Concern).

Authors are expected to respond to editorial queries about their published work in good faith and within a reasonable timeframe.

1.4 Conflict of Interest & Competing Interests

All authors must disclose, within the manuscript, any financial or personal relationships that could be perceived to influence the work, covering the previous 36 months: funding, employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership, patents, and relevant personal relationships. The absence of competing interests must also be stated explicitly. The ICMJE Disclosure of Interest form is the recommended reference for completeness. Full detail is provided in Section 6.

1.5 Journal Publishing Agreement

On acceptance, the corresponding author confirms, on behalf of all authors, a publishing agreement under which authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication under an open licence (see Section 7). The agreement confirms that the work is original, that permissions have been obtained for any third-party material, and that the manuscript does not infringe any existing copyright or other rights. No transfer of copyright to the publisher is required.

Where an author is affiliated with the publisher or the editorial organisation, this is disclosed in the declaration of interest statement, and the peer review is conducted fully independently of that author.

1.6 Ethical Oversight Policy

Editorial ethical oversight covers, at minimum: policies on consent to publish; publication of research involving vulnerable populations; ethical conduct of research using human participants and animals; handling of confidential data; and business/marketing practices. These matters are governed by the dedicated sections below (18–19) and by the COPE Core Practices.

Each journal maintains a documented editorial workflow and named editorial responsibilities, and the publisher provides infrastructure for similarity checking, image-integrity screening, and preservation.

1.8 Research Misconduct

Research misconduct includes, but is not limited to, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, image manipulation, redundant publication, improper authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, citation manipulation, and unethical research conduct. Whilst authors may legitimately adjust images for clarity, manipulation intended to deceive is treated as scientific misconduct; Editora Alumni IN applies established image-integrity principles (e.g., Rossner & Yamada, 2004, Journal of Cell Biology, 166(1), 11–15) when assessing figures.

Allegations are handled under the COPE flowcharts, with due process, presumption of good faith, and proportionality; procedures and sanctions are detailed in Sections 15 and 20. In Brazil, matters of research integrity may also engage institutional integrity offices and national frameworks such as the CNPq guidance on research ethics and integrity.

1.9 Article Sharing Policy

Because all journals publish under an open licence (Section 7), authors and readers may share, copy, and redistribute the published version of record freely, provided the original work is properly attributed. Authors may deposit any version — submitted, accepted, or published — in institutional repositories, subject repositories, and personal or scholarly-collaboration pages, with no embargo, always citing the source and the DOI.

Self-archiving and sharing permissions are registered in Open Policy Finder (formerly Sherpa Romeo) and, for Brazilian journals, in Diadorim (IBICT).

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2. Peer Review Process

All research articles undergo double-anonymized (double-blind) peer review: the identities of authors and reviewers are withheld from one another. Each manuscript is assessed by at least two independent reviewers who are external to the editorial team and have no institutional or personal conflict with the authors. Where reviewer recommendations diverge, a third reviewer is consulted.

The editorial flow is: (1) initial editorial triage (desk review) for scope, formatting, apparent methodological soundness, and text-similarity screening; (2) assignment of qualified reviewers; (3) structured peer review; (4) a reasoned editorial decision (accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject); (5) verification of revisions; and (6) copyediting, publication, and DOI registration with Crossref.

Non-peer-reviewed content — editorials, invited commentaries, interviews, book reviews, and obituaries — is clearly identified as such. Editorial decisions rest solely on academic merit: relevance, originality, methodological rigour, clarity, and fit to the journal's scope, without regard to authors' origin, nationality, gender, ethnicity, religion, political stance, or institutional affiliation.

No editorial board member takes part in decisions on manuscripts they have authored or in which they have a conflict of interest; such submissions are handled by an independent editor, per COPE guidance. The peer-review model of each journal is stated on its "About" page, in line with the Principles of Transparency.

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3. Ethics and Responsibilities of Peer Reviewers

• Contribution to editorial decisions. Peer review assists the editor in reaching decisions and, through editorial communication, may help the author improve the manuscript. It is an essential component of formal scholarly communication.
• Promptness. A reviewer who feels unqualified, or who cannot meet the deadline, should notify the editor promptly and decline the invitation.
• Confidentiality. Manuscripts received for review are confidential documents. They must not be shown to, or discussed with, others except as authorised by the editor, and must not be uploaded to generative AI tools (Section 1.7).
• Objectivity and constructiveness. Reviews must be conducted objectively, with observations formulated clearly and supported by argument. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.
• Acknowledgement of sources. Reviewers should identify relevant published work not cited by the authors and alert the editor to any substantial similarity between the manuscript and any other publication of which they have personal knowledge.
• Disclosure and conflict of interest. Privileged information obtained through peer review is confidential and must not be used for personal advantage. Reviewers must decline manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest arising from competitive, collaborative, financial, institutional, or personal relationships with the authors or organisations connected to the work.

These duties follow the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

Reviewer recognition and certification. Editora Alumni IN values and formally recognises peer-review work. Reviewers receive verifiable certification of their contribution through the ReviewerCredits plugin integrated into our OJS 3 platform, which issues certificates and credits that reviewers can record on their academic profiles (including ORCID). Certification acknowledges the review activity without disclosing the confidential content of the manuscript or the reviewer's specific comments.

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4. Ethics and Responsibilities of Editors

• Publication decisions. The editor-in-chief is solely and independently responsible for deciding which submitted articles are published, guided by the journal's policies, by the assessment of reviewers, and by legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism.
• Fair play. Manuscripts are evaluated on their intellectual content, without discrimination of any kind.
• Confidentiality. Editors and editorial staff must not disclose information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, and other editorial advisers, as appropriate. Editors must not upload decision or review letters into AI tools, even to improve language.
• Disclosure and conflicts of interest. Unpublished material in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research without the author's written consent. Editors must not handle manuscripts they have authored, or which are authored by family members, colleagues, or which relate to products/services in which they have an interest; such cases are assigned to an independent editor.
• Vigilance over the published record. When convincing evidence of error or misconduct is presented, the editor acts diligently under the COPE flowcharts, issuing correction, retraction, or expression of concern as appropriate.
• Editorial independence. Decisions are made with full autonomy from the publisher and from any commercial interest, including APC revenue or sponsorship (Section 21).

These responsibilities follow the COPE guidance for editors and the editorial-duties standards adopted by Editora Alumni IN.

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5. Plagiarism Policy

All manuscripts undergo text-similarity screening at submission and before publication, using Crossref Similarity Check or equivalent software. Similarity reports are assessed qualitatively by the editor — the overall percentage alone does not determine the outcome; what matters is the nature, extent, and location of the overlap.

Plagiarism includes verbatim copying without citation, extensive paraphrasing without credit, appropriation of ideas, data, images, or argument structures, translated plagiarism, and self-plagiarism (substantial reuse of one's own published text without transparency). Legitimate reuse of standard methodological descriptions is acceptable when properly cited.

Cases detected before publication result in rejection and author notification; cases detected after publication follow the COPE plagiarism flowcharts and may lead to correction, retraction, and notification of the authors' institutions.

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6. Conflicts of Interest Policy

A conflict (competing) interest exists when financial, personal, academic, political, or institutional relationships could influence — or reasonably appear to influence — professional judgement in conducting, reviewing, or publishing research.

• Authors declare, in the manuscript, all relevant competing interests over the previous 36 months, and explicitly state their absence where none exist.
• Reviewers decline when there is recent collaboration (typically within 3 years), co-authorship, shared affiliation, a supervisory relationship, an academic dispute, or a personal relationship with the authors.
• Editors and editorial board members declare their interests to the publisher and recuse themselves from decisions involving a conflict, which are then delegated to an independent editor.

The ICMJE Disclosure of Interest form is the recommended reference. Undisclosed conflicts discovered after publication may prompt a correction or retraction. This policy aligns with the COPE guidance on competing interests.

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7. Open Access, Copyright and Licensing

7.1 Open Access Policy

All journals published by Editora Alumni IN provide immediate, full, and gratis open access to their content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. The complete text of every article is available to readers free of charge at the moment of publication, with no embargo period, no subscription, and no registration or payment required to read, download, or print.

Our understanding of open access follows the foundational international declarations — the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI, 2002), the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (2003), and the Berlin Declaration (2003) — under which users are free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to, and text- and data-mine the full texts, and to use them for any other lawful purpose, subject only to proper attribution of authorship (see the licence in Section 7.3). This is libre open access: free to read and free to reuse.

This policy is designed to meet in full the requirements of the DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) and the joint Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. Depending on their funding model, our journals operate as Diamond open access (no charge to authors or readers) or Gold open access (with a transparent APC), as detailed in Sections 8 and 17; in neither case is there any charge to the reader.

Open-access status, licensing terms, and copyright are displayed clearly on each journal's website and on every article, and are recorded in machine-readable metadata deposited with Crossref and exposed via OAI-PMH (Section 11).

7.2 Copyright

Authors retain full copyright of their work without restriction, granting the journal only the right of first publication. No transfer or assignment of copyright to the publisher is required at any stage. Authors are therefore free to enter into additional, non-exclusive arrangements for the distribution of the published version (e.g., posting to an institutional repository or including it in a book), with acknowledgement of its initial publication in the journal.

7.3 Licensing and Reuse

• Default licence. Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, permitting use, distribution, and adaptation in any medium for any purpose, provided the original authors and source are credited. The licence is stated on each article and encoded in machine-readable metadata, as required by the DOAJ.
• Alternative licences. Where a journal's policy allows, authors may request CC BY-NC 4.0 or CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. The applicable licence is displayed on the article.
• Third-party material. Reproduction of third-party figures, tables, or instruments requires documented permission from the rights holders, obtained by the authors, and such material is identified as excluded from the CC licence where its terms differ.

Self-archiving of all versions (submitted, accepted, and published) is permitted with no embargo (Section 1.9), as registered in Open Policy Finder and Diadorim (IBICT).

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8. Article Processing Charges (APC)

The funding model of each journal is stated clearly and prominently on its institutional page before submission:

• Diamond OA journals charge no submission, processing, or publication fees (for example, the Review of Artificial Intelligence in Education, RAIEduc).
• Gold OA journals with an APC publish the fee amount, the point at which it is charged, and the waiver policy transparently on the journal page. There are no hidden charges and no submission fees.
• Waivers and discounts are granted on reasoned request to researchers from low- and middle-income countries (per the World Bank classification), unfunded graduate students, and documented cases of hardship.

Ability to pay never influences editorial decisions. The financial workflow is entirely separate from the editorial workflow: editors and reviewers have no access to payment or waiver information during a manuscript's assessment.

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9. Data Availability and Sharing

Editora Alumni IN encourages sharing of data, code, and research materials in line with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). Manuscripts must include a Data Availability Statement indicating where and under what conditions the data can be accessed, or justifying legitimate restrictions (privacy, legal confidentiality, third-party ownership).

• Deposit in trusted repositories with a persistent identifier is recommended: Zenodo, OSF, Dataverse, or institutional/thematic repositories. Brazilian authors may use the IBICT open-data infrastructure.
• Fabrication and falsification of data — inventing results, manipulating images, or selectively omitting data — constitute serious misconduct (Sections 1.8, 20).
• Editors and reviewers may request raw data during assessment; unjustified refusal may ground rejection.

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10. Preprint Policy

Prior posting of a manuscript on a recognised preprint server does not count as prior publication and does not preclude submission, provided it is disclosed at submission. Suitable servers include OPS Brasil (Ciência Aberta Brasil), SciELO Preprints, SocArXiv, and SSRN.

On publication, authors are asked to update the preprint record with the DOI and citation of the final version of record, ensuring bidirectional linkage.

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11. Archiving and Digital Preservation

• Long-term preservation. Published content is preserved through the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN) and, in Brazil, through the Rede Cariniana (IBICT), both based on LOCKSS technology, ensuring permanent access even if a journal is discontinued.
• Persistent identifiers. Every article receives a DOI registered with Crossref, with complete metadata, deposited references, and participation in similarity-check and metadata-update services.
• Interoperability. Metadata are exposed via the OAI-PMH protocol, enabling harvesting by aggregators, libraries, and discovery services.
• Organisation identity. The publisher maintains a ROR registration and requires author ORCIDs, strengthening metadata integrity and traceability.

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12. Retraction and Correction Policy

The version of record is preserved; all post-publication changes are transparent, dated, and linked to the original article, following the COPE Retraction Guidelines:

• Correction / Erratum. For errors that do not invalidate the results (typesetting errors, affiliation data, transposed figures). A correction notice with its own DOI is published and bidirectionally linked to the article.
• Retraction. When there is clear evidence that findings are unreliable (through honest error or misconduct), or in cases of plagiarism, redundant publication, fraudulent authorship, compromised peer review, or unethical research. The article remains available with a "RETRACTED" watermark and a note explaining the reasons and the parties responsible for the retraction.
• Expression of Concern. When there are substantial but still inconclusive indications under investigation whose disclosure serves the readership.
• Removal. An exceptional measure limited to court orders or serious risks (defamation, privacy violations), always with preserved metadata and a removal note.

Retraction notices are free to read, indexed, and communicated to indexing services and to Crossref. An author's refusal to cooperate does not prevent publication of a well-founded retraction.

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13. Withdrawal Policy

Authors may request withdrawal of a manuscript during peer review by written notice to the editor; withdrawal is confirmed by the editorial office. Manuscripts should not be withdrawn merely to submit elsewhere after a favourable review, and unexplained repeated withdrawals may be recorded.

"Withdrawal" of an Article in Press (accepted but not yet in a final issue) is reserved for articles that infringe professional ethical codes — multiple submission, bogus authorship claims, plagiarism, fraudulent data, or similar. Such articles may be removed before final publication, with a notice retained. Once an article is formally published in an issue, changes are governed by the Retraction and Correction Policy (Section 12) rather than withdrawal.

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14. Advertising Policy

Editora Alumni IN journals do not condition editorial content on advertisers or sponsors. Should advertising be carried, it will be: (i) clearly identified as such and separated from scientific content; (ii) not linked to specific articles nor influencing editorial decisions; and (iii) subject to academic-relevance criteria set by the publisher.

Direct marketing (invitations to authors and reviewers, calls for papers) is conducted soberly, truthfully, and non-intrusively, always in the name of the correct journal, with accurate information on scope, indexing, and fees, and with an opt-out. Practices associated with predatory publishing — indiscriminate mass invitations and guarantees of acceptance or publication timelines — are prohibited, consistent with the Think. Check. Submit. principles.

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15. Complaints and Appeals

Appeals against editorial decisions. Authors may appeal a rejection once, by a reasoned letter to the editor-in-chief responding objectively to the reviewers' comments. The editor-in-chief reviews the appeal and may consult an additional reviewer or a senior editorial board member. The publisher's policy is to support the editor's informed decision; the appeal decision is final.

Complaints about process, editorial conduct, or the publisher. These should be addressed to the journal's editor-in-chief or, where the editor-in-chief is involved, to the editorial direction of Editora Alumni IN at publisher@alumniin.com. Matters concerning research or publication ethics may be sent to the Ethics Committee at publication.ethics@alumniin.com. An initial response is provided within 15 business days.

Once internal avenues are exhausted, parties may consult the public resources of COPE on good practice for editorial disputes. Complaint records are retained for continuous improvement.

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16. Publication Schedule and Editorial Workflow

Each journal states its publication frequency on its "About" page. Journals operate a continuous-publication model where articles are published online as soon as they are ready and assigned to a volume/issue, with a stable citation from the outset. Publication cadence and ISSN are displayed transparently, as required by the Principles of Transparency and the Web of Science quality criteria.

The editorial workflow is managed on Open Journal Systems (OJS 3, PKP), providing an auditable trail from submission through triage, peer review, revision, copyediting, and publication, with DOI registration and metadata deposit at the point of publication.

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17. Revenue Sources and Business Model

Editora Alumni IN operates its journals on an open-access basis. Revenue sources are disclosed transparently and may include: article processing charges where applicable (Section 8), institutional support, and grants. For Diamond OA titles, costs are borne by the publisher and its partners at no charge to authors or readers.

Publishing revenue and business practices have no bearing on editorial decision-making or on the acceptance of any manuscript (Section 21). This separation is a condition of listing in the DOAJ and a requirement of the Web of Science quality criteria.

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18. Research Ethics: Human Participants and Animals

Research involving human participants must comply with the Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association) and, in Brazil, with National Health Council Resolutions CNS 466/2012 and CNS 510/2016, with prior approval by a Research Ethics Committee via the CEP/CONEP — Plataforma Brasil system, or an equivalent body in the country of origin. The manuscript must report the approval/protocol number.

Informed consent. Studies with human participants must state that free and informed consent was obtained. Identifiable data (case reports, images, interviews) require specific consent for publication; participant privacy must be protected in accordance with the LGPD (Section 19).

Research involving animals must comply with applicable law — in Brazil, Law 11.794/2008 and CONCEA rules — with approval by an Animal Use Ethics Committee (CEUA), and reporting following the ARRIVE 2.0 guidelines. Editors may reject manuscripts where there is reasonable doubt about the ethical conduct of the research, even if formally approved. General reporting guidelines are available through the EQUATOR Network.

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19. Data Protection and Privacy

Personal data collected through the journal platform (names, affiliations, e-mails) are used solely for the stated purposes of scholarly publishing — managing submissions, peer review, and communication — and are not shared for other purposes or with third parties. Editora Alumni IN follows the privacy-by-default configuration of its Open Journal Systems (OJS 3) platform.

Processing complies with Brazil's LGPD — Law 13.709/2018 — and, where applicable to authors or readers in the European Union, with the GDPR. Data subjects may request access, correction, or deletion of their personal data via the journal contact. Research data containing personal information must be anonymised or handled under a lawful basis and, where required, specific consent.

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20. Post-Publication Debate, Corrections & Handling of Misconduct

Scholarly debate. Critique of published content is welcome. Journals accept reasoned letters to the editor and commentaries on published articles, subject to editorial review; where published, original authors have a right of reply. Signals raised on post-publication platforms such as PubPeer are monitored and treated with the same seriousness as formal complaints.

Reporting misconduct. Anyone may report suspected misconduct (fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, authorship or peer-review manipulation, undisclosed conflicts, ethical breaches) to the Ethics Committee at publication.ethics@alumniin.com or to the publisher at publisher@alumniin.com, including anonymously. Good-faith reports never trigger retaliation.

Procedure. (1) logging and preliminary plausibility assessment; (2) handling under the applicable COPE flowcharts; (3) an opportunity for the parties to respond (adversarial principle); (4) where warranted, consultation with the authors' host institutions, which bear primary responsibility for investigating their researchers' conduct; (5) a reasoned decision and application of appropriate editorial measures.

Measures may include a clarifying letter, correction, expression of concern, retraction, rejection, institutional notification, and — in serious or repeated cases — refusal of future submissions for a defined period. All proceedings are confidential, proportionate, and conducted in good faith.

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21. Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are made independently of the publisher's commercial interests. The potential for advertising, APC, reprint, or other revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions. Each editor-in-chief is solely and independently responsible for the content of their journal and for deciding which submissions are published.

The publisher supports editors through infrastructure, ethics guidance, and access to COPE resources, but does not intervene in the evaluation or acceptance of individual manuscripts. This principle is fundamental to the trust placed in the scholarly record and is a requirement of the Web of Science and DOAJ quality frameworks.

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22. Editorial Decisions

Following peer review, the handling editor issues a reasoned decision drawn from a defined set of outcomes, communicated to the corresponding author together with the reviewers' anonymised comments:

• Accept. The manuscript is suitable for publication as submitted or with minimal editorial adjustment.
• Minor revision. The manuscript is publishable subject to limited changes that do not require a further round of external review; the handling editor verifies compliance.
• Major revision. Substantive changes are required; the revised manuscript is normally returned to one or more of the original reviewers for a second assessment.
• Reject. The manuscript is not suitable for the journal, whether for scope, methodological, ethical, or quality reasons. Rejection may occur at desk-review stage (before external review) or after peer review.
• Reject and resubmit (where offered). The study has merit but requires work beyond the scope of a revision; a new submission would be treated as a fresh manuscript.

Every decision is evidence-based and documented within the OJS 3 editorial record, ensuring an auditable trail. Decisions rest solely on the manuscript's academic merit and its fit to the journal's scope (Section 2), and are made independently of any commercial consideration (Section 21). Decision letters are written respectfully and constructively, and authors are informed of their right to appeal (Section 15).

The final decision on any manuscript rests with the journal's editor-in-chief. Where the editor-in-chief has a conflict of interest, the decision is delegated to an independent editor or a member of the editorial board without such a conflict (Sections 4 and 6).

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23. Editorial Governance, Team & Registrations

Editorial team and roles. Each journal publishes, on its "Editorial Team" page, the full composition of its governance structure — with names, affiliations, countries, and ORCID identifiers — in line with the Principles of Transparency and the Web of Science quality criteria. All members are qualified experts in the journal's scope, are actively engaged, serve defined terms, and are periodically reviewed. The standard roles and their responsibilities are:

• Editor-in-Chief. Holds ultimate responsibility for the journal's academic content and editorial standards. Sets editorial policy and scope, makes or ratifies final decisions on all manuscripts (Section 22), safeguards editorial independence (Section 21), oversees the integrity of the peer-review process, chairs the editorial board, and is the final internal instance for appeals and complaints (Section 15).
• International Editor. Strengthens the journal's global reach and diversity. Develops the international author, reviewer, and readership base; advises on cross-border research-integrity and reporting standards; helps recruit reviewers and board members from under-represented regions; and supports the journal's indexing and internationalisation goals (e.g., DOAJ, Web of Science, Scopus alignment).
• Executive Editor. Responsible for the operational management of the editorial workflow. Coordinates desk-screening, reviewer assignment, deadlines, and the OJS 3 workflow; ensures similarity checking, AI-screening, and ethics checks are applied; manages communication between authors, reviewers, and editors; and oversees production, DOI registration, metadata quality, and on-time publication.
• Scientific Board (Editorial/Scientific Board). A body of recognised experts that provides scientific guidance and quality assurance. Members advise on scope and standards, act as or recommend peer reviewers, handle manuscripts as section/handling editors where appropriate, endorse the journal's reputation, and support periodic review of editorial policy. Section or associate editors, where appointed, manage the review of manuscripts within their subject areas and recommend decisions to the Editor-in-Chief.

To preserve independence and avoid conflicts of interest, no editor or board member handles a manuscript they have authored or in which they have a competing interest; such cases are reassigned to another qualified editor (Sections 4 and 6).

Editorial workflow. Manuscripts progress through a documented, auditable pipeline managed on OJS 3:

1. Submission. The corresponding author submits via OJS, confirming authorship, originality, ethics approvals, disclosures, and ORCID.
2. Technical & ethics screening. The Executive Editor checks completeness, formatting, similarity (Crossref Similarity Check), AI-use disclosure, and ethics/consent statements.
3. Editorial triage (desk review). The Editor-in-Chief (or a designated section/scientific-board editor) assesses scope, originality, and methodological soundness, and either desk-rejects or advances the manuscript.
4. Peer review. At least two independent reviewers assess the manuscript under double-anonymized review (Section 2); a third is consulted where opinions diverge. Reviewers receive ReviewerCredits certification (Section 3).
5. Editorial decision. The handling editor issues a reasoned decision — accept, minor revision, major revision, reject, or reject-and-resubmit (Section 22) — with the anonymised reviews.
6. Revision & re-review. Revised manuscripts are verified and, for major revisions, normally returned to the original reviewers.
7. Final decision & acceptance. The Editor-in-Chief confirms acceptance.
8. Copyediting, production & publication. The article is copyedited, laid out, assigned a DOI (Crossref), given complete metadata (OAI-PMH), published open access under CC BY, and preserved (PKP PN / Rede Cariniana).

Ethics Committee. Editora Alumni Publicações Científicas maintains an Ethics Committee that supports editors in complex integrity cases, advises on policy, and contributed to the elaboration of these Publishing Ethics & Editorial Policies. The Committee operates under the COPE Core Practices and is consulted on misconduct investigations (Sections 15 and 20) while respecting the editorial independence of each journal (Section 21). It can be contacted at publication.ethics@alumniin.com.

Publisher registration and open-science directories. Editora Alumni IN is a registered scholarly publisher, and its journals and open-access/open-science policies are recorded in national and international directories:

• The publisher and its titles are registered in Miguilim (IBICT), the Brazilian directory of scientific journals, including the identification of Diamond open-access titles and their editorial and open-science policies.
• Self-archiving and access policies are indexed in Diadorim (IBICT) and in Open Policy Finder.
• Journal-level indexing and evaluation records are maintained with the DOAJ and other services listed on each journal's "Indexing and Metrics" page.
• The publisher holds a ROR organisation identifier and registers all content DOIs with Crossref.

Digital preservation partners. Long-term preservation is ensured through the PKP Preservation Network and, in Brazil, through the Rede Cariniana (IBICT), the national distributed-preservation network based on LOCKSS technology (see Section 11).

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24. Governance and Policy Review

These policies apply to all journals published by Editora Alumni IN, including the Review of Artificial Intelligence in Education (RAIEduc), the Journal of Sustainable Competitive Intelligence (JSCI), the Journal of Scientific Integrity and Metrics (JSIM), the Journal of Interdisciplinary Knowledge (JIK), and the SDGs Studies Review, as well as future titles hosted on alumnijournals.org.

These policies were prepared with the support of the Ethics Committee of Editora Alumni Publicações Científicas and are subject to continuous updating: they are reviewed by the editorial direction — with the Committee's advice — at least annually and whenever international standards or best practices evolve, and revisions are published on this page. Where any conflict of interpretation arises between language versions, the English version published on the portal prevails, alongside the original COPE guidance. Individual journals may adopt additional discipline-specific requirements consistent with these policies.

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Reference Guidelines & Sources

These policies were developed with reference to the following international guidelines, to which Editora Alumni IN adheres and which readers are encouraged to consult directly:

These Publishing Ethics & Editorial Policies were prepared with the support of the Ethics Committee of Editora Alumni Publicações Científicas and are subject to continuous updating. Editora Alumni IN • CNPJ 42.065.021/0001-35. Individual journal pages may set additional discipline-specific requirements consistent with this document.

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Contact

Editora Alumni IN • CNPJ 42.065.021/0001-35 • Guarulhos, São Paulo, Brazil

Editora Alumni IN • Guarulhos, SP, Brazil • alumnijournals.org • publisher@alumniin.com • +55 (11) 95042-1307