Duties of the Editors and sanctions [7]

The Editors are independent scientists who do not have any job contract with the Publisher. They offer their competence and experience volontarily without any remuneration. The Journal owners must not interfere nowise with editorial decisions.  
The Editor of a journal has the main duty of setting and implementing the ethical standards. He or she must comply with the main ethical rules and the following duties:  

The Editors are the major accountable for the Journal and everything is related to its content.
They should guarantee the high value of the manuscript to be published.
Their aim is to look for strategies to improve the Journal, and to support an ethical accepted behavior. They are the only parties in contact with all the other individuals involved in the process of publication.
Editors should verify if there are the following abuses in the manuscript or in the review and publication process:
- Improper changes or assignment of Authorship.
- Plagiarism.
- Multiple, redundant, duplicate, concurrent publication/Simultaneous submission.
- Research results misappropriation.
- Allegations of research errors and fraud.
- Research standards violations.
- Undisclosed conflicts of interest.
- Reviewer bias or competitive harmful acts by reviewers
Editors should take any decision about the publication of a manuscript. Their decisions should be based on some elements, such as:
validity of the results and originality, without interference from the journal owner/publisher.
They cannot invert decisions to accept papers unless there are serious problems related to the submission.
Another important element that Editors should consider carefully is confidentiality. They should develop procedures that assure the privacy of all the data submitted to the Journal. This refers both to the individual and persona information and the professional ones.
Praise Worthy Prize asks to all the authors a written informed consent, according to the Italian law D.Lgs. n. 196 dated 30th June 2003 ('Code in matter of protection of personal data').
Reasons for Allowing Submissions by an Editorial Board Member and by an Editor-in-Chief
Praise Worthy Prize permit to their Editors in Chief (EiC) and Editorial Board Members (EBM) to be author of an article in the journals where they are involved. Outright prohibition of EiC or EBM authorship is considered too severe at least for three reasons: first, prohibition of the EiC (EBM) authorship doesn’t consent to the EiC (EBM) to increase the quality level of the journal that he follows scientifically. Second, a general prohibition could prevent some high-quality articles from appearing in our journals. Praise Worthy Prize’s stated mission is to be the Publisher of Meritocracy. Good work should be evaluated on its merits and not on the basis of authorship. Third, a prohibition could be a disincentive for leading researchers to serve as EiC (EBM), especially to the extent that this prohibition would affect coauthors, in particular graduate students.
At end, the policy of the best research journals follow the same rules on this question.

About Conflict of Interest
If an Editor has conflict of interest with a submission, he should not be involved in the decision process for that submission in any capacity, both as Editorial Board Member or Editor-in-Chief. If he is asked to participate in the reviewing of a submission and has a conflict of interest, he is requested to make it known to the applicant and to decline the invitation to participate. There is usually a conflict of interest if the submission concerns work that involves:
1. coauthors from an institution where he has recently worked (within the last 5 years)
2. recent coauthor
3. family member
4. an advisor
5. subject in which there is a non-trivial financial stake
Other circumstances may create a potential conflict, requiring careful thought on a case-to-case basis.
If there are doubts, please describe the potential conflict to the Editor in Chief if you are an Editor, or describe the potential conflict to the Editorial staff of the journal, if you are an EiC – and ask for guidance.

Conflict-of-Interest Policy for Editors
Editorial board members having conflict of interest must inform about these circumstances the EiC.
Editors may publish articles in our Journals. The Editor-in-Chief will choose reviewers having no conflict of interest to handle the submission.

Conflict-of-Interest Policy for an Editor-in-Chief
EiC having conflict of interest must inform about these circumstances the Editorial Staff of the journal.
The Editorial Staff invites an Editor (Helper editor) to handle the paper and the EiC will be excluded by all the steps of the peer-review process.
The designated Helper Editor must have agreed to accept this responsibility and should not be a collaborator of an EiC or from the same organization of the EiC.
The identity of the Helper Editor will not be disclosed to the EiC.
The Helper Editor will execute the normal function of the EiC for this submission till to the final acceptance decision.
In order to avoid the possible impression of biased processing, the (implicit or explicit) standards of acceptability must be applied rigorously and conservatively to any submission (co)authored by an EiC.
One of the main duties of Editors is to detect misconduct and act in this regard.
If a paper is accused of irregularities Editors should look for an answer from the suspect. Then, they should investigate, though Institutions or Organization committed to this scope.
If the anomalies are demonstrated the authors’ paper, convicted of misconduct, should be rejected.
In the case that there are documented and proved violations of any of the above mentioned policies in any journal published by Praise Worthy Prize, the following sanctions should be applied:
- Immediate suspension of the Editor by his editorial activities.
- Prohibition for the Editor for any new review to any journal published by Praise Worthy Prize. This prohibition will be imposed for a minimum of 12 months and a maximum of 36 months, depending on the seriousness of the violation.
- Prohibition for the Editor to serve on the Editorial Board of any journal published by Praise Worthy Prize.
In cases where the violations of the above policies are found to be particularly serious, the Publisher reserves the right to impose additional sanctions beyond those described above.