Editorial Policies

Decisions about what we publish are made by editors on academic merit alone. They are not made by Oak Academic Publishing as a business, and they are not open to influence by advertisers, funders, institutions, or anyone with a commercial relationship with us.

This matters more for us than for most publishers, because our income comes from article processing charges. If acceptance were worth money to us, our incentives would be wrong. So we separate the two deliberately:

• Charges are raised only after acceptance. There is no submission fee.
• Editors and reviewers are not shown whether a charge has been paid, will be paid, or has been waived, at any point before the decision.
• A waiver request cannot affect a decision, because the decision is already made before the question arises.

Each journal has an editor-in-chief who holds final authority over its content. Editorial board members are appointed for demonstrated expertise in the subject area, and appointments are reviewed periodically.

Board members are named publicly on their journal’s page with their affiliation, so that authors can see who stands behind the journal. Nobody may serve on a board and act as a commercial agent for us at the same time.

Editors handle manuscripts under the recusal rules in our competing interests policy, and an editor’s own submission to their own journal is always handled by someone else.

Every research article is assessed by at least two independent experts under single-anonymised review before it can be accepted. The stages, the criteria reviewers apply, the decision types, and what we ask of reviewers are set out in full on the peer review page.

Each journal states its scope on its own page, and submissions are assessed against it. Where a manuscript is out of scope, we return it promptly rather than holding it through a review it cannot pass — a fast no is worth more to an author than a slow one.

A desk decision on scope is not a judgement on quality, and we say so in the letter. Where we can suggest a better-fitting journal in our portfolio, we will.

Everything we publish is open access from the moment of publication. There is no subscription, no paywall, and no embargo period. Readers pay nothing to read, download, or redistribute an article.

Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) licence. Authors retain copyright in their own work and grant us a non-exclusive licence to publish, archive, and distribute it. Anyone may share and adapt the work, including commercially, provided the original authors and source are credited.

We charge a single article processing charge, payable only when an article is accepted. There are no submission fees, no page charges, no colour figure charges, and no surcharges for supplementary material.

Current charges are published on the for authors page, and the charge that applies is the one shown when you submit. Waivers and reductions are available where the charge would be a genuine barrier — requests are handled separately from the editorial process and are never visible to editors or reviewers.

Posting a preprint does not prejudice submission to us. We welcome manuscripts that have been posted to a recognised preprint server, provided they have not been peer reviewed and published elsewhere.

Authors should tell us at submission where the preprint is posted and under what licence, and we ask that the preprint record is updated to link to the published version once an article appears.

Presenting work at a conference, or publishing it as a conference abstract, does not prevent submission of the full paper.

Where an error is found after publication we correct it in public and link the notice to the article. Serious problems lead to a retraction or an expression of concern. Articles are never silently altered or removed. The full procedure, and what distinguishes each type of notice, is in our publication ethics.

Appealing a decision. If you believe a decision on your manuscript rests on a factual error or a procedural failure, you may appeal. Set out the specific error, with evidence. The appeal is considered by an editor who was not involved in the original decision. Disagreement with a reviewer’s scientific judgement is not by itself grounds for appeal, and the outcome of an appeal is final.

Complaints about us. Complaints about our conduct as a publisher — how we handled a submission, a delay, a member of staff, or a policy — should be sent to the address in section 11. We will acknowledge it, tell you who is handling it, and respond in writing.

Concerns about published work. These are handled under the investigation procedure in our publication ethics, not as complaints.

Open access is only meaningful if the work stays available. Published articles are assigned a persistent identifier and deposited with a recognised digital preservation service, so that the record survives independently of us.

If a journal ever ceases publication, its content remains accessible through those preservation arrangements rather than disappearing with the title.

Where our journals are indexed is listed on the about page. We list only the services that actually index us, and add to that list as coverage grows.

We do not sell advertising against article content, and we do not accept sponsorship that is contingent on editorial coverage. No commercial arrangement gives a third party any say in what we publish.

Contact

Questions about these policies, complaints, and concerns about published work can all be sent to inquiries@oakpub.com. We review these policies at least once a year and publish the date of the last review at the top of each page.