EDITORS’ ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

Editors at KJRS assess the scope and quality of each submitted manuscript and make a recommendation based on feedback from peer reviewers. Editors are collectively responsible for ensuring that the journal publishes high-quality research that falls within its scope and objectives.

Handling manuscripts
One of Editor’s most important tasks is to decide whether a manuscript should be published in one of our journals or not. This guide explains the steps involved in the decision-making process and offers help for new Editors.

Publication ethics
KJRS’s editorial assistants check manuscripts and the publication record of the authors for issues including plagiarism and other types of research misconduct.
If an Editor becomes aware of any publication ethics issues on a manuscript they are handling, including plagiarism, authorship disputes, duplicate and redundant submission, or manipulation of data and figures, they should contact the KJRS Editorial Office via journal@kjrs.org.

Approving Special Issues
Special Issues are one-off issues of a journal, which focus on a specific topic or contemporary theme. Special Issues are proposed and managed by a team of Guest Editors from outside the Editorial Board. Editorial Board members are also encouraged to submit Special Issue proposals.
Editorial Board members are best placed to make a decision on whether the topic of a Special Issue is a good fit for the journal. Therefore, we contact Editors for advice on a Special Issue proposal.

Providing feedback
We have meeting four times a year for Editors to provide feedback on our journal’s direction or performance. We use this feedback to improve all aspects of our operations.

MANUSCRIPT HANDLING

Editors at KJRS are responsible for deciding whether a manuscript should be published as an article in a journal. If you are a new Editor or a Guest Editor or if you have not handled a manuscript for some time, this guide provides step-by-step assistance for the editorial process.
Manuscripts are handled using KJRS’s online system. Editors receive an email when they are invited to handle a new manuscript.

Receiving a manuscript
Editor-In-Chief (EIC) or co-EIC assign manuscripts based on an Editor’s research field and current workload. Editors should be comfortable with the topic of the manuscript, but an in-depth understanding is not essential. It is the role of the peer reviewers to assess the technical details. However, if Editors find that the assigned manuscript is too far from their area of expertise, they should decline to handle the manuscript.
Although EIC or co-EIC select our Editors carefully, if the assigned Editor suspects a conflict of interest, they should decline to handle the manuscript.

Conflicts of interest
As a member of the KJRS journal’s Editorial Board, you need to be very aware of the risk of conflicts when handling a manuscript.
Firstly, you should assess your own potential conflicts. If you have recently coauthored with the author(s) of the manuscript, you could be perceived to be influenced by your relationship. Similarly, if you have recently shared an affiliation or employment history with the author(s), it could also be seen to be inappropriate for you to handle their work. KJRS aims to avoid assigning papers to Editors who might have conflicts, but we also expect our Editors to declare any conflicts. If you believe a conflict exists, you should refuse to handle the manuscript.
As a subject expert, the journal relies on your knowledge of the discipline to assess any conflicts declared by a submitting author. You are also uniquely placed to be able to identify any undeclared conflicts that an author might have. You should think about these factors when making a recommendation on the manuscript.
You should also consider potential conflicts when assigning the manuscript to reviewers. KJRS performs conflict of interest checks on all reviewers before they receive the manuscript for review, but you should also rely on your knowledge of the sector to inform assignments you make. Typically, you should not select a referee who:

• works or has recently worked at the same institution as the author or authors; or
• has recently coauthored a paper with the author or authors; or
• has a recent or current collaboration with the author or authors.

Discretion may be applied when publications are authored by a consortium.
If you have concerns about a potential reviewer, consider appointing someone else. If you believe a reviewer’s recommendation on a manuscript was made to further their own interests, you may tell the authors they do not need to address that point.
We are aware that certain specialist areas may involve a higher likelihood of association and overlap between researchers. In some instances, you may be the best-placed individual to act as Editor despite a connection with the author or authors. In this case, you should inform your KJRS editorial contact.

Initial evaluation
KJRS performs essential editorial screening on all submissions, before assigning them to Editors. On receiving a manuscript, Editors should check if it is potentially suitable for publication. They should consider whether the article suits the scientific scope of the journal, as well as the basic quality of the article. Submissions failing this evaluation should be rejected immediately. All other articles should be sent for formal peer review.

Recruiting peer reviewers
Editors should invite at least two reviewers to assess the manuscript. We encourage Editors to invite reviewers of their choosing.
There are many important factors to consider when selecting a peer reviewer.

• 1) Are they impartial?
  • Reviewers should not work at the same institution as any of the authors, or have an active or recent collaboration with any of the authors. Avoid using any referees whom the authors have requested not be invited. If we detect a potential conflict of interest, we will ask you to assign a different reviewer.
• 2) Are they qualified?
  • Reviewers should have significant experience in the relevant field. Editors can assess a reviewer’s experience by looking at their publication history. Reviewers range from post-doctoral researchers through to emeritus professors, but occasionally experts from industry may also be appropriate.
• 3) Do they cover every necessary expertise?
  • It may not be possible for a particular referee to adequately assess all aspects of a manuscript. For example, if a manuscript covers practical laboratory-based experiments and high-level theoretical work, it may not be possible to find a single reviewer with all the necessary skills. Editors should ensure that the reviewers are capable, between them, of covering the breadth of techniques employed.

Editors may choose reviewers from their existing academic network. They may have contacted with appropriate reviewers through conferences or collaboration or as colleagues. Searching for key terms in abstracting and indexing services is another excellent way to find referees. We also suggest browsing a manuscript’s reference list to discover researchers working on similar topics. Finding peer reviewers is not always easy, as appropriate candidates may not have the time to accept your invitation.
Asking those who decline an invitation to suggest similarly qualified experts, perhaps from their own research group or institution, is an excellent way of gathering further recommendations.
Reviewers may, upon request, consult with colleagues from their own research group so long as the confidentiality of the manuscript can be maintained.

Making a decision
Having read and assessed the manuscript, each reviewer will provide a report along with one of the following recommendations:

• Accept
• Minor Revision: Revise and accept
• Major Revision: Revise and reconsider
• Reject

Considering the reviewers’ recommendations and deciding the fate of a manuscript is not always straightforward. If a majority of reviewers suggest rejection of a manuscript, then it must be rejected. However, if just one reviewer notices a fundamental technical flaw and suggests rejection, it can warrant rejection of a manuscript despite positive recommendations from the other reviewers.
Published manuscripts must be technically sound. Concerns over the validity of the experimental process, or logic employed, should result in rejection. The perceived importance and potential impact of a manuscript should not be a primary cause for rejection, though papers should present original research and add to scientific understanding. KJRS journal publishes work of significance to specialists, but replicative and highly derivative work should be rejected unless a strong scientific case supports publication.
If the reviewers raise insurmountable problems, for example if the experiments are critically flawed or the results have been presented previously, then the Editor should reject the manuscript.
If the manuscript could be improved to make it more suitable for publication, the Editor should invite the authors to revise and resubmit. We ask Editors to use ‘Minor Revision’ if they are confident that they are able to assess personally whether the suggested changes have been made properly. If an Editor believes they require the reviewers’ expertise to assess the changes, they should use ‘Major Revision’ instead.
If the reviewers find no fault and deem the manuscript to be suitable for publication in its current state, the Editor may choose to use ‘Accept’.

Confidentiality
All manuscripts should be kept completely confidential. Editors should not use any of its insights until after publication.
KJRS operates a ‘double blind’ approach to peer review. Reviewers do not know the authors’ names, and the authors are not told the reviewers’ names. At no time should an Editor communicate the names of the reviewers to the authors, or to anybody else in the community.

Recognition
In recognition of Editors’ work and to provide transparency about the journal’s review process, the name of the Editor who accepts a manuscript will be mentioned in the final published version of the paper.

SIMILARITY CHECK REPORT INTERPRETATION

KJRS uses the KCI software to highlight text overlap between a submitted manuscript and existing literature. Occasionally, our Editorial Office will send you a similarity report to assess whether there is inappropriate re-use of wording.
The report will contain a calculation of the overall percentage of reuse. This number should be taken with caution. A high percentage is not necessarily unacceptable, but only an indication that there might be plagiarism or redundancy. It is important to look through the report to see the sources of overlap and where sections of overlap occur.
Things you should consider:

• The nature of the overlap – are the similarities fragmentary or in blocks? Are complete sentences or paragraphs copied from previous works?
• Where the overlap occurs – duplication of background ideas in the introduction or common methods may be considered less significant than duplication of the discussion or conclusions
• Data duplication – this is almost never acceptable without appropriate citation
• Citation - was the source of the text overlap cited and discussed?
• Authorship - was the source written by one or more of the same authors as the KJRS submission? If so, the concern might be with copyright or redundant publication rather than plagiarism. Some overlap is allowed, e.g. with the authors’ own preprint or thesis, if those sources are mentioned.
• Could the software have miscalculated the similarity, e.g. by including large chunks of text that are properly contained within quotation marks or by flagging similarities in the references?

If you feel the level of similarity requires attention, you can request that the authors rewrite sections of their manuscript and cite any missing references prior to peer review. It may be that you regard the manuscript as too plagiarized to be further considered, and therefore it should be rejected.

SIMILARITY CHECK REPORT INTERPRETATION

KJRS journal frequently hosts Special Issues, which are focused collections of papers on topics of increasing interest within a discipline, edited by a team of Guest Editors. This team is responsible for the promotion of the Special Issue in order to attract submissions, as well as for handling the peer review of received manuscripts. Before proceeding with the launch of a Special Issue, we seek feedback from our Editorial Board Members on the appropriateness of the proposal in terms of its scope and timeliness, its likely contribution to the journal and field, and the suitability of the Guest Editor team. With the advice of our Editorial Board, our internal staff then decide whether to proceed. Here we provide details on what to look out for when assessing a Special Issue proposal.