Editorial Independence

The Journal of Intelligent Financial Systems and Autonomous Management is committed to editorial independence and to transparent handling of submissions in which the author has any editorial, advisory, or reviewing relationship with the Journal. This page describes the principles, operational protocol, and public commitment that govern such submissions.

1. Principle

Editorial decisions on every submission are made on the basis of scholarly merit, methodological soundness, and scope-fit alone, as assessed through external peer review. The publisher, World Research Union, plays no role in editorial decisions on individual submissions. The Editor-in-Chief and the editorial team operate independently of any commercial, organizational, or personal interest of the publisher, and the publisher recognizes and supports this independence as a condition of the publishing relationship.

2. Editorial Submissions Policy

The Journal recognizes that members of the editorial team and the active reviewer pool may, in the course of their own scholarly work, submit manuscripts to the Journal. To prevent any actual or perceived conflict of interest, the Journal applies the following protocol to every such submission, in alignment with COPE guidance on editorial conflicts of interest (see COPE, A Short Guide to Ethical Editing) and with current best practice in scholarly publishing.

2.1 Categories of editorial submissions

An editorial submission, for the purpose of this policy, is any manuscript on which one or more of the authors holds at least one of the following roles at the time of submission:

  • Editor-in-Chief, Honorary Editor, Publication or Managing Editor, Associate Editor, Section Editor, or Proofing Editor of the Journal
  • Active reviewer in the Journal's reviewer pool, defined as having completed a review for the Journal in the preceding 24 months

2.2 Handling protocol

  • Independent editor assignment. The submission is assigned to an editor who is not the author, is not in a direct reporting line with the author, and does not share an institutional affiliation with the author. Where no internal editor satisfies these criteria, the Editor-in-Chief may invite an external editor to handle the submission.
  • Recusal of the author-editor. The author-editor is fully recused from any editorial discussion, decision, or workflow access concerning the submission. The author-editor's OJS workflow access to the submission is removed for the duration of editorial handling.
  • Double-blind external peer review. The submission undergoes double-blind external peer review by reviewers who are not part of the Journal's editorial team and who declare no conflict with the author-editor.
  • Independent decision. The acceptance, revision, or rejection decision is made by the independent handling editor on the basis of the external reviews, without consultation with the author-editor.
  • Transparency declaration. Every published article that is an editorial submission carries an explicit declaration in its acknowledgments or methods section noting the independent handling. Standard wording: "This article was submitted by a member of the Journal's editorial team. In accordance with the Journal's Editorial Submissions Policy, the manuscript was handled by an independent editor outside the author's reporting line, underwent double-blind external peer review, and the author was fully recused from the editorial workflow."
  • Audit trail. The Journal retains a complete OJS workflow record for every editorial submission, including evidence of editor assignment, reviewer assignments, and recusal, available on request to indexing bodies and for audit purposes.

3. Public commitment on proportion

The Journal commits to keeping the proportion of articles authored by editorial team members and active reviewers below 15 percent in any rolling 12-month period. This figure is monitored by the Editor-in-Chief on a per-issue basis and reported transparently in the Journal's annual editorial summary.

This 15 percent threshold is applied at the level of articles, not authors: an article is counted as an editorial submission if any one of its authors holds an editorial role or is an active reviewer at the time of submission. The threshold is intentionally below the DOAJ 25 percent reference value to provide a clear margin against random variation.

4. Reporting

The Journal publishes an annual transparency note in the first issue of each calendar year, stating the proportion of editorial submissions in the preceding year and the actions taken to maintain editorial integrity. This note is also archived under the Announcements section.

5. Conflicts of interest declared by editors

All editors complete an annual conflict-of-interest declaration covering personal, financial, institutional, and intellectual interests. Editors recuse themselves from any submission in which they have a competing interest with the authors, including but not limited to recent co-authorship (within five years), shared institutional affiliation, doctoral supervisory or supervisee relationship, or financial interest.

6. Independence from the publisher

World Research Union, the publisher of the Journal, plays no role in editorial decisions on individual submissions. The publisher is responsible for the Journal's hosting, technical infrastructure, financial administration, and indexing-application coordination. The publisher does not have access to the OJS editorial workflow for individual submissions and does not see manuscripts or peer-review reports prior to publication. Any attempt by the publisher to influence editorial decisions on individual submissions would be a breach of this policy and grounds for the editorial team to disclose the breach publicly.

7. Concerns and complaints

Concerns about editorial independence or about the handling of any specific submission may be raised confidentially with the Editor-in-Chief through the Contact page. Complaints that cannot be resolved at the editor level may be escalated to COPE under the COPE complaints process.

This policy is reviewed annually and was last revised on 27 June 2026.