Peer Academics is published by Asociația Societatea Studenților din Uniunea Europeană (EUSS), a Romanian non-profit association registered on 04.12.2023 at Judecătoria Sectorului 6 București. The Publisher pays for the journal and owns nothing in it that matters to an author: what the journal publishes is decided by its editors, and those decisions are not subject to the Publisher's approval. This page sets out where the line runs, who may cross it, and what happens if anyone tries to.
What the Publisher does
- Meets the costs of the journal — hosting, the journal system, and editorial administration — so that neither authors nor readers are charged anything. See Article Processing Charges.
- Appoints the Editor-in-Chief, and may remove the Editor-in-Chief for cause: sustained failure to run the journal, or conduct incompatible with its published ethics policies. Not for a decision the Publisher dislikes.
- Ensures the journal operates lawfully under Romanian law and Regulation (EU) 2016/679 (GDPR), and answers for the journal as a legal person.
- Designates an independent handling editor where the Editor-in-Chief is an author or is the subject of a complaint or allegation.
What the Publisher does not do
The Publisher has no authority over any individual manuscript. It does not see submissions or reviewer reports, is not told who has submitted what, does not instruct editors, and cannot cause an article to be accepted, rejected, delayed, altered, retracted, or removed. It has no say in who is invited to review, no access to reviewer identities, and no editorial role in the journal's submission system. It does not decide what a correction or retraction notice says; that is the Editor-in-Chief's decision under Corrections and Retractions. The one exception is legal: where a court order or another legal obligation requires an article to be withdrawn from public view, the Publisher may require that, and even then a notice stating the grounds remains in place.
The journal is small, and says so
Peer Academics is being established, and its editorial board is not yet complete; until it is, manuscripts are handled by the acting editorial management appointed by the Publisher, under the journal's published policies and the same minimum of two independent reviewers for every research article. In an organization of this size, the same individuals may at times serve the association and the journal. Where that happens, the person acts in one capacity at a time, the dual role is recorded, and any manuscript in which the overlap could bear on a decision is transferred to an editor with no such role. The journal does not claim a separation of personnel it does not yet have; it claims a separation of function, and records it.
Submissions from members of the Publisher
EUSS is a students' association, and its members and officers may submit to the journal. They receive no advantage of any kind. Membership of the association, a role in it, or a relationship with anyone holding such a role is not disclosed to reviewers, confers no priority, does not lower any standard, and is not a ground for acceptance. A manuscript authored by an officer of the Publisher is assigned to an editor with no relationship to that person, and the independent handling is recorded. Nor does membership count against a submission: the journal judges the work.
Editors and editorial staff as authors
An editor may submit to Peer Academics. That editor takes no part in the handling of the manuscript, has no access to its file, its reviewers, or its reports in the submission system, and does not discuss it with the handling editor. The Editor-in-Chief assigns such manuscripts to an editor with no relationship to the author; where the author is the Editor-in-Chief, the Publisher designates an independent handling editor, and the Editor-in-Chief is excluded from the file. The independent handling is stated on the published article. A guest editor's own submission to a special issue is handled the same way; see Special Issues.
No commercial pressure exists to resist
The journal charges no article processing or submission fees, carries no advertising, accepts no sponsored content, and sells nothing — see Advertising and Sponsorship. There is therefore no customer, advertiser, sponsor, or subscriber whose interests could bear on a decision, and no payment from an author, an institution, or a funder can obtain, accelerate, or influence one. If anyone offers you a decision in exchange for anything, report it to [email protected].
Pressure from outside the journal
Editors decide on the scholarly merit of a manuscript and on nothing else. The journal does not accept, decline, alter, delay, or remove an article because an institution, a funder, a government body, an employer, a professional association, or a well-connected author asks it to. A legal threat is not a reason to retract; a legal obligation is, and the journal distinguishes the two. Approaches of this kind are recorded, and the Editor-in-Chief may publish the fact that one was made.
If the line is crossed
If the Publisher, or anyone acting for it, attempts to influence a decision on a manuscript, the Editor-in-Chief records the attempt in the journal's files, refuses it, and may make it public. The editorial decision stands regardless. Editors are free to resign over such an attempt and to say why. If you believe an editorial decision on your own manuscript was influenced by the Publisher or by any interest other than the merit of the work, say so under Complaints and Appeals: a complaint about the Editor-in-Chief goes to the Publisher, which considers the conduct of the office and does not reopen the scholarly decision.
These arrangements are informed by the principles of COPE, ICMJE, and DOAJ on editorial independence. Peer Academics is not a member of, listed by, or endorsed by any of them.