Editorial Standards
How we publish, review, and steward the research and books we put into the world. Our journals follow COPE’s Core Practices.
All journals published by Punica are fully open access. Every article is freely available to read, download, and reuse from the moment of publication, with no subscription and no charge to readers. Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence unless a more permissive licence is requested.
Selected book chapters and monographs can also be made open access where institutional or funder support is available. Speak with your commissioning editor about open options.
Our journals operate double-anonymous peer review: author and reviewer identities are withheld from one another. Each submission is assessed by at least two independent referees with relevant expertise, under the oversight of a handling editor.
Editors make decisions on the basis of the reviews, the soundness of the methods, and the contribution to the field — never on the perceived importance or commercial potential of a result. Book proposals are reviewed by external specialists before contract.
Punica follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices. We screen submissions for plagiarism and image manipulation, and we investigate allegations of misconduct — fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, redundant publication, and undisclosed conflicts — in line with COPE flowcharts.
Authorship should reflect substantial contribution to the conception, execution, or interpretation of the work. All listed authors must approve the final version and agree to be accountable for it. Contributor roles may be declared using the CRediT taxonomy.
Authors, reviewers, and editors must declare any financial or personal relationships that could be perceived to influence the work. Funding sources are disclosed in every article.
Authors retain copyright in their work. By publishing with our journals, authors grant Punica a licence to publish and agree to release the article under CC BY 4.0, which permits reuse with attribution. For books, authors grant a licence to publish while retaining their moral and authorship rights.
There is never a charge to read our journals. Where article-processing charges apply, they are kept modest and are routinely waived for authors who lack funding or who work in lower-income countries — no author is prevented from publishing for want of means. Book authors are not charged to publish.
We encourage and, where appropriate, require that the data underlying published findings be deposited in a recognised public repository and cited with a persistent identifier. Each article includes a data-availability statement. Code and materials should be shared wherever feasible to support reproducibility.
All articles are assigned a Crossref DOI and are preserved for the long term through a recognised digital-preservation service, ensuring continued access should the journal cease publication. Metadata is openly available for indexing and discovery.
The version of record is permanent. Where errors are found, we publish corrections, expressions of concern, or retractions as appropriate, each linked to the original article and following COPE guidance. Retracted articles remain available, clearly marked, to preserve the scholarly record.
We collect only the personal data necessary to operate the press — to manage submissions, fulfil orders, and send communications you have requested. We do not sell personal data. You may request access to or deletion of your data at any time by contacting the editorial office. Use of this site is subject to our terms of service.
Full policy and legal documents are available on request from books@punicascience.com.
