Membership
Membership
An optional way to support open-access publishing at Journal of Zoological Research, held entirely separate from the assessment of manuscripts.
- Optional
- Independent of peer review
- ISSN 2694-2275
What membership is
What membership supports, and what it leaves untouched
Membership is optional and supports the journal's open-access publishing. It is an administrative and financial arrangement, and it sits outside the editorial process entirely.
Membership confers no advantage in the review or acceptance of a member's own manuscripts. Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal, and they are independent of article processing charges, membership, editorial or reviewer roles, and any paid service.
A member's manuscript enters the same screening, the same independent peer review and the same decision process as any other submission, and is handled in the same order. Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
Submission, review and publication are open on the same terms to every author, member or not. The article processing charge and its conditions apply equally in both cases and are published in full on article processing charges.
Current terms
Categories, charges and duration
Membership is operated by the publisher across its journals, and the categories, charges, term and renewal conditions that currently apply are confirmed by the editorial office.
Researchers considering membership are invited to write to [email protected], stating their institution and the journals they expect to publish in. The reply sets out the categories open to them, what each costs, how long it runs, how it renews, and its relationship to the article processing charge, so that the terms can be read in full before any commitment is made.
Any arrangement confirmed in that correspondence is the arrangement that applies. Where a membership category carries a reduction in the article processing charge, the reduction is applied to the invoice after acceptance and is recorded on it.
Safeguards
How the separation is maintained
- Editorial handling
- Editors assess a manuscript on scope, method, ethics and reporting. Membership status is not part of the information an editor uses to reach a decision.
- Peer review
- Reviewers assess the manuscript in front of them. The journal's review model and the conditions under which a manuscript proceeds to external review are the same for every submission.
- Order of handling
- Manuscripts are handled in the order they arrive and according to the availability of suitable reviewers. Membership changes neither.
- Billing
- Membership and invoicing are handled by the editorial and billing office, separately from the editorial assessment of any manuscript.
The rules that govern editorial independence, conflicts and recusal are set out in the editorial policies.
Related
Publishing in the journal
Membership is separate from submitting. These are the pages an author needs.
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The charge, when it applies, and the withdrawal terms.
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Preparation and submission guidance.
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Review, ethics, rights and corrections.