Publication Policies

1. Purpose and Scope

These Publication Policies establish the publisher-wide baseline for journals published by the Canadian Center of Science and Education (CCSE). They apply to authors, editors, reviewers, readers, and other participants in the publication process. Each journal may publish additional discipline-specific or journal-specific requirements, including its aims and scope, peer-review model, article types, fees, reporting guidelines, and ethical requirements.

Policy hierarchy. A journal-specific policy controls where it provides more detailed requirements for that journal, but it may not reduce the publisher-wide standards of research integrity, transparency, editorial independence, or publication ethics stated here. Any apparent inconsistency should be reported to the journal office or CCSE for clarification.

2. Business Model and Editorial Independence

CCSE journals follow the Gold Open Access model. Revenue is derived mainly from author fees. Any other revenue source used by a journal or the publisher must be disclosed appropriately and must not influence manuscript assessment, peer review, editorial decisions, corrections, retractions, or other actions affecting the scholarly record.

Editors make decisions on the basis of scholarly merit, originality, methodological soundness, relevance to the journal, ethical compliance, and the quality of reporting. Payment, payment status, institutional affiliation, nationality, commercial relationships, sponsorship, or an author's ability to pay must not determine whether a manuscript is accepted or rejected.

3. Open Access

All articles published by CCSE journals are made freely and immediately available online without a subscription or access fee. Readers may access, read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to, text- and data-mine, and otherwise reuse published content for lawful purposes in accordance with the licence stated on the article.

No embargo applies to access to the final published article. Registration may be required only for functions such as manuscript submission, alerts, or account management, not for reading published articles.

4. Copyright and Licensing

Copyright. Authors retain copyright in their articles unless a different arrangement is required by law, an employer, or a funder and is accepted in writing before publication. Authors grant CCSE and the journal the right of first publication. After publication, authors may reuse, republish, archive, and distribute their own articles in accordance with the applicable open license and any third-party rights. Authors authorize the publisher to register and maintain a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for the article and to archive or deposit the article and its metadata in databases and indexes, including services such as EBSCO, DOAJ, and ProQuest. CCSE is not responsible for subsequent uses of the work by authors or third parties beyond the publisher's obligations under applicable law and the stated license.

Open license. Unless otherwise stated on the article, published articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). This license permits sharing and adaptation, including commercial reuse, provided that appropriate credit is given, a link to the license is supplied, and changes are indicated. Reusers may not imply endorsement by the authors, journal, or publisher.

Third-party material. Figures, photographs, datasets, instruments, scales, excerpts, and other third-party material are covered by the article’s Creative Commons license only when the credit line or rights statement does not indicate otherwise. Users are responsible for obtaining permission for reuse that exceeds applicable legal exceptions or the permission granted by the rights holder.

Author responsibility. Authors must secure all permissions necessary for publication and open licensing before submitting the final accepted version and must provide evidence of permission on request.

5. Article Processing Charges and Other Fees

Fees must be transparent and journal-specific. Each journal states its current article processing charge (APC), currency, payment timing, applicable taxes, and any other publication-related charges on its website and during the submission process. Where no submission fee or other fee is charged, the journal should state this clearly.

• APCs are requested only after a manuscript has been accepted through the journal’s editorial and peer-review process, unless a different charge is expressly disclosed before submission.
• The APC supports publication services that may include editorial administration, similarity screening, copyediting, typesetting, XML or online production, DOI registration, hosting, dissemination, and digital preservation.
• Payment does not guarantee acceptance, accelerated review, favourable editorial treatment, indexing, citation performance, or publication in a particular issue unless an approved service and its limitations are separately and transparently described.
• The author or payer is responsible for supplying accurate invoicing information and for any bank, currency-conversion, or intermediary charges that are clearly disclosed and lawfully applicable.
• Fees may change. The fee applicable to a manuscript should be the fee disclosed by the journal at the relevant stage of submission or acceptance, subject to any written quotation or agreement provided by CCSE.

6. Waivers and Discounts

CCSE does not waive or reduce publication fees or charges. Article charges vary from journal to journal and the exact amount is stated on the relevant journal webpage. To avoid confusion and ensure equal treatment, this no-waiver policy applies to all authors and categories of authors, including editorial board members and authors contributing to special issues.

7. Refunds, Cancellations, and Author Withdrawal

CCSE applies a refund policy based on the publishing status of the article. Authors requesting a refund should contact the journal office promptly and provide the manuscript title, invoice number, payment evidence, and the reason for the request.

• Full refund: the online version has not been published.
• Half refund: the online version has been published, but the print version has not been published.
• No refund: both the online version and the print version have been published.

Withdrawal does not remove the obligation to cooperate with an ethics investigation or post-publication action. Published articles are not simply deleted because an author requests withdrawal; corrections, retractions, removals, or other notices are handled under the journal’s post-publication policy.

8. Submission and Originality

Submitting a manuscript confirms that the work is original, has been approved by all listed authors, is not under consideration by another journal, and has not been published previously as a journal article in substantially the same form. Where required, publication must also be approved, tacitly or explicitly, by the responsible authorities at the institution or organization where the work was carried out. The submitting author must have authority to act on behalf of all authors and must disclose any related manuscripts, prior dissemination, overlapping content, or other material that may affect editorial assessment.

• Simultaneous submission to more than one journal is prohibited.
• Authors must cite and clearly distinguish their new contribution from their own previously disseminated work and from the work of others.
• Translations, secondary publications, replications, registered reports, protocols, updates, and substantially extended versions may be considered when the journal permits the article type, the relationship to earlier work is fully disclosed, copyright requirements are satisfied, and the new publication adds legitimate scholarly value.
• The journal may request underlying data, ethics documentation, contributor confirmations, permissions, source files, or other evidence needed to verify the manuscript.

9. Preprints, Theses, and Conference Materials

Posting a manuscript on a recognized preprint server does not by itself constitute prior journal publication. Authors must disclose the preprint at submission and provide its DOI or persistent link. After publication, authors should update the preprint record with the citation and link to the version of record, where the server permits.

• A thesis or dissertation made available through an institutional repository is normally eligible for consideration. The manuscript should identify the thesis and cite it where appropriate.
• Conference abstracts, published lectures, posters, presentations, working papers, blogs, and other non-journal venues do not necessarily prevent submission. A full conference paper or proceedings article must be disclosed, and the journal manuscript must contain sufficient new material to avoid redundant publication.
• Authors are responsible for complying with the policies of the preprint server, institution, conference, funder, and any prior publisher.
• Media coverage, blogs, or public discussion should not misrepresent preliminary findings as peer-reviewed conclusions and should not compromise anonymized peer review or participant confidentiality.

10. Similarity Screening, Plagiarism, and Text Recycling

CCSE maintains a zero-tolerance policy toward plagiarism. All submissions are screened with iThenticate before being sent to reviewers and are also subject to editorial and reviewer checks. A similarity percentage is a screening indicator, not by itself a finding of misconduct; editors assess the source, amount, location, attribution, purpose, and scholarly context of overlapping material.

• Plagiarism includes presenting another person’s text, ideas, images, data, code, or other work without appropriate attribution or permission.
• Redundant or duplicate publication includes publishing substantially the same findings more than once without transparent cross-reference, justification, and permission where required.
• Self-plagiarism and undisclosed text recycling are treated as plagiarism when authors present substantial previously disseminated text, interpretation, results, or other material as new. Limited reuse of standard methodological or descriptive language may be acceptable only when it is transparent, appropriately cited where needed, and does not misrepresent the originality of the submission.
• Citation manipulation, fabricated references, translated plagiarism, image duplication or manipulation, data fabrication or falsification, and attempts to defeat similarity screening are treated as research-integrity concerns.

Suspected misconduct may be investigated in accordance with the CCSE Ethics Statement and relevant COPE guidance. The journal may contact authors, institutions, funders, ethics bodies, or other journals when necessary and permitted.

11. Authorship and Contributorship

All listed authors must have made a substantial scholarly contribution, approved the submitted and final versions, agreed to be accountable for their contributions, and consented to publication. Individuals who contributed but do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged with their permission.

• Authors should describe contributions using the CRediT taxonomy or another journal-approved contributor statement.
• Gift, guest, honorary, and ghost authorship are not permitted. Editorial assistance, language editing, technical support, funding acquisition, and administrative support should be acknowledged when they do not qualify for authorship.
• The corresponding author is responsible for communication with the journal, ensuring that all authors receive editorial communications, and confirming the accuracy of authorship, affiliations, disclosures, and contributor information.
• Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission require a reason and written agreement from all affected authors. After acceptance or publication, changes are permitted only in exceptional circumstances and may require a correction notice or institutional review.

12. Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Technologies

Human authors, reviewers, and editors remain fully responsible for all decisions, statements, analyses, citations, and content produced or assisted by artificial intelligence (AI). AI systems and AI-assisted tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot take responsibility, provide consent, manage conflicts of interest, or meet accountability requirements.

12.1 Authors

• Authors may use AI-assisted tools for tasks such as language improvement, literature organization, coding assistance, data analysis, visualization, or other research support, provided that the use is lawful, ethically appropriate, methodologically sound, and consistent with the journal’s instructions.
• All AI-generated content and any material use of generative or AI-assisted technologies must be transparently disclosed in the manuscript. The disclosure should identify the tool and version where available, the purpose, and the nature and extent of its use. AI used as part of the research method or analysis should be described in the Methods or equivalent section; AI used primarily for writing or editing may be described in an AI-use statement or acknowledgments, as directed by the journal.
• Purely non-generative spelling, grammar, reference-formatting, or similar assistive functions generally need not be disclosed unless the journal, institution, or funder requires disclosure; this exception does not apply to AI-generated content.
• Authors must verify AI-assisted output for accuracy, originality, bias, confidentiality, permissions, and appropriate citation. Invented, unverifiable, or misleading citations are prohibited. AI-generated text or images do not excuse plagiarism, copyright infringement, fabrication, falsification, or inaccurate reporting.
• Authors must not upload confidential, personal, proprietary, copyrighted, embargoed, or identifiable participant information to an AI service unless they have the legal and ethical authority to do so and the service provides adequate confidentiality and data protection.
• AI-generated or AI-altered images, audio, video, datasets, or synthetic participants must be clearly identified and must not be used to misrepresent primary evidence. Editorial or technical image adjustments must comply with the journal’s image-integrity rules.

12.2 Reviewers and editors

• Submitted manuscripts and peer-review materials are confidential and privileged communications. Reviewers and editors must not upload them, in whole or in part, to a public or third-party AI system unless the journal has expressly authorized the use, confidentiality is contractually and technically protected, and any required author permission has been obtained.
• A reviewer or editor who is permitted to use AI assistance must disclose the use to the journal and remain responsible for the accuracy, fairness, confidentiality, and intellectual independence of the review or decision.
• AI may support administrative screening or quality-control tasks, but it must not make the final editorial decision. Human editorial oversight is required, and automated tools must not be used in a discriminatory, deceptive, or unvalidated manner.
• Journals reserve the right to reject a submission when undisclosed or inappropriate AI use is detected. Other proportionate actions may include requiring revision, removing a reviewer or editor from the process, issuing a correction, or retracting an article.

13. Research Data, Materials, and Code

CCSE supports transparency, verification, and responsible reuse of research outputs. Authors should retain the data, materials, code, protocols, instruments, and documentation needed to support the reported work for a period consistent with legal, institutional, disciplinary, and funder requirements.

• Manuscripts should include a Data Availability Statement using the journal’s approved wording, including when data are openly available, available on reasonable request, included in the article or supplementary material, restricted for ethical or legal reasons, or not applicable.
• Where sharing is appropriate, authors are encouraged to use a trusted repository that provides persistent identifiers, access conditions, versioning, and preservation.
• Restrictions based on privacy, confidentiality, Indigenous data governance, national security, contractual obligations, intellectual property, or other legitimate grounds must be explained without disclosing protected information.
• Editors may request data or other research records for confidential examination. Failure to provide a reasonable explanation or supporting records may affect the editorial decision or lead to post-publication action.
• Authors must respect licences, consent terms, data-use agreements, and community or participant expectations when sharing or reusing data.

14. Ethical Approval, Consent, and Sensitive Content

Research must comply with applicable laws, regulations, institutional requirements, and recognized disciplinary standards. Authors are responsible for obtaining and reporting all required approvals, permissions, registrations, and informed consent before conducting and publishing the research.

• Human-participant research should state the approving ethics body, approval or exemption identifier where applicable, and the consent process. Consent for participation is distinct from consent to publish identifiable information.
• Animal research must identify the approving body and demonstrate appropriate welfare, humane methods, and compliance with relevant reporting standards.
• Clinical trials and other studies requiring registration should be registered in an appropriate public registry within the timeframe required by the journal, discipline, law, or funder.
• Research involving vulnerable groups, Indigenous peoples or knowledge, cultural heritage, biosafety, dual-use risks, sensitive locations, or security-sensitive information requires particular care, community engagement where appropriate, and a clear ethical justification.
• The journal may decline or limit publication of information when disclosure would create a serious and unjustified risk of harm, while seeking a proportionate balance between transparency and protection.

15. Competing Interests and Funding

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose relationships or interests that could reasonably be perceived to influence their work. Competing interests may be financial or non-financial and may include employment, consultancies, ownership, patents, funding, personal or professional relationships, academic competition, advocacy roles, or strongly held intellectual commitments.

• Authors must include a competing-interests statement and identify all funding sources, grant numbers where applicable, and the funder’s role in study design, data collection, analysis, manuscript preparation, and publication decisions.
• Reviewers and editors must recuse themselves when a conflict could compromise, or appear to compromise, impartiality.
• Failure to disclose a relevant interest may result in reassignment, revision, rejection, correction, retraction, or another appropriate action.

16. Peer Review and Editorial Decisions

Each journal describes its peer-review model, reviewer selection, confidentiality rules, decision process, and any article types that are not externally peer reviewed. Where a journal uses double-anonymous review, authors must prepare files accordingly, but complete anonymity cannot be guaranteed because of preprints, citations, data, or disciplinary context.

• Peer review is advisory. The editor or authorized editorial decision-maker is responsible for the final decision.
• Editors select reviewers with appropriate expertise and seek independent, constructive, timely, and unbiased assessment. Reviewer recommendations do not bind the editor.
• Special issues, supplements, and invited content are subject to the same standards of research integrity, conflict management, and editorial independence as regular content. The involvement of guest editors must be disclosed where applicable.
• Editors and editorial-board members may submit work to the journal, but they must not participate in handling or deciding their own manuscripts. An independent editor must oversee the process and the arrangement should be transparent.
• CCSE does not guarantee acceptance or a fixed review or publication time. Published time estimates are indicative and may vary with reviewer availability, revisions, ethics checks, and production requirements.

17. Corrections, Retractions, and Other Post-Publication Actions

CCSE is committed to maintaining an accurate and trustworthy scholarly record. Concerns raised after publication are assessed promptly, fairly, confidentially where appropriate, and in accordance with the nature and seriousness of the issue. Authors are expected to cooperate.

• Minor errors that do not affect interpretation may be corrected in the article or through a clearly documented update, depending on journal practice.
• Errors that affect part of the article but not its overall reliability may require a formal correction. Author-name or authorship corrections follow the authorship policy and may require supporting documentation.
• An expression of concern may be issued when there is substantial uncertainty and an investigation is incomplete, inconclusive, or delayed.
• Retraction may be required when findings are unreliable because of major error or misconduct, when publication is redundant or plagiarized, when peer review was manipulated, when research was unethical, or in other circumstances consistent with recognized retraction guidance.
• Removal of the full text is exceptional and is considered only where continued display creates a serious legal, privacy, safety, or public-health risk. Bibliographic information and an explanatory notice should remain whenever legally possible.
• Correction, retraction, and other notices should be freely accessible, identify the affected article, explain the reason without defamatory or unsupported statements, and be linked to and from the article. The original scholarly record should not be silently replaced.

Post-publication discussion is welcomed when it is evidence-based, respectful, and relevant. The journal may publish letters, commentaries, corrections, or editorial notices and may refer suspected research misconduct to the appropriate institution or authority.

18. Self-Archiving and Repository Deposit

CCSE follows a green archiving policy and imposes no embargo or publisher restriction on author self-archiving. Authors may archive and share the submitted manuscript (preprint), the accepted manuscript (post-print), and the publisher's version or PDF in institutional, subject, funder, or personal repositories. Repository records should include the published citation, DOI, licence, and a link to the version of record, where available.

• Authors should not present an earlier manuscript as the final published version. Repository records should identify the version and link to the version of record.
• Third-party material not covered by the article’s licence may need to be removed or separately licensed before repository deposit.
• Authors remain responsible for funder and institutional open-access compliance. Journal policy records may also be made available through Jisc Open Policy Finder or similar services.

19. Digital Preservation and Continuity

CCSE maintains online journal archives and supports long-term preservation through external preservation or library systems identified on the relevant journal website. Participating journals may use services such as LOCKSS, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and other recognized preservation arrangements. The specific preservation coverage of each journal should be stated accurately and kept current.

• Preserved content should include published articles and, where supported, associated metadata, supplementary files, and post-publication notices.
• CCSE will use reasonable efforts to maintain access, persistent identifiers, and accurate links if a journal changes platform, title, ownership, or publication status.
• A journal that ceases publication should retain or transfer its archive and provide a clear notice explaining the status of the journal and continued access arrangements.

20. DOI, Metadata, and Version of Record

CCSE registers DOIs for eligible published content and maintains bibliographic metadata with the relevant registration service. The journal-hosted final published article is the version of record unless the article states otherwise.

• Authors must provide accurate names, affiliations, funding information, references, ORCID iDs where requested, and other metadata needed for publication and indexing.
• Corrections, retractions, updates, and related notices should be reflected in the article record and DOI metadata where technically supported.
• Indexing and database inclusion are controlled by independent services. CCSE may submit content and metadata to indexing, abstracting, library, discovery, and preservation services, but it does not guarantee acceptance, continued coverage, ranking, or citation outcomes.

21. Advertising

CCSE does not publish commercial advertisements for revenue. The publisher or a journal may publish valuable non-commercial academic information, announcements, or calls free of charge when they are relevant to the scholarly community.

If paid advertising is introduced, it must be clearly labelled, visually and operationally separate from editorial content, selected independently of manuscript decisions, and governed by a published policy describing acceptable advertisements and decision responsibility. Advertising must not be presented as editorial endorsement and must not be targeted using confidential manuscript or peer-review information.

22. Direct Marketing and Solicitation

Direct marketing, calls for papers, reviewer invitations, and manuscript solicitations conducted on behalf of CCSE or a journal must be truthful, relevant, appropriately targeted, and unobtrusive. Communications must accurately identify the journal and publisher and must not make misleading claims about indexing, metrics, acceptance, review speed, editorial-board membership, fees, or guaranteed publication.

• Recipients should have a reasonable method to stop non-essential promotional communications.
• Purchased, harvested, or unlawfully obtained contact lists must not be used.
• Editorial communications necessary to process a submission, review, correction, or account are not promotional marketing, but they should remain proportionate and professional.

23. Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other stakeholders may submit a complaint or appeal concerning editorial process, policy application, staff conduct, publication ethics, fees, or a published article. The complaint should identify the journal, manuscript or article, relevant dates, the decision or conduct being challenged, supporting evidence, and the requested remedy.

• An appeal against an editorial decision must present a specific procedural or scholarly basis; disagreement with reviewer opinion alone is not sufficient.
• The matter should first be sent to the journal office. When the complaint concerns the handling editor, editorial office, or unresolved journal-level response, it may be escalated to CCSE through the publisher contact channel.
• Complaints and appeals should be handled by a person who was not materially involved in the disputed decision whenever practicable. Retaliation against a person who raises a good-faith concern is not acceptable.
• Confidentiality will be respected, but information may be shared when necessary for a fair review, legal compliance, safeguarding, or research-integrity investigation.

CCSE follows its published Ethics Statement and relevant COPE guidance when a complaint involves suspected research or publication misconduct.

24. Policy Interpretation, Updates, and Contact

These policies should be read together with the applicable journal’s Author Guide, Submission page, peer-review policy, Ethics Statement, privacy policy, and terms and conditions. Where the policies conflict, CCSE will interpret them in a manner that best preserves research integrity, legal compliance, author and participant rights, transparency, and the reliability of the scholarly record.

• CCSE may revise these policies to reflect changes in law, technology, scholarly standards, or operational practice. The webpage should display the date of the latest material update.
• Material changes affecting fees, licences, or author obligations should be communicated clearly and should not be applied retroactively in an unfair or misleading manner.
• Questions should be directed to the relevant journal office. Publisher-level questions may be sent through the CCSE Contact page or to info@ccsenet.org.