International Journal of Coronaviruses
For Editors
Editors provide accountable scholarly oversight: they assess scope and scientific quality, select independent reviewers, manage integrity concerns and make reasoned recommendations without commercial influence.
Vetted appointment
Editorial responsibility is not an honorary or open-registration role. Appointment requires verified identity, current affiliation, ORCID where available, relevant expertise, conflict disclosure and acceptance of these responsibilities.
Defined responsibility
Roles and decision authority
Manuscript handling
From initial assessment to decision
Declare availability and conflicts
Accept an assignment only when the subject, method and time requirements can be handled competently. Disclose relationships with authors, institutions, funders or the work.
Assess scope and completeness
Confirm the coronavirus question is central and check required ethics, consent, trial, data, funding, conflict, AI and biosafety information.
Evaluate review need
Decline clearly out-of-scope or fundamentally unsuitable work with a specific reason; otherwise identify independent reviewers for the scientific and methodological questions.
Interpret reports
Check whether recommendations are supported, constructive and within reviewer expertise. Resolve material disagreement through editorial judgment or additional review.
Communicate the decision
State the decision category, the principal scientific reasons and the changes required. Do not pass abusive, discriminatory or irrelevant comments to authors.
Maintain the record
Document recusal, reviewer selection, material correspondence, integrity escalations and the basis of the decision in the editorial system.
Independent expertise
Selecting and managing reviewers
- Match reviewers to the coronavirus subject and the study design or analytical method.
- Seek reports from at least two qualified independent reviewers before an acceptance decision, unless a documented editorial reason requires a different course.
- Verify identity, affiliation and a relevant publication or professional record.
- Avoid recent collaborators, close competitors, mentors, trainees, same-institution conflicts and other relationships that could impair impartiality.
- Do not rely only on author-suggested reviewers; independently verify every identity and email domain.
- Protect reviewer confidentiality under the single-blind model. When double-blind review is requested, check that the review manuscript, file metadata and supplementary material do not identify the authors before sending files to reviewers.
- Replace a reviewer who lacks appropriate expertise, breaches confidentiality, uses discriminatory reasoning or cannot complete the assignment.
Coronavirus-specific safeguards
Ethics, biosafety and research integrity
Clinical and participant protection
Check ethics review, consent, trial registration, privacy, vulnerable populations and whether clinical conclusions remain within the evidence.
Biosafety and dual use
Escalate work involving enhanced pathogen properties, high-risk methods, containment uncertainty or material misuse potential for specialized assessment.
Data and reporting
Require appropriate access to data, code, protocols and sequence records or a legitimate restriction, plus reporting guidance suitable to the design.
Images and text
Report suspected manipulation, fabrication, plagiarism, duplicate publication, text recycling or citation coercion through the confidential integrity channel.
AI tools
Do not upload manuscripts or review material to external AI systems. Editors remain responsible for every assessment and communication.
Post-publication concerns
Escalate credible errors or misconduct reports and preserve an auditable process for corrections, expressions of concern and retractions.
Professional conduct
Conflicts, confidentiality and continued appointment
Recusal
An editor must not handle their own submission or work from a close collaborator, recent co-author, trainee, supervisor, institution or other conflicted party. An independent editor must manage the record.
Confidentiality
Unpublished manuscripts, author information, reviewer identities, reports and editorial discussion may be used only for the assigned editorial purpose.
Availability
Editors should respond promptly to assignments and communicate when leave, workload or expertise prevents responsible handling. No fixed public turnaround is promised.
Performance review
Continued appointment depends on subject engagement, decision quality, confidentiality, conflict management, timely communication and adherence to publication-ethics requirements.
Escalation
Editors should contact the editorial office before acting on suspected misconduct, legal threats, significant biosecurity risk, complaints, appeals or post-publication concerns.
Editorial service confers no publication advantage. An editor’s own manuscript is assessed independently and the role must not influence acceptance, APC treatment or review speed.
Editorial support
Escalate a handling or integrity question
Include the manuscript identifier, the specific concern, any conflict and the action already taken. Do not send confidential manuscript material outside the authorised workflow.
Contact the editorial office