Ownership & Management Disclosure

Ownership gives the publisher responsibility for the journal's organisational continuity, infrastructure, financial sustainability, platform administration, production support, and lawful operation. Ownership does not give the publisher authority to direct the scientific outcome of an individual manuscript.

Publisher responsibilities include, where applicable:

• maintaining the journal's publishing platform and technical infrastructure;
• supporting secure and stable access to published content;
• providing administrative and production support;
• supporting copyediting, typesetting, metadata preparation, and publication workflows;
• maintaining appropriate financial and business operations;
• supporting DOI, metadata, indexing, and preservation activities where operational;
• implementing approved corrections, Expressions of Concern, retractions, and other scholarly-record notices;
• maintaining reasonable continuity and recovery arrangements; and
• supporting compliance with applicable journal policies and legitimate legal obligations.

The publisher is also responsible for ensuring that financial, commercial, advertising, sponsorship, or ownership interests do not override the journal's editorial policies or scientific standards.

Editorial authority includes responsibility for:

• determining whether a submission fits the journal's aims and scope;
• selecting or assigning qualified reviewers;
• managing peer review;
• assessing reviewer recommendations;
• requesting revisions;
• accepting or rejecting manuscripts;
• managing editorial conflicts of interest;
• addressing research and publication-integrity concerns;
• issuing scholarly-record corrections and related editorial notices; and
• applying journal policy consistently.

Editorial decisions must be based on factors such as scientific validity, methodological quality, ethical acceptability, transparency, reporting quality, originality, relevance to scope, and reliability of the work.

Decisions must not be determined by the author's institutional prestige, nationality, geographic origin, professional seniority, ability to pay, personal relationship with journal personnel, anticipated citations, sponsorship, or commercial value.

Editorial staff determine the scholarly disposition of manuscripts. Publisher and administrative staff may support submission processing, technical checks, invoicing, production, website administration, metadata operations, and related functions but must not use those functions to influence scientific decisions.

Article Processing Charges are administered only after formal acceptance under the journal's published fee policy.

Ability or willingness to pay an Article Processing Charge does not:

• guarantee external peer review;
• guarantee acceptance;
• change reviewer selection;
• purchase accelerated acceptance;
• prevent rejection after revision;
• prevent correction or retraction after publication; or
• otherwise alter the journal's scientific or ethical standards.

The editorial structure may include the Editor-in-Chief, associate or section editors, managing or administrative editorial roles, Editorial Board members, statistical or methodological advisers, and other formally appointed scholarly roles as required by the journal.

Editorial appointments should reflect genuine involvement rather than purely honorary or promotional association.

Editors and board members are subject to the same requirements concerning confidentiality, competing interests, editorial independence, authorship integrity, and publication ethics that apply to other participants in the publication process.

A material competing interest may arise where a manuscript or integrity matter involves:

• the Editor-in-Chief;
• another serving editor;
• an Editorial Board member;
• a publisher representative;
• an owner or director of the publishing organisation;
• a close collaborator;
• a close personal or professional relationship; or
• another circumstance capable of reasonably affecting impartiality.

In such cases, the conflicted person must be excluded from controlling reviewer selection, editorial deliberation, final decision-making, complaints handling, or integrity adjudication as appropriate.

Responsibility should be transferred to another suitably qualified and sufficiently independent editor or decision-maker.

A submission authored or co-authored by a person involved in JPMHR's editorial or publishing operations must be assigned to an independent handling editor who has no material competing interest.

The author-editor or other conflicted individual must not:

• select reviewers;
• access confidential reviewer identities where these are protected;
• participate in editorial deliberation;
• determine the decision;
• influence the handling editor; or
• receive preferential processing or publication treatment.

Where necessary, additional independent oversight may be used to protect confidence in the process.

Revenue requirements must not compromise editorial independence.

Where advertising, sponsorship, institutional support, grants, donations, partnerships, or other financial arrangements exist, they must not determine manuscript acceptance, reviewer selection, peer review outcomes, corrections, or retractions.

Sponsored or advertising material, where accepted, must remain distinguishable from independent scholarly and editorial content.

Where editors determine that a correction, Expression of Concern, retraction, or other post-publication notice is required, the publisher will support implementation of the action.

A required scholarly-record action must not be withheld because it could reduce journal metrics, affect reputation, create financial inconvenience, concern a prominent author, or involve a person connected with journal ownership or governance.

Material changes to published scholarly content should be documented transparently and implemented through appropriate editorial notices rather than silent alteration.

A planned service, submitted application, configured plugin, pending evaluation, or intended relationship must not be represented as a confirmed operational status.

In particular, claims concerning:

• indexing;
• abstracting;
• accreditation;
• preservation services;
• professional memberships;
• journal metrics;
• external endorsements; or
• technical integrations

should accurately reflect their current and verifiable status.

Use of external standards or publicly available guidance does not imply membership, endorsement, certification, or accreditation unless such a relationship is independently established.

A complaint involving a person in editorial or publisher leadership should be assigned to a sufficiently independent person who was not responsible for the conduct or decision being challenged.

Where a concern cannot reasonably be resolved internally because it directly involves the highest relevant journal authority, independent external advice or another appropriate escalation pathway may be used.