Publishing Policies
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026 · Reviewed at least once a year
These policies apply to every journal published by NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED and to everyone who takes part in our publishing process: authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, guest editors, and publishing staff. They set the minimum standards that all of our journals follow. A journal-level policy supplements these publisher-level policies and may never fall below the standards set here.
Our journals are guided by the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics, the ICMJE Recommendations, the WMA Declaration of Helsinki, and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.
General enquiries and questions about publishing policies：office@the-newpress.com
Publication ethics and research integrity, including concerns about published articles：ethics@the-newpress.com
Appeals against editorial decisions and complaints：complaints@the-newpress.com
Postal address：NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED, Unit 532B, 5/F, Star House, No. 3 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China
Publisher Information and Governance
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
Who we are, how the publisher is owned and managed, how to reach us, and the legal basis on which we operate.
Overview
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED ("NEW HORIZON PRESS", "the publisher", "we") is an open access scholarly publisher committed to responsible, transparent, inclusive, and ethical publishing. Our mission is to make rigorously reviewed research freely available to readers everywhere while protecting the integrity of the scholarly record and the independence of the editors who curate it.
These Publishing Policies apply to every journal published by NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED and to everyone who takes part in our publishing process, including authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, guest editors, and publishing staff. They set out the minimum standards that all of our journals follow. Their purpose is to protect the integrity of the scholarly record, to support editorial independence, to guide those who submit to, review for, and edit our journals, and to promote fair and rigorous publication practices.
Where applicable, our journals are guided by internationally recognized principles of publication ethics and research integrity, including the Core Practices and guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki, and relevant discipline-specific standards.
Individual journals may maintain additional policies or procedural details, including article processing charges, peer review models, article types, publication frequency, and editorial contacts. A journal-level policy supplements these publisher-level policies and may never fall below the standards set here. Authors should consult the relevant journal website before submission.
These policies are organized into thirteen sections: Publisher Information and Governance; Editorial Governance; Peer Review Policy; Authorship and Contributor Responsibilities; Competing Interests, Funding and Commercial Influence; Research Ethics and Integrity; Data, Materials and Research Transparency; Originality, Citation Ethics and AI Use; Post-Publication Policies; Copyright, Licensing and Open Access; Fees and Waivers; Digital Preservation, Archiving and Metadata; and Accessibility, Diversity and Community Standards. The policies are reviewed at least once a year. Each policy page carries a version number and a "Last updated" date so that readers can see when it was last revised.
Ownership, Management and Publisher Information
All journals on this website are owned and published by NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED, a company incorporated and registered in Hong Kong SAR, China. The registered office of the company is at Unit 532B, 5/F, Star House, No. 3 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED is an independent, privately held company wholly owned by its founding shareholders. The publisher is not owned by, controlled by, or operated on behalf of any learned society, university, government body, or commercial sponsor unless this is expressly stated on the relevant journal page.
The publisher's business operations, production, platform hosting, and compliance with these policies are managed by the publishing office of NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED, which can be contacted at office@the-newpress.com. Editorial decisions on every journal are made independently by that journal's editors and editorial board, as described in Editorial Independence, and management of the publisher does not take part in them.
The name of the publisher, its address, and a link to this website appear on every journal homepage and in the metadata of every article we publish. Any change in the ownership or management of the publisher, or in the ownership of an individual journal, is announced on this website and on the affected journal's homepage within thirty days of taking effect, and the journal's editors and editorial board are informed before the change is made public.
Journal Website and Information Accuracy
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED takes care that all information published on this website and on each journal website is accurate, current, complete, and not misleading. Journal titles are presented exactly as registered with the ISSN International Centre (portal.issn.org), without unregistered abbreviations, descriptive subtitles, or other additions. Every journal displays at least one registered and confirmed ISSN. We never state or imply that a journal is indexed, abstracted, listed, or ranked by a service in which it is not in fact included, and we display no metrics other than those permitted under Journal Metrics and Rankings.
Every journal website provides, at a minimum, the following information, each on a stable page: the journal's aims and scope; the article types accepted and which of these are not sent for external peer review; the names and institutional affiliations of all editorial board members; the name and dedicated email address of the editorial office contact; instructions for authors; a description of the peer review process; the open access statement, licensing terms, and copyright terms; every charge an author may be asked to pay, including a statement of any charges not levied, together with the waiver policy; the plagiarism screening policy; the digital preservation arrangements; the publication schedule; and the name, address, and website of the publisher. Every published article has its own permanent URL, a registered DOI, full text in at least one format (HTML or PDF), a visible license statement, and the dates on which it was received, accepted, and published.
The publisher takes reasonable technical and organizational measures to keep the website continuously available, secure, and readable. Policy pages are published as ordinary web pages whose text can be read with JavaScript disabled, and each policy page shows a version number and a "Last updated" date. Readers who find a broken link, outdated information, or an error of fact on the website are asked to write to office@the-newpress.com; reported problems are corrected promptly and, where the error affected published content, handled under Post-Publication Policies.
Our commitment to making the website and its content usable by people with disabilities is set out in the Accessibility Statement.
Contact Information
Questions about these publishing policies, publication ethics, corrections, retractions, appeals, complaints, and any other policy matter may be directed to NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED using the contacts below.
General enquiries and questions about publishing policies: office@the-newpress.com. Publication ethics and research integrity concerns, including suspected misconduct, requests for corrections or retractions, and concerns about published articles: ethics@the-newpress.com. Appeals against editorial decisions and complaints about editorial, reviewer, or staff conduct, delays, or published content: complaints@the-newpress.com. Postal address: NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED, Unit 532B, 5/F, Star House, No. 3 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, China.
For matters concerning a specific journal, including submissions, the status of a manuscript, or production queries, authors and readers should contact the editorial office of that journal. Every journal website names the editorial office contact person and gives a dedicated journal email address; a web form alone is never the only means of contact.
We acknowledge all messages to the addresses above within three working days. Ethics concerns are handled under Research Misconduct and Investigations and under Post-publication Discussions and Reader Concerns; appeals and complaints are handled under Appeals and Complaints. Correspondence is treated confidentially, and the identity of a person raising a concern in good faith is not disclosed without that person's consent except where disclosure is required by law.
Jurisdictional Neutrality
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps, institutional affiliations, and geographical designations. The use of a particular country, territory, region, city, or institutional name in a published article, in author affiliations, in metadata, or elsewhere on this website reflects the usage of the authors or of the source cited and does not imply any position by the publisher or its journals regarding legal status, sovereignty, borders, or jurisdiction.
Maps and geographical figures are published as supplied by the authors. The publisher does not alter borders or place names for political reasons, and the presence of a map in a published article does not constitute an endorsement of the boundaries it shows. Authors are responsible for ensuring that maps and geographical designations in their work are accurate and appropriately sourced.
Legal Compliance
Authors, reviewers, editors, and users of published content are responsible for complying with all laws, regulations, institutional requirements, sanctions, export control rules, data protection requirements, and ethical obligations that apply to their work and to their use of published content. Submitting a manuscript to a NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED journal, reviewing for it, or reusing its content does not relieve any person of these responsibilities.
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED conducts its business in accordance with the laws of its place of registration and with the laws applicable to the services it provides, including those governing data protection, consumer protection, intellectual property, and electronic commerce. Where a legal requirement conflicts with a provision of these policies, the legal requirement prevails and the policies are revised accordingly.
This section is the only place in these policies where general legal compliance is addressed. Specific legal matters are dealt with where they arise: research ethics and permits in Research Ethics and Integrity, privacy and consent in Informed Consent and Privacy, copyright and licensing in Copyright, Licensing and Open Access, and article removal for legal reasons in Article Removal.
Editorial Governance
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
How editorial authority is held and exercised, who sits on our editorial boards, and how special issues are run.
Editorial Independence
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED is committed to editorial independence. Editorial decisions are made by journal editors and editorial boards on the basis of scholarly merit, relevance to the journal's aims and scope, originality, methodological soundness, ethical compliance, clarity of presentation, and contribution to the field.
Editorial decisions must not be influenced by commercial interests, advertising, sponsorship, political considerations, institutional affiliations, personal relationships, or the payment or non-payment of article processing charges. The publisher does not interfere with editorial decisions. Acceptance for publication is never guaranteed and is never dependent on an author's ability to pay publication fees. Where article processing charges apply, payment is requested only after editorial acceptance unless the journal clearly states otherwise; the relationship between payment and editorial decisions is set out in full in Payment Timing and Editorial Independence.
The Editor-in-Chief of each journal has full authority over the editorial content of that journal, including special issues, collections, and commissioned content, and is accountable for it. The publisher's role is limited to providing the resources, systems, and policies within which the editors work, to ensuring that these policies are followed, and to supporting the editors in handling ethical matters. The publisher may not require an editor to accept, reject, delay, or alter a manuscript for any reason other than a breach of these policies or of the law. Editors are free to publish critical or dissenting views, including views critical of the publisher, its journals, or its commercial partners.
Editors are appointed by the publisher in consultation with the editorial board for a defined term, and their responsibilities and authority are set out in a written agreement. An editor may not be removed from office for reasons connected with editorial decisions made in good faith under these policies. Where an editor and the publisher disagree about the application of these policies, the matter is resolved in writing with reference to the policies themselves and to COPE guidance.
Editors are expected to handle manuscripts fairly, confidentially, and without discrimination based on age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, culture, political belief, institutional affiliation, socioeconomic background, or career stage.
Editor Responsibilities
Editors are responsible for maintaining the quality, integrity, and editorial standards of the journal. They evaluate submissions fairly, confidentially, and without discrimination, and they are accountable for everything the journal publishes.
On receiving a submission, the editor first assesses whether the manuscript fits the journal's aims and scope, whether it is complete, and whether it raises any immediate concern about originality, ethics, or authorship. Manuscripts that pass this initial assessment are sent for peer review where the article type requires it, as described in Peer Review Process and Transparency. The editor selects reviewers who are qualified in the subject matter and independent of the authors, and ensures that at least the minimum number of independent reviews required by the journal is obtained before a decision is made.
Editors manage competing interests, including their own. An editor who has a competing interest in relation to a manuscript, for example a recent collaboration with an author, membership of the same department, a financial interest, or a personal relationship, recuses himself or herself and passes the manuscript to another qualified editor. An editor who submits a manuscript to his or her own journal is subject to the procedure in Editorial Decision-Making and Editor-Authored Submissions.
Editors make editorial decisions on the basis of scholarly merit, reviewer feedback, ethical compliance, and journal standards, and communicate those decisions to authors with the reasons and the reviewer comments on which they rest. They protect the confidentiality of manuscripts, reviewer reports, and editorial correspondence, and they respond appropriately to concerns about research integrity or publication ethics, whether raised before or after publication, following the procedure in Research Misconduct and Investigations and the actions set out in Post-Publication Policies.
Editors must not use confidential information obtained through the editorial process for personal advantage, must not disclose the content of an unpublished manuscript to anyone other than the reviewers and editors handling it, and must not request citations to the journal or to their own work for the purpose of influencing citation counts.
Editorial Board and Advisory Body
Every journal published by NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED has an Editor-in-Chief and an editorial board. Some journals also have an advisory board or an international advisory body whose members offer strategic guidance on the journal's development but do not handle manuscripts. The complete membership of the editorial board and of any advisory body, giving each member's full name, institutional affiliation, and country or region, is published on the journal website and kept current. Where a journal publicly lists the reviewers who have contributed to it, their institutional affiliations are listed as well.
An editorial board consists of at least five members. Its membership is drawn from more than one institution and is expected to reflect the disciplinary breadth of the journal's aims and scope and the geographic distribution of its authors and readers. Board members are recognized researchers or practitioners in the fields the journal covers, and the publisher verifies each prospective member's identity, affiliation, and publication record before appointment.
No person is listed as a member of an editorial board or advisory body without having given written consent to serve. Members are appointed for a defined term, normally of two or three years, which may be renewed. The board list is reviewed at least once a year, members who have stepped down or whose term has ended are removed from the website within thirty days, and new members are added when their appointment takes effect. The publisher will confirm on request whether a named person is a current member of a journal's editorial board.
Editorial board members are expected to act as handling editors or reviewers when asked, to advise the Editor-in-Chief on the journal's scope and policies, to help identify suitable reviewers and guest editors, and to promote the journal within their communities. They declare competing interests under Competing Interests, protect the confidentiality of the editorial process, and are subject to Editorial Decision-Making and Editor-Authored Submissions when they submit their own work to the journal. Editorial board members are appointed and removed on scholarly grounds only, and never for commercial reasons or as a reward for submitting or paying for articles.
Special Issues and Guest Editors
Special issues, collections, and themed article groups follow the same editorial standards, peer review requirements, and ethical policies as regular submissions. The Editor-in-Chief of the journal is responsible for all content published in the journal, including every article published in a special issue, and retains oversight of the editorial process from the approval of the proposal to the publication of the last article.
A proposal for a special issue is submitted in writing to the Editor-in-Chief and the publisher. It sets out the topic and its relevance to the journal's scope, the proposed guest editors, the planned call for papers, and the expected number of articles. Before approving a proposal, the journal verifies each proposed guest editor's identity, institutional affiliation, expertise, and publication record, confirms that the guest editor is not subject to any current integrity sanction, and obtains written declarations of competing interests. Guest editors must act independently, declare competing interests, maintain confidentiality, and ensure that manuscripts are evaluated fairly and rigorously.
Every manuscript submitted to a special issue receives the same peer review as a regular submission: it is assessed by at least two independent external reviewers, and the decision to accept or reject is made by the Editor-in-Chief or a designated member of the regular editorial team, who may act on the recommendation of the guest editors but is not bound by it. Guest editors recommend reviewers and coordinate the review process but do not make final decisions alone.
Guest editors may not handle, review, or take any editorial decision on manuscripts of which they are an author or co-author, or in which they have a competing interest. A manuscript authored by a guest editor is handled entirely by the Editor-in-Chief or a designated regular editor, using reviewers not chosen by the guest editor, and the article states that it was handled independently of the guest editors. Articles authored or co-authored by the guest editors of a special issue may not exceed twenty-five percent of the articles published in that special issue.
Every special issue is clearly identified as such on the journal website, in the table of contents, and on the landing page of each article in the issue, together with the names and affiliations of its guest editors. Guest editors receive no payment from authors, may not charge or solicit fees of any kind, and may not solicit submissions from commercial manuscript brokers or paper mills. The publisher monitors the progress and peer review of every special issue. The publisher or the journal may cancel, suspend, or modify a special issue at any stage if concerns arise regarding editorial quality, peer review integrity, competing interests, or publication ethics, and articles already accepted in a cancelled special issue are re-evaluated by the regular editorial team before any further action.
Peer Review Policy
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
What peer review means at our journals, how it is carried out, and who takes the final decision.
Peer Review Standards
Research articles and most other article types published in NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED journals undergo peer review. The peer review model, the number of reviewers, the review workflow, and the expected timelines may vary by journal and article type and are stated on the relevant journal website, in accordance with Peer Review Process and Transparency.
Peer review is intended to assist editors in making informed decisions and to help authors improve the quality, clarity, reliability, and scholarly value of their work. Peer review does not replace editorial judgment. Editors are responsible for making final editorial decisions on the basis of the manuscript, the reviewer comments, the journal's scope, ethical compliance, and editorial standards.
Editors select reviewers with appropriate expertise and without known competing interests. A reviewer is expected to be independent of the authors: not affiliated with the same institution, not a co-author or collaborator on work published in the previous three years, not a current or recent supervisor or student of any author, and not in any relationship that could reasonably be seen to compromise an objective assessment. Where an editor has a competing interest in relation to a manuscript, another qualified editor is assigned to handle it.
Reviews are expected to be objective, specific, constructive, and based on the scholarly content of the manuscript. Reports that consist of a bare recommendation without reasons, that address the authors rather than the work, or that request unjustified citations are not accepted, and the editor seeks a further review. Reviewer identities and reports are treated as confidential in accordance with the journal's review model, and reviewers receive no payment for their work.
Peer Review Process and Transparency
Each journal describes its peer review process on its own Peer Review Process page. The description states the review model, the minimum number of independent reviewers, who makes the final decision, which article types are not sent for external review, how special issues are reviewed, and the journal's average time to first decision and average time from acceptance to publication. The publisher-level process below applies to every journal unless the journal page states a stricter standard.
Every submission first receives an initial editorial assessment, normally completed within seven working days of submission. At this stage the editor checks that the manuscript falls within the journal's aims and scope, that it is complete and prepared according to the instructions for authors, that it has passed similarity screening under Plagiarism, Originality and Duplicate Submission, that required ethics, consent, funding, competing interest, and data availability statements are present, and that authorship appears to be in order. Manuscripts that do not meet these requirements are returned to the authors or rejected without external review, and the reason is stated.
Manuscripts that pass initial assessment are sent for external peer review. NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED journals use single-anonymized peer review, in which the identities of the reviewers are concealed from the authors, while the reviewers know the identities of the authors. Each manuscript must be assessed by at least two independent external reviewers selected by the handling editor. Reviewers suggested by the authors may be used only after the editor has independently verified their identity, affiliation, and institutional email address, and never as the sole reviewers of a manuscript. Reviewers are asked to return their reports within a stated period, normally three to four weeks.
On receiving the reports, the handling editor makes a decision to accept, to request minor or major revision, or to reject, and sends the decision to the corresponding author together with the reviewer comments. Revised manuscripts are assessed by the handling editor and, where the revisions are substantial or where a reviewer has asked to see the revised version, returned to the original reviewers. Final acceptance is confirmed by the Editor-in-Chief or the handling editor designated by the Editor-in-Chief. The final decision is always made by an editor of the journal; it is never made by the publisher, by a guest editor acting alone, or by a reviewer.
Research articles, review articles, short communications, case reports, methods papers, and all other article types that present original research or scholarship are always externally reviewed. Editorials written by the journal's editors, commissioned commentaries, letters to the editor, book reviews, obituaries, news items, correction notices, and retraction notices are assessed by the editors but are not normally sent for external review; each journal lists on its website exactly which of its article types fall into this category. Manuscripts submitted to special issues are reviewed under the same process, with the additional safeguards set out in Special Issues and Guest Editors.
The journal reports on its website its average time from submission to first decision and from acceptance to online publication, calculated from actual data for the preceding twelve months and updated at least annually. The current figures for both journals are: average time to first decision, six weeks; average time from acceptance to publication, three weeks. Reviewer reports and editorial correspondence are confidential and are not shared outside the editorial process, and reviewers may not be identified to authors without their express consent. The names of reviewers who agree to be acknowledged may be published in an annual list of reviewers with their affiliations.
Supplementary material submitted with a manuscript is made available to reviewers and is assessed as part of the review of the manuscript. Reviewer reports are not published and the journals do not operate open peer review; where a journal adopts a different practice, this is stated on that journal's Peer Review Process page.
Reviewer Responsibilities
Reviewers are expected to provide objective, constructive, timely, and confidential assessments. They evaluate manuscripts on the basis of scholarly merit, originality, methodology, clarity, ethical soundness, and relevance to the journal, and they explain their recommendation so that the editor and the authors can understand the reasons for it.
A reviewer who is invited to assess a manuscript should first consider whether he or she has the expertise and the time to do so and whether any competing interest exists. Reviewers must disclose any competing interest and decline the review if they cannot provide an impartial assessment. A reviewer who accepts an invitation and later finds that a competing interest exists, or that the manuscript falls outside his or her competence, informs the editor immediately. Reviewers who cannot meet the agreed deadline tell the editor as soon as possible so that another reviewer can be found.
Reviewers maintain the confidentiality of the manuscript and of the review process. They do not share the manuscript with others, do not discuss it with colleagues or students unless the editor has agreed in advance and the colleague is named in the report, do not contact the authors directly, and do not use unpublished information from the manuscript for personal advantage, including to advance their own research or to delay a competing publication. Reviewers must not upload manuscripts, review reports, or confidential editorial materials to public or unsecured artificial intelligence tools, and must not use generative artificial intelligence to write their review, as set out in Use of Artificial Intelligence.
In their reports, reviewers identify relevant published work that has not been cited where appropriate, and they alert the editor to suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data concerns, image manipulation, ethical issues, citation manipulation, or other potential misconduct. Reviewers avoid requesting unnecessary citations, including citations to their own work, unless the citation is scientifically justified and the justification is stated in the report. Reviewers are courteous in their language and address the work rather than the authors.
Editorial Decision-Making and Editor-Authored Submissions
The decision to accept or reject a manuscript rests with the editors of the journal. Decisions are based on the manuscript, the reviewer reports, the journal's aims and scope, ethical compliance, and the journal's editorial standards, and they are communicated to the corresponding author in writing with the reasons for the decision and the reviewer comments. An editor may depart from the recommendations of the reviewers where the editor considers this justified, in which case the reasons are given to the authors. Authors who believe that a decision was reached in error may appeal under Appeals and Complaints.
Editors, editorial board members, guest editors, and employees of the publisher may submit manuscripts to the journals with which they are associated, but such manuscripts receive no preferential treatment and are handled under a procedure that removes the author from every stage of the editorial process. The submitting editor or board member has no access to the manuscript's editorial file, does not take part in the selection of reviewers, does not see the reviewer identities or reports until the decision has been communicated, and is not present when the manuscript is discussed. The manuscript is assigned to an editor who has no competing interest with the author; where the author is the Editor-in-Chief, the manuscript is assigned to a deputy editor or a senior editorial board member designated in advance for this purpose. Reviewers are chosen by the handling editor alone. The published article states that it was handled by an independent editor and identifies that editor's role.
Articles authored or co-authored by the journal's editors, editorial board members, reviewers of the journal, or the publisher's staff may not exceed twenty-five percent of the research articles published in any single issue and in each of the two most recent issues. For journals that publish continuously, the same limit applies to the research articles published in the preceding calendar year, in which the journal must publish at least five research articles. The publisher monitors this proportion for every journal at the close of each issue or calendar year and reports it to the Editor-in-Chief; where the limit would be exceeded, publication of the article is deferred. This limit exists to ensure that the journal serves its wider community rather than its own editors.
Where a manuscript is handled by an editor who has a competing interest that comes to light only after a decision has been made, the decision is reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief or a designated independent editor, and the authors are informed of the outcome of that review.
Authorship and Contributor Responsibilities
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
Who qualifies as an author, what the corresponding author is responsible for, and how the author list may change.
Inclusive Author Name Changes
Authors who change their names after publication may request that their name be updated in published articles and in the associated metadata. Such requests may arise for reasons including gender identity, marriage, divorce, religion, or personal safety, and authors are not required to state the reason for the request.
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED handles name change requests respectfully, promptly, and confidentially. On receiving a request, the publisher updates the author's name on the article landing page, in the HTML full text, in the PDF, and in the metadata deposited with Crossref and other indexing services, and asks those services to update their records. Where appropriate, updates are made silently, that is, without publishing a correction notice and without notifying co-authors, unless the author requests otherwise or a legal or technical requirement makes notification necessary. Where a correction notice is published at the author's request, it does not state the reason for the change.
Authors should send name change requests to the relevant journal editorial office or to the publisher at office@the-newpress.com, giving the DOI of each affected article, the name as currently published, and the name to be used. Identification documents are not normally required.
Competing Interests, Funding and Commercial Influence
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
What must be declared, how the publisher is funded, and how commercial activity is kept apart from editorial decisions.
Competing Interests
A competing interest exists when a person's judgment about a manuscript, or about the peer review or editorial process, could be perceived to be influenced by a financial or non-financial interest that is not the pursuit of scholarly truth. Authors, reviewers, editors, editorial board members, and guest editors must disclose any financial or non-financial interest that could be perceived to influence the submitted work, the peer review process, or editorial decision-making.
Competing interests may include, but are not limited to: research funding, grants, sponsorship, or equipment support; employment, consultancy, advisory roles, board membership, or paid expert testimony; stock ownership, patents, patent applications, licensing arrangements, or royalties; personal relationships, academic competition, mentoring relationships, or institutional affiliations; and strongly held personal, professional, political, or intellectual positions relevant to the work.
Authors declare competing interests at submission and in a Competing Interests section of the manuscript, which is published with the article. The declaration covers the preceding thirty-six months and any interest that is expected to arise from the work. If there are no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests, authors state: "The authors declare that they have no relevant financial or non-financial competing interests." A competing interest is not in itself a reason for rejection; failure to disclose one is treated as a breach of publication ethics and may lead to rejection, a correction, or a retraction under Post-Publication Policies.
Reviewers declare competing interests when invited and decline the review where an interest could compromise impartiality, as set out in Reviewer Responsibilities. Editors and editorial board members declare their interests to the publisher on appointment and annually thereafter, and recuse themselves from any manuscript in which they have an interest, as set out in Editor Responsibilities and Editorial Decision-Making and Editor-Authored Submissions. Guest editors provide written declarations before a special issue is approved, as set out in Special Issues and Guest Editors. Editors' and board members' declared interests are held by the publisher and are available on request where relevant to a specific concern.
Funding Disclosure
Authors must disclose all sources of funding for the research and for the preparation of the manuscript, and must describe the role of the funders in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or the decision to publish, where applicable. Where a funder had no such role, the statement says so. Where a third party, such as a company, a foundation, or an institution other than the authors' own, has paid or will pay the article processing charge, this is stated as well.
The funding statement gives the full official name of each funding organization, as recorded in the Crossref Open Funder Registry where the funder is listed, together with the grant, award, or project number for each award. Abbreviations alone are not sufficient. A typical statement reads: "This work was supported by the [full name of funder] under Grant [number] and by the [full name of funder] under Grant [number]. The funders had no role in the design of the study, the collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, the writing of the manuscript, or the decision to submit it for publication." Where the work received no specific funding, authors state: "This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors."
Funding information is published with the article and is deposited as structured funding metadata with Crossref, including the funder name, the funder identifier, and the award number, so that it can be retrieved by funders, institutions, and indexing services. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of this information and should check it at proof stage.
Advertising, Sponsorship and Commercial Influence
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED maintains a clear separation between editorial decision-making and commercial activities. Advertising, sponsorship, partnerships, article processing charges, and other commercial arrangements must not influence editorial decisions, peer review, article acceptance, or published content. Sponsors and advertisers have no access to the editorial process and no influence over what is published.
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED carries no paid advertising on its journal websites, in its articles, or in its email communications at present, and receives no advertising income. Where advertising is accepted, it is limited to the categories set out here: display advertising, such as banners and side panels, on journal and article-listing pages; recruitment and classified advertising for academic and research posts; announcements of conferences, calls for papers, and academic events; advertising for books, journals, and other scholarly publications; advertising for research tools, instruments, software, laboratory products, and academic services; and advertising in table-of-contents email alerts. Advertising for tobacco, alcohol, weapons, prescription medicines directed at patients, and products that make unsubstantiated health claims is not accepted, and no advertising is accepted from any party that seeks to influence editorial content. Decisions to accept or reject an advertisement are made by the publisher’s management and never by journal editors. Every advertisement is clearly labelled "Advertisement", is visually separated from editorial content, and is never placed within the full text of an article or juxtaposed with an article in a way that suggests a connection between the two. Advertisers are not informed of the content of forthcoming articles.
The publisher does not permit intrusive advertising of any kind. There are no pop-up, pop-under, interstitial, auto-playing, or full-screen advertisements on any page, no advertisements in the HTML or PDF full text of articles, and no advertising that collects readers' personal data without consent.
Any sponsored content, sponsored special issue, or commercially supported activity is clearly identified as such, with the name of the sponsor, and remains subject to the same peer review and editorial standards as all other content. Editorial content remains independent and transparent.
Any direct marketing undertaken by or on behalf of a NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED journal, including calls for papers and invitations to submit, is targeted at researchers working in the journal's subject area, is sent at a restrained frequency, and carries a working unsubscribe link. Marketing communications state the journal name, the publisher name, and the reason the recipient was contacted. We do not send untargeted bulk invitations, do not use purchased mailing lists, and never guarantee acceptance, a review outcome, or a publication timeline in a marketing communication.
Revenue Sources
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED discloses the sources of income that support its publishing activities so that readers, authors, and evaluators can judge for themselves whether any source could affect editorial independence.
The publishing activities of NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED are funded by the shareholders' own capital, by institutional sponsorship of individual journals, and, where a journal levies them, by article processing charges paid after editorial acceptance by authors, by their institutions, or by their funders, as described in Fees and Waivers. All of our journals are fully open access and the publisher receives no subscription income. The publisher receives no advertising income, as described in Advertising, Sponsorship and Commercial Influence, no income from the sale of reprints, and no income from special issues beyond any article processing charge that applies to every article of the journal regardless of where it is published.
None of these sources of income influences editorial decisions. Editors do not know whether an article processing charge has been or will be paid, or whether a waiver has been granted, when they make their decisions, as described in Payment Timing and Editorial Independence, and no journal is required to publish a minimum number of articles for financial reasons. Where our sources of income change, this policy is updated within thirty days.
Journal Metrics and Rankings
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED displays journal-level metrics only when they are calculated and published by a widely adopted, independent source. The sources we recognize are the Journal Citation Reports published by Clarivate, which provide the Journal Impact Factor and the Journal Citation Indicator; the Scopus database, which provides CiteScore, SCImago Journal Rank and Source Normalized Impact per Paper; official national accreditation lists; the Eigenfactor; the Google Scholar h5-index; and article-level metrics such as Altmetric and Crossref Event Data. A journal displays such a metric only if it is in fact covered by the corresponding source, and every metric is shown with its name, the year to which it refers, the name of its source, and a link to that source's record for the journal.
Metrics, impact factors, indices, ratings, or rankings produced by any other organization are not displayed anywhere on the publisher's or the journals' websites, in email communications, or in promotional material, in any form, including images, links and logos, and regardless of how they are named. This includes, without limitation, any product described as a global impact factor, universal impact factor, journal index, journal quality factor, or similar measure that is not one of those named above.
We take care that our journals are not listed in unreliable indexes, and we request removal where we become aware of such a listing. Badges and logos of indexing and abstracting services are displayed only for services that in fact include the journal, and only with a link to that service's record of the journal. No journal is described as indexed or listed in a service whose evaluation is pending, and inclusion is described accurately, distinguishing full indexing from discovery, listing, or archiving. Where a journal loses coverage in a source, the corresponding metric or badge is removed from the website within thirty days.
Journals may state their acceptance rate, their average time to first decision, and their average time from acceptance to publication, provided that these figures are calculated from actual data for a stated period and are updated at least once a year.
Research Ethics and Integrity
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
The ethical requirements that research must meet before we publish it, and how we respond when integrity is questioned.
Publishing Ethics and Research Integrity
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record. All authors, reviewers, editors, and publishing staff are expected to uphold high standards of publication ethics and research integrity, and the policies in this section set out what those standards require.
Authors must ensure that their submissions are original, accurate, ethically conducted, and not under consideration by another journal at the same time. Research findings must be presented honestly and without fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, inappropriate image manipulation, citation manipulation, selective reporting, or misleading interpretation. Authors must retain the data, materials, and records underlying their work so that the findings can be verified, and must disclose limitations of the work candidly.
If concerns about research integrity or publication ethics arise before or after publication, the journal assesses the matter in accordance with applicable publishing ethics principles, following the procedure in Research Misconduct and Investigations. The journal may request explanations, raw data, ethics approval documents, authorship confirmations, competing interest declarations, or other supporting materials. The journal may also consult editors, editorial board members, reviewers, independent experts, institutions, funders, or relevant organizations where appropriate, while protecting the confidentiality of those involved.
Corrective actions may include rejection, correction, expression of concern, retraction, article removal in exceptional circumstances, notification to institutions or funders, or other actions appropriate to the nature and severity of the issue. The post-publication actions are described in Post-Publication Policies. The publisher supports its editors in handling these matters and does not allow commercial considerations to affect them.
Research Ethics Approval
Research involving human participants, human data, human tissue, animals, plants, field studies, biodiversity resources, genetic resources, hazardous materials, environmental sampling, genetically modified organisms, sensitive locations, or other regulated materials must comply with applicable laws, institutional requirements, permits, and recognized ethical standards. Authors provide ethics approval, informed consent, trial registration, animal welfare approval, collection permits, access permits, biosafety approval, or other documentation where applicable, and describe these in the Methods section of the manuscript, giving the name of the approving body, the approval or permit number, and the date of approval.
For research involving human participants, human data, or human tissue, authors confirm that the study was approved by an appropriate ethics committee or institutional review board, or explain why approval was not required under the laws and regulations applicable where the research was carried out. The research must have been conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and with relevant national and institutional requirements. Informed consent must be obtained where required, and consent for publication is addressed in Informed Consent and Privacy. Clinical trials must have been registered in a publicly accessible registry before the enrolment of the first participant, and the registry name and registration number are stated in the abstract and the Methods.
For research involving animals, authors confirm that the study was approved by an appropriate ethics committee and conducted in accordance with applicable animal welfare standards, including the principles of replacement, reduction, and refinement. Authors describe housing, husbandry, anaesthesia, analgesia, and humane endpoints where relevant and follow the reporting guidelines in Reporting Guidelines and Community Standards.
For field studies, environmental sampling, the collection of plant, animal, or microbial specimens, the use of biological or genetic resources, work on protected species, and work in protected areas or other sensitive locations, authors confirm that appropriate permissions, permits, or approvals were obtained and name the authority that issued them. Research on genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge must comply with the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Nagoya Protocol where they apply, and voucher specimens should be deposited in an accessible collection. Work with hazardous materials, pathogens, or genetically modified organisms must have received the required biosafety approval.
The journal may request supporting documentation and may reject manuscripts where appropriate ethical safeguards or required documentation are lacking. Research that was conducted without required approval is not published, and the journal may inform the authors' institution.
Informed Consent and Privacy
Authors are responsible for protecting the privacy and confidentiality of research participants and of any other identifiable individual who appears in their work. Consent to take part in research, addressed in Research Ethics Approval, is distinct from consent to publication, addressed here; both may be required.
Where a manuscript includes identifiable personal information, images, case details, or other private data, authors must confirm that informed consent for publication has been obtained from the individual or from his or her legal representative. Information that may make an individual identifiable includes names, initials, hospital or record numbers, exact dates, precise geographical locations, photographs of the face or of distinctive features, pedigrees, and combinations of details such as a rare condition together with a place and a date. Identifying details are omitted unless they are essential for scholarly purposes and consent for publication has been obtained. Anonymization must be genuine: placing a bar across the eyes in a photograph, altering data in ways that would change the scientific meaning, or omitting the name alone is not sufficient.
Case reports, case series, and any other article that describes an individual patient or person require written consent for publication from that person, or from a parent, guardian, or legal representative where the person is a minor or unable to consent, and, where the person has died, from the next of kin where this is required by law or where the family could be affected. The manuscript states that consent for publication was obtained. Authors retain the signed consent form and provide a copy to the journal on request; the form itself is not published. Where consent cannot be obtained and the case is of exceptional scholarly value, the editor decides whether publication is possible after all identifying details have been removed, and the manuscript states that consent could not be obtained and why.
Editors and reviewers of case reports and similar articles check that the consent statement is present, that identifying details have been removed, and that images have been anonymized, and they do not ask authors to add identifying information. Reviewers and editors treat any personal information they encounter as confidential.
Personal data collected from research participants, from social media, from public records, or from other sources must be handled in accordance with the data protection laws applicable to the authors and to the participants. The journal may request copies of consent documentation where necessary, and it may decline to publish material for which consent cannot be shown.
Reporting Guidelines and Community Standards
Authors follow the reporting guidelines relevant to their study design, so that readers and reviewers can assess what was done and reproduce it. The applicable guidelines include CONSORT for randomized controlled trials, SPIRIT for trial protocols, PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, STROBE for observational studies in epidemiology, STARD for diagnostic accuracy studies, TRIPOD for prediction model studies, CARE for case reports, ARRIVE for animal research, COREQ and SRQR for qualitative research, CHEERS for economic evaluations, and MOOSE for meta-analyses of observational studies. Guidance for other study designs is available from the EQUATOR Network at equator-network.org, and journals in other disciplines identify the community standards that apply to their fields on their instructions for authors.
Where a reporting guideline applies, authors complete the corresponding checklist, submit it with the manuscript, and indicate in the checklist where each item is addressed. Editors and reviewers use the checklist in assessing the manuscript and may require the authors to supply missing information before the manuscript is considered further. Flow diagrams required by CONSORT and PRISMA are included in the manuscript.
Authors also follow the community standards of their discipline for nomenclature, units, and the deposition of data. These include the use of SI units; approved gene, protein, chemical, and taxonomic nomenclature; the deposition of nucleotide and protein sequences, structures, microarray and sequencing data, proteomics data, and similar datasets in the recognized public repositories before publication with the accession numbers given in the manuscript; the prospective registration of clinical trials and, where available, of systematic reviews; and the complete reporting of statistical methods, including sample size justification, the handling of missing data, and the software used. Journals may specify additional standards for their fields.
Adherence to reporting guidelines and community standards is a condition of publication. Manuscripts that do not meet the applicable standard are returned to the authors for completion.
Research Misconduct and Investigations
Research misconduct includes fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism; the purchase or sale of authorship or of manuscripts; the use of commercial paper mills or other third parties that produce, manipulate, or submit manuscripts on behalf of authors; manipulation of the peer review process, including the provision of false reviewer identities or contact details; duplication, reuse, or manipulation of images; citation manipulation; failure to disclose material competing interests; breaches of research ethics or consent requirements; and any other practice that seriously deviates from accepted standards of research and publication. This section describes how NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED journals respond to concerns about such practices, whether they arise before or after publication.
Concerns may be raised by editors, reviewers, authors, readers, institutions, funders, or any other person, and should be sent to ethics@the-newpress.com or to the journal editorial office, giving the manuscript or article concerned, the nature of the concern, and any evidence available. Concerns raised anonymously are considered on their merits. The identity of a person raising a concern in good faith is protected and is not disclosed to the authors without that person's consent. The journal acknowledges receipt within five working days.
Every concern is assessed by the handling editor together with the Editor-in-Chief and the publisher's ethics contact, following the relevant COPE flowcharts and guidance. The initial assessment, normally completed within thirty days, establishes whether the concern is substantiated on its face and what further information is required. Where the concern is not frivolous, the corresponding author is informed of it and given a reasonable opportunity, normally fourteen days, to respond and to supply raw data, original uncropped images, ethics documentation, authorship confirmations, or other materials. The journal may consult independent experts and may use forensic tools to examine images, text, and data. Where the concern is serious, or where the authors' response is unsatisfactory, the journal refers the matter to the authors' institution or employer and to funders where appropriate, asks for an investigation, and takes account of its outcome. The journal does not itself conduct institutional investigations, but it reaches its own decision on the published record.
Outcomes may include, according to the nature and severity of the finding, rejection of a manuscript under consideration, publication of a correction, expression of concern, or retraction under Post-Publication Policies, notification of the authors' institutions or funders, informing other journals or publishers where the same manuscript or the same misconduct affects them, and declining to consider submissions from the individuals involved for a defined period. The journal keeps a record of every case and its outcome. Cases are handled confidentially, and no public statement is made until a decision has been reached, other than an expression of concern where this is warranted under Expressions of Concern.
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED screens submissions for the indicators of paper mill activity, including non-institutional or mismatched email addresses, templated or nonsensical text, unusual requests to change authorship, images reused across unrelated manuscripts, manipulated citation patterns, and submissions in which the corresponding author cannot answer basic questions about the work. Where systematic manipulation is suspected, the publisher investigates across all affected journals, coordinates with other publishers, and reports its findings to institutions. The publisher supports the United2Act initiative against paper mills and applies COPE guidance on the systematic manipulation of the publication process.
Data, Materials and Research Transparency
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
What authors must make available so that published findings can be checked and reused.
Data Availability and Transparency
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED supports transparency, reproducibility, and responsible data sharing. Authors are encouraged to make the data, materials, software, and code that support their findings available where this is legally, ethically, and practically possible, and to do so in a way that follows the FAIR principles, so that the data are findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.
Every research article includes a Data Availability Statement explaining where the data supporting the reported findings can be accessed or why they cannot be shared. The statement uses one of the following forms, adapted as necessary. Where the data are in a repository: "The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at [DOI or persistent link], reference number [number]." Where the data are in the article: "All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article and its supplementary information files." Where the data are available on request: "The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request. The data are not publicly available because [reason]." Where the data cannot be shared: "The data that support the findings of this study are not available because [reason, for example participant privacy or third-party licensing restrictions]; [describe any conditions under which access may be granted, or the aggregated data that are available]." A statement that the study generated no new data is used where that is the case.
Data should be deposited in a recognized public repository where one exists for the data type, and otherwise in a general repository that assigns a persistent identifier, such as Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad, or an institutional repository. Authors provide persistent identifiers, accession numbers, repository links, or other access information in the statement and cite the dataset in the reference list as described in Data Citation. Data deposited under embargo should be released by the date of publication.
Restrictions on data access are clearly explained. Legitimate restrictions may include participant privacy, legal restrictions, third-party rights, commercial confidentiality, security concerns, environmental protection, biodiversity protection, or ethical limitations. Where data are available only on request, the statement names the person or body to whom requests should be made and any conditions that apply, and the authors undertake to respond to reasonable requests.
Authors preserve data, materials, software, and code in accordance with disciplinary standards for at least ten years after publication, and cooperate with reasonable requests for verification of published findings from the journal, from readers, and from other researchers. Editors and reviewers may ask to see the underlying data during peer review.
Data Citation
Authors cite the datasets, software, code, and other research objects that support the findings of the manuscript, whether these were generated by the authors themselves or by others, in the same way as they cite publications. A dataset that is used in the work is cited in the text at the point of use and is listed as a formal entry in the reference list, in accordance with the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles.
A data citation gives the creators or contributors, the year of publication or release, the title of the dataset, the version where applicable, the repository or publisher, and the persistent identifier. Where available, persistent identifiers such as DOIs, accession numbers, or repository identifiers are included and are rendered as resolvable links. A typical reference reads: "[Creator(s)]. ([Year]). [Title of dataset] (Version [number]) [Data set]. [Repository]. https://doi.org/[DOI]". Software and code are cited in the same way, giving the version used.
Data citations are deposited with the article's reference list in Crossref metadata, so that the use of the dataset can be tracked and credited. Editors and reviewers may ask authors to add citations to datasets or software that the work relies on but does not cite.
Software, Code and Materials Availability
Where the results of a study depend on custom software, scripts, models, or analysis code, authors make that code available so that the results can be reproduced. Code is deposited in a public repository that assigns a persistent identifier, for example by archiving a release from GitHub or GitLab in Zenodo or Software Heritage, and the manuscript gives the repository link, the persistent identifier, and the version used to generate the reported results. Code is released under a recognized open source license, such as the MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD, or GNU General Public License, and the license is stated. Where commercial or proprietary software was used, the name, vendor, and version are given, and any custom settings or scripts are provided.
Every research article that relies on such code includes a Code Availability Statement, which may be combined with the Data Availability Statement described in Data Availability and Transparency. The statement gives the location of the code or explains why it cannot be shared. Legitimate reasons for not sharing code include third-party licensing restrictions, security concerns, and the protection of confidential information; the absence of an existing repository or the wish to publish further work is not a legitimate reason.
Authors describe the materials used in the work, including reagents, antibodies, cell lines, organisms, strains, plasmids, and instruments, in enough detail that others can obtain or reproduce them, giving supplier names, catalogue numbers, and, where they exist, Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs). Cell lines are authenticated and tested for contamination, and the method and date are stated. Unique materials generated in the work are made available to other researchers for non-commercial use under a material transfer agreement where required, and any restriction on their availability is stated in the manuscript.
Editors and reviewers may request access to code and materials during peer review, and the journal may require that code be made available before publication where it is essential to the findings.
Digital Image Integrity
Images, figures, and visual data must accurately represent the original research results. Authors must not enhance, obscure, move, remove, or introduce features in an image in a way that could mislead readers. No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced, and adjustments applied to one part of an image may not differ from those applied to the rest.
Adjustments to brightness, contrast, colour balance, or resolution are acceptable only when they are applied to the whole image, when they are applied uniformly, and when they do not obscure, eliminate, or misrepresent any information present in the original, including the background. Non-linear adjustments, such as changes to gamma settings, are disclosed in the figure legend. Any grouping, splicing, or rearrangement of images, including the assembly of lanes or fields from different gels, blots, or exposures, is clearly indicated by dividing lines or spacing in the figure and explained in the legend. Cropping is acceptable only where it does not remove information relevant to the interpretation of the image, and the full uncropped image is retained and, for gels and blots, provided as supplementary material or on request.
Authors retain the original, unprocessed image files and raw data for every published figure for at least ten years after publication. The journal may request original image files, raw data, or additional documentation at any stage, and may use image analysis software to screen manuscripts for duplication or manipulation before and after publication. Where a concern arises, the procedure in Research Misconduct and Investigations applies. Inappropriate image manipulation may result in rejection, correction, expression of concern, or retraction.
Images generated or altered by artificial intelligence tools are not permitted in research figures unless the generation or alteration is itself the subject of the research and is fully described, as set out in Use of Artificial Intelligence.
Originality, Citation Ethics and AI Use
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
Originality, honest citation, and the responsible use of artificial intelligence in scholarly work.
Plagiarism, Originality and Duplicate Submission
Submitted manuscripts must be original and must not have been published previously or be under consideration by another journal at the same time. Plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, redundant publication, inappropriate text recycling, salami publication, data fabrication, data falsification, and the misleading reuse of previously published material are not permitted.
Authors must properly cite and acknowledge the work, data, text, ideas, images, figures, tables, software, and materials of others. Verbatim text from another source must be clearly indicated by quotation marks or indentation and cited appropriately, and close paraphrase of another author's work without citation is treated as plagiarism. Reuse of the authors' own previously published text is limited to what is necessary, is cited, and is never used to present previously published results as new. Translation of a previously published article is not original work and is not accepted unless the prior publication is disclosed and the editor agrees that publication in a second language is justified, in which case the article cites the original and is labelled as a translation.
Every manuscript submitted to a NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED journal is screened for overlap with published and publicly available material. Screening is carried out during the initial editorial assessment, before the manuscript is sent to external reviewers, using Turnitin. Revised manuscripts are screened again where substantial new text has been added, and every manuscript is screened once more before acceptance if the previous screening is more than six months old. Similarity reports are assessed by the editor on a case-by-case basis. A high similarity score does not automatically indicate misconduct, and a low score does not exclude possible plagiarism. As a guide, an overall similarity above twenty percent, or an overlap with any single source above five percent, excluding the reference list and standard methodological phrasing, prompts closer examination. Where the editor finds unattributed overlap, the manuscript is returned to the authors for correction or rejected, according to the extent and nature of the overlap; where plagiarism is found, Research Misconduct and Investigations applies. Plagiarism discovered after publication is handled under Post-Publication Policies.
Submitting a manuscript that is under consideration elsewhere, or submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal, is a breach of publication ethics. Where duplicate submission is discovered, the manuscript is rejected and the other journal may be informed. Authors must disclose any prior dissemination of the work, including conference abstracts, posters, proceedings papers, theses, reports, preprints, or other public postings, in the cover letter and in the manuscript. The editor determines whether prior dissemination constitutes prior publication, applying the principles in Preprints and Prior Publication.
Citation Ethics
Authors are responsible for ensuring that all citations are accurate, relevant, and necessary. Citations should support the claims made in the manuscript and should reflect the relevant scholarly literature, including work that reaches different conclusions from the authors' own. Authors should cite the original source of a finding rather than a secondary source that reports it, and should cite the version of a work that they actually consulted.
Unethical citation practices are not permitted. These include excessive self-citation, irrelevant citations, citation manipulation, citation cartels in which groups of authors or journals cite one another to inflate metrics, coercive citation requests, inappropriate citation of retracted works without indicating that they have been retracted, and references to non-existent or unreliable sources. Editors may ask authors to justify the inclusion of citations that appear to serve no scholarly purpose and may require their removal.
Authors verify all references before submission, checking that each cited work exists, that the bibliographic details are correct, and that the work says what it is cited for. This is especially important when artificial intelligence tools have been used during manuscript preparation, since AI-generated references may be inaccurate or non-existent and must be carefully checked by the authors. The journal may check references and may return a manuscript that contains references that cannot be verified.
Editors and reviewers must not request citations for the purpose of increasing citation counts, journal metrics, or personal citation advantage. A request to cite specific work is acceptable only where the work is directly relevant to the manuscript and the reason is stated. Authors who receive a citation request that they consider unjustified may decline it and may report it to the publisher at ethics@the-newpress.com without affecting the handling of their manuscript.
Use of Artificial Intelligence
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED supports the responsible and transparent use of artificial intelligence tools where they assist scholarly communication and do not replace human accountability, expertise, or judgment. This policy sets out the minimum requirements that apply to authors, reviewers, editors, and the journals themselves. It covers generative AI tools, including large language models, and AI-assisted tools for writing, analysis, image processing, and literature searching.
Authors disclose the use of AI tools. Authors may use AI-assisted tools for language editing, grammar checking, formatting, translation, literature organization, or other assistive purposes, and basic language and formatting assistance need not be declared. Authors must disclose the use of any AI tool that has materially contributed to the preparation, analysis, interpretation, or presentation of the manuscript, including the generation of text, the analysis of data, the generation or alteration of images, or the drafting of code. The disclosure is placed in the Methods section or in a dedicated statement headed "Declaration of AI Use" before the references, and it gives the name and version of the tool, how it was used, and which parts of the work were affected.
Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and validity of all content in the manuscript, whether or not an AI tool was used to produce it. Authors must check and verify all AI-generated or AI-assisted content, must ensure that it does not plagiarize the work of others, and must not use AI tools to fabricate data, generate false references, manipulate images, create misleading content, obscure plagiarism, or misrepresent research findings. Images and figures generated or altered by AI are not permitted in research articles unless the AI process is itself the subject of the research and is fully described.
AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors. Authorship requires human responsibility and accountability, which cannot be assigned to an artificial intelligence system. AI tools are not credited in the Acknowledgements as if they were contributors; their use is disclosed as described above.
AI tools may not be cited as a source of information. Output produced by an AI tool is not a verifiable source and may not appear in the reference list or be cited in the text as evidence for a claim. Where an AI tool is discussed as an object of study, it is described in the Methods with its name, version, provider, and the dates and prompts used.
Reviewers and editors must not use generative AI tools to produce, in whole or in part, their reviews, reports, recommendations, or decision letters, and must not upload confidential manuscripts, reviewer reports, or editorial correspondence to public or unsecured AI systems. A manuscript under review is confidential, and uploading it to such a system breaches that confidentiality. Editorial evaluations and editorial decisions remain under human responsibility at every stage.
The journals of NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED use automated and AI-assisted tools in their own operations only to support editors, and the results of every such tool are reviewed by a person before any action is taken. The tools currently used are similarity screening under Plagiarism, Originality and Duplicate Submission, automated checks of reference accuracy and of manuscript completeness, image duplication screening under Digital Image Integrity, and the matching of manuscripts to potential reviewers by subject. No automated tool makes an editorial decision, and no manuscript is rejected or accepted on the basis of an automated result alone. Any change to the tools used is recorded in this policy.
Preprints and Prior Publication
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED supports the responsible sharing of preprints. Posting a manuscript on a recognized preprint server before or during submission is not considered prior publication, provided that the authors disclose the preprint at submission. Authors include details of any preprint, including the preprint server, the DOI or persistent link, and the license terms where available, in the cover letter and in the manuscript. Authors may update the preprint with revised versions during peer review but should not post the journal's typeset version as a preprint.
If the manuscript is accepted and published, the authors are encouraged to update the preprint record with a citation and a link to the final published version, and the publisher deposits the relationship between the preprint and the published article in Crossref metadata where the preprint server supports this.
Presentation of the work at a conference, or publication of an abstract, a poster, or a short proceedings paper, is not considered prior publication provided that it is disclosed and that the submitted manuscript substantially extends the earlier presentation with full methods, results, and discussion. A proceedings paper that already reports the complete study is treated as prior publication. Inclusion of the work in a thesis or dissertation deposited in an institutional repository is not considered prior publication and is disclosed. Publication in a report, a working paper series, or a similar venue is disclosed and assessed by the editor.
Authors should not seek media coverage of a manuscript under consideration and should not release its findings to the press before publication, other than in a preprint or conference presentation as described above. Where a journal operates a media embargo, its terms are given on the journal website.
Post-Publication Policies
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
How the published record is corrected, questioned, and, where necessary, withdrawn.
Corrections
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED is committed to preserving the integrity and accuracy of the scholarly record. When errors or ethical concerns are identified in published articles, the journal considers the appropriate action according to the nature and severity of the issue, following COPE guidance. The available actions are corrections, retractions, expressions of concern, and, in exceptional circumstances, article removal, each described in this section.
A correction is issued when an error affects the accuracy, clarity, or completeness of an article but does not invalidate the overall findings or conclusions. Examples are errors in a figure or table, in a numerical value, in the author list or affiliations, in a funding or competing interest statement, in a reference, or in a data availability statement, and errors introduced during production. Corrections may be requested by the authors, by readers, or by the editor, and are approved by the Editor-in-Chief. Where the authors disagree about whether a correction is needed, the editor decides.
A correction is published as a separate notice with its own DOI, stating what was wrong, what has been changed, and how the change affects the article. The notice is linked to the original article and the original article is linked to the notice, on the landing page, in the HTML full text, in the PDF, and in the Crossref metadata. The corrected article is updated so that readers see the accurate version, with the correction clearly marked. The version of record is not changed silently: any change to the substance of a published article, however small, is accompanied by a notice. Changes that do not affect content, such as the repair of a broken link or a formatting fault, may be made without a notice. Corrections are free to read and are not charged to authors.
Retractions
A retraction is issued when the findings or conclusions of an article are no longer reliable, following the COPE Retraction Guidelines. Grounds for retraction include major error, plagiarism, data fabrication, data falsification, unethical research or the absence of required ethics approval or consent, serious image manipulation, compromised or manipulated peer review, duplicate publication, undisclosed major competing interests, paper mill involvement, copyright infringement, and other serious breaches of publishing ethics. A retraction is a mechanism for correcting the literature and alerting readers, not a punishment; where an article is retracted because of honest error, the notice says so.
A retraction may be initiated by the editor, by the publisher, by the authors, or following an investigation by an institution or funder. Before an article is retracted, the concern is investigated under Research Misconduct and Investigations, and the authors are informed of the proposed retraction and its reasons and invited to respond. A retraction is decided by the Editor-in-Chief; it does not require the authors' agreement, but the notice records whether the authors agreed with the retraction and, where they did not, that they dispute it. Partial retractions are not issued; where only part of an article is affected and the remainder stands, a correction is used instead.
The retraction notice is published as a separate item with its own DOI, is titled to identify the article it retracts, explains the reason for the retraction and who is retracting it, and is free to read. The original article remains available online, to preserve the scholarly record, but is clearly marked as retracted: the word "Retracted" is added to the title on the landing page and in the HTML, the PDF carries a "Retracted" watermark on every page, and both are linked to the notice. The retraction is deposited in Crossref metadata and communicated to indexing and abstracting services so that the retracted status is displayed wherever the article is listed. Article processing charges are not refunded when an article is retracted for misconduct.
Expressions of Concern
An expression of concern is issued when serious concerns have been raised about the reliability or integrity of an article but the outcome of an investigation is not yet available or remains inconclusive. It may be used where an institutional investigation is under way and is expected to take a long time, where the authors cannot be contacted or do not respond, where the evidence is inconclusive but the concern is substantial, or where the journal believes readers should be alerted while a matter is examined.
An expression of concern is decided by the Editor-in-Chief, after the authors have been informed and given an opportunity to respond, and is published as a separate notice with its own DOI. The notice identifies the article, describes the nature of the concern in neutral terms without prejudging the outcome, and states what is being done to resolve it. It is linked to and from the article on the landing page, in the HTML full text, in the PDF, and in the Crossref metadata.
An expression of concern is not a permanent state. When the investigation concludes, it is followed by a retraction, a correction, or a further notice stating that the concern has been resolved and that the article stands, and the follow-up notice is linked to the original expression of concern. The journal reviews outstanding expressions of concern at least every six months and records the progress of the underlying matter.
Article Removal
The removal of a published article from the website is reserved for exceptional circumstances in which retention of the content would itself be unlawful or harmful. These circumstances include infringement of legal rights that cannot be remedied by correction, violation of privacy in a way that cannot be remedied by anonymization, defamation, a court or governmental order, and content that poses an immediate and serious risk to public health or safety. Removal is never used as a substitute for retraction, and an article is not removed because its findings have been questioned or because the authors or a third party would prefer it not to exist.
The decision to remove an article is made jointly by the Editor-in-Chief and the publisher, on legal advice where appropriate. Where an article is removed, the bibliographic information, that is, the title, authors, journal, volume, page or article number, DOI, and publication date, is retained on the article landing page, together with a notice explaining that the content has been removed and why. The DOI continues to resolve to this notice. The removal is deposited in Crossref metadata and communicated to indexing services and to the digital preservation services in Digital Preservation and Archiving, which retain a dark copy of the content in accordance with their own procedures. Where the reason for removal ceases to apply, the article may be restored with a notice explaining its history.
Appeals and Complaints
Authors may appeal an editorial decision if they believe that a significant error occurred during the review or decision-making process. Appeals should be submitted in writing to the relevant journal editorial office, with a copy to complaints@the-newpress.com, within thirty days of the decision, and should include the manuscript title, the manuscript number, the decision letter, and a clear explanation of the grounds for appeal, together with any evidence, such as a point-by-point response to the reviewer comments identifying factual errors. Appeals based only on disagreement with the editorial assessment of novelty, priority, or journal fit are unlikely to be successful unless evidence of a procedural error, factual error, conflict of interest, or bias is provided. A revised manuscript submitted during an appeal is not considered; if the appeal succeeds, the editor will state what revision is needed.
Appeals are considered by the Editor-in-Chief or an appropriate editorial representative who was not involved in the original decision. The journal may consult additional editors or independent experts where necessary. The journal acknowledges receipt of an appeal within five working days and aims to give a decision within thirty working days; where more time is needed, the authors are told when to expect a decision. Only one appeal per submission is normally considered, and the outcome of an appeal is final. An appeal does not prevent the authors from submitting the manuscript elsewhere, but a manuscript under appeal may not be submitted to another journal until the appeal has been withdrawn or decided.
Complaints regarding editorial processes, publication ethics, reviewer conduct, editorial conduct, delays, or published content should be sent to the journal editorial office or to the publisher at complaints@the-newpress.com. Complaints about the conduct of an Editor-in-Chief, or about the publisher itself, are sent to the publisher. Complaints are acknowledged within five working days, investigated by a person not involved in the matter complained of, and answered in writing within thirty working days, or, where the matter is complex, with an interim reply stating when a full reply will be given. Complaints are handled respectfully, confidentially where appropriate, and in accordance with relevant publishing ethics principles, and the complainant is told what action, if any, has been taken. A complainant who is dissatisfied with the response may ask for it to be reviewed by the publisher's management, whose decision is final. Complaints that raise concerns about the integrity of a published article are handled under Research Misconduct and Investigations and Post-publication Discussions and Reader Concerns.
For publisher-level ethics concerns, appeals, or complaints, please contact office@the-newpress.com or the dedicated addresses given in Contact Information.
Post-publication Discussions and Reader Concerns
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED welcomes scholarly discussion of published articles and encourages readers to raise questions and concerns about published work. Post-publication discussion takes two forms: formal published correspondence, and the reporting of concerns to the journal for assessment.
Readers who wish to comment on a published article in the journal may submit a letter to the editor or a commentary. Such submissions are assessed by the editor for relevance, accuracy, and tone, and may be sent for peer review. Before a critical letter is published, the authors of the original article are sent the letter and invited to reply within a stated period, normally thirty days; the letter and the reply are published together, and each is linked to the original article. Letters that make allegations of misconduct are not published as correspondence; they are handled as concerns under this section and Research Misconduct and Investigations.
Readers who have a concern about the reliability, integrity, or ethics of a published article, including concerns about data, images, statistics, authorship, competing interests, consent, or plagiarism, should send it to ethics@the-newpress.com or to the journal editorial office, giving the DOI of the article, a description of the concern, and any supporting evidence. The journal also monitors comments posted on PubPeer and other public platforms about its articles and treats them as concerns raised with the journal. Concerns may be raised anonymously, and the identity of a person raising a concern is not disclosed to the authors without that person's consent.
The journal acknowledges a concern within five working days and completes an initial assessment within thirty days. Where the concern is not frivolous, the corresponding author is informed of it and invited to respond within fourteen days, and the journal may request data, images, or documents. The person who raised the concern is told the outcome of the assessment and of any subsequent action, though the details of the investigation and the authors' response remain confidential. Where the assessment shows that the article requires action, the journal proceeds under Corrections, Retractions, Expressions of Concern, or Article Removal, as appropriate, and where it indicates possible misconduct, under Research Misconduct and Investigations. Where the concern is not substantiated, the journal records its reasons and, if the concern has been made public, may state that it has been examined and resolved.
Copyright, Licensing and Open Access
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
What open access means at our journals, who holds copyright, and what readers may do with published content.
Open Access Policy
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED is dedicated to open access publishing. All journals published by NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED are fully open access. Every article is made freely available online to all readers, everywhere, immediately upon publication, without any embargo period. Readers do not need to register, log in, subscribe, or pay to read, download, print, or share any article, and no article is ever placed behind a paywall or made available only to subscribers.
None of our journals is a hybrid journal: we do not publish subscription content alongside open access content, and we do not offer open access as an option for individual articles in an otherwise closed journal. Our journals do not charge readers or libraries for access, and the publisher receives no subscription income.
Our open access model follows the definition of the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Users are free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, and link to the full text of every article, to crawl it for indexing, to pass it as data to software, and to use it for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself, subject only to the attribution requirements of the license described in Licensing. The open access status of every article is stated on its landing page, in its full text, and in machine-readable form in its metadata.
The publisher's commitment to open access is permanent. Published articles remain freely available for as long as the publisher exists and, through the arrangements described in Digital Preservation, Archiving and Metadata, beyond.
Copyright
Authors retain the copyright in the articles they publish with NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED. The publisher does not ask authors to transfer or assign copyright. On acceptance, the authors grant NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED a non-exclusive right to publish the article, to identify itself as the original publisher, and to distribute the article under the license described in Licensing; all other rights remain with the authors. Every article carries a copyright line in the form "© [year] The Author(s)", followed by the name of the license.
Because authors hold the copyright and the article is published under an open license, no article published in a NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED journal is marked "All rights reserved", and no such statement appears on any article landing page, full text, or PDF. Any statement to that effect elsewhere on the website does not apply to published articles.
The copyright terms that apply to published articles are separate from the terms of use of this website. The website terms of use, which are published on their own page, govern the use of the website itself, including its design, software, trademarks, logos, and the non-article content written by the publisher, such as these policies. Nothing in the website terms of use limits or overrides the rights that the article license grants to readers, and the terms of use are not to be read as applying to articles.
Authors are responsible for ensuring that they hold, or have obtained, the rights necessary to grant the license, including for third-party material, as described in Third-Party Material, and that publication does not infringe the rights of any other person. Authors whose employer holds copyright in their work, or whose funder requires a particular license, should confirm before submission that the license in Licensing is acceptable to them.
Licensing
All articles published in NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED journals are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), the full terms of which are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The license applies to the whole article, including its text, figures, tables, and supplementary material, except for third-party material identified under Third-Party Material.
The CC BY 4.0 license permits anyone to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the article in any medium or format and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given to the authors and the source, that a link to the license is provided, and that any changes made are indicated. Credit is given by citing the authors, the article title, the journal, the year, the DOI, and the license, and by not suggesting that the authors or the publisher endorse the reuse. No further permission from the authors or the publisher is required for reuse that complies with the license, and the publisher does not charge fees for such reuse.
The license is applied to the article at the moment of publication and cannot be withdrawn. It is displayed on the article landing page, in the HTML full text, and on the first page of the PDF, in each case with the name of the license and a link to its official text, and it is embedded in the article's metadata, including the license URL deposited with Crossref, so that it can be read by machines. Authors retain the right to reuse their own work in any way that the license permits and in addition may include it in theses, books, and course material without further permission.
Where an individual journal applies a different Creative Commons license, the journal names the license on its website, links to its official text, and applies it to every article it publishes; a journal does not apply different licenses to different articles.
Third-Party Material
Material included in an article that is owned by a third party, such as figures, photographs, maps, illustrations, tables, extended quotations, questionnaires, and software, may be subject to different licensing terms from the rest of the article and is excluded from the article's Creative Commons license unless the rights holder has agreed to its release under that license. Such material is clearly identified in the figure legend, table footnote, or text with the name of the rights holder, the source, and a statement of the terms under which it is reproduced, for example "Reproduced with permission from [rights holder]" or "Reproduced from [source] under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license".
Authors are responsible for obtaining, before submission, written permission to reproduce third-party material where permission is required, including permission for the material to be published in an open access article that will be distributed under a CC BY license, and for paying any fee the rights holder charges. Authors retain the permission documents and provide copies to the journal on request. The journal does not assume that reuse of third-party material is covered by fair use or fair dealing, and it may decline to publish material for which permission cannot be shown.
Readers who wish to reuse third-party material from an article must obtain permission from the rights holder identified in the article; the article license does not extend to it.
Content Sharing and Repository Policy
Authors may share and deposit every version of their article, at any time and without embargo. The submitted version, that is, the manuscript as first submitted or a preprint of it; the accepted manuscript, that is, the version accepted for publication after peer review but before typesetting; and the published version of record may each be deposited in institutional repositories, subject repositories, preprint servers, funder repositories, and personal or departmental websites, shared on scholarly networking sites, and distributed to colleagues, students, and the public. No permission from the publisher is needed and no fee is charged.
Authors who deposit the submitted version or the accepted manuscript are asked to add a statement identifying the journal, giving the DOI of the published version, and linking to it, so that readers can find the version of record. Authors who deposit the published version should retain the copyright line and license statement. The publisher's sharing policy will be registered with Sherpa Romeo so that authors and institutions can verify it.
Articles published under open access licenses may be shared by anyone in accordance with the applicable license terms set out in Licensing. Users who share or reuse published content must provide appropriate attribution to the authors, the article title, the journal, the publisher, the DOI, and the license, and must indicate whether changes were made. The publisher makes article metadata and full text available for harvesting by repositories, aggregators, and indexing services through standard protocols, and encourages readers to use and link to the official version of record on the journal website as the authoritative version.
Text and Data Mining
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED supports responsible text and data mining of its open access content. Because all articles are published under Creative Commons licenses, users may download, analyse, index, and mine the full text and metadata of any article, and any collection of articles, for any lawful purpose, including commercial purposes and the training of computational tools, in accordance with the applicable article license and the website terms.
Users must provide appropriate attribution where the license requires it and must not use automated access in a way that disrupts the publisher's website, systems, or services. Automated agents should identify themselves, respect the site's robots directives and rate limits, and retrieve content at a reasonable pace. Researchers who need to obtain a large volume of content, or who require bulk access to metadata or full text in a structured form, may write to office@the-newpress.com and will be provided with a suitable means of access without charge.
This section is the only place in these policies where text and data mining is addressed; the data policies in Data, Materials and Research Transparency concern the research data underlying articles, not the mining of published content.
Fees and Waivers
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
Every charge an author may be asked to pay, every charge we do not levy, and how waivers work.
Article Processing Charges
Some journals published by NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED charge an article processing charge (APC) to support open access publication, editorial management, peer review administration, production, online hosting, indexing preparation, metadata deposit, and long-term preservation. The APC is the only charge that authors pay for publication, and it is charged once per accepted article. All other potential charges are addressed in Other Charges.
The APC of each journal is stated on the journal's website, on its fees page and in its instructions for authors, in a fixed amount and a stated currency, and the same amount applies to every article of a given type in that journal regardless of the author's country or institution.
The APC becomes payable only after a manuscript has been accepted for publication, as described in Payment Timing and Editorial Independence. An invoice is issued to the corresponding author, or to the institution, funder, or other party that the corresponding author nominates, within seven days of acceptance, and payment is due within thirty days of the invoice date; the methods of payment accepted are stated on the invoice. The article is published when payment has been received or a waiver has been granted; publication is not delayed for any other financial reason. Authors who need a pro-forma invoice, a purchase order reference, or a particular billing arrangement may ask the publisher at office@the-newpress.com.
Any change to a journal's APC is announced on the journal website at least sixty days before it takes effect, and the charge that applies to a manuscript is the charge in force on the date of submission.
Other Charges
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED journals charge authors no fee other than the article processing charge described in Article Processing Charges, where one applies. Specifically, there is no submission fee: submitting a manuscript costs nothing, and no payment is requested at any stage before acceptance. There is no editorial handling fee, and no fee is charged for peer review whether the manuscript is accepted or rejected. There are no page charges: the APC does not vary with the length of the article. There are no colour figure charges: colour figures, tables, and supplementary material are published without additional cost. There is no fee for language editing: the publisher does not sell editing services, and any editing that authors obtain from third parties is arranged and paid for by the authors independently and has no bearing on editorial decisions. There is no fast-track, expedited, or priority handling fee, and no such service is offered, since every manuscript is handled in the order in which it is ready. There are no fees for corrections, retractions, or the publication of correspondence. Reprints are not sold; authors and readers may print the article themselves under the terms of the license.
There is no withdrawal fee. Authors may withdraw a manuscript at any time before acceptance by writing to the editorial office, and no charge results. A manuscript withdrawn after acceptance but before publication is treated as described in Refund Policy, and any invoice already issued is cancelled or the payment refunded; the publisher never asks an author to pay, on withdrawal, any sum greater than the APC that would have been payable on publication.
Any fee not listed here is not charged. If a journal ever introduces a fee of a kind described in this section, it will be listed on the journal's fees page with its amount and currency at least sixty days before it takes effect, and this section will be updated.
Where a journal intends to introduce a charge of any kind in future, the amount, the currency, and the date from which it applies are published on that journal's fees page at least sixty days in advance, this policy is updated at the same time, and the new charge never applies to a manuscript that was already submitted or under review on the date of the announcement.
Waivers and Discounts
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED does not want the ability to pay to be a barrier to publication. Any applicable charges, waivers, and discounts are clearly displayed on the relevant journal website, and the waiver policy below applies to every journal that charges an APC.
While a journal levies no article processing charge, no waiver or discount has to be requested and none is refused. Where a charge applies, corresponding authors based in countries listed by the United Nations as Least Developed Countries receive an automatic full waiver of the APC. Eligibility is determined by the country of the corresponding author's primary affiliation at the time of submission. In addition, any author who is unable to pay the APC for reasons of financial hardship, including authors from other countries who have no institutional or funder support, may request a full or partial waiver at the time of submission, and each request is considered on its own merits by the publishing office, which does not inform the editors or the reviewers that a request has been made. Journals may also offer discounts to their reviewers and editorial board members and to authors whose institutions have an agreement with the publisher; any such discount is stated on the journal website.
Waiver and discount requests are made at the time of submission, in the field provided in the submission system or in the cover letter, stating the basis for the request. Requests made after acceptance are considered only in exceptional circumstances. Waiver decisions are made by the publisher's administrative staff and are communicated to the corresponding author within ten working days of submission. Requests are decided on the stated criteria and never on the perceived quality or likely acceptance of the manuscript.
The grant or refusal of a waiver has no bearing on the editorial process. Editors and reviewers are not informed whether a waiver has been requested or granted, and the editorial system does not display this information to them. A manuscript for which a waiver has been granted is handled in exactly the same way as any other manuscript, and acceptance or rejection is decided on scholarly merit alone.
Payment Timing and Editorial Independence
Where article processing charges apply, payment is requested only after editorial acceptance unless otherwise clearly stated by the journal, and no NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED journal currently requests any payment before acceptance. No fee is charged for submission or for peer review, and an author is never asked to pay anything for a manuscript that is rejected. The APC invoice is issued only after the Editor-in-Chief or the designated handling editor has confirmed acceptance in writing.
Editorial decisions are based solely on scholarly merit and are not influenced by the payment or non-payment of publication fees, by the author's ability to pay, or by whether a waiver has been requested or granted. Editors and reviewers have no involvement in invoicing or payment, are not informed of an author's payment or waiver status during the editorial process, and are not told whether a decision would generate income for the publisher. The publisher does not set publication targets for journals and does not reward editors for the number of articles accepted.
Acceptance is never conditional on payment, and the decision to accept a manuscript is not reversed if the author cannot pay; instead, the waiver procedure in Waivers and Discounts applies. Where payment is due and neither payment nor a waiver has been arranged, the publisher may hold publication of the accepted article until the matter is resolved, but the acceptance decision stands. Conversely, payment or the offer of payment never accelerates peer review, improves the chance of acceptance, or shortens the time to a decision.
Refund Policy
An APC that has been paid is refunded in full if the publisher fails to publish the accepted article for any reason within its control, if the author withdraws the article before publication, or if the article was accepted in error. It is refunded in full where an author has paid more than once for the same article or has paid an amount that exceeds the applicable charge, in which case the excess is refunded. It is refunded in full or in part where a waiver or discount to which the author was entitled at submission was not applied.
An APC is not refunded after the article has been published, since the services the charge supports have by then been provided. An APC is not refunded where an article is retracted for misconduct on the part of the authors, or where the authors withdraw an article after publication. Where an article is retracted because of an error on the part of the publisher, the APC is refunded in full.
Refund requests are made in writing to office@the-newpress.com, giving the manuscript number, the invoice number, and the reason for the request. Requests are acknowledged within five working days and decided within ten working days. Approved refunds are made to the original payment method, or to the party that made the payment, within thirty days of the decision, and the publisher bears its own bank charges. Where a refund is refused, the reasons are given in writing, and the author may ask the publisher's management to review the decision under Appeals and Complaints.
Digital Preservation, Archiving and Metadata
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
How published content is preserved, identified, and kept findable for the long term.
Digital Preservation and Archiving
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED recognizes the importance of the long-term availability and preservation of scholarly content, and every article we publish is preserved in a dedicated digital preservation service that is independent of the publisher.
All articles published in NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED journals, together with their metadata and supplementary material, are deposited for long-term preservation in Portico. Deposit takes place on publication and includes every subsequent version, correction, and notice. The preservation status of each journal can be verified independently in the Keepers Registry at keepers.issn.org or in Portico's own list of participating publishers.
The preservation service holds a complete copy of the content and makes it available if the content ceases to be available from the publisher's website, whether because the journal ceases publication, the publisher ceases to operate, or the website suffers a catastrophic failure. The publisher also keeps its own backup copies of all content and metadata, stored in more than one location and tested regularly.
In addition, authors may deposit their articles in institutional and subject repositories under Content Sharing and Repository Policy, which provides a further layer of preservation, and article metadata is held by Crossref and by the indexing services in which the journals are included. Authors and readers are encouraged to use the official version of record on the journal website as the authoritative version, and the persistent identifiers described in Metadata, Indexing and Persistent Identifiers continue to resolve to the content wherever it is held.
Long-Term Access and Journal Discontinuation
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED commits that content it has published will remain freely accessible permanently, whether or not the journal in which it appeared continues to be published.
If a journal ceases publication, the publisher announces the decision on the journal website and informs the editorial board, indexing services, and the preservation service in advance. All content published in the journal remains freely available on the journal website, with its landing pages, full text, and metadata intact, for as long as the publisher operates the website, and in any event for not less than ten years from the date of the last article. The content also remains available through the preservation service described in Digital Preservation and Archiving, and every DOI continues to resolve, being redirected to the preservation service's copy if the website is ever taken down. The journal's ISSN record is updated to show that publication has ceased.
If a journal is transferred to another publisher, the transfer is carried out in accordance with the NISO Transfer Code of Practice: the published content is transferred in full, the DOIs are transferred to the new publisher so that they continue to resolve, the preservation deposits are maintained, readers are informed on the website, and authors' rights under the licenses already granted are unaffected. If the publisher itself ceases to operate, the preservation service is triggered under its own terms, and the publisher will, before ceasing operation, seek to transfer its journals and their content to another publisher or to a non-profit organization able to keep them accessible.
Content that has been retracted or removed under Post-Publication Policies is handled as those sections describe, and the retracted or removed status is carried into the preservation copy.
Metadata, Indexing and Persistent Identifiers
Every article, correction notice, expression of concern, retraction notice, and removal notice published in a NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED journal is assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) registered with Crossref under the publisher's DOI prefix 10.66178 at the time of publication. The DOI is displayed on the article landing page, in the HTML full text, and on the first page of the PDF, as a resolvable link, and it is the identifier by which the article should be cited. DOIs are permanent and are never reassigned or deleted, and the publisher ensures that every DOI it has registered continues to resolve, as described in Long-Term Access and Journal Discontinuation.
For each article the publisher deposits with Crossref a complete metadata record, comprising the article title, the journal title and ISSN, the volume, issue, and article or page number, the names of all authors with their affiliations and, where provided, their ORCID iDs and their institutions' ROR identifiers, the abstract, the dates of submission, acceptance, and publication, the full reference list, which is deposited openly so that it can be reused by anyone, funding information with funder identifiers and award numbers under Funding Disclosure, the license URL under Licensing, and the relationship between the article and any preprint. Corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, and removals are deposited as updates linked to the affected article, so that the article's current status is visible through Crossref and in every service that draws on its data. The publisher's metadata is made available for reuse without restriction.
All authors are encouraged to provide an ORCID iD at submission, and the corresponding author is strongly encouraged to do so. ORCID iDs are displayed with the author names and are deposited in the article metadata so that publications can be linked automatically to their authors' records. The publisher is a member of ORCID.
The journals' metadata is exposed for harvesting through standard protocols, and the publisher applies for inclusion of each journal in indexing, abstracting, and discovery services, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals, Scopus, and the Web of Science, only when the journal meets the service's published criteria. Indexing status is stated on the journal website only for services in which the journal is in fact included, in accordance with Journal Website and Information Accuracy and Journal Metrics and Rankings, and a journal's inclusion in a service is described accurately, distinguishing full indexing from listing, discovery, or evaluation in progress.
Publication Schedule
Every journal states on its website whether it publishes continuously or in issues, how frequently it publishes, and how many articles it expects to publish each year, and every journal publishes in practice according to the schedule it states.
Journals that publish continuously make each article available online as soon as it has been accepted, paid for or granted a waiver, and prepared for publication, and gather the articles published in a calendar year into a single annual volume. Journals that publish in issues state the number of issues per year and the months in which they appear, and may publish accepted articles online ahead of the issue in which they will be included.
Every journal publishes not fewer than five peer-reviewed research articles in each calendar year. The publisher monitors the output of each journal against its stated schedule, and where a journal is unable to meet its schedule, for example because of a shortage of acceptable submissions or a change in editorial capacity, the journal website is updated within thirty days to state the revised schedule, so that the stated schedule is always the actual schedule. A newly launched journal states on its website the year of its first volume and the schedule it intends to follow, and a journal that is unable to publish at least five research articles a year for two consecutive years is reviewed by the publisher and the editorial board to decide whether it should continue.
Articles are published in the order in which they are ready. No article is held back to fill a later issue, and no article is advanced ahead of others for financial reasons. Volume, issue, and article numbers are assigned sequentially and are never reused.
Accessibility, Diversity and Community Standards
Version 1.0 · Last updated 4 September 2026
Our commitments on accessibility, on diversity and inclusion, and on how we expect people to treat one another.
Accessibility Statement
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED aims to make its website, journal content, and publishing services accessible to the broadest possible audience, including people with disabilities. We strive to improve the usability, readability, and accessibility of our digital content, and we aim to follow recognized accessibility principles, including the requirement that digital content be perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust, as set out in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at level AA, which is the standard to which the website is designed.
In practice this means that every article is published in HTML as well as PDF, so that its text can be resized, reflowed, and read by screen readers; that PDFs are tagged and their reading order is set; that images and figures carry alternative text and are described in their legends; that the website can be navigated by keyboard alone; that headings, links, and form fields are labelled; that colour is not the only means of conveying information; and that text and background colours have sufficient contrast. Authors are asked to write figure legends and alternative text that describe the content of figures for readers who cannot see them, and to avoid conveying information by colour alone.
We recognize that some content, particularly older articles, complex figures, and mathematical notation, may not yet meet this standard in full, and we are working to improve it. If you experience difficulty accessing any content or service on this website, please contact us at office@the-newpress.com, describing the content concerned and the difficulty you have encountered. We will make reasonable efforts to provide assistance or an accessible alternative, normally within ten working days, and we welcome suggestions for improvement.
This section is the only place in these policies where accessibility is addressed; Journal Website and Information Accuracy refers to it.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED is committed to supporting diversity, equity, and inclusion in scholarly publishing. We welcome authors, reviewers, editors, readers, and contributors from all backgrounds, regions, disciplines, and career stages, and we believe that diverse perspectives strengthen research quality, broaden scholarly dialogue, and contribute to a more equitable academic community.
We do not tolerate discrimination, harassment, bullying, or exclusion based on age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, culture, political belief, institutional affiliation, socioeconomic background, or any other protected or personal characteristic, whether in the editorial process, in published content, or in communication among those involved in publishing.
The publisher and its journals seek to build editorial boards and reviewer pools that reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, in gender, geography, career stage, and institution, and the publisher reviews the composition of editorial boards for this purpose when appointments are made and at the annual review described in Editorial Board and Advisory Body. Editors are asked to consider diversity when inviting reviewers and guest editors. Manuscripts are assessed on their scholarly merit, without regard to the authors' identity, country, institution, or language background, and authors whose first language is not English are not disadvantaged on account of language provided that the manuscript is comprehensible; editors and reviewers are asked to distinguish clearly between substantive and linguistic comments.
Authors are asked to use inclusive and respectful language in their manuscripts, to report sex and gender in accordance with the SAGER guidelines where relevant, to describe research participants and populations accurately and without stereotyping, to use person-first or identity-first language as the communities concerned prefer, and to consider whether the study population and the cited literature are appropriately representative. Editors may ask authors to revise language that is discriminatory or that reinforces stereotypes.
Respectful Communication
NEW HORIZON PRESS LIMITED is committed to maintaining respectful, professional, and constructive communication among authors, reviewers, editors, readers, and publishing staff. We expect all participants in the publishing process to communicate with courtesy and integrity, and we hold our own staff and editors to the same standard.
We do not tolerate harassment, intimidation, abusive language, threats, discrimination, or bullying directed at our staff, editors, reviewers, authors, or readers, in any channel, including correspondence with the editorial office, reviewer reports, responses to reviewers, appeals and complaints, and public comment. Reviewer reports are expected to address the work rather than the authors, and editors will withhold from authors any part of a report that is abusive. Authors are expected to respond to reviewer comments courteously even where they disagree with them. Concerns about the conduct of any participant may be raised under Appeals and Complaints.
The publisher reserves the right to limit communication with, decline submissions from, or take other appropriate action against any person who engages in repeated or serious misconduct of this kind, after giving a warning where appropriate. Such action is taken by the publisher's management, is recorded, and may be reviewed at the request of the person concerned.