The role of the Editor-in-Chief

Appointment and term

An Editor-in-Chief is appointed for a defined, renewable term on the strength of scholarly standing in the journal's field, editorial or peer-review experience, and a demonstrated commitment to research integrity. Appointments are made in consultation with the editorial board and, for society-owned titles, with the owning society. The appointment letter records the term, the expected time commitment, the reporting relationship, and the grounds on which a term may end early.

• Terms are fixed and renewable, so leadership is refreshed without disrupting the journal.
• Succession is planned before a term expires; an interim Editor-in-Chief may be named if needed.
• Where a journal has not yet announced its Editor-in-Chief, the masthead reads Pending rather than naming a placeholder.

Editorial independence

Editorial independence is not a courtesy at Lumora; it is the operating model. The Editor-in-Chief decides what enters review, who reviews it, and what is accepted, revised, or declined. The publisher does not interfere in individual decisions and cannot overturn them. This follows the positions of COPE and the ICMJE on the relationship between editors and publishers, and it is set out in full in our editorial policies.

• Commercial considerations — including article processing charges — never influence a decision.
• An author's ability to pay is never disclosed to reviewers and never a factor in the outcome.
• Submissions are judged on relevance, originality, methodological rigor, ethical soundness, and fit with the journal's scope — never on the identity, affiliation, nationality, gender, or seniority of the authors.

Decision authority

The Editor-in-Chief makes or delegates the final decision on every manuscript and remains accountable for the integrity of the process even when a handling editor carries the file. Within Lumora's seven-day editorial commitment, the Editor-in-Chief is responsible for keeping each handoff under twenty-four hours.

• Desk decisions: scope, completeness, ethics documentation, and author-guideline compliance.
• Reviewer selection and the resolution of conflicting reviewer reports.
• Accept, revise, or decline decisions, with a written rationale to the authors.
• Appeals and complaints, handled under publication ethics, and corrections or retractions under corrections and retractions.

Conflict of interest and recusal

The credibility of a journal rests on what its Editor-in-Chief refuses to decide. Any financial, personal, professional, institutional, or intellectual interest that a reasonable reader might see as capable of influencing a decision triggers recusal.

• Manuscripts authored or co-authored by the Editor-in-Chief are reassigned to an independent editor with no reporting relationship to them, and the Editor-in-Chief has no access to the review file.
• The same applies to submissions from close collaborators, recent co-authors, students and mentees, and colleagues at the same institution.
• Recusals are recorded, and the handling arrangement is stated in the published article where relevant.
• Full disclosure requirements are in the conflict of interest policy.

Relationship to the editorial board

The Editor-in-Chief leads the editorial board but does not replace it. The board brings subject breadth, geographic and methodological diversity, and an independent check on editorial practice.

• Appoints associate and handling editors, sets their remit, and reviews their performance.
• Convenes the board to review scope, standards, special issues, and recurring ethics questions.
• Builds a board that reflects the journal's readership and the wider research community, per our editorial board practice.
• Ensures board members declare their own conflicts and step aside on the same terms.

Alignment with COPE and international standards

Lumora journals operate within COPE's Core Practices and the ICMJE recommendations. In practice, that means a documented peer-review model, transparent authorship and contributorship expectations, prompt handling of allegations of misconduct, a published corrections and retractions pathway, and a real appeals route for authors. The Editor-in-Chief is the person who makes those commitments real on a day-to-day basis.

What the publisher provides

Lumora supplies the platform, the editorial workflow, production and typesetting, DOI registration and metadata, archiving, and the support desk. We track turnaround, flag stalled files, and give the Editor-in-Chief the operational picture needed to keep the seven-day commitment — without ever asking to see the decision before the author does.