Every policy under which WJSI operates is published here in full. If anything is unclear or appears not to match our practice, please tell us at editor@tamalanreasrc.org.
WJSI is fully open access. All articles are free to read, download and distribute immediately on publication, with no subscription, registration or payment required of readers, and no embargo period. This follows the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition.
All articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Anyone may share and adapt the work for any purpose, including commercially, provided appropriate credit is given.
Authors retain full copyright. By submitting, authors grant WJSI the right of first publication and agree to CC BY 4.0. Authors may deposit any version — submitted, accepted or published — in any repository or personal site at any time, without embargo or permission.
WJSI charges no fees of any kind. No article processing charges, no submission fees, no page or colour charges. Costs are met by Tamalanrea Science and Research Centre. Should this ever change, it will be announced here well in advance and will never apply retroactively to manuscripts already submitted.
WJSI operates double-blind peer review. Author identities are withheld from reviewers, and reviewer identities from authors.
Reviewers must treat manuscripts as confidential, must not use unpublished material for their own purposes, must declare conflicts of interest, and must not upload manuscripts to AI tools or online services.
WJSI follows the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the joint Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.
Authors must submit original work not under consideration elsewhere, report data accurately, cite all sources properly, ensure all listed authors meet authorship criteria, and disclose conflicts and funding. Fabrication, falsification, image manipulation and plagiarism in any form constitute serious misconduct.
Editors decide on scholarly merit alone, without regard to authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, citizenship, institution or politics, and act promptly on credible allegations of misconduct following COPE guidance.
All manuscripts are screened for similarity against published literature, and for undisclosed duplicate publication, before peer review, using automated detection software.
Reports are reviewed by the handling editor. A similarity score alone is not evidence of misconduct: matches from standard methodological descriptions, correctly quoted material, reference lists and common disciplinary phrasing are expected and discounted. Every flagged case is assessed manually in context, and authors are given the opportunity to respond before any decision.
Manuscripts are confidential. The journal does not upload them to services that retain, publish or index submitted text.
Authorship follows the ICMJE criteria and requires substantial intellectual contribution, involvement in drafting or revision, approval of the final version, and accountability for the work. Contributors not meeting all four belong in the Acknowledgements.
WJSI uses the CRediT taxonomy, published with each article. Corresponding authors must supply an ORCID iD. Authorship changes after submission require written agreement from all authors, including anyone added or removed.
Manuscripts without required ethics documentation are not sent for review.
Authors must disclose any generative AI used in drafting, editing, translation, analysis, code or figures, naming the tool and its purpose. Ordinary grammar and spell-checkers need no disclosure. AI cannot be listed as an author, as it cannot take responsibility for the work, and must never be used to fabricate or alter data or images. Authors remain fully responsible for everything they submit.
Reviewers and editors must not enter manuscripts or any part of them into generative AI tools, as this breaches confidentiality. Editorial decisions are made by people.
Editorial decisions are made independently of the publisher and of any commercial or institutional interest. Editorial team and board members may submit to WJSI, subject to safeguards: the submitting editor is entirely excluded from the process for their own manuscript, it is handled by an independent editor, review is to the usual standard, and the involvement is disclosed on the published article. Articles by editorial team or board members will not exceed a reasonable proportion of content in any volume.
Every article carries a Data Availability Statement specifying where data can be found and under what conditions, or explaining why they cannot be shared. Participant privacy, indigenous data sovereignty and protection of sensitive species localities are legitimate and expected restrictions. Recommended repositories include Zenodo, Dryad, GBIF and GenBank.
Following COPE guidelines, WJSI issues corrections for errors not affecting overall findings, retractions where findings are unreliable through error or misconduct, and expressions of concern where a serious concern exists but investigation is inconclusive. Retracted articles remain online, clearly marked, with a notice explaining why — the record must remain complete and citable.
All articles are permanently deposited in Zenodo, operated by CERN, which provides long-term preservation and a permanent DOI. Should WJSI cease publication, all content remains accessible there.
Authors may appeal a decision in writing to editor@tamalanreasrc.org, setting out specific grounds. Appeals are considered by the Editor-in-Chief and decisions on appeal are final; disagreement with a reviewer's judgement is not in itself grounds for appeal. Complaints about editorial process or conduct are acknowledged within five working days and normally resolved within thirty days. Complaints concerning the Editor-in-Chief are referred to the publisher.
Names, email addresses and affiliations are used exclusively for managing submissions, peer review, publication and journal correspondence. They are not shared with third parties, sold, or used for any other purpose. Published articles contain author names, affiliations and ORCID iDs, which become part of the permanent public record.
WJSI carries no advertising and conducts no direct marketing or unsolicited invitations to submit. The journal is funded entirely by Tamalanrea Science and Research Centre, charges no author fees, and accepts no sponsorship that could compromise editorial independence.