Editorial and publishing policies

1. Open access and licensing

All articles are published open access: free to read, download and share immediately on publication, with no subscription, registration or embargo. Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). Authors keep the copyright in their work and grant Crestfield the right to publish it.

2. Fees and waivers

There are no submission fees and no article processing charges (APCs) during the launch period. Authors are never asked to pay before a manuscript has been peer reviewed and accepted. If a fee is introduced in future, it will be shown clearly on each journal's page at least six months beforehand, will apply only to manuscripts submitted after that date, and will include full and partial waivers for authors who cannot pay. Ability to pay never influences editorial decisions.

3. Peer review

Every research article is assessed by at least two independent external reviewers with expertise in the subject. Crestfield journals use double-anonymous review: reviewers do not know the authors' identities, and authors do not know the reviewers'. An editor first checks each submission for scope and basic quality; manuscripts that pass are sent for review, and the editor decides on the basis of the reviewers' reports. Editors and reviewers must declare any conflict of interest and step aside from manuscripts where one exists. Submissions by editors are handled by another editor and reviewed in the same way as any other paper.

4. Editorial independence

Decisions to accept or reject manuscripts are made by each journal's editors alone, based on scholarly merit. The publisher, its owner and any commercial considerations play no part in editorial decisions.

5. Publication ethics

Crestfield follows the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), including its Core Practices and flowcharts for handling suspected misconduct, and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. Research involving people or animals must have received approval from an appropriate ethics committee, and authors must state this in the manuscript.

6. Authorship and contributions

Every listed author must have made a substantial contribution to the work, approved the final version and agreed to be accountable for it. Authors are asked to describe each person's contribution. Changes to the author list after submission require the written agreement of all authors. Buying, selling or gifting authorship is not permitted.

7. Conflicts of interest

Authors, editors and reviewers must declare any financial, professional or personal interest that could appear to influence their work. Funding sources must be stated in every article.

8. Plagiarism and misconduct

Submissions are screened for text similarity before review. Plagiarism, duplicate submission, data fabrication or falsification, image manipulation and citation manipulation lead to rejection, or to correction or retraction after publication. Suspected misconduct is investigated following COPE guidance and may be reported to the authors' institutions.

9. Use of AI tools

AI tools cannot be listed as authors. Authors who use generative AI in preparing a manuscript must say how they used it, and remain fully responsible for the content. Reviewers and editors must not upload manuscripts to public AI tools, to protect confidentiality.

10. Data and research integrity

Authors are encouraged to share the data, code and materials behind their results in a public repository, and must state in the article where they can be found or why they cannot be shared.

11. Corrections and retractions

Errors in published articles are corrected through a published correction notice linked to the original article. Articles with serious errors or misconduct are retracted with a notice explaining why. Retracted articles remain online, clearly marked, so the scholarly record stays complete.

12. Appeals and complaints

Authors may appeal an editorial decision by writing to the journal's Editor-in-Chief with a reasoned explanation; appeals are considered by an editor not involved in the original decision. Complaints about the conduct of a journal, editor or the publisher can be sent to [email protected] and will be acknowledged within ten working days.

13. Identifiers and archiving

Every published article will receive a permanent Digital Object Identifier (DOI) through Crossref. Each journal will have an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) before its first issue. Published content will be deposited with a long-term digital preservation service so it remains available if the publisher ceases to operate.

14. Privacy

Names and email addresses entered in the submission system are used only for the journal's stated purposes and are not shared with third parties or used for marketing.

These policies apply to all Crestfield journals. Last updated: 1 October 2026.