Responsibilities of the Editor and the Editorial Board

The Editor-in-Chief and the editorial board of the Journal of the Faculty of Economics Brčko make the final decision on which manuscripts will be published. When making decisions, the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial board are guided by the editorial policy, taking into account relevant legal regulations concerning defamation, copyright infringement, and plagiarism.

The Editor-in-Chief and the editorial board retain discretionary rights to evaluate and not publish received manuscripts if they determine that the manuscripts do not meet the prescribed content and formal criteria. Under normal circumstances, the editorial board informs the author whether the manuscript has been accepted within 4 to 6 weeks from the date of receipt.

The Editor-in-Chief must not have any conflict of interest regarding the manuscripts under consideration. If such a conflict of interest exists, the editorial board decides on the selection of reviewers and the fate of the manuscript. If a conflict of interest exists for one or more members of the editorial board, those members are excluded from the process of selecting reviewers and making decisions about the manuscript. The editor and the members of the editorial board are obliged to promptly report any existing conflict of interest.

The Editor-in-Chief and the editorial board are obliged to make judgments on manuscripts based solely on their content, without racial, gender, religious, ethnic, or political prejudice.

The editor and the members of the editorial board must not use unpublished material from submitted manuscripts for their own research without the explicit written permission of the authors, and the information and ideas presented in the manuscripts must be kept confidential and not used for personal gain.

The editor and the members of the editorial board are obliged to take all reasonable measures to ensure that the identity of reviewers remains unknown to authors before, during, and after the review process, and that the identity of authors remains unknown to reviewers until the completion of the review. To ensure the independence of reviewers from authors, the Journal of the Faculty of Economics Brčko implements an external/independent review procedure, which includes the following key steps:

- The editorial board selects independent reviewers with appropriate expertise (doctoral degree, academic affiliation, recognized academic and research contribution, relevant scientific research area) who are not directly or indirectly affiliated with the same institution as the authors, in order to avoid conflicts of interest.

- The review process is conducted as double-blind, meaning that reviewers do not know the identity of the authors and authors do not know the identity of the reviewers, ensuring impartiality.

- The editorial board engages two to three independent external reviewers to evaluate each manuscript in order to obtain multiple unbiased opinions.

- The editorial board concludes an agreement with the selected reviewers, in which they express their willingness and qualifications to conduct an impartial review of the manuscript within a specified timeframe.

- The editorial board pays special attention to maintaining author anonymity by providing reviewers with a version of the manuscript without information that could reveal or suggest the identity of the authors (name, affiliation, email, ORCID, etc.).

- Reviewers assess manuscripts based on scientific value, originality, methodology, and relevance, without influence from the identity or affiliation of the authors.

- The editorial board mediates communication and ensures that all reviewer comments are anonymized before being sent to the authors, thus maintaining the integrity of the independent review process