EDITORIAL POLICIES AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

Peer Review and Acceptance

Mental Health Clinician (MHC) utilizes a double-blind peer review process for all manuscripts and follows industry best practices whenever possible to ensure that it publishes high-quality scientific material. Refer to these peer review guidelines for additional information.

Quality, originality and significance to journal readership are primary criteria for acceptance. Manuscripts are reviewed by senior editors and those determined to meet journal requirements are then sent for review by at least 2 peer reviewers.

Peer reviewers must maintain confidentiality of manuscripts. It is prohibited to use or share data in manuscripts under review. All communication should go through the PeerTrack system or directly through MHC editors. Manuscripts should not be entered into any Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems as these are not confidential systems. Authors should not be contacted directly.

Appeals on decisions or complaints regarding the peer review process can be sent to the managing editorial office at: Audrey.McDonald@kwglobal.com. All editor's decisions following an appeal are final.

Author Code of Conduct

For information related to author code of conduct, conflicts of interest, ethical considerations, and other issues, refer to the author guidelines.

Editorial Code of Conduct

  1. Editors (ie, the Senior Editors and Editorial Board Members) will not be involved in editorial activities for work they have contributed to as an author, or for work from an organization of which they are an employee, advisor, shareholder or have some other close relationship with.
  2. Editors must declare their conflicts of interest when authoring editorials or other contributions to the journal as is required for other authors.
  3. Editors must declare a conflict of interest if present for an assigned manuscript.
  4. Editors will not contribute editorials, letters or other papers to MHC on commission from an outside organization.

Data Sharing and Data Accessibility

The journal encourages authors to share the data supporting research results in the submitted manuscripts by archiving them in an appropriate public repository if available. When relevant, authors should include a link to the repository they have used to be published with their paper.

Supplemental Issues Receiving External Funding

MHC adheres to strict principles regarding publication of content funded by sources other than the journal publisher (AAPP) including:

  • Senior editors are given and take full responsibility for the policies, practices, and content of supplements, including complete control of the decision to select authors, peer reviewers, and content for the supplement. Editing by the funder or others who are neither authors nor affiliated with the journal will not be permitted.
  • Senior editors have the right to appoint one or more external editors of the supplement and must take responsibility for the work of those editors.
  • The senior editors must retain the authority to send supplement manuscripts for external peer review and to reject manuscripts submitted for the supplement with or without external review. These conditions will be made known to authors and any external editors of the supplement before beginning editorial work on it.
  • The source of the idea for the supplement, sources of funding for the supplement’s research and publication, and products of the funding source related to content considered in the supplement will clearly be stated in introductory material.
  • Advertising in supplements should follow the same policies as those of the primary journal.
  • Senior editors must enable readers to distinguish readily between ordinary editorial pages and supplement pages.
  • Senior and supplement editors must not accept personal favors or direct remuneration from sponsors of supplements.
  • Secondary publication in supplements (republication of papers published elsewhere) should be clearly identified by the citation of the original paper and by the title.
  • The same principles of authorship and disclosure of potential conflicts of interest discussed elsewhere in this document should be applied to supplements.
  • Editors recuse themselves from publication decisions involving any manuscripts that may pose a real or perceived conflict of interest. This includes manuscripts authored by the editor themselves or authored by trainees under their supervision.