The Journal of Mathematics follows the principles of transparency and best practice set out jointly by COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME. Everyone involved in publishing with the journal — editors, referees, authors and the publisher — is expected to uphold the standards described below.

Responsibilities of editors

• Decisions to accept or reject are based only on scholarly merit, never on the identity, nationality, institution, gender, ethnicity, religion or seniority of the authors.
• Editors keep all information about a submission confidential and disclose it only to those involved in its assessment.
• Editors do not use unpublished material from a submission in their own work without the written consent of the authors.
• An editor with any competing interest in a manuscript withdraws from handling it and hands it to an independent colleague.
• Editors take reasonable steps to investigate credible concerns about published or submitted work, and issue corrections or retractions where warranted.

Responsibilities of referees

• Referees who feel unqualified, who cannot meet the deadline, or who have a conflict of interest decline the invitation promptly.
• Reviews are objective, evidence-based and constructive. Personal criticism of authors is unacceptable.
• Referees identify relevant published work that the authors have not cited, and alert the editor to any substantial overlap with other publications known to them.
• Manuscripts received for review are confidential and must not be retained, shared or used for private advantage.

Responsibilities of authors

• Submitted work must be original, must not have been published elsewhere, and must not be under consideration by another journal.
• All results must be reported accurately. Fabrication, falsification and selective reporting of computations constitute serious misconduct.
• Sources must be properly cited, and permission obtained for any reproduced figure, table or extended quotation.
• Authors must disclose all financial and non-financial competing interests and all sources of funding.
• An author who discovers a significant error in published work must inform the editorial office immediately and cooperate in correcting or retracting the paper.

Authorship

Authorship is limited to those who made a substantial contribution to the conception, theory, computation or writing of the work, who approved the final version, and who agree to be accountable for it. Anyone who does not meet all three conditions should be recognised in the acknowledgements instead. Guest, gift, honorary and ghost authorship are not permitted. Changes to the author list after submission require the written agreement of every author, including the person being added or removed.

Handling allegations of misconduct

Concerns may be raised in confidence with the editorial office. The journal follows COPE flowcharts: the corresponding author is asked to respond to the specific allegation with evidence, the response is assessed by the Editor-in-Chief together with an uninvolved editor, and where the concern is substantiated the journal may issue a correction, an expression of concern or a retraction, and may notify the authors' institution. Complainants are informed of the outcome, and the identity of a good-faith complainant is protected.