Open Access Policy

The Journal is Open Access. No fee is charged to view, download, or print articles. There is no print edition. The online edition has ISSN 2575-8527, and is available at the website https://journalprivacyconfidentiality.org/. Readers may subscribe to the Journal via a notification system.

Publishing schedule

The Journal strives for two publications per year, dependent on submissions of sufficient quality. In addition, the Journal publishes special issues on certain topics, such as the Theory and Practice of Differential Privacy (TPDP) workshops.

Peer review process

All submissions are peer-reviewed; editorials and sundry materials are the exceptions, and are clearly marked. We rely on the volunteer effort by our peers for input.

Section policies

Editorial

Section	Open Submissions	Indexed	Peer Reviewed	Explanation
Articles
Perspectives				Shorter articles, limited peer review, provide context. Generally solicited, inquire before submitting.
Editorial
Conference issues				Submission is restricted to attendees.
Sundry				Used for informational items
Reminiscences				Special article used in reminiscences and commemorative issues (see Vol 8 No 1)

Reviewing Process

Every editor will seek at least two timely expert opinions for submissions. Peer review is single-blind: The authors’ names are not blinded, the reviewers’ names are kept confidential. The reviewer guidelines are posted on our website.

Timeliness of Peer-Review Process

While we strive for quick turnaround, we do not control the time reviewers take to complete their tasks. The current turnaround goals are listed as part of the reviewer guidelines.

Ownership

The Journal is fully independent, and is not owned by any university or publishing house. The Journal’s contact information is available on our website.

Management and Governance

The Journal is managed by the Governing Board. The Editorial Board handles the regular business of the journal.

Governing Board

The Governing Board defines the strategic direction of the Journal, and appoints members of the Editorial Board. The Governing Board retains the right to review decisions of the Editorial Board. The Editor-in-Chief is the chair of the Governing Board. Voting is by ⅔ majority of membership. Current membership is listed on the Editorial Team page. Changes to the Governing Board are announced in the Journal.

Editorial Board

The Editorial Board handles the regular business of the journal. Appointments are normally 3 years, renewable. Appointments are approved by the Governing Board. Membership should be limited to no more than 12 editors. Current membership is available on our website. Changes to the membership of the Editorial Board are published as part of the next editorial in the Journal.

A Managing Editor handles the day-to-day operations of the journal. The Managing Editor is a member of the Editorial Board.

Editors solicit and encourage submissions to the Journal. Editors are jointly responsible for the content of the journal, unless an issue specifically designates a subset of the Editorial Board. Co-chairs of the Organizing and Program Committee of the TPDP workshop are ex-officio members of the Editorial Board. The main organizing co-chair of TPDP is the editor of the current year’s TPDP special issue. The Editorial Board has control over the selection of referees.

Author fees

As of 2019, the Journal does not charge fees or charges for manuscript processing and/or publishing materials. This is clearly noted on the Submission page.

Revenue sources

The Journal has no income at this time. Funding since AY 2017 has been provided by the John M. Abowd’s Edmund Ezra Day Chair and the Labor Dynamics Institute at Cornell University. Funding from 2009-2016 was provided by Stephen Fienberg’s chair at Carnegie Mellon University, with support from Research Showcase @ CMU, Carnegie Mellon University’s institutional repository. The support in no way restricts or influences editorial decisions.

Advertising

The Journal does not accept advertisements.

Direct Marketing

The Journal does not engage in marketing activities.

Copyright and Licensing

The Journal’s copyright policy is stated on our Submission page. Each article also identifies the specific license under which it was published. By submitting to this journal, the author(s) license the article under the ]Creative Commons License – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), unless choosing a more lenient license (for instance, public domain).

Process for identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct

The Journal and its editors strongly discourage any attempt at plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. If we detect such behavior, or are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in their journal, we shall follow COPE’s guidelines in dealing with allegations.

Publication Ethics

The Journal adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. In particular:

Journal policies on authorship and contributorship

The Journal requires that each author is aware of the contents of the entire article and its submission status, and each author materially contributed to the creation of the paper (see Submission page. The submitting author explicitly confirms this, on behalf of all authors, upon submission.

Complaints and appeals

Should authors have complaints about the behavior of any Journal editor, reviewer, or staff member, they should first attempt to contact the Managing Editor (see Contact page). Should that not resolve the issue, the complainant may contact COPE or the Managing Editor’s employer.

Journal policies on conflicts of interest / competing interests

Editors who have a conflict of interest with a submission recuse themselves from the editorial process. An alternate editor is then assigned. Editors may themselves be authors on submissions to the Journal, but are excluded from all aspects of the editorial workflow.

Authors are encouraged, but not required to state any competing interests at the time of submission.

Journal policies on data sharing and reproducibility

The Journal strongly encourages transparency. The Journal’s Code and Data Availability Policy is part of the Submission Guidelines.

Other policies

The Journal does not have explicit policies on ethical oversight or on intellectual property.

Options for post-publication discussions and corrections

The Journal does not host any forum for post-publication discussions. We may, subject to our Submission Guidelines, publish comments or discussions of articles published in the Journal. Authors may request corrections to their articles, which will be posted in addition to the original manuscript. Articles may be retracted, in which case a notice will replace the manuscript.

Archiving

The Journal subscribes to CLOCKSS, the community governed and supported digital preservation archive for scholarly content. The Journal is also archived on the WayBack Machine. Most of the Journal’s manuscripts are also available on non-public Github repositories at https://github.com/journalprivacyconfidentiality in LaTeX source code.