Service Agreement

This Service Agreement (the "Agreement") is entered into between Guinness Press ("Publisher") and the submitting author(s) ("Author") upon submission of a manuscript to any Guinness Press journal.

By submitting a manuscript, the Author agrees to the terms set out in this Agreement. This Agreement governs the entire submission, peer review, editorial, and publication process.

Manuscripts may be submitted by researchers, academics, practitioners, and scholars at any career stage and from any country or institution. Guinness Press does not discriminate on the basis of institutional affiliation, nationality, race, gender, religion, or any other characteristic.

The submitting author must be authorised to act on behalf of all listed co-authors. By submitting, the submitting author confirms that all co-authors have reviewed the manuscript, approved its submission, and agree to the terms of this Agreement.

By submitting a manuscript, the Author warrants and represents that:

• The manuscript is the Author's own original work and has not been copied, in whole or in part, from any other source without proper citation.
• The manuscript has not been published previously in any form, except where the Author has disclosed a prior preprint version at the time of submission.
• The manuscript is not currently under review at any other journal or publication.
• All authors listed on the manuscript have made a genuine intellectual contribution to the work and meet recognised authorship criteria.
• Any persons who contributed to the work but do not qualify as authors are acknowledged in the manuscript.
• All data, results, and findings reported in the manuscript are accurate and have not been fabricated, falsified, or selectively reported.
• Any necessary permissions for the reproduction of third-party materials (figures, tables, images) have been obtained and are disclosed.
• All sources of funding, grants, and financial support have been disclosed in the manuscript.
• All conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, have been declared in the manuscript.
• All required ethical approvals (for studies involving human participants or animals) have been obtained and are reported in the manuscript.

Guinness Press takes research integrity seriously. All submitted manuscripts may be screened for plagiarism and duplicate submission using industry-standard detection tools.

Self-plagiarism the reuse of substantial portions of one's own previously published work without disclosure or citation is not permitted. Authors must clearly disclose any prior publication of substantially similar material.

If plagiarism, data fabrication, or duplicate submission is detected at any stage, Guinness Press reserves the right to immediately reject or retract the manuscript and notify the authors' institutions.

Manuscripts must be submitted through the online submission form at guinnesspress.com/submissions. Authors must select the target journal, provide all required author details, upload the manuscript file, and confirm the author declarations.

Upon receipt of a submission, the editorial office will send an acknowledgement to the submitting author's email address within two business days.

Manuscripts that do not conform to the author guidelines of the selected journal, that are clearly out of scope, or that contain obvious ethical violations may be returned without peer review.

All manuscripts that pass initial editorial screening will undergo double-blind peer review. Guinness Press targets a peer review decision within four to eight weeks of the submission date, though timelines may vary depending on reviewer availability.

Reviewers are selected by the Editor-in-Chief based on their relevant subject expertise. Both the Author's identity and the reviewers' identities are withheld from each other throughout the review process.

Authors may suggest potential reviewers at the time of submission. Guinness Press is not obligated to use suggested reviewers but will consider the suggestions. Authors may also flag individuals they believe should be excluded from review due to a conflict of interest.

Following peer review, the Editor-in-Chief will communicate one of the following editorial decisions to the submitting author:

• Accept: The manuscript is accepted for publication, subject to any minor editorial corrections.
• Major revision: The manuscript requires substantial revisions before a final decision can be made. Revised manuscripts will be re-reviewed.
• Minor revision: The manuscript requires limited revisions. Revised manuscripts may be assessed by the editor without further peer review.
• Reject: The manuscript does not meet the standards of the journal and will not be considered further.

All editorial decisions are final. Guinness Press does not enter into correspondence regarding the reasons for rejection beyond the information provided in the decision letter.

Upon acceptance of a manuscript, Guinness Press will:

• Assign a CrossRef Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to the article.
• Prepare the article for publication in accordance with the journal's formatting and style standards.
• Publish the article online as soon as the production process is complete, under open access terms.
• Submit the article metadata to IP Indexing and CrossRef for indexing and archiving.

Authors will receive a proof of the formatted article for review before final publication. Authors should review proofs carefully and return corrections within the time specified.

Authors retain copyright in their published works. By submitting a manuscript, Authors grant Guinness Press a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to publish, reproduce, distribute, transmit, archive, and make the work available online in all formats.

Authors are permitted to post the accepted and published versions of their articles on personal websites, institutional repositories, and academic networking platforms (such as ResearchGate and Academia.edu), provided that Guinness Press is acknowledged as the original publisher and a link to the published DOI is included.

Authors may reproduce their published work in theses, book chapters, and other scholarly publications, provided the original publication in a Guinness Press journal is cited.

Authors may withdraw a manuscript at any point before acceptance by notifying the editorial office at editorial@guinnesspress.com. Withdrawal requests made after a revised manuscript has been submitted, or after acceptance, must be accompanied by a satisfactory explanation.

Withdrawal of a manuscript after acceptance is strongly discouraged. Guinness Press reserves the right to note the withdrawal in scholarly records if the manuscript has already entered the production process.

Manuscripts that have already been published may not be withdrawn unilaterally. Post-publication corrections and retractions are governed by our Editorial Policies and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines.

Guinness Press adheres to the publication ethics guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Authors, reviewers, and editors are all expected to comply with COPE's Code of Conduct.

Research involving human participants, patient data, or animals must have received appropriate ethical approval from a relevant institutional review board or ethics committee. Details of the approval must be stated in the manuscript.

Guinness Press reserves the right to retract any published article in which post-publication evidence of research misconduct, plagiarism, ethical violations, or data integrity concerns is found.

This Agreement is governed by the laws of the State of New York, United States. Any dispute arising from this Agreement shall be resolved under New York jurisdiction.

Guinness Press reserves the right to amend the terms of this Agreement at any time. Updated terms will be published on our website. Continued use of our submission services following publication of updated terms constitutes acceptance of those terms.