Editor resource centre
How editing works at Palmyra Academic Press: the roles, the standards editors uphold, the editorial workflow, and how to apply to edit one of our journals.
Editorial roles
| Role | Responsibilities |
|---|---|
| Editor-in-Chief | Leads the journal's scholarly direction and scope; makes or confirms final decisions; appoints associate editors and the board with the publisher; answers for the journal's integrity. |
| Associate editor | Handles manuscripts in their specialty: checks fit, invites reviewers, weighs the reports and recommends or makes a decision. |
| Editorial board member | Advises on scope and policy, reviews in their field, suggests reviewers and encourages strong submissions. |
| Reviewer | Assesses manuscripts confidentially. See the reviewer resource centre. |
| Editorial office | The publisher's staff: technical checks, similarity screening, copyediting, production, metadata and archiving. The office does not make editorial decisions. |
Editorial independence
Editorial decisions belong to the editors alone. The publisher does not ask for any paper to be accepted or rejected, and no payment of any kind influences a decision: the journals charge no fees. A paper submitted by an editor or board member is handled by another editor, and its author has no access to its review. Editors decide on scholarly merit, as the editorial policies set out.
Standards editors uphold
- The COPE Core Practices, and COPE's guidance on misconduct, corrections and retractions.
- For health journals, the ICMJE Recommendations, including trial registration and authorship criteria.
- Double-anonymised review by at least two independent reviewers for every research article.
- Reporting guidelines checked at submission (CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, CARE, STARD, ARRIVE, SPIRIT) where they apply.
- Ethical approval, consent, data availability, funding and competing-interest statements present before review.
- No coercive citation: editors never ask authors to cite the journal or the editor's own work.
- Competing interests declared, and cases passed on when an editor is conflicted.
The editorial workflow
Editors work in the journal's editorial workspace (log in, then Submissions). Each manuscript passes through five stages:
- Submission. The editorial office checks completeness, anonymisation, declarations and similarity. The handling editor then checks scope and quality. Manuscripts that are out of scope or clearly unready are returned without review, promptly and with reasons.
- Review. The editor invites at least two reviewers with no competing interest, never relies only on reviewers the authors suggested, and follows up late reviews. Reviewers respond within one week and review within three weeks, with automatic reminders.
- Decision. The editor reads the reports and the manuscript and decides: accept, minor revision, major revision with re-review, or decline. The decision letter gives reasons and passes on the reviewers' comments to authors.
- Copyediting. The editorial office edits the accepted manuscript for language, consistency and reference style, and the authors approve the changes.
- Production. The office prepares the final files and metadata; the authors check the proofs; the article is published in an issue.
Editors rate each review, and the ratings guide future invitations.
Editorial boards
A board is a list of people who have agreed, in writing, to serve. Nobody is listed without that confirmation, and each member is shown with their current affiliation and country. Boards are international: each journal's board draws on at least four countries. Members are expected to review or handle manuscripts in their field during the year and to respond to the editor's requests. A member who no longer takes part steps down, and the editorial history page of each journal keeps the record of who served when.
How a new journal opens
New Palmyra journals are prepared in full but stay closed until every one of these conditions is met:
- An Editor-in-Chief is appointed and has confirmed in writing, with a record in the field that anyone can verify.
- At least eight board members from at least four countries have confirmed in writing.
- The Editor-in-Chief has reviewed and approved the aims and scope, the article types and the author guidelines.
- Enough peer-reviewed papers have been accepted for a complete first issue before the journal is announced.
- Plagiarism screening and persistent identifiers are in place.
- The journal's publication-ethics page, with its field's requirements, is published.
We work this way because a journal that opens without editors or papers serves nobody. A journal is judged by its editors, its review and a steady record of issues, so we do not claim an ISSN, an index or a metric before a journal has earned it.
Call for editors
We are recruiting Editors-in-Chief, associate editors and board members for the journals below. None is open for submissions yet.
Health sciences
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Palmyra Journal of Dental Sciences
The Palmyra Journal of Dental Sciences publishes peer-reviewed research across oral health and dentistry: oral and maxillofacial surgery, orthodontics, endodontics, periodontics, prosthodontics and implantology, paediatric dentistry, oral medicine and pathology, dental materials, and dental public health. It welcomes clinical trials, observational and laboratory studies, systematic reviews and instructive case reports, and has a particular interest in evidence from settings where access to oral care is limited.
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Palmyra Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences
The Palmyra Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences publishes peer-reviewed research across the pharmaceutical sciences and pharmacy practice: pharmaceutics and drug delivery, pharmacology and toxicology, medicinal and pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmacognosy and natural products, pharmaceutical analysis and regulatory science, and clinical pharmacy and pharmacy practice. It welcomes laboratory, clinical and health-services research that is reported fully enough to be reproduced, including work on medicines access and quality in low- and middle-income settings.
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Palmyra Journal of Clinical Medicine
The Palmyra Journal of Clinical Medicine publishes peer-reviewed research across clinical medicine and its specialties, including internal medicine, cardiology, surgery, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, neurology and psychiatry, infectious diseases, oncology, emergency and critical care, radiology and imaging, and public health and epidemiology. It publishes research that changes or informs clinical practice, systematic reviews, and case reports that add genuinely new knowledge. Specialty sections may become journals in their own right as they grow.
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Palmyra Journal of Health Services and Management
The Palmyra Journal of Health Services and Management publishes peer-reviewed research on how health systems and health organisations are governed, financed, managed and improved: health policy and systems, hospital and health-services management, health economics, quality and patient safety, the health workforce and nursing management, and digital health. It bridges management research and health-services research, and welcomes quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods work, including evaluations of reforms and programmes in resource-constrained settings.
Engineering and earth sciences
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Palmyra Journal of Civil Engineering
The Palmyra Journal of Civil Engineering publishes peer-reviewed research across civil engineering: structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, transportation, water resources and hydraulics, construction engineering and management, construction materials, and environmental engineering. It welcomes experimental, numerical and field research and documented case studies, with a particular interest in infrastructure, reconstruction and resilience in regions rebuilding after conflict or disaster.
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Palmyra Journal of Earthquake Engineering
The Palmyra Journal of Earthquake Engineering publishes peer-reviewed research on earthquakes and the built environment: engineering seismology and strong ground motion, seismic hazard and risk, structural dynamics and seismic design, geotechnical earthquake engineering, assessment and retrofitting of existing structures, and resilience and post-earthquake recovery. It welcomes post-event reconnaissance and lessons-learned studies, including from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East, reported with the ground-motion records and data needed to verify them.
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Palmyra Journal of Petroleum and Geo-engineering
The Palmyra Journal of Petroleum and Geo-engineering publishes peer-reviewed research on the engineering of the subsurface: reservoir engineering, drilling and well engineering, production engineering, natural gas engineering, geomechanics and geotechnical engineering, and subsurface energy and carbon storage. It welcomes laboratory, numerical and field studies, and publishes industry data only where its owner has permitted publication.
How to apply
We look for active researchers with a publication record in internationally indexed journals, experience as reviewers, and the time to answer authors promptly. Editor-in-Chief candidates normally hold a doctorate and have editorial experience. Researchers from Syria, the region and its diaspora are warmly encouraged to apply, as are researchers from anywhere in the world.
- Write to editor@palmyrapub.org with the subject line Editor application: [journal] – [role].
- Attach a current CV with your publication list.
- Give your ORCID iD and a public profile of your work (for example Scopus, Web of Science or Google Scholar).
- For Editor-in-Chief applications, add a one-page statement of how you would develop the journal.
What happens next. We acknowledge each application within ten working days, check the record against public sources, and talk with shortlisted candidates. Appointments are made by letter, and a name appears on a journal's website only after the appointee confirms in writing.