Policies

These policies are set out in more detail on the pages on publication ethics, publishing and citation and governance.

Open review

All review takes place in public on GitHub. Reviewers’ comments and authors’ replies remain part of the published record.

Conflicts of interest

Authors, reviewers and editors must declare any relationship with the software, data or people involved in a submission. An editor with a conflict of interest takes no part in handling the submission.

Submissions from editors

Any submission from a member of the editorial team is handled entirely by another editor, who selects the reviewers and makes the decision. The submitting editor has no access to the process beyond that of any other author. Until the editorial board includes at least one editor besides the Founding Editor, the journal does not accept submissions from its editors.

Right of reply

Maintainers of the examined software or data are invited to respond before publication, and are given at least 30 days to do so. Responses that meet the journal’s standards of accuracy are published alongside the article.

Use of AI tools

Authors and reviewers must disclose any use of AI tools in preparing a submission or review, and remain responsible for everything they submit.

Corrections and retractions

Errors in published articles are corrected openly, with a dated notice. An article whose central claim is shown to be wrong is retracted, with the reason stated; the original remains available, clearly marked.

Licence and archiving

Published articles are released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0) and archived on Zenodo, each with its own DOI.

Fees

ExSil charges no fees to authors or readers.