Direct Marketing Policy
The AJMS Direct Marketing Policy explains how the journal may communicate legitimate journal information or invite manuscript submissions from researchers whose work is relevant to the Aims and Scope. Communications should be appropriate, accurate, well targeted, proportionate, and non-intrusive.
1. Scope of Direct Marketing
Direct marketing may include calls for papers, special-issue announcements, journal updates, manuscript invitations, and other communications about AJMS publishing activities.
2. Accuracy and Transparency
Marketing communications should accurately describe AJMS, its publisher, scope, peer-review model, publication schedule, open-access model, fees, policies, and current abstracting or indexing status. AJMS should not make misleading, exaggerated, or unverifiable claims.
3. No Guarantees or Improper Claims
Direct marketing must not guarantee manuscript acceptance, favourable peer review, unusually rapid publication, citation impact, future indexing, or another outcome controlled by independent editorial assessment or third parties.
4. Targeting and Frequency
Communications should be directed to reasonably relevant research or professional audiences and should not be repetitive, intrusive, deceptive, or designed to pressure recipients into submission or purchase.
5. Editorial Independence
Receiving, responding to, ignoring, or opting out of a marketing communication has no influence on editorial screening, reviewer selection, peer review, acceptance, rejection, correction, retraction, or publication.
6. Contact Information, Privacy and Opt-Out
Contact information used for journal communication should be handled consistently with the Privacy Policy. Recipients should have a practical way to request that direct marketing communications stop, and complaints about outreach should be handled promptly. The DOAJ transparency principles similarly state that journal direct marketing should be appropriate, well targeted, unobtrusive, truthful, and not misleading.
