Responsibilities of Editors

• All manuscripts received by the editorial office are treated as confidential documents.
• Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, and other editorial advisers (e.g., statistical reviewers), as appropriate.

• The peer review process is strictly confidential. Reviewers must treat all manuscripts and associated data as confidential information.
• Reviewers must not share, discuss, or use the content of the manuscript they are reviewing for any purpose during or after the peer-review process, beyond what is officially published by the journal.
• If a reviewer wishes to consult a colleague or junior researcher for their expert opinion on a specific part of the manuscript, they must first seek explicit permission from the journal's Editor-in-Chief. The names of all individuals who contributed to the review must be disclosed when the report is submitted.

• The Journal of [Journal Name] will not share manuscripts with third parties outside the journal's editorial team and trusted review network, except in cases of suspected research or publication misconduct, where information may be shared with relevant authorities as part of an investigation.
• As the journal is published by the [National Nutrition Institute], manuscripts may be shared with senior editorial staff within the Institute for the purpose of editorial governance and process improvement. This does not include sharing for other purposes without author consent.

• To advance the science of scholarly communication and improve our own processes, the Journal of [Journal Name] may occasionally conduct internal, ethical research on our editorial workflows.
• Any such research will be designed and conducted in a way that does not affect the editorial decision on any manuscript and will strictly maintain the confidentiality of all submitted materials, author identities, and reviewer comments.
• If a research project requires direct contact with authors or reviewers, it will only be conducted after obtaining ethical approval and explicit consent from the participants.

• We respect the work of peer reviewers at other journals. If a manuscript submitted to us has been previously reviewed at another journal, authors may submit the previous reviews. The Editor-in-Chief will consider these reports at their discretion, but the manuscript will still undergo our own independent and confidential peer-review process.