PUBLISHING POLICIES ON INBREEDING

Sapiens in Health Sciences (SHS) maintains an editorial endogamy prevention policy aimed at safeguarding academic independence, editorial impartiality, institutional diversity, and the credibility of the scientific publishing process. This policy is grounded in internationally recognized best practices in publication ethics and scholarly publishing.

Editorial endogamy is understood as the excessive concentration of publications authored by individuals directly affiliated with the journal’s editorial management or with the institution responsible for its publication. For the purposes of this policy, individuals affiliated with the journal include members of the Editorial Team, Editorial Board, Scientific Committee, Academic Committee, staff of the publishing entity, and any person who participates on a permanent basis in the journal’s editorial management.

To ensure academic openness and institutional diversity, the participation of authors affiliated with the journal shall not exceed 25% of the total scientific articles published during the corresponding editorial year or across the two most recent issues of the journal.

Manuscripts submitted by members of the Editorial Team, Editorial Board, or any academic body of the journal shall be subject to the same evaluation criteria applied to all other authors and must undergo the complete double-blind peer review process.

In such cases, editorial handling of the manuscript shall be assigned to an independent editor who has no academic, professional, institutional, or personal relationship with the authors. Under no circumstances may an author affiliated with the journal participate in the receipt, reviewer selection, evaluation, editorial decision-making, or any other stage related to the management of their own manuscript.

Reviewer selection shall prioritize independence, academic expertise, institutional diversity, geographic diversity, and subject-matter competence in order to ensure objective, impartial, and scientifically rigorous evaluations.

Sapiens in Health Sciences actively promotes the participation of authors, reviewers, and collaborators from diverse institutions, countries, and disciplinary backgrounds, thereby strengthening academic pluralism, editorial transparency, and the scientific quality of its publications.

Through this policy, the journal reaffirms its commitment to editorial integrity, academic independence, scientific diversity, and internationally recognized best practices in scholarly publishing.