Standards for technology, engineering and AI publishing.

Editorial Standards

Each Ridgeline journal's editorial board evaluates submissions against its own published aims and scope, using structured peer review with editorial timelines communicated to authors. Acceptance decisions rest with that board, not with the imprint or the publisher; the group's role is to provide the shared infrastructure and policy framework editorial boards operate within, not to direct individual decisions.

Peer Review Principles

Reviewers are expected to assess a manuscript's methods, contribution and presentation on their merits, disclose any competing interest with the manuscript or its authors, and keep unpublished material confidential during review. Review feedback is returned to authors in a form that explains the basis for the editorial decision, not as a bare accept or reject.

Research Integrity

Submissions are expected to be original, accurately represent the work performed, and cite prior work appropriately. Where a manuscript involves the use of generative AI tools in the research or writing process, that use must be disclosed at submission — AI systems are not listed as authors, and responsibility for the manuscript's content and accuracy remains with the human authors regardless of what tools were used to help produce it.

Authorship

Authorship should reflect a substantive contribution to the work — its conception, execution, analysis, or writing — and all listed authors are expected to have approved the submitted manuscript and any subsequent revision. Corresponding authors are responsible for confirming this before submission.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors, reviewers and editors are expected to disclose financial, institutional or personal relationships that could reasonably be seen to influence a manuscript's content or its editorial handling — including, where relevant to Ridgeline's subject matter, a commercial or governmental interest in the technology, company or policy a manuscript discusses.

Publication Ethics

Ridgeline's journals follow Panorama Scholarly Group's group-wide Publication Ethics policy, which sets out the complete governance framework for authorship, originality, conflicts of interest, complaints and editorial conduct across all five imprints. This page describes how that framework applies to Ridgeline specifically; where anything here appears to differ, the group policy is authoritative.

Open Access & Creative Commons Licensing

Every Ridgeline article publishes open access under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license from the day of publication: free to read, download, and reuse — including for text and data mining — provided the original work is properly credited. There is no reader subscription or access fee at any Ridgeline journal. Full licensing terms are set out in the group's Open Access Policy.

Crossref DOI & Metadata Quality

Every accepted Ridgeline article receives a Digital Object Identifier registered with Crossref under Panorama Scholarly Group's prefix 10.63802, giving it a permanent, resolvable citation record independent of where it is hosted. DOI registration is deposited alongside structured bibliographic metadata — title, authors, affiliations, abstract and references — so the article is correctly identified wherever that metadata is consumed, including by citation databases and discovery tools.

Indexing & Discovery

Published Ridgeline research is indexed in Google Scholar, extending each article's reach beyond its own journal's readership. The group's Indexing & Archiving page lists the full set of indexing and discovery channels that apply across Panorama Scholarly Group's journals; Ridgeline does not claim indexing coverage beyond what is listed there.

Digital Preservation

Published content is preserved in CLOCKSS and the PKP Preservation Network, two independent, distributed archives designed to keep research accessible even if a journal or its publisher were to discontinue. Preservation happens independently of the journal's own hosting, so continued access does not depend on any single system staying online.

Corrections, Retractions & Post-publication Updates

A published article is not treated as closed to correction. Where an error is identified after publication, the journal issues a correction that documents what changed and why, without altering the original scholarly record silently. Where the error is serious enough to undermine the article's conclusions, or where the underlying research is found to be unsound or fraudulent, the journal may issue a retraction, again documented publicly rather than removed without explanation. Both are handled under Panorama Scholarly Group's shared publication-ethics framework — see Corrections & Retractions for the complete process.