Guide for Editors and Journal Owners

1 How journals work here

Starting and hosting a journal is free. SciMatic runs the platform, the article pages, the payment of publication fees and the paperwork; you build your team and run the editorial work.
The publisher is ZincirX Bilişim Teknoloji ve Danışmanlık A.Ş. (Urla, İzmir, Türkiye); SciMatic is its brand. It holds the copyright of the articles published here (ZincirX Inc. for those submitted before 6 November 2026), which appear open access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence; authors agree to this when they submit.
You have full editorial control: who sits on your board, and which papers you accept or reject.
Journals started on SciMatic are owned and published by ZincirX A.Ş., which holds their ISSN and handles legal matters such as copyright claims and disputes. The Editor-in-Chief keeps the role for life, unless they step down or a legal or ethical problem requires a change.
Journals that join with their own ISSN stay yours: you are the publisher and may move the journal elsewhere with 60 days' written notice. Articles already published on SciMatic stay on SciMatic at their permanent addresses (their copyright remains with ZincirX Inc.); you continue with new articles.

2 Start a journal

Confirm your e-mail address, then open Create Journal.
Fill in the short name, full name and abbreviation, a welcome heading and text, the aims and scope, an "about" text, the article types you accept and your country. The starting year and an existing ISSN are optional.
Submit the application. SciMatic or the coordinator for your country reviews it, and you receive an e-mail with the decision (and the reason, if it is declined). We may decline new journals in fields we already cover well.

3 Set up your journal

Open Editor Panel → My Journals and the settings of your journal. Only the journal owner (and SciMatic admins) can change settings.

Tab	What you set there
Basic	Names, ISSN, starting year, the article types you accept, the publication fee (APC) and the cover image (up to 2 MB).
Content	Welcome text, aims and scope, about, editorial board text and additional information, the place for your author guidelines and, if you have one, a link to your manuscript template.
Editorial	Your editorial board (see step 4).
Indexing	Tick the services that index your journal. List only real, confirmed indexing.
Publication	Issues per volume, and the current volume and issue (see step 7).
DOIs	Free DOIs through Zenodo, registered by SciMatic, or Crossref DOIs under your own prefix (see step 9).
Certificate	The Editor-in-Chief's signature (PNG or JPG, up to 2 MB), printed on every publication certificate. It is stored with that person's account, so it appears on every journal they lead.

Authors submit their manuscripts as Word (.docx) or PDF files. You do not need a template, but a short author-guidelines text under Content → Additional information helps authors send you well-prepared papers.

4 Your editorial board

Editor-in-Chief and associate editors can handle submissions and take decisions. Other board members appear on the journal's Editorial page and can see the submission queue.
The journal owner adds members on the Editorial tab.
Researchers can also apply from your journal's Editorial page. The owner or the Editor-in-Chief approves or declines each application; until it is approved the applicant has no access.
Submitting assistants: the owner and the Editor-in-Chief can name assistants who may start a submission on an author's behalf.

5 Handle submissions

The Editor Panel lists your journals with the number of manuscripts awaiting review and of accepted papers that still need their PDF. Open a journal to see its queue, and a manuscript to work on it. Check the panel regularly; the SciMatic app also sends you a notification for new submissions.
Peer review: authors may suggest up to two reviewers when they submit. You can work with them or with your own reviewers and attach their reports.
AI tools (paid from the balance of the editor who starts them):
- SciMatic Check, USD 1 per manuscript version, charged only when the report is ready (Run SciMatic Check on a submitted manuscript that awaits a decision): a recommendation for the desk (send to review, revise first or desk reject), fit with your aims and scope, the language, every reference looked up in Crossref and OpenAlex with retractions flagged, your journal's rules, the required statements, and signals worth a second look, including the same file or title at another SciMatic journal. The report is visible to the journal's editors only; the author does not see it. If the author ran SciMatic Check and shared the report, the desk links to it. From the report you can have its suggestions implemented in the paper (USD 2 from your balance), or send the paper back to the authors with them.
- The former AI pre-screen is no longer sold on its own: its scope, language and desk recommendation are part of SciMatic Check. Pre-screen reports bought earlier stay on the manuscript page.
- AI review, USD 2 per run: a section-by-section peer review by SciMatic's AI reviewers, which you can attach to your decision.
Your decisions are recorded in the activity log.

6 Decisions

Decision	What happens
Return for revisions	The paper goes back to the author with your comments. You can attach the AI review and offer the author the AI correction (USD 25, paid by the author and only if the paper is accepted). With a SciMatic Check report of this version, you can also send its suggestions along and offer the authors to have them implemented (USD 2, from their balance).
It's a thesis	The paper is returned with an invitation to submit it to the thesis repository.
Wrong journal	You transfer the paper to a better-fitting SciMatic journal, which is told about it.
Reject	Final. Give the author a reason (at least 20 characters).
Accept	The article is published. You choose how its final PDF is made: laid out by AI from the manuscript, converted from the author's Word file, or uploaded by you as a finished PDF.

On most journals the author pays the publication fee after acceptance: the article is listed at once, and its PDF is made once the fee is paid. Those papers appear in your panel as "needing a PDF".

7 Issues and volumes

A new journal starts at Volume 1, Issue 1.
Every issue holds 10 articles. When the tenth article is published, the issue is archived and the next one opens automatically.
A new volume starts automatically after the number of issues set under Publication (12 by default). You can also close a volume early from that tab, once it has at least two completed issues. Page numbers restart at 1 in each volume.
Readers find the open issue under Current Issue and earlier ones under Archive on your journal's pages.

8 ISSN

Journals started on SciMatic: once your first issue of 10 articles is complete, ZincirX A.Ş. applies for the journal's ISSN as its publisher, at ISSN Türkiye (the national ISSN centre of Türkiye) wherever possible. Journals that already received an ISSN keep it.
Your own ISSN: you may instead register the journal with your country's national ISSN centre (for example the National Library of the Philippines); see issn.org. SciMatic places no restriction on this. You are then the publisher, as described in step 1.
When the ISSN is assigned, enter it under Settings → Basic.

9 DOIs

Your articles can get DOIs in one of two ways.

Free DOIs through Zenodo: SciMatic registers each article's DOI on Zenodo, CERN's open research repository, at no cost to you. It uploads the final PDF with the title, authors, abstract and journal details; Zenodo registers the DOI (prefix 10.5281), the record links back to the article's page here, and it joins your journal's own community on Zenodo. Switch it on on the DOIs tab. Prepaid journals get the DOI when the article is published, postpaid journals once the author has paid the publication fee. An article that already has a DOI keeps it and is not sent: an article has one DOI only.
Journals with their own Crossref membership: SciMatic deposits Crossref DOIs under your prefix instead.
1. In Crossref's account manager, create a role account for SciMatic with permission to deposit for your prefix. Use a role, not anyone's personal login.
2. On the DOIs tab, enter the prefix, the depositor's name and e-mail address, the role account's user name and password, and at least one ISSN. Then switch on automatic deposit.
3. Each newly published article then gets its DOI registered. You can also register or retry one by hand with Register DOI on the article.

Crossref membership and fees: crossref.org/membership.

10 Fees and earnings

Publication fee (APC): authors pay only when their paper is accepted. The default is USD 50; you set your journal's amount under Settings → Basic.
Your share: SciMatic collects the fee and credits 50% to the journal owner's SciMatic balance the moment the author pays.
Withdrawals: ZincirX Inc. pays your earnings in USDT or USDC to your EpPay wallet once your balance reaches USD 100.
SciMatic reminds authors about unpaid fees automatically (7, 20 and 28 days after acceptance), so you never chase payments yourself.
Submission fee: from 1 December 2026, or from the day your journal's owner accepts version v3 of the Journal Publishing Agreement if that is later, authors pay a USD 5 submission fee when they submit a new manuscript: the first, non-refundable part of the APC, credited against it at acceptance. The owner receives 50% of it when it is paid.
For articles accepted on or after December 1, 2026 (or from the day your journal's owner accepted the updated agreement, if later), the full text and final PDF are released when the author pays the fee. Until then the article page shows the title, authors and abstract, with a neutral note to readers. Articles accepted before that date are not affected.
Some journals collect their fees themselves (prepaid journals, arranged with SciMatic). For them, SciMatic's fee is taken from the accepting editor's balance at acceptance: 50% of the journal's APC (USD 25 at the default USD 50), or the fixed fee agreed with the journals that were prepaid on 21 October 2026.

11 Responsibilities

The owner and the editors are responsible for what the journal publishes: the correctness, quality, ethics and originality of its articles.
Make decisions on merit, declare conflicts of interest, and do not publish work you have reason to believe is plagiarised, fabricated or submitted elsewhere.
Describe the journal truthfully, including its indexing and ISSN status.
Serious misconduct can lead to removal from the platform and to listing on SciMatic's public blacklist.

12 Help

See also the guide for authors, which your authors will follow, and the Documentation page. For anything else, write to info@scimatic.org.