Editorial Policies

This is a diamond open-access journal. All content is freely available online immediately upon publication, without registration, embargo, or charge. The journal charges no fees of any kind: no submission charges, no article processing charges (APCs), and no publication charges. Publication is funded by the World Happiness Foundation. Anyone may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, link to and reuse the full texts for any lawful purpose, subject only to the terms of the licence.

All research articles undergo double-anonymized peer review: reviewers do not know the authors' identities, and authors do not know the reviewers'.

The process: a handling editor screens each submission for scope, originality and basic quality, normally within two weeks. Submissions that pass screening are sent to at least two reviewers, at least one of whom is independent of the editorial board and of the authors' institutions. The handling editor weighs the reviews and issues a first decision — accept, minor revisions, major revisions, or decline — normally within eight weeks of submission. Revised manuscripts are assessed by the handling editor and, where useful, returned to reviewers. Reviewers declare any conflict of interest before accepting an assignment and treat manuscripts as confidential.

Editors and editorial board members may submit to the journal. They take no part in the editorial handling of their own manuscripts, which are assigned to another editor with anonymity fully preserved; each such article carries a declaration to that effect. This practice has applied since the journal's first issue. To protect the journal's independence, the share of research articles authored by editors, board members or reviewers is being kept to a small minority of each volume.

Editorials, announcements and other non-research content are reviewed by the editorial team and clearly labelled as such. Any special issue is subject to the same peer review and editorial oversight as regular content, under the responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief, and is clearly labelled.

Each article displays its publication date; from the journal's next issue onward, submission and acceptance dates are also displayed.

The journal follows the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME) and is guided by COPE's guidelines in handling ethical matters. Submissions must be original and not under consideration elsewhere; manuscripts are checked for originality, including with plagiarism-detection tools where appropriate. All listed authors must meet authorship criteria — substantial contribution, participation in drafting or revision, approval of the final version, and accountability for the work — and all conflicts of interest and funding sources must be disclosed. Research involving human participants must report appropriate ethical approval and informed consent. Any use of generative AI tools in preparing a manuscript must be disclosed; AI tools cannot be credited as authors.

Unless otherwise stated, articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0), displayed on every article. Authors retain copyright without restriction and grant the journal the right of first publication. Authors may deposit any version of their work — submitted, accepted or published — in repositories and on personal or institutional websites, at any time, with a reference to the published version.

Honest errors are corrected promptly through a correction notice linked to the article. Retractions follow COPE guidance and are clearly marked, while the original remains accessible; the DOI record is updated in each case. Complaints and appeals are addressed to the Editor-in-Chief; where the Editor-in-Chief has a conflict of interest, they are handled by a designated member of the editorial board.

Every article receives a Crossref DOI under the World Happiness Foundation's prefix (10.68220), with full metadata deposited at Crossref. Articles are published in HTML and PDF; the journal is working to place its full archive in a recognised long-term digital preservation service.