About the Journal

Scope and focus 

The Journal of Construction Business and Management (JCBM) is an open-access journal published bi-annually by the University of Cape Town Libraries, South Africa.  The journal is indexed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)  and is hosted by the Construction Business and Management Research Group of the University of Cape Town. The journal explores the experience of construction industry stakeholders and trends in the global system. It aims to publish peer-reviewed and high-quality papers emanating from original theory-based research, a rigorous literature review, conceptual papers, the development of theories, case studies, and practical notes. The journal also welcomes papers with diverse methodological approaches, including qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods. Contributions are expected from academia, public administrators, professionals in the public sector and private practice (such as contracting organisations and consulting firms) and other related bodies and institutions (such as financial, legal and NGOs).

The Journal is also indexed in the ARCOM database and Google Scholar.

Special Issues

The Journal of Construction Business and Management may occasionally publish a special issue, centred on a sub-theme within its overall scope, to allow for in-depth exploration of a chosen subject. 

As with this case, the editorial team would decide on a specific topic by focusing on recent developments within the journal's scope. The published papers would significantly benefit the readers by keeping them abreast of current trends on the subject. The Editor-in-Chief would place a Call for Papers announcement on the journal website, with the criteria to publish the selected, time-bound research papers from events such as the annual Construction Business and Project Management Conference.

While the guest editors would be specialists in their discipline and responsible for collecting original research on the chosen topic for the issue, the Editor-in-Chief would have oversight of the issue. This role would include choosing and approving the guest editors, who would have a proven publication record, relevant qualifications, and a verifiable institutional affiliation. The guest editors would usually use the journal's peer-review panel for the peer review process. Further, the Editor-in-Chief would have oversight of the same rigorous peer-review process as regular articles in the journal, as well as ensuring that the special issue conforms to the journal's editorial processes. Ultimately, the Editor-in-Chief is accountable for the scholarly content published in special issues.

Editorial Policies

Editorial Responsibilities

The editorial bodies of the JCBM include the Editor-in-Chief, Section Editors, Editorial Board, and Editorial Staff.

Editorial operations related to content and peer review are independent and free from the influence of the entities that support the journal.

The Editorial Board is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the Journal of Construction Business and Management will be published. The Editorial Board is guided by the journal’s editorial policies and is constrained by the legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Editorial Board reserves the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts if they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects. The Editor will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication within eight weeks from the date of the manuscript submission.

The Editor-in-Chief / Section Editor must hold no conflict of interest regarding the articles they consider for publication. If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the manuscript shall be made by another section editor or the Editorial Board as a whole.

Editorial assessment is strictly based on scientific merit, content quality, and relevance, free of bias relating to race, gender, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, or politics.

The Editor and the Editorial Staff shall not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and not used for personal gain.

Editors and the Editorial Staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during, and after the evaluation process and that the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.

Authors’ Responsibilities

Authors warrant that their manuscript is their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal constitutes misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by the Journal of Construction Business and Management. Please note that posting preprints on preprint servers or repositories is not considered prior publication. The peer review in this case will be single-anonymised. Authors should disclose details of preprint posting upon submission of the manuscript. This must include a link to the location of the preprint. Should the submission be published, the authors are expected to update the information associated with the preprint version on the preprint server/repository to show that a final version has been published in the journal, including the DOI linking directly to the publication.

If a manuscript has previously been submitted elsewhere, authors should provide information about the previous reviewing process and its outcome. This provides an opportunity for authors to detail how subsequent revisions have taken into account previous reviews and why certain reviewer comments were not considered. Information about the author's previous reviewing experience is to the author's advantage: it often helps the editors select more appropriate reviewers.

In case a submitted manuscript is a result of a research project, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc., shall be provided in Acknowledgements.

Each author is responsible for ensuring that manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Construction Business and Management are written with ethical standards in mind.  Authors affirm that the manuscript contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any compensation claims.

Reporting Standards

The Journal of Construction Business and Management is committed to serving the research community by ensuring that all articles include enough information to allow others to reproduce the work. A submitted manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit reviewers and, subsequently, readers to verify its claims - e.g., provide complete details of the methods used, including time frames, etc. Authors are required to review the standards available for many research applications from the Equator Network and use those that are relevant for the reported research applications. The deliberate presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards.

Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions and must ensure they have permission from all involved parties to make the content public. Authors are also exclusively responsible for the contents of their data/supplementary files. Authors affirm that data protection regulations, ethical standards, third-party copyright and other rights have been respected in the process of collecting, processing and sharing data.

Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere must obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Authors may be required to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their manuscripts. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors. 

Inclusive Language

The Journal of Construction Business and Management promotes accessible and inclusive language to ensure that scientific research is widely understood and respected by all individuals. To promote accessibility, authors should:

• Use clear, simple language that is understandable across disciplines and for non-native English speakers;
• Avoid overly technical or unnecessary terminology, unnecessary complexity, long sentences, repetition, uncommon acronyms and abbreviations, stereotypes, idiomatic speech, slang, and cultural assumptions;
• Explain technical terms when needed;
• Respect diversity and avoid implying superiority of any group based on gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, health status, age, or socio-economic background.
• Use inclusive and appropriate language in relation to race and ethnicity and provide participants with a comprehensive range of categories and subcategories to choose from when collecting self-reported racial or ethnic identity data, as well as the option to select multiple, not mutually exclusive categories;
• Be cautious in generalising findings from studies to groups simply based on a shared identity category and provide the rationale behind any racial or ethnic groupings used in the Methods section;
• Where it is necessary to refer to the indigenous identity of a person or group, use the terms preferred by the person or group. If in doubt, ask the person or group;
• Make a distinction between biological sex and socially constructed gender. Use self-identified pronouns and gender-neutral terms (e.g., "chairperson" instead of "chairman");
• Use "impairment" for medical conditions and "disability" for societal barriers. Avoid discriminatory language and offensive terms (derogatory labelling, depersonalising, stereotyping and emphasising the disability) in relation to the portrayal of people with disabilities (e.g. use ‘a person diagnosed with cancer’ rather than ‘a cancer victim’)

   

  For more guidance, consult also additional resources from C4DISC (Coalition for Diversity and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications): https://c4disc.org/toolkits-for-equity/ 

Authorship

Authors must ensure that only contributors who contributed significantly to the submission are listed as authors. Conversely, all contributors who contributed significantly to the submission are listed as authors. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the Acknowledgements section.

As a guide, authors should refer to the criteria for authorship that have been developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). To be named on the author list, one must have:

• made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• contributed to the drafting of the work, or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• provided final approval of the version to be published; AND
• agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved; AND
• agreed to be named on the author list, and approved of the full author list.

Each author’s contribution must be detailed using the CRediT taxonomy. The submitting author must include a contribution statement in the manuscript. Example: Author 1: review and editing (equal). Author 2: Conceptualisation (lead); writing – original draft (lead); formal analysis (lead); writing – review and editing (equal). Author 3: Software (lead); writing, review, and editing (equal). Author 4: Methodology (lead); writing, review, and editing (equal). Author 5: Conceptualisation (supporting); Writing – original draft (supporting); Writing – review and editing (equal). More information: https://credit.niso.org/implementing-credit/

The addition or removal of authors during the editorial process will only be permitted if a justifiable explanation is provided to the editorial team and publisher. Attempts to introduce 'ghost', 'gift' or ‘honorary’ authorship will be treated as cases of misconduct.

Acknowledgement of sources

Authors must properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Information received in a private conversation or correspondence with third parties, in reviewing project applications, manuscripts and similar materials, must not be used without the express written consent of the information source.

When citing or making claims based on data, authors should reference data in the same way as they cite publications. We recommend the format proposed by the FORCE11 Data Citation Principles.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

Plagiarism includes the following:

• Word-for-word, or almost word-for-word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks);
• Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

Please note that all submissions to the Journal of Construction Business and Management are thoroughly checked for plagiarism using iThenticate, a reputable plagiarism checker provided by the University of Cape Town. Manuscripts with a plagiarism score above 20% will be rejected, the authors may be invited to significantly revise their papers, and repeat offences may result in sanctions.

In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that the journal has already published, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described below under the Retraction policy.

Conflict of interest

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, the following standard statement should be added: ‘No conflict of interest was disclosed’.

Conflict of interest may be of a non-financial or financial nature. Examples of the conflict of interest include (but are not limited to):

• individuals receiving funding, salary or other forms of payment from an organisation, or holding stocks or shares from a company, that might benefit (or lose) financially from the publication of the findings;
• individuals or their funding organisation or employer holding (or applying for) related patents;
• official affiliations and memberships with interest groups relating to the content of the publication;
• political, religious, or ideological competing interests.

Authors from pharmaceutical companies or other commercial organisations that sponsor clinical or field trials or other research studies should declare these as competing interests on submission. The relationship of each author to such an organisation should be explained in the ‘Conflict of interest’ section. Publications in the journal must not contain content advertising any commercial products.

Fundamental errors in published works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, the author must promptly notify the journal Editor or publisher and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper.

By submitting a manuscript, the authors agree to abide by the Journal of Construction Business and Management's Editorial Policies.

ORCID

The Journal of Construction Business and Management asks all authors submitting a paper to register an account with Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID). ORCID numbers for all authors and co-authors should be added to the author data upon submission and will be published alongside the submitted paper, should it be accepted.

ORCID registration provides a unique and persistent digital identifier for the account, enabling accurate attribution and improving the discoverability of published papers. This ensures that the correct author receives the correct credit for their work.

Funding information

If a paper is a result of the funded project, authors must specify funding sources in the manuscript according to their contracts with the funder.

Reviewers' Responsibilities

Reviewers are required to provide timely, written, competent, and unbiased feedback on the manuscript's scholarly merits and scientific value.

The reviewers assess the manuscript for compliance with the journal profile, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the originality and scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style, and the scholarly apparatus.

Reviewers should alert the Editor to any well-founded suspicions or knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Reviewers should recognise relevant published works that the authors have not cited and alert the Editor to substantial similarities between a reviewed manuscript and any manuscript published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, in the event they are aware of such. Reviewers should also alert the Editor to a parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal if they are aware of such.

Reviewers must not have conflicts of interest regarding the research, its authors, and/or its funding sources. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the Editor immediately.

Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review (within three weeks) will be impossible should notify the Editor immediately.

Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

Peer Review

All research papers submitted to JCBM are subjected to rigorous double-blind peer review by at least two independent experts in the construction field. The purpose of peer review is to assist the Editor-in-Chief and Section Editors in making editorial decisions. Through the editorial communication with the author, it may also assist the author in improving the manuscript. The average time frame between article submission and decision is about eight weeks.

The choice of reviewers is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief/Section Editors. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the manuscript's subject area, not from the authors' own institution, and they should not have recently published jointly with any of the authors.

In the main review phase, the Editor sends submitted manuscripts to at least three experts in the field. The reviewers’ evaluation form contains a checklist to help reviewers cover all aspects that can decide a submission's fate. In the final section of the evaluation form, the reviewers must include observations and suggestions aimed at improving the submitted manuscript; these are sent to authors without the names of the reviewers. All of the reviewers of a manuscript remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process, and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.

All of the reviewers of a manuscript act independently, and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor-in-Chief/Section Editors may assign additional reviewers.

During the review process, the Editor-in-Chief/Section Editors may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if necessary to evaluate the scholarly merit of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

The editorial team shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and of a high academic standard. When there is any doubt regarding the objectivity or quality of the reviews, additional reviewers will be assigned.

All articles that do not meet the scope of the journal or that are not methodologically sound will be rejected.

Members of the editorial team/board/guest editors are permitted to submit their own papers to the journal. In cases where an author is associated with the journal, they will be removed from all editorial tasks for that paper, and another member of the team will be assigned responsibility for overseeing peer review.

Post-Publication Discussions

The Journal of Construction Business and Management encourages post-publication debate through letters to the Editor-in-Chief.

Use of Large Language Models and Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools

The Journal of Construction Business and Management conforms to the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) recommendations on chatbots, ChatGPT and scholarly manuscripts and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s position statement on Authorship and AI tools.

AI bots like ChatGPT cannot be listed as authors on your submission.

Authors must indicate the use of tools based on large language models and generative AI for data or code generation, data collection, cleaning, analysis, or interpretation (which tool was used and for what purpose), preferably in the methods or acknowledgements sections. Photography, videos or illustrations created wholly or partly using generative AI are unacceptable. The use of non-generative machine learning tools to manipulate, combine or enhance existing images or figures should be disclosed in the relevant caption upon submission to allow a case-by-case review. Concealing the use of AI tools is unethical. The use of AI-based tools for copyediting and spell checking does not need to be declared.

AI outputs should not be cited as primary sources for backing up specific claims.

Editors and Reviewers must ensure the confidentiality of the editorial work and the peer review process. Editors must not share information about submitted manuscripts or peer review reports with any tools based on large language models and generative AI. Reviewers must not use any tools based on large language models and generative AI to generate review reports. Concealing the use of AI tools is unethical and undermines transparency in editorial work and peer review. The editorial and review processes are confidential, and using AI tools on the manuscript makes it public, violating the confidentiality principle, disclosing confidential information in public, and compromising transparency.

Procedures for Dealing with Complaints and Appeals

Anyone may inform the editors and/or editorial staff of suspected unethical behaviour or any misconduct by providing the necessary information/evidence to start an investigation.

Investigation 

• The Editor-in-Chief will consult with the Section Editors/Editorial Board on decisions regarding initiating an investigation.
• Any evidence gathered during an investigation is treated as strictly confidential and made available only to those involved in the investigation.
• The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them.
• If misconduct is found to have occurred at the end of the investigation, it will be classified as either minor or serious.

Minor Misconduct

Minor misconduct will be dealt with directly by those involved without involving any other parties, e.g.:

• Communicating with authors/reviewers whenever a minor issue involving misunderstanding or misapplication of academic standards has occurred.
• A warning letter to an author or reviewer regarding relatively minor misconduct

Major Misconduct

The Editor-in-Chief, in consultation with the Section Editors/Editorial Board, and, when appropriate, further consultation with a small group of experts, should make any decision regarding the course of action to be taken using the evidence available. The possible outcomes are as follows (these can be used separately or jointly):

• Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct.
• Informing the author's (or reviewer's) head of department or employer of any misconduct by means of a formal letter.
• The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy (see below).
• A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period.
• Referring a case to a professional organisation or legal authority for further investigation and action.

When dealing with complaints and appeals, the editorial team will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE):  https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts.

Retraction Policy

The infringement of the legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), the violation of of professional ethical codes and research misconduct, such as multiple submissions, duplicate or overlapping publication, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data and data fabrication, undisclosed use of tools based on large language models and generative AI, honest errors reported by the authors (for example, errors due to the mixing up of samples or use of a scientific tool or equipment that is found subsequently to be faulty), unethical research or any major misconduct require retraction of an article. Occasionally, a retraction can be used to correct errors in submission or publication.

For any retracted article, the reason for retraction and who is instigating the retraction will be clearly stated in the Retraction notice. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this practice has been adopted for article retraction by The Journal of Construction Business and Management: in the electronic version of the retraction note, a link is made to the original article. In the electronic version of the original article, a link is made to the retraction note, which clearly states that the article has been retracted. The original article is retained unchanged, save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”

Research Data, Code, Protocol Sharing and Preregistration

The Journal of Construction Business and Management encourages authors to share research data that is required for confirming the results published in the manuscript and/or enhancing the published manuscript under the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’. We encourage authors to share supporting software applications, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound or video clips, large appendices, data tables and other relevant items that cannot be included in the article.

The preferred mechanism for sharing research data is via data repositories. Authors may deposit relevant data in a FAIR-compliant repository – institutional, disciplinary, or general-purpose (e.g. Zenodo). If you need assistance finding a FAIR-compliant repository, check these links: https://repositoryfinder.datacite.org/ and https://www.re3data.org/. Authors should also provide via the repository any information required to replicate, validate, and/or reuse the results / their study and analysis of the research data. This includes details of software, instruments and other tools used to process the results. Where possible, the tools and instruments themselves should also be provided. A DOI will be assigned to each research data file, enabling the research data to be cited the same way as publications. Authors affirm that data protection regulations, ethical standards, third-party copyright and other rights have been respected in the process of collecting, processing and sharing data.

Exceptions: We recognise that open data sharing may not always be feasible. Exceptions to open access to research data underlying publications include the following: the obligation to protect results, confidentiality obligations, security obligations, the obligation to protect personal data, and other legitimate constraints. Where open access is not provided to the data needed to validate the conclusions of a publication that reports original results, authors should make metadata available explaining the research and access rules to the data. 

Ethical and security considerations

If data access is restricted for ethical or security reasons, the manuscript must include:

• a description of the restrictions on the data;
• what, if anything, the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent said about the data sharing; and
• all necessary information required for a reader or reviewer to apply for access to the data and the conditions under which access will be granted.

Data protection issues

Where human data cannot be effectively de-identified, it must not be shared to protect participant privacy unless the individuals have given explicit written consent that their identifiable data can be publicly available.

In instances where the data cannot be made available, the manuscript must include:

• an explanation of the data protection concern;
• any intermediary data that can be de-identified without compromising anonymity;
• what, if anything, the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent said about data sharing; and
• where applicable, all necessary information required for a reader or peer reviewer to apply for access to the data and the conditions under which access will be granted.

Link to research data from a Data Availability Statement within the submitted paper, which will be made public upon publication. A ‘Data Availability Statement’ should be added to the submission before the reference list, providing the details of the data availability, including the DOI linked to it. If the data is restricted in any way and/or is not being made available within the journal publication, a statement from the author should be provided to explain why.

Consider the following when depositing data related to a publication:

• Check whether a repository where the data is deposited has a sustainability model.
• The data must be deposited under an open license that permits unrestricted access (e.g., CC0, CC-BY). More restrictive licenses should only be used if there is a valid reason (e.g., legal).
• The deposited data must include a version that is in an open, non-proprietary format.
• The deposited data must have been labelled in such a way that a third party can make sense of it (e.g., sensible column headers, descriptions in a readme text file).

Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where applicable, the studies must have been approved by an appropriate Ethics Committee. The identity of the research subject should be anonymised whenever possible. For research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardians).

Code Sharing

Authors are encouraged to share any code used in their work, especially author-generated code. If commercial software was used, its name and version should be provided. This information can be included in the Methods section.

When feasible, code should be deposited in a public repository with a persistent identifier and version control. Open-source licensing is recommended. The deposited code should include:

• Installation and usage instructions
• Operating system details
• Programming language and data format information
• Software dependencies (version, toolboxes, modules)
• Documentation for reproducibility, including purpose explanations
• Actual or sample data with log files or equivalent documentation

A Code Availability Statement must be included for studies using custom code or mathematical algorithms essential to the conclusions. This statement should specify code description, access details, repository identifier, and access restrictions. It should be provided as a separate section following the Data Availability Statement.

Experimental Protocols Sharing

Authors are encouraged to share step-by-step research protocols to facilitate replication and further research. These can be uploaded to a protocol-sharing platform of choice or a repository. If such protocols are available, please provide a DOI or other citation details with the submission.

Preregistration

The Journal of Construction Business and Management supports study pre-registration (including clinical trials) and pre-registration of analysis plans in public repositories. Authors should indicate at submission whether any part of their study was preregistered. If so, they must include an active link to the preregistration in the Methods section and specify the preregistration date. Any deviations from the preregistered protocol and the reasons for those changes should be disclosed.

Open access policy

The Journal of Construction Business and Management is a diamond open-access journal providing immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. All its content is available free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, and establish HTML links to them, without having to seek the author's or publisher's consent.

The journal does not charge any fees at the submission, reviewing, and production stages.

Authors retain copyright, and works published in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). The CC BY license allows anyone to remix, adapt, and build upon one's work, even commercially, on the proviso that the author of the original work is acknowledged. JCBM has recently migrated from CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license to CC BY 4.0 License to allow further sharing and use of knowledge with no restrictions. 

Self-archiving Policy

Authors can deposit Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) and/or Versions of Record (VoRs) in a repository of the authors' choice (e.g. an institutional, disciplinary and general-purpose repository. etc.), author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website at any time after the acceptance of the manuscript and at any time after publication.

Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided, and links must be made to the article's DOI and the license.

Copyright and Licensing

The JCBM is an open-access journal, and the authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media. Articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Authors can enter separate, additional contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the published paper (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Metadata Policy

The journal metadata are freely accessible and freely reusable by all under the terms of the Creative Commons Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication license.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. The publisher shall have no liability in the event of the issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Publication Fees

The journal does not charge Article Processing Charges.