Policies

All articles published in JYI are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Under this license, anyone is free to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material) for any purpose, including commercially, provided that appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided, and any changes made are indicated.

Each article displays its license terms on the article page and, where applicable, in machine-readable metadata.

Authors retain copyright of their work. By submitting to JYI, authors grant the journal a non-exclusive license to publish the article and identify it as having been first published in The Journal of Young Innovators, while retaining all other rights to their work.

Authors are free to deposit their published work in institutional repositories, share it on personal or scholarly websites, and reuse it in subsequent works, provided proper citation is given.

JYI imposes no embargo on author self-archiving. Authors may deposit and distribute the submitted manuscript (preprint), the accepted manuscript (postprint), and the published version (Version of Record) in any of the following venues, immediately upon publication and without seeking further permission:

• The author's personal or institutional website
• An institutional or subject repository (e.g., arXiv, SSRN)
• A scholarly social network (e.g., ResearchGate, Academia.edu)
• A funder-mandated repository

The published version remains licensed under CC BY 4.0 wherever it is shared. Authors are asked to include the original citation and a link to the article on young-innovator.org.

All research articles submitted to JYI undergo double-blind peer review. Author identities and affiliations are concealed from reviewers, and reviewer identities are concealed from authors.

Each manuscript is evaluated by at least two members of our editorial board or external reviewers selected for their expertise in the relevant subject area. Reviewers assess originality, scholarly rigor, methodological soundness, clarity, and contribution to the field.

Editorial decisions (accept, accept with revisions, revise and resubmit, or reject) are communicated to authors typically within 4–8 weeks of submission. Detailed reviewer feedback is provided to authors regardless of the final decision.

JYI publishes two issues per year (biannual): a winter issue and a spring issue. Articles are also released continuously online as soon as they have completed peer review, copyediting, and final author approval, and are subsequently collected into the next scheduled issue.

For the 2026–2027 academic year, submission and publication in JYI are free of charge. There are no submission fees, no article processing charges (APCs), no publication fees, no page charges, no color charges, and no reader fees. The journal is fully open access at no cost to authors or readers.

This is made possible by grant funding dedicated to making scholarly publishing accessible to students of all income levels. Need-based waivers are also available by request.

JYI takes plagiarism seriously. Beginning June 2026, all submissions will be screened for originality using Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate) prior to peer review. Until that date, submissions are screened through editorial review and cross-referencing against published literature and online sources. Manuscripts flagged with substantial overlap are returned to the author or rejected outright, depending on the nature of the match.

Plagiarism — including verbatim copying, substantial paraphrasing without attribution, self-plagiarism, and improperly attributed quotations — is grounds for immediate rejection. If plagiarism is detected after publication, the journal will issue a correction or retract the article in accordance with COPE guidelines and notify the author's affiliated institution where appropriate.

JYI is committed to the highest standards of publication ethics and follows the principles articulated by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices.

Author responsibilities. Authors must submit original work, properly cite all sources, disclose any conflicts of interest or sources of funding, and obtain permission for any third-party material they reproduce. Submissions must not be under consideration at another journal.

Reviewer responsibilities. Reviewers must keep manuscripts confidential, declare conflicts of interest, provide fair and constructive feedback, and complete reviews in a timely manner.

Editor responsibilities. Editors are responsible for the integrity of the published record. They make publication decisions free from commercial influence, handle complaints and corrections promptly, ensure the confidentiality of submissions, and act to prevent the publication of work in which a conflict of interest has not been declared.

Concerns about misconduct, including data fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or undisclosed conflicts of interest, may be sent to editor@young-innovator.org.

Authors. Generative AI tools (such as large language models) may be used to assist with language polishing, spelling, and grammar. They may not be used to generate substantive scholarly content, analysis, citations, data, or figures. Any use of AI tools beyond minor language assistance must be disclosed in the manuscript's methods or acknowledgements section, including the tool name, version, and how it was used. AI tools cannot be listed as authors and cannot be cited as a source of authority — the human authors are fully responsible for the integrity, accuracy, and originality of all submitted content.

Reviewers. Reviewers must not upload manuscripts, in whole or in part, to generative AI tools, as doing so violates the confidentiality of the peer review process.

Editors. Editors may use AI-assisted tools for administrative tasks (e.g., similarity screening) but final editorial decisions are made by human editors.

All authors, reviewers, and editors must declare any financial, personal, professional, or institutional relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their work in connection with a submission.

Authors must include a Conflicts of Interest statement at the end of the manuscript. If there are no conflicts to declare, the statement should read “The authors declare no conflicts of interest.” Funding sources, grants, employment, consulting relationships, stock ownership, patents, and personal relationships with editors or reviewers must be disclosed.

Reviewers must decline review if they have a conflict with the authors, the work, or any party that funded or is affected by the work.

Editors must recuse themselves from handling any manuscript with which they have a personal, professional, or competitive conflict, and must not handle manuscripts authored by close colleagues, recent collaborators, students, or family members. In such cases the manuscript is reassigned to another editor.

JYI encourages authors to make the data, code, and materials underlying their findings openly available to the extent permitted by ethical, legal, and privacy constraints. Authors are asked to deposit datasets in a public, recognized repository (e.g., Zenodo, OSF, Dryad, GitHub for code) and to cite the dataset in the manuscript with a persistent identifier where possible.

Each accepted manuscript should include a brief Data Availability Statement describing where the data can be accessed, any restrictions that apply, and how to request access where data cannot be made fully public (e.g., human-subjects data subject to IRB restrictions).

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other parties may raise concerns or appeals about the editorial process or any published content. JYI follows COPE's guidance on appeals and complaints.

Step 1. Direct your complaint or appeal to the handling editor by emailing editor@young-innovator.org with the subject line “Appeal” or “Complaint”. Include the manuscript or article title, the nature of the concern, and any supporting evidence. We acknowledge receipt within 5 business days.

Step 2. If the response from the handling editor does not resolve the matter, the appeal is escalated to the Editor-in-Chief, who reviews the case independently. Decisions at this stage are final within JYI.

Step 3. If the complaint concerns the Editor-in-Chief, an editor with no conflict of interest is designated to handle the case. Unresolved disputes about publication ethics may be referred to COPE for external guidance.

Retaliation against complainants in good faith is prohibited.

JYI is committed to maintaining the integrity of the published record and follows COPE's retraction and correction guidelines.

Corrections (errata). Minor errors that do not affect the conclusions of an article (e.g., typographical errors, errors in author affiliations, mislabelled figures) are addressed by issuing a correction notice. The original article remains in place and is updated with a clearly visible link to the correction notice.

Expressions of concern. If a credible concern is raised about the integrity of an article and an investigation is required, JYI may issue an Expression of Concern linked to the article while the matter is being resolved.

Retractions. Articles are retracted when there is clear evidence of unreliable findings (resulting from misconduct or honest error), redundant publication, plagiarism, undisclosed major conflicts of interest, or unethical research practices. Retracted articles are not removed from the site — they remain accessible with a clearly displayed retraction notice and a watermark on the PDF, so the scholarly record remains intact and citing parties can identify the retraction.

All correction, expression-of-concern, and retraction notices are open access, freely linked from the original article, and indexed alongside the original record.

JYI maintains a permanent, freely-accessible online archive of all published articles at young-innovator.org/issues. Each article is hosted as a downloadable PDF with a stable URL based on its title slug.

Web archiving. Every JYI article URL is captured by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine at the time of publication and at regular intervals thereafter, so the full content of the journal — including the article landing page and the article PDF — can be retrieved through web.archive.org even if young-innovator.org becomes unavailable.

Author deposit. Because every article is published under a CC BY 4.0 license with no embargo, authors are encouraged — and explicitly permitted — to deposit the published version in their institutional or subject repository for additional preservation redundancy. See the Author Self-Archiving section above.

JYI is committed to maintaining long-term access to the scholarly record it publishes. In the event the journal ceases publication, the editorial team will ensure that the existing article archive remains accessible through web archives and, where possible, through transfer to a partner institution or repository.

The Journal of Young Innovators is an independent, non-profit open-access journal published from Baltimore, Maryland, USA. The journal is operated by its editorial team for the purpose of youth educational advancement and is not owned by, sponsored by, or operated for the financial benefit of any commercial entity.

Editorial decisions are made independently of any sponsor, funder, or institutional affiliation of the editors. The editorial team is solely responsible for the content of the journal, the selection of reviewers, and the acceptance or rejection of manuscripts.

JYI does not accept paid advertising on the journal website or within published articles. The journal does not engage in direct marketing of acceptance, expedited review, or publication services to authors. Solicitations purporting to offer guaranteed acceptance, paid placement, or fee-based indexing should not be regarded as genuine communications from JYI and may be reported to editor@young-innovator.org.

JYI collects only the personal information necessary to operate the journal: author and reviewer names, affiliations, and contact details for the purpose of editorial correspondence and attribution.

We do not sell or share personal information with third parties. Information collected during submission is used solely for editorial workflow, peer review, and publication. Aggregated, anonymized site analytics may be collected to improve the service.

Questions about personal data may be sent to editor@young-innovator.org.