Who owns a journal publisher decides who can overrule an editor. At Directive Publications the published chain is short: the handling editor decides, an appeal goes to the Editor-in-Chief, and that decision is final. No commercial step sits after it. A full ownership statement is not yet published here — that gap is stated plainly, not glossed.
What an ownership disclosure should actually contain
An ownership disclosure is a published statement naming the legal entity that owns the journal, naming who owns that entity, and saying where it is registered. It is not a mission statement or an "About us" paragraph.
The joint COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing set the reference standard: ownership and management clearly indicated, revenue sources stated, a backup and preservation plan given, and an explanation of how a decision on a manuscript is ultimately made and who is involved. Going further than the Principles do on registration and on appeals, a full disclosure names:
- the legal entity that publishes the journal, and the country in which it is registered;
- who owns that entity — individuals, a learned society, a university, a foundation or a parent company;
- the business model, including where revenue comes from and what advertising or sponsorship exists;
- the governance line for editorial decisions, ending at a named final step;
- what happens to the archive if the journal is sold, transferred or closed.
Directive Publications publishes the fourth of those items; the fifth only in general terms, through a preservation policy claiming no preservation-archive membership. It does not publish the first two at all. That gap is set out in full further down.
Why undisclosed ownership is a risk to your paper
Undisclosed ownership is not proof that an owner is acting badly. The risk is that you cannot see whether the person with a commercial interest in your acceptance is also the person deciding it. Three mechanisms carry a visible symptom you can check.
The decision-maker and the invoice-sender are the same role
If one person sets the fee, chases it and signs the acceptance letter, peer review has no structural protection. The symptom is a governance page that never separates the two functions, or an appeal route ending with "management" rather than an editor.
The final step is unstated
An appeal chain that does not name its last step can be extended indefinitely. Final is a governance word: nobody further up can reopen the file. A publisher that describes appeals without saying where they stop has not said who holds the power.
Ownership changes quietly
Journals are bought and sold. If the owning entity is never named, a change of owner is invisible to authors, and so is any change in standards that follows. A DOI is only as durable as the organisation that maintains what it resolves to.
Who can overrule an editor at Directive Publications
Here is the decision chain as published across our peer review, publication charges and fee waiver pages. The third column is our own annotation, marking where a commercial role could sit and where the policy leaves no room for one.
| Step | Who acts | Can a commercial role reverse it? |
|---|---|---|
| Screening and similarity check | Editorial office | No — no fee is involved at this point |
| Double-blind review, with at least two independent expert reviewers sought for a research manuscript | Reviewers | No — and the charge falls due only on acceptance, so nothing has been paid yet |
| Decision on the manuscript | Handling editor | No |
| Appeal | Editor-in-Chief | No — this decision is final, and final means no further step exists |
| Fee waiver request | Administrative staff, separately | Not applicable — waivers are decided outside editorial evaluation |
Two published rules give that table its force. Submission is free, and the article processing charge falls due only if a manuscript is formally accepted after peer review. Waivers are handled administratively, separately from editorial evaluation, so an editor never weighs a discount alongside a manuscript.
Six questions that reveal who owns a journal publisher
Send these six questions to any publisher, including this one. They are short enough for a single email and specific enough that vagueness shows.
| Question to send | What a good answer looks like | What a weak answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Which legal entity publishes this journal, and in which country is it registered? | One named entity and one jurisdiction, given without hedging | A brand name only, or office addresses with no entity behind them |
| 2. Who owns that entity — individuals, a society, a university or a parent company? | The category named and any parent company named; if privately held, said openly | "We are an independent international publisher", and nothing further |
| 3. Who appoints the Editor-in-Chief, and who can remove them? | A named body or role distinct from whoever handles invoicing | Silence, or the same office that answers billing queries |
| 4. Can anyone outside the editorial line reverse an acceptance or a rejection, and where does the appeal chain end? | A plain no, plus the last step named explicitly | An appeal process described at length with no stated end point |
| 5. Who sets the fee, who decides waivers, and is either of them involved in editorial decisions? | Waiver decisions sit outside editorial evaluation, and a policy page says so | Waivers "considered case by case by the editor" |
| 6. If the journal is sold or ceases publishing, what happens to the articles, their DOIs and the archive? | A continuity commitment covering persistent identifiers and archived content | No answer, or a reassurance with no mechanism behind it |
The covering email to send with the six questions
Keep it plain. A publisher that objects to being asked has told you something.
Dear Editorial Office,
I am assessing your journal before submitting a manuscript, and my institution asks me to record the publisher's ownership and governance arrangements. Could you answer the six questions below in writing, or point me to the pages where each is already published?
[paste the six questions]
A short reply is fine, and pointers to existing policy pages are welcome.
Kind regards,
Where our own disclosure stops, stated plainly
Applying the six ownership questions to Directive Publications produces one published answer, two partial answers and three gaps. Question 4 is answered above: an appeal ends with the Editor-in-Chief, and no step follows it. Question 5 is answered in part — waiver requests are handled separately from editorial evaluation, though no page states who sets the charge. Question 6 is answered only in general terms, through a preservation policy with no continuity commitment for a sale or transfer. The remaining gaps:
- Questions 1 and 2 have no published answer. No page on this site names the owning legal entity, its country of registration or its ownership. The accurate statement is that the information is not published — not a form of words that sounds like disclosure without being it.
- Question 3 has no published answer. No page on this site states who appoints the Editor-in-Chief or who can remove them. What is published is where a decision stops, not who selects the person holding that step.
- Editorial board verification is in progress, not complete. Board members are being checked against ORCID, ROR and OpenAlex records, and that work is unfinished. A board is part of governance, so an incomplete board record is an incomplete governance record.
Two further facts belong in any governance disclosure. Directive Publications is not listed in DOAJ, and it is not indexed in PubMed, PubMed Central, MEDLINE, Scopus or Web of Science. No impact factor or ranking is displayed anywhere on this site, because the publisher holds none — the reasoning is in what impact factor, CiteScore and h-index really mean.
What to do with the answers you get back
Weigh the answers as a set. A small privately held publisher that names its entity, states where appeals end and keeps waiver decisions away from editors has disclosed more than a large one answering question 4 with process and no end point.
- Keep the reply. A written answer is evidence you can show a research office later.
- Check the reply against the public pages. A governance claim made only in email is worth less than one published for every author to read.
- Note what was not answered and ask once more. A second unanswered request is itself a finding.
- Read the answers alongside the warning signs in how to identify a predatory journal, rather than in isolation.
Ownership is the one check a publisher cannot talk its way through: it either names the entity or it does not. Our position: the decision chain is published and ends with the Editor-in-Chief, waiver decisions are handled separately from editorial evaluation, and the ownership page itself is still missing. The surrounding commitments are on our editorial policies and peer review pages. For related reading, see how to identify a predatory journal and how long it takes to publish a paper.