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Editorial standards

The rules behind every record.

CitePep records typed contributions, ties them to real people and specific pages, and counts only work a publisher accepted. These are the rules that make that record trustworthy, and they apply to everyone, including us.

Articles7
Applies toAll accounts, including staff
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§1

Reputation is earned, never bought

Scores are computed only from contributions a publisher accepted. There is no paid tier that improves a score and no way to purchase a place in a directory.

In practice: A profile with no accepted work is not indexed by search engines.

Reputation is computed from accepted contributions and is fully transparent:

  • Contribution score: a weighted total of accepted contributions, with authoring and reviewing carrying the most weight.
  • Trust score: an acceptance-rate measure tempered by track record, so a long, consistent history counts for more than a perfect record over one or two contributions.
  • Topic authority: a separate score per topic, so a profile shows precisely where a person's expertise is concentrated.

The full methodology is described on the reputation page.

§2

Only accepted work counts

Every contribution is decided by the publisher or editor who controls the page. Declined work may be retained internally for integrity but is never published and earns no credit.

In practice: Publishers always hold final editorial authority over their own content.

A contribution does not count toward anyone's record until the publisher or editor responsible for the page accepts it. Self-claimed work, unaccepted submissions, and unverifiable bylines carry no weight. This is the core rule that keeps CitePep from becoming a marketplace for purchased authority.

  • Accepted work only. Reputation is built solely from contributions a publisher actually accepted.
  • Identity. Profiles progress through verification levels (email, a confirmed external profile such as a professional or code-hosting account, then staff review), and each profile shows its current level.
  • Expertise tags. A contributor's topic authority is derived from the topics of their accepted contributions, not from self-described titles.
  • Public record. Accepted contributions are public by default. Rejected and pending contributions are kept in the internal record and shown publicly only where appropriate, following publisher and contributor visibility rules.

The publisher always holds final editorial authority over their own pages. CitePep does not edit anyone's content or decide what is true on a publisher's behalf. What CitePep does is record who contributed what, capture the publisher's acceptance decisions, and turn that verified history into public attribution and portable reputation. The publisher decides; CitePep keeps the record.

§3

Conflicts must be disclosed

No one may review or approve their own work. Affiliations are declared, and reviewers are never matched to an author from the same institution, ORCID or email domain.

In practice: Author and reviewer accounts are kept separate so no one is offered their own manuscript.

Trust depends on disclosure. Contributors must disclose any relationship that could bias their work on a page, including employment, client relationships, ownership, paid affiliation, or a personal stake in the subject. A contributor must not review or approve their own work, and must decline a contribution where a conflict cannot be disclosed and managed. Undisclosed conflicts are grounds for removing a contribution and the credit attached to it.

§4

Corrections are logged, not hidden

When a correction is accepted, the exact wording change, the date and the contributor become part of the page's permanent public record.

In practice: Nothing changes on a page automatically, the publisher sees the before and after and decides.

Any contributor can flag wrong, outdated, or unsupported information on a page and suggest a fix. Every correction follows the same path:

  • The correction is submitted with the specific change and, where relevant, a supporting source.
  • The publisher or editor reviews it and accepts or rejects it.
  • Accepted corrections are attributed to the contributor and recorded against the page; rejected ones remain logged but earn no credit.
  • The contribution history of a page is public, so its correction record can always be inspected.
§5

Paid for the review, never the verdict

Reviewers set their own fee; it is frozen on acceptance and paid on completion regardless of what the review concludes. CitePep does not referee for journals.

In practice: The content of a review is seen only by the author who commissioned it.

Paying someone to review creates an obvious risk: that the money buys the conclusion. These are the rules that prevent it, and they are enforced by the system rather than by good intentions.

The riskWhat prevents it
Paying for a favourable conclusionThe fee is fixed when the reviewer accepts, before they read a word, and does not vary with what they find
Reviewing your own workAuthor and reviewer are separate accounts. The matcher excludes anyone sharing an email, ORCID, institution or email domain with the author
Rushing reviews to earn moreMissed deadlines suspend new offers of work until the backlog is cleared, and the on-time record is public
A journal outsourcing its refereeingCitePep never referees for a journal, never receives an editorial decision, and takes no fee on one
Reviewers touting for direct workContact details are never exposed in the directory or in search results

A reviewer must still decline any manuscript where they hold a conflict our automatic checks cannot see, such as an undisclosed collaboration or a competing submission. A paid review is an expert opinion delivered to the author who commissioned it. It is never a decision, never a guarantee of acceptance, and never reported to a journal as refereeing.

§6

What is never shown

Email addresses and contact details, payout method and tax residence, the content of any review, which manuscripts a reviewer was sent, and private review notes.

In practice: Only the facts needed to verify a record are public.
§7

Records belong to real people

Each contribution is tied to a verified person and a specific page. Authorship claims are checked against the byline on the page itself.

In practice: A profile survives a change of institution or a publisher removing the page.

These editorial standards govern every action recorded on CitePep. Each one is a typed contribution, tied to a real person and a specific page. Each type earns its own credit and counts toward that person's topic authority.

  • Author: wrote the original content and is accountable for what it says.
  • Reviewer: read the page critically and confirmed it holds up.
  • Editor: improved clarity, structure, and tone without changing what is true.
  • Correction: found something wrong and fixed it.
  • Source & citation: supplied the references behind a page, or was cited as a trusted source by another.

See something that breaks these rules?

Report an inaccurate credit, profile or page record. The standards team reviews every report.

standards@citepep.comReputation method