Submission, Resubmission, and Authorship Plurality Policy

Preamble
To guarantee a plurality of voices, prevent authorship concentration (academic inbreeding), and protect the rigor and time of our peer-review team, JOTMI enforces a strict submission policy. The journal expects authors to submit only final, thoroughly proofread manuscripts and to maintain a commitment to diligent communication throughout the editorial process.

a) Technical Return and Desk Reject
Submissions that manifestly fail to comply with author guidelines (formatting, length, omission of mandatory documents) or fall clearly outside the journal's scope will be returned without peer review. To encourage responsible preparation of submissions, the signing authors will not be allowed to submit new work (whether the same or a different manuscript) for 30 days from the date of the decision. A second return for these reasons within a 12-month period will extend the moratorium to 6 months.

b) Pre-review Clarifications and Manuscript Abandonment
In cases where the journal requests critical clarifications prior to initiating peer review (e.g., doubts regarding data provenance, dataset availability, ethical or authorship declarations), the corresponding author will have a strict, non-extendable deadline of two (2) weeks to respond. Failure to provide a satisfactory response within this timeframe will result in the manuscript being declared "abandoned." Any abandoned article will be considered formally rejected for the purpose of calculating journal moratoriums.

c) Rejection after Content Evaluation (Editorial or Peer Review)
Any manuscript rejected due to its scientific or methodological quality, or lack of contribution to the field, may not be resubmitted to JOTMI in any future version. The "same manuscript" is defined as any work sharing the primary research question, data, or main results, regardless of changes to the title, structure, or authorship order. Any covert resubmission will be immediately archived.
Furthermore, to promote turnover and prevent system saturation by a single research group, following a content-based rejection, all signing authors must wait a period of 3 months before submitting a manuscript based on a different research study.

d) Simultaneous Submission Limit and Cumulative Moratorium
A single author (regardless of authorship position) or research group is not permitted to have more than one (1) article under simultaneous evaluation at JOTMI. Additionally, the accumulation of three (3) rejection decisions (including abandonments) or returns of any kind within a 12-month period will result in an automatic 12-month moratorium on new submissions for any of the involved authors.

e) Prevention of Endogamy and Annual Publication Limit
To safeguard scientific pluralism, democratize access to publication, and provide opportunities for emerging or underrepresented researchers, JOTMI strictly limits the publication frequency of any single author. No researcher (whether appearing as lead author, corresponding author, or co-author) may publish more than one (1) article within a 12-month period in the journal. If an author whose article has been accepted submits a new manuscript before this period expires, the document will be desk-rejected, indicating the date when the system will be enabled to receive their new work.

f) Scientific Integrity Violations
In the event of ethical misconduct (plagiarism, data manipulation, ghost/gift authorship, or simultaneous submission to other journals), the manuscript will be immediately rejected, and the procedures outlined in our Amendment and Integrity Policy will be applied.

g) Operability and Exemptions
To enforce this policy, registration with a validated ORCID is mandatory for all signing authors at the time of submission. Every editorial decision will explicitly state the date from which restrictions on new submissions are lifted. Exceptionally, the Editor may waive these deadlines solely under an "express invitation" modality (e.g., for special issues).