Publication agreement

1. Who we are

Northmere Press is a brand of 312 Productions NW, LLC, a Washington limited liability company (the Publisher). These terms form the agreement between the Publisher and the corresponding author, who signs for all authors (the Author).

2. What you are paying for

The publication fee is US$750 per accepted article, in any of the three journals. The fee covers editorial screening, copyediting-level formatting, typesetting to the journal's template, hosting of the article as open access under the license in section 6, and a permanent web page with a stable link.

The fee is a charge for publishing services. It does not buy acceptance, a review outcome, a publication date, indexing, a DOI, an impact factor, citations or any institutional or professional recognition. The Publisher does not promise any of these.

3. No guarantee of acceptance

Submission is free and creates no payment obligation. The Publisher decides on acceptance at its sole editorial discretion and may decline, request changes or stop considering a work at any time before the Author signs this agreement. No fee is requested until a work is accepted, and the editorial decision is made before and separately from any discussion of payment.

4. Review model, stated plainly

The current model is editorial screening by the Publisher. It is not external academic peer review, and the Publisher will not describe it as peer review. Each published article will carry a statement of the review process it actually received. Authors must decide whether this model meets their own institution, employer or funder requirements before paying.

5. Payment

The fee of US$750 is due after acceptance and after the Author signs this agreement, and before publication. It is payable by card or other method offered at checkout through Stripe. The Publisher does not see or store card numbers. Taxes, if any apply, will be shown before payment. The Author is responsible for any bank or currency conversion charges.

The Publisher will not publish before payment is received, unless a fee waiver under the Waiver Policy has been granted in writing.

6. Rights and license

The Author keeps copyright. The Author grants the Publisher a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual license to publish, host, archive and distribute the article, and publishes it under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0), so anyone may reuse it with credit. The Author may also post the work elsewhere, subject to the disclosure duties in the research-integrity policy.

7. Author warranties

The Author confirms that: (a) the work is original, or properly credits and has permission for everything taken from others; (b) all people who qualify as authors are listed and have approved the submission and this agreement; (c) the work has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration elsewhere, or any prior posting such as a preprint has been disclosed; (d) the work does not infringe copyright, privacy or other rights, and contains no defamatory, unlawful or fabricated material; (e) required ethics approvals, consents and data permissions were obtained; (f) conflicts of interest, funding and substantive use of AI tools are fully disclosed; (g) the Author has authority to sign for all authors and to grant the license above.

If any warranty is untrue, the Publisher may correct, retract or remove the article under the Corrections policy.

8. Refunds

Before the Publisher begins typesetting: full refund on written request, less any payment processor fee the Publisher cannot recover.

After typesetting has started but before publication: refund of the fee less 50 percent, on written request, if the Author withdraws.

After publication: no refund, except where the Publisher fails to publish the article as agreed, retracts it for a reason that is not the Author's fault, or must refund under applicable law. Retraction or removal because of a breach of the warranties in section 7 is not refundable.

If the Publisher declines to publish after payment, the fee is refunded in full. Refunds go back to the original payment method within 10 business days of approval.

9. Timing

The Publisher will aim to publish within 30 days of payment and a final proof approved by the Author. This is a target, not a promise. Delays caused by author revisions or late proof approval do not entitle the Author to a refund.

10. Disclaimer

The Publisher provides its services as described and gives no other warranty, express or implied, to the extent the law allows. The Publisher does not warrant that the journals will be indexed, that the article will be cited, read, accepted by any institution, or counted toward any degree, grant, hiring or promotion decision.

11. Limit of liability

To the extent the law allows, the Publisher's total liability to the Author for any claim connected to this agreement is limited to the publication fee the Author actually paid. The Publisher is not liable for indirect, consequential or lost-opportunity losses. Nothing in this agreement limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud.

12. Author indemnity

The Author will cover the Publisher's reasonable losses and legal costs arising from a third-party claim that results from a breach of the warranties in section 7.

13. General

This agreement and the Submission Terms, Review, Fees and Rights policies are the whole agreement. Washington State law governs, and disputes go to the courts of Spokane County, Washington, unless the law gives the Author a different right. The Publisher may update the website policies, but changes do not alter an agreement already signed.