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Editors may encounter difficult cases involving conflicting reviews, suspected plagiarism, data concerns, image concerns, authorship disputes, undisclosed competing interests, reviewer behavior, complaints, appeals, withdrawal requests, or post-publication issues.

Difficult cases should be handled calmly, fairly, confidentially, and through documented procedures. This page provides practical guidance and does not replace CorayNova's formal research and publication ethics, corrections, retractions, complaints, appeals, or legal procedures.

· General Approach

For difficult cases, CorayNova follows a staged approach: pause to identify the issue, gather relevant information, maintain confidentiality, allow relevant parties an appropriate opportunity to respond where required, document the process, and escalate when the matter exceeds ordinary editorial handling.

·  Pause and identify the issue before making a decision.

·  Separate administrative problems from scholarly disagreements, ethics concerns, policy breaches, and legal or safety risks.

·  Gather relevant information from the manuscript, submission records, reviewer reports, correspondence, declarations, files, metadata, and published records.

·  Maintain confidentiality and share information only with people who need it for legitimate handling of the case.

·  Give affected parties a fair opportunity to respond when policy and due process require it.

·  Document actions, dates, communications, reasons, and decisions.

·  Escalate serious or uncertain cases to the appropriate journal or publisher route.

· Difficult Case Handling Table

Case Type	Editorial Response	When to Escalate
Conflicting reviewer reports	Assess the quality and relevance of each report, identify the specific disagreement, request targeted revision, invite an additional reviewer, or make a reasoned editorial decision.	Escalate if the disagreement involves ethics, data reliability, safety, legal risk, or reviewer misconduct.
Suspected plagiarism or text overlap	Check the nature of overlap, sources, citation, permissions, and prior dissemination. Ask for explanation where appropriate.	Escalate if overlap appears substantial, undisclosed, misleading, or part of a broader misconduct concern.
Data or image concerns	Request raw data, image history, analysis files, ethics details, or clarification where appropriate.	Escalate when concerns may affect reliability, integrity, participant safety, or the published record.
Authorship dispute	Avoid deciding personal credit disputes based only on competing claims. Request written confirmation from authors and, where necessary, institutional input.	Escalate if authors disagree, a contributor is omitted, authorship changes are contested, or coercion is alleged.
Competing interest concern	Request disclosure or clarification and consider reassignment of editorial handling or reviewer replacement.	Escalate when undisclosed conflicts may have affected review, decision-making, or published interpretation.
Reviewer misconduct	Assess allegations of breach of confidentiality, inappropriate language, coercive citation, use of unpublished material, or undisclosed conflicts.	Escalate when the conduct could compromise the review process or scholarly record.
Complaint or appeal	Follow the formal complaint or appeal route. Review whether there was a procedural error, factual error, conflict, or serious scholarly issue.	Escalate when independent review, publisher oversight, or ethics investigation is needed.
Post-publication concern	Assess whether the issue requires correction, expression of concern, retraction, article removal, metadata update, or no action.	Escalate all serious integrity, safety, legal, privacy, or rights concerns.
Legal, privacy, safety, or serious institutional risk	Pause ordinary handling where needed, preserve records, limit information sharing, and seek publisher-level guidance.	Escalate to editorial@coraynova.com and, for serious institutional-level matters, executive@coraynova.com.

 

· Institutional and High-Risk Escalation

Editors should not routinely promise or initiate direct institutional investigation contact on their own. Where institutional contact may be necessary, the decision should be made through the Editor-in-Chief, the Editorial Office, and the relevant publisher-level ethics route.

Legal, privacy, safety, serious institutional, and high-risk ethics matters should be escalated through publisher-level routes. Serious institutional-level matters may be escalated to executive@coraynova.com in addition to editorial@coraynova.com.

· Tone and Communication

Editors should use careful, neutral, factual language when communicating about difficult cases. Communications should avoid accusations unless findings have been established through an appropriate process.

When requesting information from authors, reviewers, or institutions, editors should specify the concern, the information needed, the response route, and the expected timeframe where applicable. Editors should avoid sharing unnecessary confidential information.

· Records and Confidentiality

Difficult cases should be documented in a secure and appropriate location. Records may include correspondence, manuscript versions, reviewer reports, decision letters, similarity reports where used, author responses, editorial notes, evidence reviewed, and decisions taken.

Confidential records should not be published or shared beyond the people who need them for editorial, ethical, legal, or operational handling.