Academic Debate

Management Science Advances (MSA) encourages constructive academic debate and welcomes scholarly correspondence concerning articles published in the journal. Correspondence should be relevant, evidence-based, respectful, and focused on the scientific, methodological, theoretical, or practical aspects of the work being discussed.

Readers, researchers, and other members of the scholarly community may submit comments, correspondence, or reasoned critiques concerning articles published in MSA. Such contributions should provide a clear scholarly basis for the points raised and, where appropriate, should be supported by relevant evidence or references.

Where correspondence contains substantive criticism of a published article, the journal will normally provide the author(s) of the original article with a reasonable opportunity to respond before the correspondence is published. Where appropriate, the correspondence and the authors' response may be published together or otherwise linked in order to provide readers with a transparent scholarly discussion.

Authors have a right to reply but do not have the right to prevent the publication of legitimate scholarly criticism solely because they disagree with it or consider it unfavorable. Authors may choose not to respond, and the absence of a response will not necessarily prevent publication of the correspondence.

The decision to publish correspondence and any associated author response rests with the Editor-in-Chief or an appropriately designated editor. The decision will be based on scholarly relevance, evidential basis, clarity, contribution to academic discussion, and compliance with the journal's editorial and ethical standards.

MSA reserves the right to decline correspondence that is unsupported, irrelevant, defamatory, abusive, repetitive, misleading, or otherwise unsuitable for scholarly publication.

Academic disagreement and criticism should be distinguished from allegations concerning research or publication misconduct. Where correspondence raises a credible concern regarding plagiarism, fabrication or falsification, manipulation of the peer-review process, inappropriate authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, or another potential breach of publication ethics, the matter will be assessed in accordance with the journal's Procedures for Dealing with Allegations of Unethical Behaviour.

Where discussion identifies an error or other issue affecting the published scholarly record, any formal correction, Expression of Concern, retraction, or other post-publication action will be considered in accordance with the journal's Retraction and Correction Policies.