Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics for Journal Editors

Editors should be accountable for everything published in their journal: this includes having measures in place to assess the quality of the material they accept for the journal and a willingness to publish corrections and clarifications when required.

Editors should act in a fair and balanced way when carrying out their duties, without discrimination on grounds of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religious or political beliefs.

Editors should provide guidance to authors and reviewers on everything that is expected of them.

Peer Review
Editors should make decisions on which articles to publish based on quality and suitability for the journal and without interference from the journal owner/publisher.

A description of peer review processes should be published, and editors should be ready to justify any important deviation from the described processes.

Editors should handle submissions in a fair, unbiased and timely manner and treat all manuscripts as confidential, for distribution to others for purposes of peer-review only.

Editors should have systems to ensure that peer reviewers’ identities are protected unless they use an open review system that is declared to authors and reviewers.

Journals should have policies and systems in place to ensure that commercial considerations do not affect editorial decisions, and editors should handle submissions for funded issues in the same way as for standard issues, so that articles are accepted entirely on their academic merit and without commercial influence.

Editors should be guided by COPE flowcharts in cases of suspected misconduct (including plagiarism) or disputed authorship.

Journals should have a declared mechanism for authors to appeal against editorial decisions.

Editorial Board
Editors should provide new editorial board members with guidelines on everything that is expected of them and should keep existing members updated on new policies and developments.

Conflicts of Interest
Editors should have systems for managing their own conflicts of interest as well as those of their staff, authors, reviewers and editorial board members.

Publication Ethics for Journal Authors

Authors should declare that all work in their submitted piece is original, and cite content from other sources appropriately to avoid plagiarism.

Authors must ensure their contribution does not contain any libellous matter or infringe any copyright or other intellectual property rights or any other rights of any third party.

The listing of authors should accurately reflect who carried out the research and wrote the article, and the order of authorship should be jointly determined by all of the co-authors.

All authors should be aware of the submission of their paper to the journal and agree to the main author signing an IPR form on their behalf.

Authors should ensure that their manuscript as submitted is not under consideration (or accepted for publication) elsewhere. Where sections of the manuscript overlap with published or submitted content, this should be acknowledged and cited.

Authors should obtain permission to reproduce any content from third-party sources (text and images).Unfortunately, the Press is unable to publish third-party content for which permission has not been obtained (excluding content covered by fair dealing).

The source of funding for a research project should be listed on all funded research papers. Other sources of support (including funding for Open Access article processing charges) should also be clearly identified in the manuscript, typically in an acknowledgement.

Authors should declare any potential conflicts of interest relating to a specific article.

Authors should inform the editor or publisher if there is a significant error in their published piece, and work with the editor to publish an erratum, addendum or retraction where necessary.

Authors have the right to appeal editorial decisions.

Publication Ethics for Journal Article Reviewers

• Reviewers should assist in improving the quality of a submitted article by reviewing the manuscript with care, consideration and objectivity, in a timely manner.
• Reviewers should inform the journal editor of any published or submitted content that is similar to the material under review, or any suspected plagiarism.
• Reviewers should declare any potential conflicts of interest relating to a specific article or author.
• Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of any information or material supplied during the review process.