Editorial Policies

01

How decisions are made

So an author knows who decides, on what evidence, and against which criteria.

Every manuscript is first read by an editor for scope and for the minimum requirements set out in the Instructions for Authors. Manuscripts that pass that reading are sent for independent review; the editor selects reviewers for subject expertise and for the absence of a competing interest, and weighs their assessments against the published criteria before deciding.

Authors who request double-blind review prepare an anonymized manuscript as described in the Instructions for Authors; editors and reviewers follow the corresponding handling rules on the For Editors and For Reviewers pages.

Decisions remain independent of fees, services, memberships and roles. Scope eligibility and evidence quality are assessed separately: whether a question belongs in this journal is settled on the Aims and Scope remit, and what the evidence supports is settled in review.

02

Editorial independence and recusal

So no commercial or personal interest can reach an editorial outcome.

Editorial decisions are made by the handling editor on the scientific record in front of them. Payment of the article processing charge, membership of any scheme, an editorial or reviewing role, and the use of any optional author service confer no advantage in the review or acceptance of a manuscript.

Editors recuse themselves from manuscripts they have authored or co-authored, and from manuscripts by close collaborators, members of their own institution or anyone with whom they have a personal or financial relationship that could affect their judgment. Those manuscripts are reassigned and handled independently, and the recusal is recorded.

03

Authorship and contribution

So credit and accountability attach to the people who earned them.

All listed authors must meet the ICMJE authorship criteria: substantial contribution to the work, involvement in drafting or revising it critically, approval of the version submitted, and agreement to be accountable for it. Contributors who do not meet all four are named in the acknowledgments with their contribution described.

Authors are asked to state individual contributions using the CRediT taxonomy. One author acts as corresponding author and is responsible for communication with the journal and for confirming that every listed author has approved the submission.

Any change to the author list after submission — an addition, a removal or a change of order — requires written agreement from every author, including the one being added or removed, with the reason stated. Requests received after acceptance are referred to the authors’ institutions where the journal judges that appropriate.

04

Competing interests

So a reader can weigh the interests behind a result for themselves.

Authors disclose all financial and non-financial relationships that a reasonable reader might consider relevant to the work: funding, employment, consultancies, honoraria, patents, stock, advisory roles, and personal or professional relationships bearing on the subject. Funding sources are named with grant numbers where they exist, and the role of the funder in the design, conduct, analysis and reporting of the study is stated.

Reviewers decline manuscripts where they hold a competing interest, and editors recuse themselves as described above. A declared interest is not a bar to publication; an undeclared one is a matter for the misconduct procedure.

05

Research ethics and consent

So published research meets the standards the participants were owed.

Research involving people requires approval from a named research ethics committee or institutional review board, with the approval reference reported in the manuscript, and informed consent from participants described. Studies must be conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

Identifiable material — a photograph, an image, a clinical detail from which a person could be recognized — requires written consent to publish from the individual or their legal representative, and the manuscript must state that consent was obtained. Animal studies require approval from an institutional animal care and use committee, with the housing, welfare and humane endpoints described.

Where a study raises an ethical question the manuscript does not settle, the editor may ask for the approval documentation before review proceeds.

06

Data, code and reporting

So a result can be checked, reused and built on.

The statement names where the data supporting the findings can be found — a repository and accession, the supplementary files, or the conditions under which the data are available from the authors. Where participant privacy, consent terms or a legal restriction limits sharing, the statement says so and describes the controlled-access route. Analysis code is shared on the same terms wherever it is needed to reproduce the reported analysis.

Reporting should follow the guideline appropriate to the study design, and the completed checklist should be submitted with the manuscript. The guidelines the journal expects for each design are listed in the Instructions for Authors.

07

Use of generative AI

So responsibility for the text and the analysis stays with people.

Authors disclose any use of generative AI tools in the preparation of a manuscript, naming the tool and describing what it was used for. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality and integrity of everything they submit, including any material an AI tool helped produce, and for checking that cited sources exist and say what the manuscript claims.

An AI tool is not listed as an author, because authorship carries accountability that only a person can hold. The rules that apply to reviewers and editors using such tools are published on the For Reviewers and For Editors pages.

08

Originality and research misconduct

So the published record can be relied on.

Submitted work must be original, properly attributed, and not under consideration elsewhere. Manuscripts are screened with Crossref Similarity Check, powered by iThenticate, and a similarity report is read in context by an editor rather than applied as an automatic threshold. Figures are reviewed for signs of manipulation, and statistical reporting is examined for anomalies.

Concerns raised before or after publication — by a reader, a reviewer, an institution or the editorial office — are investigated in confidence following COPE guidance. The authors are told what the concern is and given the opportunity to respond before any conclusion is reached. The authors’ institution is notified where that is the appropriate body to investigate.

Where a concern is substantiated, the outcome may be a correction, an expression of concern, a retraction, or the rejection of a manuscript under consideration. The action taken is published with the reasons for it.

09

Corrections, retractions and the version of record

So the record shows what changed, and why.

The published article is the version of record. An error that does not affect the reliability of the findings is addressed by a correction notice; an error that does affect them, or a confirmed ethical breach, is addressed by a retraction notice. An expression of concern is published where a serious question is under investigation and the outcome is not yet settled.

Every notice is published open access, identifies the article it concerns, states what is wrong and who is retracting or correcting it, and is linked from the original article in both directions. The original article stays available and is marked with its status, so the record of what was published is preserved.

10

Complaints and appeals

So a decision an author believes is wrong can be re-examined.

An author who believes a decision rests on a misunderstanding of the work, or on a review that misrepresents it, may appeal by writing to the editorial office with the specific points at issue and the evidence for them. An appeal is considered by an editor who did not take the original decision, who may seek a further independent review.

Complaints about the conduct of the editorial process, about an editor, or about the journal’s handling of an ethical concern are addressed to the editorial office and are investigated following COPE guidance. The outcome of an appeal or complaint is communicated in writing with the reasons for it.

11

Copyright, licensing and self-archiving

So authors and readers know exactly what they may do with the work.

Authors retain copyright in their articles. Every article is published open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits anyone to read, redistribute, translate, adapt and reuse the work, including commercially, provided the original is credited and changes are indicated.

Because that license applies from publication, authors may deposit the published version in an institutional or subject repository, post it on a personal or departmental page, and share it with colleagues, at any time and without seeking further permission. Material reproduced from another source remains subject to that source’s terms, and written permission must be obtained and cited.

Full terms are on the Copyright and License page, and archiving and permissions arrangements on the Data Archiving and Permissions page.

12

Confidentiality and privacy

So a manuscript in review stays the authors' to publish.

A submitted manuscript is a confidential document. Editors and reviewers must not share it, discuss it outside the review process, or use unpublished material from it in their own work. Reviewers delete downloaded files once the review is submitted, and must not upload manuscript content to any service where confidentiality cannot be assured.

Personal data supplied to the journal are used to operate the editorial process and are handled under the publisher’s privacy statement. Reviewer identities are not disclosed to authors under the default model.

13

Withdrawal of a submitted manuscript

So an author knows what applies before they submit elsewhere.

Authors who wish to withdraw a manuscript after submission should contact the editorial office. The journal’s withdrawal policy, including the conditions that apply and the confirmation an author must receive, is published in full on the Article Processing Charges page.