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.

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

Editors should have policies and systems in place to ensure that commercial considerations do not affect editorial decisions and 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.

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 libelous 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.

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

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.