These policies apply to every journal published on jrnls.org. A journal's own Guidelines page may add to them for its subject area.
Editorial policy
A manuscript is considered on the understanding that it reports original work that has not been published before, is not under consideration elsewhere and has been approved by all of its authors. One author acts as the corresponding author for every matter concerning the manuscript.
The editors first check each submission for scope, originality and basic scientific quality. Manuscripts with serious flaws, insufficient originality or little interest for the journal's readers may be declined at this stage without external review. The rest go to independent peer review, described on the Peer Review Process page.
Manuscripts that do not follow the journal's format may be returned to the authors before review. Accepted articles are copy-edited for language, style and format, and page proofs are sent to the corresponding author for approval.
Open access and licensing
All articles are free to read online from the day they are published. Unless an article states otherwise, it is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0), which lets anyone share and adapt the work for any purpose, provided the original authors and source are credited.
On acceptance, the corresponding author signs the journal's copyright and licence form on behalf of all authors. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reuse any figures, tables or text for which they do not hold the rights.
Plagiarism policy
Authors must make sure their work is original and that the words, data and ideas of others are properly cited or quoted. Submissions are checked with similarity-detection software. A manuscript found to contain plagiarism is rejected; plagiarism found after publication leads to retraction, a published notice, and may be reported to the authors' institutions and funders. Cases are handled following the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Authorship
Everyone listed as an author should have made a substantial contribution to the work and approved the final manuscript, in line with the ICMJE recommendations. Others who helped should be named in the Acknowledgements. Changes to the author list after submission need the written agreement of every author.
Research ethics and consent
Research involving people, human data or tissue, or animals must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee, and the manuscript must say so, with the approval reference. Studies on people must report that informed consent was obtained. Identifying details of participants must not be published without their written consent.
Conflicts of interest and funding
Authors must declare any financial or personal relationship that could be seen to influence their work, or state that there is none, and must name every source of funding. Reviewers and editors must decline to handle manuscripts where they have a conflict of interest.
Data availability
Authors should state where the data supporting their findings can be found, and are encouraged to deposit data in a public repository with a persistent identifier. Data should be available to the editors and reviewers on request.
Corrections and retractions
Errors found after publication are corrected with a linked correction notice. An article may be retracted for serious errors that undermine its findings, plagiarism, duplicate publication, manipulated peer review, unethical research, use of data without permission or an undisclosed major conflict of interest. The retraction notice states the reason, is linked to the article, and the article stays online clearly marked as retracted.
Appeals and complaints
Authors may appeal an editorial decision by writing to the journal's editorial office with a reasoned response. Complaints about a journal, an article or our processes can be sent through the Contact Us page; every complaint is acknowledged and investigated.