General principles 

1.1 Conflict of Interest:

Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed to the journal at the earliest possible stage. All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other relevant interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their work. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. Editors should recuse themselves from considering manuscripts (i.e. should ask a co-editor, associate editor or other member of the editorial board to review and consider) in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or (possibly) institutions connected to the papers . Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, funders, or institutions connected to the paper or any relevant interests in organizations that might benefit or suffer from publication of the work.

 1.2 Confidentiality:

No information shall be disclosed about any submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, potential reviewers, actual reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate. Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorised by the editor. 

1.3 Privileged Information/Transparency:

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s or reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

2. Authors 2.1.1:

Reporting standards and research conduct Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable. Review articles and commentaries should also be accurate and objective, and ‘opinion pieces’ should be clearly identified as such. If the work involved chemicals, procedures or equipment that have hazards inherent in their use that might not be apparent to other researchers, the author must clearly identify these in the manuscript. If the work involved the use of animal subjects or human participants, the author should seek assurance that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committee(s) have approved them. Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human participants. The privacy rights of individuals must always be observed. 

2.1.2 Data Access and Retention:

Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data (See the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases), if practicable, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication. 

2.1.3 Originality and Plagiarism:

Plagiarism takes many forms, from ‘passing off’ another’s paper as the author’s own paper, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another’s paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical behaviour and is unacceptable. Authors should submit original works and sources must be appropriately cited or quoted.

 2.1.4 Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication:

An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same findings in more than one journal of primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently also constitutes unethical behavior and is unacceptable. In general, an author should not submit for consideration in another journal a previously published paper. Publication of some kinds of articles (eg, clinical guidelines, translations) in more than one journal is sometimes justifiable, provided certain conditions are met. The authors and editors of the journals concerned must agree to the secondary publication, which must reflect the same data and interpretation as the primary document. The primary reference must be cited in the secondary publication. 

2.1.5 Acknowledgement of Sources:

 The work of others must always be properly acknowledged. Authors should cite publications that have influenced the reported work. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission from the author(s) of the work concerned. 

2.1.6 Authorship of the Paper:

 Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in substantive aspects of the research project, but who do not qualify as authors, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. 

2.1.7 Fundamental errors in published works:

 When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper

Image Integrity:

 It is not acceptable to enhance, obscure, move, remove, or introduce a specific feature within an image. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable if and as long as they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original. Manipulating images for improved clarity is accepted, but manipulation for other purposes could be seen as scientific ethical abuse and will be dealt with accordingly. Authors should comply with any specific policy for graphical images applied by the relevant journal, e.g. providing the original images as supplementary material with the article, or depositing these in a suitable repository