Every journal we publish operates under one framework of twenty-three policies. This page states the principles. The operative text lives on each journal’s own site. See the full framework.
Two commitments, before anything else
The editorial decision comes before the invoice. No fee is requested or accepted at submission. Nothing is charged for review. A publication fee falls due only after a manuscript has already been accepted, on scholarly grounds, by editors with no visibility of payment status. There is no priority handling, no fast track, and no sum of money that buys either.
Authors keep their copyright. We take a non-exclusive licence to publish. Copyright transfer is not a condition of publication, and never will be.
Authors
Originality. Unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, and reuse of text, data, or images without acknowledgment are not acceptable. Neither is self-plagiarism that misrepresents novelty.
Data integrity. Fabrication, falsification, selective reporting intended to mislead, and manipulation of images are unacceptable. Editors may request raw data for verification.
Authorship. Every author must have contributed substantially, participated in drafting or revising, approved the final version, and accept responsibility for it. Gift, guest, and ghost authorship are not permitted.
Ethics. Studies involving people, human data, human material, or animals must confirm compliance with applicable standards, and approval details must appear in the manuscript. Where an individual may be identifiable, explicit permission to publish is required.
Conflicts. Disclose anything that could reasonably be perceived to influence the work. Funders must be named, and their role stated.
Reviewers
Confidentiality is absolute. A manuscript under review is unpublished work given to you in trust.
Reviews must be constructive and specific. Personal criticism and discriminatory language are not acceptable in a review.
Do not put any part of a manuscript into a generative AI tool. These systems retain what they are given. An author’s unpublished work is not yours to hand to a third party, and doing so removes you from our reviewer pool.
Editors
Decisions rest on scientific merit, methodological quality, relevance, ethical acceptability, and clarity. Not on the author’s seniority, institution, nationality, or fee.
Manuscripts from our own editors go through an independent pathway from which those editors are wholly excluded. They do not decide, do not see reviewer identities, and do not access deliberations on their own work.
Corrections where an error is confirmed but the findings hold. Retraction where findings are unreliable. An expression of concern where serious doubt exists and investigation is incomplete. All published openly, linked to the article, permanently.
Generative AI
AI tools cannot be authors and cannot take responsibility for a work. Authors remain fully accountable for every element of a manuscript — including anything an AI tool touched. You are responsible for fabricated citations a tool produced.
Our training does not lead to our journals
We publish journals and we teach people to write papers. In most organisations that is a conflict of interest, and we treat it as one. Completing an LMI course confers no advantage at any LMI journal. No preferential review. No expedited handling. No fee waiver. No improved prospect of acceptance. We teach journal selection as a module — including how to identify predatory journals — which will often lead an author away from our journals. That is the point.