The Link Medical Interface policy library brings publisher-wide governance, journal minimum standards and implementation standards into one controlled, versioned framework.
Each category combines its policy instruments with the controlled terms whose primary home sits in that part of the framework.
Foundational publishing principles, ownership, governance, editorial independence, complaints, privacy and related governance standards.
5 policies BEditorial assessment, peer review, reviewer conduct, special issues and publishing-related artificial-intelligence standards.
3 policies CAuthorship, author identification, originality, plagiarism, citation integrity and research or publication misconduct.
5 policies DHuman and animal research, consent, trial registration, reporting standards, biological materials, biosafety and related ethical requirements.
5 policies ECompeting interests, funding transparency, data, code, materials, reproducibility and image or figure integrity.
3 policies FOpen access, copyright, licensing, publication charges, advertising, sponsorship, responsible metrics and related commercial safeguards.
3 policies GArticle versions, metadata, preservation, corrections, retractions, withdrawals and post-publication scholarly discussion.
3 policies HTraining, monitoring, transparency reporting, implementation assurance, document control and continuing policy review.
3 policiesEstablishes the foundational ethical principles of Link Medical Interface as a scholarly publisher — integrity, honesty, transparency, fairness, respect, academic freedom and protection of the scholarly record — and requires every journal operating under the LMI publishing framework to apply these principles in all editorial and publishing activity.
Discloses the ownership and governance of Link Medical Interface, defines the publisher's legal, administrative, technical and financial responsibilities toward its journals, and establishes accountability arrangements — including independent handling where publisher leadership itself is implicated — while separating organisational governance from manuscript-level editorial authority.
The authoritative LMI statement of editorial independence. Scholarly acceptance and rejection decisions belong exclusively to authorised journal editorial authority and may not be determined by payment, advertising, sponsorship, ownership, institutional prestige, or political or reputational pressure. Establishes independent handling where editorial leadership or the publisher is conflicted, and the publisher's duty to support justified record actions even when commercially inconvenient.
Establishes LMI’s second-tier route for complaints and appeals that cannot properly be resolved at journal level, including structurally conflicted matters, allegations against LMI or senior editorial leadership, publisher interference and systemic issues. It governs accessible escalation, anonymous concerns, conflict-free triage, interim protection, reasoned outcomes, reopening, communication boundaries, records, good-faith reporting and non-retaliation, while remaining distinct from a routine second appeal against scholarly rejection.
The primary LMI policy on confidentiality in scholarly publishing and on the protection of personal data processed in the publishing workflow. Governs confidential manuscripts, peer-review information, editorial correspondence, complaint and investigation materials, role-based access, service providers, security, retention, evidence holds, breach handling, permitted disclosures, and the entry of confidential material into external systems including AI tools.
Establishes LMI's minimum standards for journal editorial governance: designated editorial authority, documented appointments and terms, truthful disclosure of editorial-board composition, editorial-conflict management, and the absolute prohibition on publication by serving editorial-team members in their own journal. Defines the publisher's monitoring rights and the standards governing review, discipline and removal of editors.
Establishes publisher-wide minimum standards for the integrity of peer review across LMI journals: truthful disclosure of each journal’s actual review model; principled reviewer selection and verification; reviewer conduct; editorial use of reports; management of revised manuscripts; confidential report editing and retention; safeguards against fabricated and manipulated review; and the boundaries of AI use. Each journal chooses and implements its own review model within these standards.
Establishes minimum publisher standards for guest-edited special issues, thematic collections and conference-derived content across LMI journals: documented guest-editor appointment under permanent editorial oversight, conflict safeguards, the same-journal publication consequence for serving guest editors, defences against special-issue manipulation and paper-mill infiltration, sponsorship separation, and termination authority where integrity safeguards fail.
Establishes LMI’s minimum standards for authorship qualification and accountability, transparent contributorship, fair recognition of local and community contributors, verified names and affiliations, proportionate use of ORCID, professional writing and translation assistance, corresponding-author duties, authorship changes and disputes, privacy-respecting name changes, exceptional pseudonymous authorship, deceased or incapacitated authors, and the prohibition of gift, honorary, ghost and traded authorship.
Defines plagiarism, text recycling, duplicate, redundant and salami publication, and legitimate prior dissemination such as preprints, conference abstracts and theses. Requires originality screening as decision support while prohibiting reliance on similarity scores as automatic determinations of misconduct, and refers investigations to C5 and record actions to G2.
The LMI framework governing organised manipulation of publication, citation, identity, process and attention metrics - including paper mills, purchased manuscripts and authorship, fabricated documents and identities, citation cartels and coercive citation, dishonest agencies, coordinated submissions, and artificial downloads or engagement. It establishes proportionate detection, cross-journal analysis, fair assessment and response.
The LMI framework for artificial intelligence across the publishing lifecycle: AI systems cannot be authors and human accountability is undiminished; substantive generative use must be disclosed; confidential manuscripts and investigation materials must never enter uncontrolled external AI systems; and AI must not make editorial or misconduct determinations. Drafted in terms of function and risk so it remains durable as technologies change.
The principal LMI framework for responding to suspected research or publication misconduct: receipt and preliminary assessment of concerns, evidence preservation, confidentiality, independent handling, notice and opportunity to respond, proportionality, institutional referral and cooperation, coordination across journals, and outcomes including record action. Distinguishes the journal's assessment of the scholarly record from an institution's determination of research misconduct.
Establishes the minimum ethical prerequisites for publishing research involving human participants, identifiable human data or biological material: prior ethics approval or a properly granted waiver, valid informed consent, separate publication consent for identifiable information, safeguards for vulnerable participants and minors, privacy, online and observational research, audits and quality-improvement activity, community-governed research, biobanks, genetics and other sensitive human materials. Defines the journal’s verification role and its limits.
Establishes minimum requirements for publishing research involving animals: documented prospective ethical oversight under the applicable national and institutional framework, justification of animal use, application of replacement, reduction and refinement, humane care and welfare endpoints, and transparent reporting consistent with recognised animal-research reporting guidance.
Requires applicable clinical trials to be registered prospectively in a recognised public registry, with the registration number reported and the registry entry consistent with the manuscript. Governs protocol transparency, material deviations and outcome changes, and permits only rare, documented and prominently disclosed exceptions for late registration after an assessment of potential reporting bias.
Requires each journal to implement design-appropriate reporting guidelines, using current versions and recognised sources such as the EQUATOR Network, while leaving checklist mechanics, submission requirements and enforcement points to journal-level implementation. Clarifies that reporting-guideline compliance improves transparency but does not by itself establish methodological quality.
Establishes how LMI journals identify and handle research whose dissemination could create unusual risk to public health, safety or security — including dual-use research, dangerous pathogen work, and safety-sensitive technical detail. Requires proportionate assessment weighing scientific benefit, foreseeable harm, legal and ethical obligations and possible mitigation, with specialist consultation and publisher escalation, and expressly bars use of the policy to suppress uncomfortable but legitimate research.
The definitive LMI policy on competing interests: defines competing interest, financial and non-financial interests, disclosure and recusal in terms that apply consistently to authors, reviewers, editors, board and guest editors, publisher personnel and sponsors. Requires funding disclosure as a distinct obligation, publisher disclosure of its own material relationships, and publication of competing-interest statements with published articles.
Requires research articles to carry a meaningful Data Availability Statement identifying whether, where and under what conditions underlying data, code and materials may be accessed, or why they cannot be shared. Establishes author access to supporting data and protects analytical and publication freedom in sponsor agreements, recognises legitimate privacy, consent, legal, community-governance and third-party restrictions, and distinguishes transparency from guaranteed reproducibility.
Defines the minimum integrity rules governing genuine research images and figures — permitted global adjustments, prohibited selective enhancement, splicing, duplication and feature removal, composite-image disclosure, and retention of unprocessed source files — while leaving screening tools, thresholds and workflow to journal implementation. Distinguishes image manipulation from image reuse (C2) and AI-generated imagery (C4).
Establishes LMI’s Gold Open Access model with CC BY 4.0 as the standard licence for research content, author retention of copyright, and a formal non-exclusive publishing agreement granting only the rights necessary to publish and preserve the scholarly record. Governs licence exceptions, third-party and non-copyright rights, author self-archiving, and the boundary with participant consent: an open licence does not create reuse rights in identifiable material beyond the consent obtained.
Establishes the principles governing publication charges across LMI journals: full transparency of all charges before submission, no hidden or surprise fees, a documented waiver and reduction scheme, refund and record-keeping requirements, and an absolute firewall between payment and every editorial decision. Journal-specific amounts, currencies, waiver criteria and payment mechanics are published by each journal.
Governs LMI’s commercial and promotional activity - advertising, sponsorship, marketing, calls for papers, direct contact, social media, press releases, reprints and metrics - and separates it from editorial decisions. Prohibits commercial influence over selection, review and record action; requires advertisements and sponsorship to be identifiable; requires accurate indexing, speed, acceptance and endorsement claims; supports responsible research assessment; and prohibits metric and engagement manipulation.
Establishes LMI’s infrastructure responsibilities for a trustworthy, persistent and accessible scholarly record: the Version of Record; persistent identifiers; metadata accuracy and propagation; reader-facing status signalling; accessible formats; digital preservation; operational backup, integrity testing and disaster recovery; truthful preservation claims; continuity where a journal changes title, transfers, merges or closes; and status integrity for distributed copies.
The definitive LMI instrument governing transparent amendment of the scholarly record. It establishes the controlled record-action taxonomy - correction, addendum, Expression of Concern, retraction and exceptional removal - together with grounds and notice requirements, partial-retraction limits, rare retract-and-republish, author notification without veto, appeals and reversal, correction of notices, timely case records, absolute independence from financial or reputational consequences, and propagation of status to metadata, preservation systems and distributed copies.
Establishes minimum principles for post-publication scholarly discussion across LMI journals — correspondence, commentaries, responses and reader-raised concerns — requiring that legitimate criticism not be suppressed because it is unwelcome, that authors receive a fair opportunity to respond without holding a veto, and that discussion be evidence-based, civil and subject to competing-interest disclosure. Defines the boundaries with misconduct handling and with formal record amendment.
Governs the LMI Publisher Policy Framework itself: who may draft, review, approve and publish policy instruments; the permanent identifier and versioning scheme; the lifecycle from draft to current to superseded; the requirement that revisions never silently overwrite published versions; scheduled and event-triggered review; emergency interim amendment with formal confirmation; and the public availability of current policies with historical versions retained.
Establishes how LMI determines whether its policies are implemented: role-appropriate competence and training; evidence retention; risk-proportionate monitoring, case audit and review; confidentiality and independence of assurance; documented findings, corrective and preventive action, controlled policy exceptions and evidence-based claims; website, contact and accessibility checks; declared-schedule integrity; continuing improvement; and periodic aggregated publishing-integrity and transparency reporting.
Governs requirements that vary by journal, jurisdiction, recognition body or indexing service. Requires each journal to identify its applicable legal, regulatory, recognition, indexing and voluntary standards, assign responsibility, implement controls and monitor changes, while keeping changing numerical and operational criteria in journal-level documentation rather than in publisher policy. Requires that all claims of indexing, recognition, accreditation, membership or endorsement be currently supportable, and establishes how conflicts between external requirements and LMI policy are resolved.