Authorship & Publication Integrity

A person meeting the authorship criteria of C1, named as responsible for the work and accountable for its integrity.

The status of being named as an author, entailing substantive contribution, approval of the published version and continuing accountability.

A person who contributed to the work, whether or not qualifying as an author; non-author contributors are acknowledged under C1.

The author designated to communicate with the journal, confirm co-author qualification and consent, manage required declarations, and respond to post-publication questions, without reduction of other authors' accountability.

Omission from the author list of a person who meets authorship criteria, including undisclosed professional writers or sponsor personnel.

Naming as an author a person who does not meet authorship criteria.

Presentation of another's words, ideas, data, images or work as one's own without appropriate attribution and, where required, permission — including close paraphrase, unattributed translation and appropriation of material encountered in confidence.

Reuse of an author's own previously published text without transparent citation or beyond what is reasonable and lawful.

Publication of substantially the same work in more than one venue without disclosure and justification.

Publication substantially overlapping earlier work without sufficient new content or acknowledgement of the overlap.

Artificial division of one coherent study into multiple submissions where the parts do not independently justify separate publication.

Legitimate republication, typically in another language or for a different audience, with the consent of both journals, prominent citation of the primary source and faithful correspondence to it.

An operation producing or brokering manuscripts, authorship positions or publication outcomes as a commercial product, including fabricated or templated research.

Conduct intended to inflate citation counts other than by genuine scholarly citation, including citation cartels, undisclosed reciprocal arrangements and addition of excessive or irrelevant references.

Any request or requirement that citations be added other than for genuine scholarly reasons, whether made by a reviewer, an editor or a third party.

Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or other serious departure from accepted practice in proposing, conducting or reporting research; excludes honest error and legitimate disagreement.

Serious impropriety in the publication process, including prohibited authorship practices, plagiarism, redundant publication and manipulation under C1, C2 and C3.

Invention of data, results, participants, approvals or events.

Manipulation of research materials, processes, images or data such that the research is not accurately represented.

A computational system performing tasks that would otherwise require human judgement or authorship.

An AI system producing text, images, code, data or other content.

A verified change to the name displayed in the scholarly record, implemented where reasonably possible without requiring public disclosure of the personal reason and without being used to conceal an integrity concern.

Publication under a name other than the author’s public legal or professional identity, permitted only exceptionally where the journal verifies the person confidentially, preserves accountability, can assess competing interests and prevents concealment of prohibited authorship or misconduct.