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Publishing ethics

Peer review

This journal usually requires a minimum of two independent peer reviewers to peer review manuscripts for consideration in the journal.

This journal uses a single-anonymous peer review model. This means that the identity of the authors is known to the peer reviewers, but the identity of the peer reviewers is not known to the authors. Please check the journal's peer review information for full details of this process and any policy exceptions.

Research Ethics: Animal research

Research involving vertebrates and regulated invertebrates should comply with relevant national and international animal welfare guidelines and where possible, be approved by an ethics committee. The name of the ethics committee and the ethics committee approval number should be included in accordance with this journal's author instructions, along with the national and international guidelines that were followed.

Animal euthanasia methods should comply with the American Veterinary Medical Association Guidelines for the euthanasia of animals.

Research reporting animal research should follow the ARRIVE reporting guidelines. 

This journal publishes in accordance with Cambridge University Press’s research publishing ethics guidelines, which apply to authors, peer reviewers, the editorial office and the journal as a whole. Further details as applicable to this journal can be found below. Anyone who believes that these guidelines have not been followed should raise their concern with the editor or email publishingethics@cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com.

Research Ethics: Human participants, tissue, or data

Research involving human participants, tissue or data should be approved by relevant institutional ethics committee(s) and should conform to relevant international ethical and legal standards for research (for example, the Declaration of Helsinki and the Belmont Report).

Ethics committee approval

The name of the ethics committee that approved the research, the ethics committee approval number and the types of consent obtained should be included according to this journal's author instructions. In cases where the need for formal ethics committee approval was waived, the name of the ethics committee that granted the waiver should be included in the methods section of the manuscript. 

Consent to publish

This journal expects authors to respect human participants’ right to privacy, and to gain written consent to publish individual identifying data when relevant before submitting to us. 

Authors should obtain consent to publish from individual participants if their manuscript includes any data that might identify them. For example, this includes photographs, videos, individual clinical data, quotes, demographic details and any other details that might identify the participant. For children (under 18yrs) consent should also be obtained from the child’s parent of legal guardian.

Consent to participate

Consent to participate should not be confused with consent to publish. In the conduct of their research, authors should prospectively obtain consent from the individuals involved to participate in their research and/or for their tissues or data to be used. The need for consent and method of obtaining consent should be determined by the authors’ institutional ethics committee. Details of consent to participate should be included in manuscripts. Where consent for participation was not obtained (for example, in cases where the participants were not capable of providing consent) the editor may ask to see evidence that the need for consent was waived by an ethics committee.

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Artificial Intelligence tools

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools
We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.
In particular, any use of an AI tool:
• to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
• to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
• to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
• must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission
Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.

Acknowledgements 
Authors can use this section to acknowledge and thank colleagues, institutions, workshop organisers, family members, etc. that have helped with the research and/or writing process. It is important that that any type of funding information or financial support is listed under ‘Financial Support’ rather than Acknowledgements so that it can be recorded separately.
We are aware that authors sometimes receive assistance from technical writers, language editors, artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication. Such assistance must be noted in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section, along with a declaration that the author(s) are entirely responsible for the scientific content of the paper and that the paper adheres to the journal’s authorship policy. Failure to acknowledge assistance from technical writers, language editors, AI tools and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section may lead to disqualification of the paper. Examples of how to acknowledge assistance in drafting manuscripts:
• “The author(s) thank [name and qualifications] of [company, city, country] for providing [medical/technical/language] writing support/editorial support [specify and/or expand as appropriate], which was funded by [sponsor, city, country]."
• “The author(s) made use of [AI system/tool] to assist with the drafting of this article. [AI version details] was accessed/obtained from [source details] and used with/without modification [specify and/or expand as appropriate] on [date(s)]

Disclosure of interests and funding

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the presentation, review or publication of a piece of work. These may be financial, non-financial, professional, contractual or personal in nature. Conflicts of Interest do not necessarily mean that an author’s work has been compromised. All authors must include a competing interest declaration in accordance with this journal's author instructions. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.

Peer reviewers are expected to declare any competing interests arising at any point during the peer review process. The editor will review the competing interest and work with the reviewer to mitigate the competing interest. Where a reviewer’s competing interest is too significant to mitigate, the reviewer should recuse themselves from reviewing. See Ethics in Peer Review for further information.

Editors are responsible for declaring any competing interests, whether they apply to individual articles or to their position as an editor of this journal, and recusing themselves as appropriate.

Anyone who suspects an undisclosed competing interest regarding a work published or under consideration in this journal should inform the relevant editor or email publishingethics@cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com.

This journal publishes in accordance with Cambridge University Press’s research publishing ethics guidelines, which apply to authors, peer reviewers, the editorial office and the journal as a whole. Further details as applicable to this journal can be found below. Anyone who believes that these guidelines have not been followed should raise their concern with the editor or email publishingethics@cambridge-org.demo.remotlog.com.