Publication Ethics and Related Editorial Policies
A journal should have policies on publication ethics (for example, COPE's Core Practice guidance).
These should be visible on its website, and should refer to:
Journal’s policies on authorship and contributorship.
How the journal will handle complaints and appeals.
How the journal will handle allegations of research misconduct.
Journal’s policies on conflicts of interest.
Journal’s policies on data sharing and reproducibility.
Journal's policy on ethical oversight.
Journal's policy on intellectual property.
Journal's options for post-publication discussions.
Journal’s policies on corrections and retractions.
Editors and publishers are responsible for ensuring the integrity of the scholarly literature in their journals and should ensure they outline their policies and procedures for handling such issues when they arise. These issues include plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. Neither the journal’s policies nor the statements of its editors should encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place. In the event that a journal's editors or publisher are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a submitted or published article in their journal, the editor or publisher should follow COPE's guidance (or equivalent) in dealing with allegations.