Publication Ethics

NexOneMed follows the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the recommendations of the ICMJE. Where this page does not cover a situation, we apply the relevant COPE flowchart.

Research ethics

Research involving human participants, their data or their tissue must have been approved by a named research ethics committee or institutional review board, and must comply with the Declaration of Helsinki. The approving body and the reference number go in the manuscript. Where approval was genuinely not required, say so and explain why.

Informed consent must have been obtained from participants, or from a legal guardian, and the manuscript must say so. Any individual who could be identified — from a photograph, a case description or a rare combination of details — must have given written consent to publication, and that consent must be available to us on request.

Animal research must have had ethical approval and must comply with the relevant national regulations; report it to ARRIVE.

Authorship and contribution

Authorship follows the ICMJE criteria set out in the author guidelines. We treat the following as misconduct:

• Gift or honorary authorship — listing someone who did not meet the criteria.
• Ghost authorship — omitting someone who did, including paid writers.
• Selling or buying authorship, and submissions originating from paper mills.

Submissions bearing the hallmarks of a paper mill are rejected and reported to the authors’ institutions.

Originality and duplicate publication

Submit only work that is original and not under consideration elsewhere. Every submission is screened for text overlap.

• Plagiarism — presenting another’s words, ideas, figures or data as your own, including unattributed reuse of your own previous text.
• Duplicate submission — the same manuscript under consideration at more than one journal at once.
• Redundant publication — republishing findings already published, without disclosure and clear cross-reference.
• Salami slicing — splitting one study into several papers to inflate output, where the parts do not stand alone.

Preprints are not duplicate publication. Declare the preprint and we will cite it.

Data and image integrity

Data must not be fabricated, falsified or selectively reported. Figures must represent what was observed: adjustments to brightness, contrast or colour must be applied to the whole image and must not obscure or create any feature, and splicing in a gel or blot must be made visible and stated. Keep original, unprocessed images — we may ask for them.

Outcomes and analyses must match what was planned. Where a registered protocol exists, departures from it must be reported and explained.

Competing interests

Authors, reviewers and editors must declare anything that could be seen to influence their judgement. See the competing interests policy.

Artificial intelligence

AI tools cannot be authors: they cannot take responsibility for the work. Authors who use generative AI in preparing a manuscript must say so, naming the tool and what it was used for, and remain fully responsible for accuracy, originality and every citation. AI must not be used to generate or alter data or images.

Reviewers and editors must not upload manuscripts to AI tools, as set out in the review policy.

Corrections, expressions of concern and retractions

The published record is corrected openly, never silently.

Action	When we use it
Correction	An error that affects the record but not the conclusions. The article is amended and a linked correction notice published.
Expression of concern	A credible but unresolved concern, or an institutional investigation we cannot conclude ourselves. Published while the matter is looked into.
Retraction	Findings are unreliable through error or misconduct, or the work is plagiarised, redundant, or reports unethical research. The article stays online, marked retracted, with a notice stating who requested it and why.

We do not remove published articles. The only exception is a legal requirement or a serious risk to an individual, and a notice stays in place.

Raising a concern

Write to the editorial office at contact with the article, the specific concern and any evidence. We acknowledge within [N] working days.

1. Assessment

   The editorial office checks the concern is specific and substantiable, and the chief editor decides whether to investigate.

2. Author response

   The corresponding author is put to the concern and given a reasonable period to answer, with the evidence.

3. Institutional referral

   Where misconduct is suspected and the authors’ response does not settle it, we refer the matter to their institution. We investigate publication conduct; we do not investigate people.

4. Outcome

   A correction, expression of concern or retraction is published as appropriate, and the complainant is told the outcome.

Concerns may be raised anonymously, and are judged on evidence, not on who raised them. We will not disclose a complainant’s identity to the authors without their agreement.

What we require of editors

Editors decide on the manuscript’s merits alone, without regard to the authors’ nationality, institution, seniority or ability to pay. They keep submissions confidential, recuse themselves where they have a competing interest, and may not handle their own work. Commercial considerations play no part in any editorial decision.