Purpose and Scope

This policy outlines our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of ethical publishing practices. It applies to all stakeholders involved in our publishing process, including authors, editors, reviewers, and publishing staff.

Core Principles

Research Integrity

All research must be conducted with honesty, rigor, and transparency
Authors must present their findings accurately and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate data manipulation
Research methods must be described clearly to allow reproducibility
Any limitations of the research should be openly acknowledged

Authorship and Contributions

Authorship should be limited to those who have made substantial contributions to the work
All authors must approve the final version before publication
The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal
Changes to authorship after submission requires written approval from all authors and will not usually be accepted
If AI has been used in the generation of any content then this must be declared on submission and mentioned clearly in the text

Peer Review

We are committed to fair, unbiased, and timely peer review
Reviewers must declare any conflicts of interest
Review comments should be constructive and professional
Confidentiality of the peer review process will be maintained
All papers will be double blind reviewed – i.e. the Reviewers will not know the Authors of the paper and the Authors will not know the names or affiliations of the Reviewers
All peer reviews are personally checked for AI generation and repetition, reviews that don’t seem to be genuine will be discounted in the decision making process

Conflicts of Interest

All parties must declare any potential conflicts of interest
Financial, personal, or professional relationships that could influence judgment must be disclosed
Editors and reviewers should recuse themselves when conflicts exist

Ethical Research Practices

Research involving human subjects must have appropriate institutional approval
Informed consent must be obtained and documented where required
Animal research must comply with relevant institutional and national guidelines
Patient privacy and confidentiality must be protected

Publication Ethics

Plagiarism, duplicate submission, and redundant publication are prohibited
Text recycling should be minimal and properly cited
Image manipulation must be limited to standard adjustments and clearly described
Corrections and retractions will be published when necessary

Copyright and Licensing

Authors must comply with all copyright requirements
Third-party content must have appropriate permissions
Authors retain rights as specified in our publishing agreements

Data and Materials

Data should be shared where possible, we encourage providing access to raw data when appropriate, and will host if needed
Source data for figures should be available upon request
Materials and protocols should be available for replication
Data privacy and security must be maintained

Implementation

Handling Misconduct

All allegations of misconduct will be investigated promptly. Please send any concerns you have to nicki.dennis@riverpublishers.com  Journals Publisher at River Publishers.
Authors will be given the opportunity to respond to allegations
Appropriate actions such as paper retraction will be taken based on investigation findings
Relevant institutions and bodies will be notified as necessary

Editorial Responsibilities

Editors-in-chief will ensure fair and consistent application of policies
Decisions are based on academic merit alone

Publisher Responsibilities

We maintain systems to detect plagiarism and manipulation
We aim to support editors, authors and reviewers in handling ethical issues

Review and Updates

This policy will be reviewed annually and updated as needed to reflect evolving publishing standards and best practices.

Compliance

Failure to comply with this policy may result in manuscript rejection, published corrections, or retractions. Serious violations may result in additional sanctions, including barring authors from future submissions.
February 2025