Misconduct and sanctions

Misconduct and Sanctions

Suspected breaches of our publication ethics policies — before or after publication — as well as concerns about research ethics, should be reported to the journal. Claimants will be kept anonymous if requested.

Upon receiving information about suspected misconduct, our editors will initiate a thorough investigation. Authors may be asked to provide underlying data, images, or other supplementary materials. The journal may consult with editors and contact relevant institutions or employers to request an investigation.

If an article is found to violate the journal's ethical publishing guidelines — including duplicate submission, fraudulent data, plagiarism, citation manipulation, or false claims of authorship — the article will be rejected.

If the article has already been accepted and is at the "Online First" stage, the journal will remove it from the website, with an appropriate notice of withdrawal posted. Failure by authors to respond to journal communication following review and provisional acceptance will also be treated as a withdrawal of the article. If the article has already been published, it will be retracted immediately, following COPE's Retraction Guidelines.

The journal follows COPE flowcharts for handling misconduct.

Depending on the severity of the misconduct, the journal may also take the following actions:

• Suspension of submission privileges for 1–3 years
• Prohibition from acting as an editor or reviewer for the journal
• Reporting the misconduct to the author's institution, employer, and funding agencies

Minor, unintentional errors by authors may be corrected via a corrigendum; errors attributable to the publisher will be corrected via an erratum.