Research integrity

The principle

Researchers are responsible for their research: its design, data, analysis, interpretation, authorship, and final submission. Our role is to help that work be communicated clearly, prepared carefully, and placed thoughtfully. We do not take over any part of the authors’ scholarly responsibility, and we will decline work that asks us to.

What we do

• Edit language, structure, and consistency while preserving the authors’ meaning, and flag rather than change anything that affects a claim.
• Help authors understand journal requirements, reporting guidelines, and editorial decisions.
• Research and compare journals using information that can be verified in official sources.
• Help organize and clarify responses to reviewers that the authors have decided on.
• Present research the authors have done, accurately, in titles, abstracts, summaries, posters, and graphical abstracts.

What we will not do

• Fabricate, falsify, or selectively alter data, results, images, or analyses.
• Invent citations, or add references the authors have not read and verified.
• Write peer-review reports, or responses claiming changes that were not made.
• Produce research papers, theses, or assignments to be submitted as someone else’s own work.
• Arrange or sell authorship, or add or remove authors on anyone’s behalf.
• Guarantee acceptance, publication dates, indexing, impact factors, or citations.
• Claim affiliations with, or influence over, journals, publishers, indexing services, or universities.
• Contact editors or reviewers in an author’s name.

Authorship and acknowledgment

Editorial and language assistance does not meet the criteria for authorship. Some journals ask authors to acknowledge professional editing or writing assistance; authors should follow their journal’s policy. The ICMJE recommendations (external link) and the CRediT contributor roles taxonomy (external link) are useful references. See authorship, acknowledgments, and contributor roles.

Responses to reviewers

A response letter is a factual record. Every change it describes must exist in the revised manuscript, and every disagreement must be the authors’ own reasoned position. We help with structure, clarity, and tone, and we cross-check the letter against the manuscript. We do not supply the scientific substance.

Journals and indexing

Indexing status, fees, and policies change. When we refer to a journal’s indexing, we verify it in the relevant official database and record when we checked. A journal’s claim to be indexed is not evidence on its own, and indexing is not a guarantee of quality. Names such as Scopus, Web of Science, and publishers mentioned on this site are references to the scholarly publishing ecosystem; we have no partnership or affiliation with them.

Confidentiality

Unpublished manuscripts can contain sensitive findings and personal data. Files are shared only after the scope and the confidentiality, storage, retention, and deletion arrangements for the project have been agreed in writing. Please don’t send manuscripts or participant data through the website enquiry form.

Raising a concern

If you believe any content or practice of ours falls short of these principles, please tell us through the contact page. For guidance on publication ethics more broadly, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (external link) publishes guidance for authors, editors, and publishers.