Editorial policies | biosciencehorizons

Our Editorial Policies

Open access policy

All articles are published open access and are licensed under the CC-BY 4.0 International licence agreement. Under this licence authors retain copyright, and unrestricted reuse of the content is allowed as long as proper attribution is given to the original author of the work. Further information regarding this can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ and licensing terms and conditions can be found in the author contributor agreement.

Originality of article statment

Originality of article statement

All submitted articles must not be under consideration for publication anywhere else, nor have been published in any form prior to submission to any UCL Press journal. By submitting, authors are agreeing that the submission is original except for material in the public domain and such excerpts of other works that have written permission of the copyright owner. Where there is potential for duplication authors must correctly reference and cite the work.

Co-publication of an article, as agreed with the publisher and journal, may be considered in accordance with the ICMJE guidelines on overlapping publication, at the discretion of the Editor.

Authorship and author consent policy

All listed authors must have made a significant contribution to the article and have approved all its claims. Authors are required to include an authorship statement in their article to outline how each author contributed to the article, after any acknowledgements in the article. UCL Press adheres to the statement of authorship as outlined by the ICMJE statement, and considers an author of an article to have:

made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content; AND
made final approval of the version to be published; AND
agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

For suspected and incorrect authorship, UCL Press will refer to the UCL description of authorship misconduct as outlined here and follow COPE guidelines.

Authorship and author consent policy

Ethics approval

UCL Press is committed to ensuring the highest standards of integrity in all aspects of its publication activities and expects that all authors submitting to a UCL Press journal have secured all relevant ethics or institutional review board approval for their research. A statement declaring this must be included in the article, along with the name of the ethics or institutional review board granting approval.

Where ethics or institutional review board approval is waivered, a statement declaring this must be included in the article along with the name of the ethics or institutional review board granting waiver status. Authors also declare that by submitting to a UCL Press journal this information will be made freely available to the Editor(s) upon request.

Retrospective ethics approval

If a study has not been granted ethics or institutional review board approval prior to commencing, retrospective ethics approval usually cannot be obtained and it may not be possible to consider the article for peer review. The decision on whether to proceed to peer review in such cases is at the Editor’s discretion.

Research involving humans

Any work or research that involves collecting data from human participants must comply in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and authors must have received any and all relevant ethics or institutional review board approval. A statement declaring this must be included in the article, along with the name of the ethics or institutional review board granting approval.

If authors are unable to provide sufficient evidence to the Editor(s) upon request, the Editor(s) may reject the article and inform the author(s) institution and any other third parties where applicable.

Clinical trial registration

In line with ICMJE guidelines, UCL Press requires registration of all clinical trials that are reported in articles submitted to any of its publications.

The ICMJE uses the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of a clinical trial, which is “any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes”. This definition includes phase I to IV trials. The ICMJE defines health-related interventions as “any intervention used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome” and health-related outcomes as “any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants”. Authors who are unsure whether their trial needs registering should consult the ICMJE FAQs for further information.

Suitable publicly available registries are those listed on the ICMJE website.

Consent for publication

For all articles involving human subjects, including any images, videos, and any other personal and identifiable information, authors must have secured informed consent to participate in the study and to publication before submitting to the journal, and a statement declaring this must be included in the article.

Authors also declare that by submitting to a UCL Press journal this information will be made freely available to the Editor(s) upon request

Research involving animals and plants

A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines and/or ethical approval (including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate) must be included in the article. Where ethics or institutional review board approval is waivered, a statement declaring this must be included in the article along with the name of the ethics or institutional review board granting waiver status. Authors also declare that by submitting to a UCL Press journal this information will be made freely available to the Editor(s) upon request. UCL Press and Editors reserve the right to contact the ethics committee for further information.

The below subheadings outline the policy regarding research involving animals and plants, however, authors are recommended to comply with the following, where applicable:

Ethics and Animal Welfare Committee http://iclas.org/committees/ethics-and-animal-welfare-committee
Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora https://cites.org/
IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/PP-003-En.pdf
ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines

Research involving animals

When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. Authors should follow the Basel Declaration http://www.basel-declaration.org/basel-declaration/ to further advance the implementation of ethical principles such as the 3Rs whenever animals are being used and to call for more trust, transparency and communication on the sensitive topic of animals in research. The Editor will take account of animal welfare issues and reserves the right to reject an article, especially if the research involves protocols that are inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of animal research.

Field studies and other non-experimental research on animals must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines and/or appropriate permissions or licences must be included in the article at submission.

Research involving plants

Experimental research on plants (either cultivated or wild), including collection of plant material, must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. Field studies should be conducted in accordance with local legislation, and the article should include a statement specifying the appropriate permissions and/or licences. We recommend that authors comply with the IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction (https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/PP-003-En.pdf) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora https://cites.org/.

Voucher specimens must be deposited in a public herbarium or other public collection providing access to deposited material. Information on the voucher specimen and who identified it must be included in the article.

Competing interests

Authors must declare any and all conflicts of interest and competing interests that may relate to the submitted article, including all financial and non-financial competing interests. This must be stated in their article after the main text and acknowledgements under the heading ‘Competing interests’. Where there are no conflicts of interests or competing interests, authors must clearly declare this under the same heading.

Textual overlap and suspected plagiarism

All authors are responsible for the content written and published in their articles. In cases where unacceptable textual overlap and suspected plagiarism is found, UCL Press Editors will follow COPE’s guidelines, as well as refer to UCL’s policy on plagiarism as outlined here. Editors also have access to use iThenticate plagiarism detection software.

UCL and UCL Press define plagiarism as the presentation of another person’s thoughts or words or artefacts or software as their own. Any quotation from another person’s published or unpublished works must be clearly identified as such by the correct citation and referencing.

Self-plagiarism is defined as the presentation of a person’s own thoughts or words or artefacts or software where it has been previously published as a new publication, without clear identification as such by the correct citation and referencing.

UCL Press journal Editors make every effort to ensure that published content does not infringe any person’s rights or applicable UK laws. If you believe or have cause for concern that content in any of UCL Press journals may infringe on copyright, textual overlap, and/or plagiarism, please contact the Journal Editor who will review the complaint and take appropriate action.

To avoid such cases and for best practice, authors should be transparent and ensure proper and correct referencing and citation.

Reviewer policy

Reviewers must declare any and all conflicts of interests and competing interests when returning their review for the Editor’s consideration. Where there are no conflicts of interest or competing interests, reviewers must clearly declare this in the review form online, or by contacting the Editor. The Editor may decide to reject a review after considering any and all conflicts of interest and the reviewer will be informed of this decision. The Editor’s decision is final.

Ethical Obligations of Reviewers of articles

To ensure the highest quality research in UCL Press publications, reviewers are expected to uphold the following when reviewing:

Provide clearly written, unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly and/or scientific merits and value of the work, together with a documented basis for the reviewer’s opinion. Judge the paper on its merits without regard to personal bias, ethnic origin, race, religion, citizenship, language, political or another opinion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, appearance, age, or economic class, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s)
Thoroughly address all review criteria provided by the journal
Decline to review articles for which the reviewer lacks sufficient time is not qualified or has a conflict of interest with any of the authors, including personal or competitive relationships
Explain and support judgments adequately so that Editors and authors may understand the basis of their comments. Any statement by a reviewer on an observation, derivation, or argument that has been previously published should be accompanied by the relevant citation
Provide citations to relevant work by other scholars/scientist as appropriate
Alert the Editor to any significant similarity between the article under consideration and any other published paper or article submitted concurrently to another journal. Report any plagiarism or the appearance of plagiarism by contacting the Editor
Never use or disclose unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in an article under consideration, except with the consent of the author
Never include personal criticism of the author in reviewing an article

Additionally, all reviewers are directed to read and follow the peer review and commenting code of conduct, available online at https://ucl-about.scienceopen.com/review-and-comment-code-conduct.

Editor policy

Every Editor of a UCL Press journal has the responsibility to establish and maintain guidelines that adhere to the highest ethical standards for selecting and accepting article submitted to that journal. The UCL Press Board have the responsibility to ensure the independence of the Editors and provide agreed-upon support so that the quality of publications is not compromised.

Editors must declare any and all conflicts of interests and competing interests when assessing an article, and therefore not be involved with a submission when they:

have a recent publication or current submission with any author in the submission.
share or have recently shared an affiliation with any author in the submission.
collaborate or have recently collaborated with any author in the submission.
have a close personal connection to any author in the submission.
have a financial interest in the subject of the work of the submission.
feel unable to be objective.

Editorial Board Members are guided in their duties by the terms of reference as outlined online at https://ucl-about.scienceopen.com/editorial-board-terms-of-reference/.

Article deposit

UCL Press works to include journals in various indexes and open access depositories to ensure article permanency as far as possible. In addition to subject-specific indexing, officially published articles are deposited into the Portico Preservation Service and to UCL’s institutional open access repository, called UCL Discovery, where articles are freely available to access and download.

Corrections and retractions

When corrections and retractions are necessary to maintain the integrity of published content, UCL Press will publish an erratum, corrigendum, addendum, and retraction articles but will not make alterations to the version of record initially published, other than to provide a URL link to the erratum, corrigendum, addendum, or retraction article.

UCL Press and Editors will follow COPE guidelines where corrections and retractions may be required.

Misconduct and grievance procedure

In the event of any suspected allegations of publication and/or research misconduct, UCL Press and Editors will follow COPE guidelines. This can result in UCL Press and Editors contacting the author’s institution raising concern over findings and can lead to sharing article and submission information to other third parties, including but not limited to: author(s); institution(s); ethics committee(s).

Research misconduct

Any research that involves humans, animals, or plants, must have been carried out within the appropriate ethical framework, as above. Should research submitted to a UCL Press journal be suspected of not having taken place within an appropriate ethical framework, the Editors may reject the article and inform the author’s institution and any other third parties where applicable. In addition, where misconduct has been proven, UCL Press will follow COPE retraction guidelines.

Publication misconduct

In the event of any suspected allegations of publication misconduct concerning any submission or publication, UCL Press journals will follow COPE guidelines.

Appeals and complaints

UCL Press journals follow the COPE code of conduct when dealing with any appeals and complaints. In the first instance, contact the Editorial office and Editor. Further information including contact information can be found in the individual journal’s information pages.

Advertising policy

UCL Press does not currently place any advertising on journals’ webpages or include any advertising in journal issues.

Article-processing charges

UCL Press Academic Journals, as listed below, do not currently charge an Article-Processing Charge (APC). Authors of accepted papers will not be requested or required to make an APC payment before the publication of their article.