Publishing Ethics

Our publication policy is not open to considering for publication or publishing manuscripts that:

1. have been submitted to more than one journal or volume for simultaneous consideration;
2. have previously been published in full or in part elsewhere, unless considerable new work builds on the already-published material;
3. have been plagiarized, i.e. contain texts, theories and data produced by others but presented as if they were produced by the authors;
4. contain copyrighted material for which the authors have not secured the relevant permissions;
5. contain fabricated or manipulated data, evidence and arguments;
6. are claimed to be authored by those who have not relevantly contributed to the research and other work contained in the manuscript;
7. have not been approved for publication by all co-authors (if applicable);
8. do not contain proper acknowledgements of individuals, funding agencies and other institutions that made the research possible or relevantly contributed to the research or manuscript preparation;
9. make derogatory, abusive, racist, xenophobic or otherwise inappropriate claims;
10. defend hostile, discriminatory or otherwise inappropriate attitudes toward individuals or groups.

Authors must:

1. present their results honestly, meaning that their manuscripts must not contain fabricated or manipulated data, evidence or arguments;
2. present not only data and arguments that support their claims, but also those that are less favorable, giving them due attention in presenting the results of their research;
3. take into account the existent literature on the topic;
4. present the work of other researchers as fairly as possible, without distortions or deliberate manipulation;
5. clearly state what novelty they bring to the research compared to the existent literature or research conducted by other scholars;
6. refrain from submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal or volume for simultaneous consideration;
7. refrain from submitting manuscripts published in full or in part elsewhere, unless considerable new work builds on the already published material;
8. refrain from plagiarizing others’ works;
9. refrain from using copyrighted material without the relevant permissions;
10. avoid splitting up a single study into several manuscripts to increase the quantity of publications;
11. honestly acknowledge the contributions of all involved in the research or manuscript preparation and refrain from giving credit to those not involved in the research and manuscript preparation;
12. reveal all sources of research funding;
13. respond to the reviewers’ comments, criticisms and suggestions in a professional manner, i.e. satisfactorily respond to them in the revised versions of manuscripts;
14. respond to post-publication comments in a satisfactory way, which includes but is not limited to making clarifications, supplying further details or arguments, and making corrections or retractions.

Reviewers must:

1. accept invitations to review only those manuscripts with respect to which they would not be involved in a potential conflict of interest;
2. evaluate manuscripts only with respect to their intellectual content and scientific values, such as relevance, topicality, novelty, cogency, conceptual clarity, precision and soundness of argumentation;
3. evaluate manuscripts impartially even if they defend ideas, theories and arguments that the reviewers’ do not accept;
4. write their reports as carefully as possible (in particular, point to all strengths and weaknesses of the manuscripts in a fair and unbiased way);
5. write their reports in a matter-of-fact style that in no way challenges the authors’ dignity;
6. submit their reports on time;
7. refrain from undergoing steps leading to the disclosure of the authors’ identity;
8. treat the manuscripts they review as confidential documents, i.e. not providing access to a third party;
9. avoid drawing on ideas, research data, arguments and other intellectual content in the manuscripts for their own purposes.

Editors must:

1. approach all authors and reviewers with due respect and in a way that meets high professional standards;
2. make decisions about manuscripts only with respect to their intellectual content and scientific values such as relevance, topicality, novelty, cogency, conceptual clarity, precision and soundness of argumentation;
3. make decisions about manuscripts without undue delay;
4. establish their decisions about submitted research articles and discussion notes on the suggestions provided by reviewers;
5. guarantee that all research articles and discussion notes submitted to Organon F are properly evaluated by independent scholars before being published;
6. protect the anonymity of those involved in the peer review process;
7. refrain from amending the content of reviewers’ reports;
8. acquaint the authors with the parts of reviewers’ reports addressed to authors in full and without modification;
9. pay due care to the preparation of manuscripts for publication so that the authors’ ideas are presented in a proper and fair way;
10. pay due care to the dissemination of published articles in order to reach the widest possible audience;
11. ensure that no potential conflict of interest arises on the authors’, reviewers’ or editors’ part; if a potential conflict of interest is inevitable, however, editors must act to prevent any harm that may result from such a conflict;
12. consider and respond to all appeals from authors, reviewers and anyone else regarding editorial work, pre-publication processes, post-publication processes, published content and other relevant issues in full and with due care on the condition that the information provided does not breach confidentiality or reveal personal data or other sensitive issues;
13. avoid making decisions about manuscripts with respect to which they may be involved in a potential conflict of interest;
14. refrain from undergoing any steps with the aim of inappropriately influencing the journal’s ranking by artificially increasing journal metrics.