Publication Ethics
Authorship
All authors should have made substantial contributions to all of the following:
- The conception and design of the study, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data.
- Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
- Final approval of the version to be submitted.
All authors should agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work to ensure that the questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Changes to authorship
The editors of this journal generally will not consider changes to authorship once a manuscript has been submitted. It is important that authors carefully consider the authorship list and order of authors and provide a definitive author list at original submission.
The policy of this journal around authorship changes:
- All authors must be listed in the manuscript and their details entered into the submission system.
- Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should only be made prior to acceptance, and only if approved by the journal editor.
- Requests to change authorship should be made by the corresponding author, who must provide the reason for the request to the journal editor with written confirmation from all authors, including any authors being added or removed, that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement.
- Only in exceptional circumstances will the journal editor consider the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors post acceptance.
- Publication of the manuscript may be paused while a change in authorship request is being considered.
- Any authorship change requests approved by the journal editor will result in a corrigendum if the manuscript has already been published.
- Any unauthorised authorship changes may result in the rejection of the article, or retraction, if the article has already been published.
Declaration of interests
All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence or bias their work. Examples of potential competing interests include:
- Employment
- Consultancies
- Stock ownership
- Honoraria
- Paid expert testimony
- Patent applications or registrations
- Grants or any other funding
Authors with no competing interests to declare should select the option, "I have nothing to declare".
The resulting Word document containing your declaration should be uploaded at the "attach/upload files" step in the submission process. It is important that the Word document is saved in the .doc/.docx file format. Author signatures are not required.
Funding sources
Authors must disclose any funding sources who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article. The role of sponsors, if any, should be declared in relation to the study design, collection, analysis and interpretation of data, writing of the report and decision to submit the article for publication. If funding sources had no such involvement this should be stated in your submission.
List funding sources in this standard way to facilitate compliance to funder's requirements:
Funding: This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]; the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA [grant number zzzz]; and the United States Institutes of Peace [grant number aaaa].
It is not necessary to include detailed descriptions on the program or type of grants, scholarships and awards. When funding is from a block grant or other resources available to a university, college, or other research institution, submit the name of the institute or organization that provided the funding.
If no funding has been provided for the research, it is recommended to include the following sentence:
This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
Declaration of generative AI in scientific writing
Authors must declare the use of generative AI in scientific writing upon submission of the paper. The following guidance refers only to the writing process, and not to the use of AI tools to analyse and draw insights from data as part of the research process:
- Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies should only be used in the writing process to improve the readability and language of the manuscript.
- The technology must be applied with human oversight and control and authors should carefully review and edit the result, as AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete or biased. Authors are ultimately responsible and accountable for the contents of the work.
- Authors must not list or cite AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author or co-author on the manuscript since authorship implies responsibilities and tasks that can only be attributed to and performed by humans.
The use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in scientific writing must be declared by adding a statement at the end of the manuscript when the paper is first submitted. The statement will appear in the published work and should be placed in a new section before the references list. An example:
- Title of new section: Declaration of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process.
- Statement: During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the published article.
The declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools, such as tools used to check grammar, spelling and references. If you have nothing to disclose, you do not need to add a statement.
Post-publication corrections to journal articles & Retractions
If you notice an error in your published article, several courses of action are available:
A corrigendum: should be published when you (the author) have made an error in your article.
An erratum: should be published when we (EJG) have made an error in your article.
A post-publication change to the original article: can only be made where the error affects the discoverability, visibility and citability of the article. For example, corrections can be made to author names, titles and abstracts. We also allow changes to affiliations, footnotes and/or acknowledgments in order to meet the requirements of a funding body, or those related to legal issues. Please contact the journal email address to request changes in these categories.
If you have changed your name and would like to update previously published articles, please refer to our specific policy relating to name changes in the related links below, which includes instructions on how to make a request.
In the case of a corrigendum or erratum, the PDF of the correction article will be attached to the online version of the original article, and a link created between the corrigendum/erratum article and the original article to make readers and other users/systems aware of the correction.
When submitting a corrigendum, the article title should be in the following format: “Corrigendum: “original article title” (“original article reference”)”
If a post-publication change is made, the online version of the article will be replaced and a dated note added to highlight the amendment that was made. Please note that in some cases it will not be possible to also correct any print versions.
Please contact us in the first instance and we can provide guidance on the most suitable course of action. Please note you may be required to provide reasonable proof that you are the author of the article. The majority of post publication changes require agreement from all co-authors to proceed.
In cases where serious errors are identified, we may publish a retraction or expression of concern:
A retraction: should be published as a way to correct the scientific record by bringing fundamental flaws/errors in a paper to the attention of the readership. They are usually reserved for cases where there is clear evidence the findings are unreliable due to misconduct or honest error. When articles are retracted they are not removed from EJG, instead they are retained with a clear notice of retraction and bibliographic databases are notified, as per COPE guidelines.
An expression of concern: should be issued when concerns about publications have not been conclusively proven but are sufficiently serious to warrant warning potential readers.
Research Involving Human Subjects
Institutional Review Board Statement
When reporting on research that involves human subjects, human material, human tissues, or human data, authors must declare that the investigations were carried out following the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975, which was revised in 2013. According to point 23 of this declaration, approval from the local Institutional Review Board (IRB) or another appropriate ethics committee must be obtained before undertaking the research to confirm that the study meets national and international guidelines. As a minimum, a statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board must be stated in the ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ Section of the article.
Example of an Institutional review board statement: “The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code) on [date of approval].”
For non-interventional studies (e.g. surveys, questionnaires, social media research), all participants must be fully informed whether their anonymity is assured, why the research is being conducted, how their data will be used, and if there are any risks involved in participating. As with all research involving humans, ethical approval from an appropriate ethics committee must be obtained prior to conducting the study. If ethical approval is not required, authors must either provide an exemption from the ethics committee or cite the local or national legislation that indicates ethics approval is not required for this type of study. When a study has been granted exemption, the name of the ethics committee that provided this should be stated in the ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ Section with a full explanation for the rejection of ethical approval.
Informed Consent Statement
Manuscripts reporting studies involving human participants, human data, or human tissue must include a statement of informed consent for participation in research. Verbal informed consent to participate in a study can be acceptable under some circumstances (such as in ethnographic studies). The authors must explain the rationale for using this kind of consent in the “Informed Consent Statement” Section. For verbal informed consent, a copy of the script used must be provided during the submission stage.
For all manuscripts that include identifying patient/participant information (personal details, images, or videos relating to an individual person), written informed consent for the publication of these details must be obtained from patients/participants (or their relatives/guardians) before submitting to the journal. A blank version of the form used to obtain permission (without the patient/participant names or signature) should be provided upon submission.
For the purposes of publishing in the European Journal of Geography, a consent, permission, or release form should include unlimited permission for publication in all formats (including print, electronic, and online), in sublicensed and reprinted versions (including translations and derived works), and in other works and products under open access license. To respect patients’/participants’ and any other individuals’ privacy, please do not send signed forms.
Private information identifying participants need not be included unless the identifiable materials are of relevance to the research (e.g., photographs of participants’ faces that show a particular symptom). Patients’/participants’ initials or other personal identifiers must not appear in any images. Patient/participant details must be anonymized as much as possible, e.g., do not mention specific age, ethnicity, or occupation where they are not relevant to the conclusions. Steps necessary to protect privacy may include de-identifying data, adding noise, or blocking portions of the database. Editors reserve the right to reject any submission that does not meet these requirements.
The Editorial Office reserves the right to request further documentation when necessary. The submitted manuscript will be scrutinized by the Editorial Office, and upon request, documentary evidence (signed consent forms and any related discussion documents from the ethics board) must be provided.
Example of an Informed Consent Statement: “Informed consent for participation was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.” OR “Informed consent for participation is not required as per local legislation [provide local legislation].” OR “Verbal informed consent was obtained from the participants. Verbal consent was obtained rather than written because [state the reason]”, OR “Informed consent for publication was obtained from all identifiable human participants.”
Requirements for Studies on Vulnerable Groups and Organ Transplants
If a study involves vulnerable groups, the manuscript will undergo an additional review by the editorial office. If requested, the author must provide documentary evidence, including blank consent forms and any related discussion documents from the ethics board or other relevant bodies. Additionally, when studies describe groups by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, disease, etc., an explanation regarding why such categorization was needed must be clearly stated in the article.
Articles describing human organ transplantation studies are subject to all policies for research involving human subjects. Additionally, the authors must specify the institution(s), clinic(s), or department(s) from which the organs or tissues were sourced. EJG does not accept manuscripts that report data on organs and/or other materials obtained from illegal commercial activity, executed prisoners, or other unethical practices relating to organ donations. Manuscripts addressing this practice, such as editorials or reports on its secondary consequences, may be considered at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief but require a written appeal to the editorial office before submission.
Ethical Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research
The editors will require that the benefits potentially derived from any research causing harm to animals are significant in relation to any cost endured by animals, and that procedures followed are unlikely to cause offense to the majority of readers. Authors should particularly ensure that their research complies with the commonly-accepted '3Rs [1]':
- Replacement of animals by alternatives wherever possible,
- Reduction in number of animals used, and
- Refinement of experimental conditions and procedures to minimize the harm to animals.
Authors must include details on housing, husbandry and pain management in their manuscript.
For further guidance authors should refer to the Code of Practice for the Housing and Care of Animals Used in Scientific Procedures [2], American Association for Laboratory Animal Science [3] or European Animal Research Association [4].
If national legislation requires it, studies involving vertebrates or higher invertebrates must only be carried out after obtaining approval from the appropriate ethics committee. As a minimum, the project identification code, date of approval and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board should be stated in Section ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’. Research procedures must be carried out in accordance with national and institutional regulations. Statements on animal welfare should confirm that the study complied with all relevant legislation. Clinical studies involving animals and interventions outside of routine care require ethics committee oversight as per the American Veterinary Medical Association. If the study involved client-owned animals, informed client consent must be obtained and certified in the manuscript report of the research. Owners must be fully informed if there are any risks associated with the procedures and that the research will be published. If available, a high standard of veterinary care must be provided. Authors are responsible for correctness of the statements provided in the manuscript.
If ethical approval is not required by national laws, authors must provide an exemption from the ethics committee, if one is available. Where a study has been granted exemption, the name of the ethics committee that provided this should be stated in Section ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ with a full explanation on why the ethical approval was not required.
If no animal ethics committee is available to review applications, authors should be aware that the ethics of their research will be evaluated by reviewers and editors. Authors should provide a statement justifying the work from an ethical perspective, using the same utilitarian framework that is used by ethics committees. Authors may be asked to provide this even if they have received ethical approval.
EJG endorses the ARRIVE guidelines (arriveguidelines.org/) for reporting experiments using live animals. Authors and reviewers must use the ARRIVE guidelines as a checklist, which can be found at https://arriveguidelines.org/sites/arrive/files/documents/ARRIVE%20Compliance%20Questionnaire.pdf. Editors reserve the right to ask for the checklist and to reject submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines, to reject submissions based on ethical or animal welfare concerns or if the procedure described does not appear to be justified by the value of the work presented.
- NSW Department of Primary Industries and Animal Research Review Panel. Three Rs. Available online: https://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/dpi/animals/animal-ethics-infolink/three-rs
- Home Office. Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986. Code of Practice for the Housing and Care of Animals Bred, Supplied or Used for Scientific Purposes. Available online: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/388535/CoPanimalsWeb.pdf
- American Association for Laboratory Animal Science. The Scientific Basis for Regulation of Animal Care and Use. Available online: https://www.aalas.org/about-aalas/position-papers/scientific-basis-for-regulation-of-animal-care-and-use
- European Animal Research Association. EU regulations on animal research. Available online: https://www.eara.eu/animal-research-law
Research Involving Cell Lines
Methods sections for submissions reporting on research with cell lines should state the origin of any cell lines. For established cell lines the provenance should be stated and references must also be given to either a published paper or to a commercial source. If previously unpublished de novo cell lines were used, including those gifted from another laboratory, details of institutional review board or ethics committee approval must be given, and confirmation of written informed consent must be provided if the line is of human origin.
An example of Ethical Statements:
The HCT116 cell line was obtained from XXXX. The MLH1+ cell line was provided by XXXXX, Ltd. The DLD-1 cell line was obtained from Dr. XXXX. The DR-GFP and SA-GFP reporter plasmids were obtained from Dr. XXX and the Rad51K133A expression vector was obtained from Dr. XXXX.
Research Involving Plants
Experimental research on plants (either cultivated or wild) including collection of plant material, must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. We recommend that authors comply with the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
For each submitted manuscript supporting genetic information and origin must be provided. For research manuscripts involving rare and non-model plants (other than, e.g., Arabidopsis thaliana, Nicotiana benthamiana, Oryza sativa, or many other typical model plants), voucher specimens must be deposited in an accessible herbarium or museum. Vouchers may be requested for review by future investigators to verify the identity of the material used in the study (especially if taxonomic rearrangements occur in the future). They should include details of the populations sampled on the site of collection (GPS coordinates), date of collection, and document the part(s) used in the study where appropriate. For rare, threatened or endangered species this can be waived but it is necessary for the author to describe this in the cover letter.
Editors reserve the rights to reject any submission that does not meet these requirements.
An example of Ethical Statements:
Torenia fournieri plants were used in this study. White-flowered Crown White (CrW) and violet-flowered Crown Violet (CrV) cultivars selected from ‘Crown Mix’ (XXX Company, City, Country) were kindly provided by Dr. XXX (XXX Institute, City, Country).
Arabidopis mutant lines (SALKxxxx, SAILxxxx,…) were kindly provided by Dr. XXX, institute, city, country).
Clinical Trials Registration
Registration
EJG follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines which require and recommend registration of clinical trials in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrollment as a condition of consideration for publication.
Purely observational studies do not require registration. A clinical trial not only refers to studies that take place in a hospital or involve pharmaceuticals, but also refer to all studies which involve participant randomization and group classification in the context of the intervention under assessment.
Authors are strongly encouraged to pre-register clinical trials with an international clinical trials register and cite a reference to the registration in the Methods section. Suitable databases include clinicaltrials.gov, the EU Clinical Trials Register and those listed by the World Health Organisation International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.
Approval to conduct a study from an independent local, regional, or national review body is not equivalent to prospective clinical trial registration. EJG reserves the right to decline any paper without trial registration for further peer review. However, if the study protocol has been published before the enrolment, the registration can be waived with correct citation of the published protocol.
CONSORT Statement
EJG requires a completed CONSORT 2010 checklist and flow diagram as a condition of submission when reporting the results of a randomized trial. Templates for these can be found here or on the CONSORT website (http://www.consort-statement.org) which also describes several CONSORT checklist extensions for different designs and types of data beyond two group parallel trials. At minimum, your article should report the content addressed by each item of the checklist.
Dual Use Research of Concern
EJG follows the practical framework defined in Guidance for Editors: Research, Audit and Service Evaluations and introduced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Research that could pose a significant threat, with broad potential consequences to public health or national security, should be clearly indicated in the manuscript, and potential dual-use research of concern should be explained in the cover letter upon submission. Potential areas of concern include but are not limited to biosecurity, nuclear and chemical threats, and research with a military purpose or application, etc. For these manuscripts to be considered for peer review, the benefits to the general public or public health must outweigh the risks. The authors have a responsibility to comply with relevant national and international laws.
Sex and Gender in Research
We encourage our authors to follow the ‘Sex and Gender Equity in Research – SAGER – guidelines’ and to include sex and gender considerations where relevant. Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) carefully in order to avoid confusing both terms. Article titles and/or abstracts should indicate clearly what sex(es) the study applies to. Authors should also describe in the background, whether sex and/or gender differences may be expected; report how sex and/or gender were accounted for in the design of the study; provide disaggregated data by sex and/or gender, where appropriate; and discuss respective results. If a sex and/or gender analysis was not conducted, the rationale should be given in the Discussion. We suggest that our authors consult the full guidelines before submission.
Borders and Territories
Potential disputes over borders and territories may have particular relevance for authors in describing their research or in an author or editor correspondence address, and should be respected. Content decisions are an editorial matter and where there is a potential or perceived dispute or complaint, the editorial team will attempt to find a resolution that satisfies parties involved.
EJG stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Citation Policy
Authors should ensure that where material is taken from other sources (including their own published writing) the source is clearly cited and that where appropriate permission is obtained.
Authors should not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work.
Authors should not copy references from other publications if they have not read the cited work.
Authors should not preferentially cite their own or their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications.
Authors should not cite advertisements or advertorial material.
In accordance with COPE guidelines, we expect that “original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations.” This condition also applies to an author’s own work. COPE have produced a discussion document on citation manipulation with recommendations for best practice.
General Publication Ethics Statement
EJG fully adheres to COPE's Code of Conduct and to its Best Practice Guidelines.
The editors of this journal enforce a rigorous peer review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The editors of EJG take such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero tolerance policy.
Authors wishing to publish their papers in EJG must abide to the following:
- Any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission.
- Authors should accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.
- Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the paper, so that other researchers can replicate the work.
- Raw data should preferably be publicly deposited by the authors before submission of their manuscript. Authors need to at least have the raw data readily available for presentation to the referees and the editors of the journal, if requested. Authors need to ensure appropriate measures are taken so that raw data is retained in full for a reasonable time after publication.
- Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not tolerated.
- If errors and inaccuracies are found by the authors after publication of their paper, they need to be promptly communicated to the editors of this journal so that appropriate actions can be taken.
- Your manuscript should not contain any information that has already been published. If you include already published figures or images, please obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CC-BY license.
- Plagiarism, data fabrication and image manipulation are not tolerated.
- Plagiarism is not acceptable in EJG submissions.
Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving any credit to the original source.
Reuse of text that is copied from another source must be between quotes and the original source must be cited. If a study's design or the manuscript's structure or language has been inspired by previous works, these works must be explicitly cited.
All EJG submissions are checked for plagiarism using the industry standard software Turnitin. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, an investigation will take place and action taken in accordance with our policies.
- Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image.
Irregular manipulation includes: 1) introduction, enhancement, moving, or removing features from the original image; 2) grouping of images that should obviously be presented separately (e.g., from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels); or 3) modifying the contrast, brightness or color balance to obscure, eliminate or enhance some information.
If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, we may reject the manuscript. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we may correct or retract the paper.
Our in-house editors will investigate any allegations of publication misconduct and may contact the authors' institutions or funders if necessary. If evidence of misconduct is found, appropriate action will be taken to correct or retract the publication. Authors are expected to comply with the best ethical publication practices when publishing with EJG.