Ethics Policy

These guidelines are drawn from, but not precisely identical with, the COPE guidelines for ethics in scientific publication.

Ethical Guidelines for Authors

In submitting an article to the journal, the authors assert that it is their own work and that it is not already published or under consideration at another publication venue. If, in the editors’ judgment, these conditions are not met, the submission will be rejected.

Authorship

As defined by McNutt et al. (https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1715374115), the standard of authorship for articles submitted to PTPBio is as follows. Each author is expected to:

  • have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or have drafted the work or substantively revised it; AND
  • to have approved the submitted version (and any substantially modified version that involves the author’s contribution to the study); AND
  • to have agreed both to be personally accountable for the author’s own contributions and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated, resolved, and the resolution documented in the literature.

All authors meeting this definition should be listed as co-authors by the person making the initial submission of a paper to our online editorial management system. Changes in authorship are possible during the revision or production stage, but need to be specifically requested (including a justification) from the handling editor for the submission.

Non-authors who still merit an acknowledgment can be added in an “Acknowledgments” section at the end of accepted articles. Authors may either place these acknowledgments in the “Comments to Editor” section of a new submission (preferred), or add them during article typesetting.

Authorship disputes will be handled in the same way as other forms of potential research misconduct; please see our misconduct policy at the bottom of this document.

Authors who have changed their names may request for their name and pronouns to be altered in a previously published article; contact the Executive Editor by e-mail for more information.

Conflicts of Interest

Any potential conflicts of interest that any authors may have must be declared at the time of initial submission. As defined by COPE (https://doi.org/10.24318/ElTeSLhp), a conflict of interest is “a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial interest or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual or organization. The presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of impropriety.” In the context of journal publication, this involves any situation in which these competing interests might reasonably be seen to have an impact on the full and objective presentation of the research, on the peer review process, on editorial decision-making, or on the publication of the article.

In order to evaluate such conflicts of interest, we ask that all authors fully declare any funding which has directly supported the research at issue (except for standard academic or professional salaries) during the article submission process. Any further conflict of interest that may be relevant should be mentioned explicitly in the “Comments to Editor” section of the article submission. If undeclared conflicts of interest are detected at later steps in the review or publication process, the editors will, at minimum, clearly document their presence in the version of record of the article.

Copyright and Intellectual Property

All articles published in PTPBio will be published open access and licensed under the CC-BY 4.0 license. Authors reserve the copyright to their own texts.

Data Sharing

We strongly recommend, but do not require, that authors share all data generated for all published articles, within any applicable limits as set by copyright and the sharing of personal information. You may make use of sites such as OSF (https://osf.io/) or figshare (https://figshare.com/) for open data sharing, if your home institution does not offer (or mandate) such a repository.

Selection of Peer Reviewers

Authors may suggest peer reviewers for the editors to consider or to exclude. The former is a standard part of the submission process, with a dedicated field on the submission form; the latter may be accomplished by writing a message in the Comments to Editors box. While the editors will take such suggestions seriously, they are not bound by them, and are free to consult any peer reviewers they deem appropriate.

Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers

  • Reviews should be conducted objectively
  • Reviews should not be written with the aid of any generative AI tools, except as needed to improve the quality of prose
  • Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments and references as necessary and not be personal, defamatory, or libelous
  • Reviewers should declare to the editor if they are invited to review manuscripts in which they have a competing interest resulting from competitive, collaborative or other relationships, or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the papers
  • Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of material supplied to them and may not discuss unpublished manuscripts with colleagues or use the information in their own work
  • Any reviewer that wants to pass a review request onto a colleague must obtain the editor’s permission first

Ethical Guidelines for Editors and the Publication Process

Conflicts of Interest

The same conflict of interest policy applies to editors as to authors; see above. Any editor that has a conflict of interest will not select peer reviewers for a submission, nor be involved in the decision process for that submission.

Peer Review Process

  • All research articles, articles in special issues, position papers, or trends articles are peer-reviewed by (a minimum of) two peer reviewers
  • Introductions to special issues, comment articles, or book reviews may be reviewed by only one reviewer or only by members of the editorial team; these articles are explicitly marked on our website as non-peer-reviewed
  • Decisions on acceptance or rejection are made by the editorial board, on the basis of the received peer reviews; decisions are never automatic, regardless of the recommendations of peer reviewers
  • If revisions are requested, editors will make every effort to send the revised version to the same peer reviewers; in the event that this is impossible, replacement reviewers will be selected and informed that they are entering at a later stage in the process
  • Authors may appeal final decisions by e-mailing the handling editor who communicates the decision; the decision of the editors after this appeal, however, is final

Misconduct Procedure

Any reader (including authors and peer reviewers) who suspects that they have detected a case of research, publication, or review misconduct should immediately contact the journal’s executive editor by e-mail (whose name and address are listed on the “Editors” page, linked above). If the executive editor is implicated in the misconduct, contact instead any one of the other editors. The contacted editor should be able to respond within a period of one month to indicate that the complaint has been received. Should a period of one month pass without a reply from the editors, a complaint may be filed with Michigan Publishing Services’ Journals office, which can be found at https://services.publishing.umich.edu/Services/Journals.

If a whistle-blower would like to register an anonymous complaint with the journal, they may do so by using our “Contact” form, at the bottom-right of every page of our website, selecting the Executive Editor from the drop-down list, and filling in a fake e-mail address (e.g., “whistleblower@gmail.com”). Obviously, in this case we will not be able to reply to indicate that the complaint is being addressed, but we commit to addressing concerns sent anonymously with the same degree of attention and care as those sent signed.

The allegation will be reviewed by the entire group of editors (excepting, of course, any accused of misconduct), and, if it is determined to be serious, a fully confidential investigation will commence. In the event of a signed report, the identity of the person who submitted the complaint will not be taken into account except insofar as it has evidential value (i.e., if the person presenting the complaint has particular expertise).

After the conclusion of the investigation, the authors of the paper concerned will be notified with any results, and given the opportunity to respond. On the basis of these results, the editors reserve the right to reject a manuscript, to retract a published manuscript (i.e. leaving the article online but marked as ‘retracted’), and to notify authors’ home institutions or funding bodies for potential follow-up analyses.