Confidentiality

This policy applies to all Authors, Editors, Reviewers, language editors, and any other individual given access to a manuscript in the course of its editorial handling or production. It covers the manuscript itself, all associated material, including draft figures, tables, and datasets, and all correspondence, recommendations, and editorial decisions relating to it. It applies for the period from submission until the work is published as the version of record or made available as a preprint through the Journal’s own site, at which point the corresponding provisions of this policy cease to apply to the published or preprinted content itself.

A manuscript under submission, in review, or in preparation for publication is confidential. It is shared only with those given access for editorial purposes, and only to the extent that access is required for those purposes. This obligation extends equally to Authors, Editors, Reviewers, and language editors, in respect of any manuscript to which they are given access, including their own submissions and those of others.

Unless and until a manuscript is published as the version of record, or made available as a preprint through the Journal’s own site, no person given access to it may:

• share it, or any part of it, with a third party;
• publish, post, or otherwise make available any dataset, draft figure, or other material associated with it outside the manuscript submission system; or
• post about, comment on, or otherwise disclose the content, or any partial or whole extract of it, including by way of commentary or subtext, on social media or any other public or semi-public channel.

This includes submission of the same or substantially similar work elsewhere, which is separately addressed under the Plagiarism and duplicate publication policy.

All correspondence relating to a submission is conducted using the unique identifier assigned to it at the time of submission, and is directed to the corresponding author, who is the sole point of contact for correspondence on that submission. Other listed authors are encouraged to create an account on the manuscript submission system so that they may follow its progress, but correspondence is not directed to them individually. A change to the corresponding author must be requested directly of one of the Journal’s Senior Editors, and is not effected other than through that route.

Additional listed authors may be linked to a submission on the manuscript submission system, where they will be able to see the status of works on which they are named. Linking is carried out by the corresponding author and requires the approval of the managing editor, senior editor, or Editor-in-Chief before access is granted. Access granted in this way is limited to the submissions on which the individual is a named author.

Reviewers are not given access to the manuscript submission system itself. A Reviewer receives the manuscript and any associated material directly from the handling editor, and returns their recommendation through the system, where it is made available to Editors and, in due course, to the Authors. The confidentiality expectations placed on Reviewers, including the expectation that a Reviewer will not share a manuscript, or any part of it, with other staff, peers, or research communities, even where the purpose given for doing so is scholarly, are set out in full in the Peer Reviewer policy, and apply in addition to this policy.

Use of artificial intelligence tools by any Author, Editor, Reviewer, or language editor in connection with a manuscript is governed by the AI policy. A manuscript, or any part of it, may not be input into, processed by, or otherwise disclosed to an artificial intelligence tool or other third-party service outside the terms permitted by the AI policy, and any such use is treated as a breach of this policy.

Where an Author consents to their manuscript being triaged using Readmy Reviewer, the Journal’s pre-peer-review structural triage tool, the confidentiality of the manuscript continues to be governed by this policy. The use, access, and handling of a manuscript within Readmy Reviewer is governed separately under the AI policy, in conjunction with this policy and the Publication Ethics policy.