Publication Ethics

This policy sets out the governance framework by which JQBio and the Publisher safeguard the integrity of published content, and the procedural safeguards applied to authorship, conflicts of interest, research misconduct, editorial conduct, licensing, and corrections. It is directed at readers seeking to understand how ethical compliance is governed and enforced across the publication process. It does not set out the substantive obligations placed on authors in the design, conduct, or reporting of their research; those obligations, and the documentation required to evidence them, are defined in the Research Ethics policy and in related author-facing policies, including Authorship, Funding Statements, Plagiarism and duplicate publication, and Image integrity and standards.

The Journal requires a declaration of authorship and contributorship at the point of submission, setting out the specific role of each listed author and of any non-author contributors acknowledged in the manuscript. The criteria that determine who qualifies as an author are set out in the Authorship policy; this policy governs the process by which the resulting declaration is captured, checked for completeness, and recorded against the submission.

Changes to authorship after submission, including the addition, removal, or reordering of authors, must be requested in writing, with the agreement of all listed authors and, where applicable, the author being added or removed. Such requests are logged against the submission record and are subject to editorial review in accordance with the Corrections and Retractions policy.

Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose any circumstance that could be perceived to compromise, or to have the appearance of compromising, the objectivity, integrity, or independence of the work or of its evaluation. A conflict of interest does not need to have influenced a person’s conduct for it to require disclosure; the requirement is triggered by the existence of the interest itself.

Disclosable interests include, without limitation:

• Financial interests, including employment, consultancy, honoraria, speaker fees, equity or share ownership, patents or patent applications (pending, granted, or licensed), and research funding or in-kind support received from any organisation with an interest in the outcome of the work;
• Personal or professional relationships, including with other authors, reviewers, editors, or with individuals or organisations that could be affected by, or benefit from, publication of the work;
• Institutional interests, including affiliations, sponsorships, or contractual arrangements between an author’s institution and any third party with an interest in the work;
• Non-financial interests, including intellectual or ideological commitments, advocacy roles, or prior public positions that bear directly on the subject matter of the submission; and
• Any role in the design, funding, conduct, analysis, or reporting of the work held by a party other than the named authors, together with a statement of that party’s influence, if any, over the decision to submit for publication. Where the interest concerns the funding or sponsorship of the study, the declaration is made in accordance with the Funding Statements policy.

Disclosures must be made at the time of submission, using the declaration mechanism specified by the relevant title, and must be kept current throughout the review process; authors must notify the editorial office promptly if a previously undisclosed interest arises or is identified after submission. A submission is not released to peer review, and a decision is not issued, until the required declarations from all authors have been received and recorded. Editors and reviewers must recuse themselves from handling or evaluating a submission where a conflict exists that they cannot adequately disclose or manage, and editorial decisions on such submissions must be reassigned accordingly.

A declared conflict of interest is not, of itself, a bar to publication. It is assessed by the editorial team to determine whether, and how, it should be disclosed to readers, and whether additional safeguards, such as independent peer review or editorial oversight, are required. Failure to disclose a material conflict of interest, once identified, is treated as a breach of this policy and may result in rejection, correction, or retraction.

Fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism are grounds for immediate rejection or retraction. Where an allegation of misconduct is raised, in relation to a submission or a published work, the editorial office logs the allegation against the record, investigates in accordance with COPE guidance, and notifies the corresponding author. The outcome of the investigation, and any resulting action, is recorded against the submission and, where the work has been published, addressed under the Corrections and Retractions policy.

Matters of plagiarism and duplicate or redundant publication are governed by the Plagiarism and duplicate publication policy; matters concerning the manipulation or presentation of images are governed by the Image integrity and standards policy. This policy governs how allegations concerning either matter are received, investigated, and resolved.

Editors across the Journal undergo ongoing training in publication ethics, and more broadly in data privacy and security. This equips our editorial team to apply consistent, informed judgement as new technologies, methods, and data types enter the research we publish, and allows JQBio to adapt responsibly as the Journal grows in both authorship and readership.

JQBio does not accept, review, or publish reports of biological or clinical trials, and the conduct of such trials falls outside the scope of the Journal. JQBio may, however, publish material that touches on health- or medicine-adjacent subject matter falling within its scope, including data infrastructure for healthcare or life-sciences applications, drug discovery methods and tooling, and content addressing therapeutic or clinical themes from a scientific, technical, or policy perspective. Where a submission involves human participants, the substantive standards authors must meet are set out in the Research Ethics policy.

The Journal and Publisher are not a healthcare or pharmaceutical company, are not a regulated entity for the purposes of medicines advertising or promotion, and this policy does not purport to bring JQBio within any such regulatory oversight. Notwithstanding that JQBio operates outside the regulation mandated for healthcare and medicine companies, JQBio has regard, as a voluntary safeguard, to the principles set out by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, and in particular the standard set out at Clause 6 (Information, Claims, Comparisons and Disparagement) of the ABPI Code of Practice (2024) — namely that information, claims, and comparisons concerning the therapeutic or clinical value of a product or intervention should be accurate, balanced, fair, objective, and unambiguous, based on an up-to-date evaluation of the available evidence, and capable of substantiation — as informative of good practice, without adopting the ABPI Code in its entirety or submitting to the jurisdiction of the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority.

JQBio does not assess, and expressly disclaims responsibility for assessing, the clinical or medical suitability, safety, or appropriateness for publication of sensitive clinical content. That assessment, and accountability for it, rests exclusively with the submitting authors.

JQBio governs compliance with this policy and with the Research Ethics policy, and with the other policies referred to throughout this document, through the design of the submission system. Each submission proceeds through a defined sequence of stages—from initial submission, completeness and compliance screening, peer review, editorial decision, through to production—and the system requires that the declarations and supporting documentation applicable to that stage have been provided before the submission is permitted to advance to the next stage.

A submission that is missing a required declaration or item of supporting documentation, including those required under the Research Ethics, Authorship, Funding Statements, Open Access Licencing Policy, Press & Embargo policy, and other policies that JQBio and the Publisher has published is held at the relevant stage and cannot proceed further until the outstanding item has been provided and recorded. Editorial staff cannot advance a submission past a stage for which a required declaration is outstanding.

Every declaration, approval, editorial decision, and change made to a submission record is time-stamped and logged, so that the history of a submission, including what was declared, by whom, and at what stage can be reconstructed and audited. Submission records are retained in a manner designed to be tamper-evident: prior entries in the record are not overwritten, and any correction or amendment to a previously logged declaration or document is itself recorded as a new, dated entry rather than as a change to the original, so that the full sequence of events remains visible and traceable. This log is available to Editors and Authors under clear scoped design without revealing confidential, private or sensitive material, and authors can request the full audit history on request.

This governance mechanism applies to the declarations and documentation required by this policy (including authorship, conflicts of interest, and licensing) and to those required by the Research Ethics policy and other author-facing policies referred to above; it is the means by which JQBio verifies, at each stage of the process, that the requirements those policies impose on authors have in fact been met before publication. Publication requires consent from both authors and editors.

By submitting a manuscript, the corresponding author warrants, on behalf of all listed authors, that the work is original, that it has not been published elsewhere in substantially the same form, and that the authors hold, or have obtained, all rights necessary to grant JQBio the licence required to publish it. This warranty is captured as a declaration at submission and, consistent with Section 7, must be on record before the submission can proceed to production.

Authors must identify and obtain, prior to submission, any permission or licence required to reproduce third-party material within the work, including figures, images, tables, datasets, questionnaires, or extended text, and must provide evidence of that permission on request. Authors remain responsible for any fee, attribution, or condition attached to such third-party permissions.

The specific licence terms under which a published work is made available, including any open-access licence, embargo period, or self-archiving arrangement, are set out in the Open Access Licencing Policy and in the applicable author agreement provided at the point of acceptance, and vary by title and article type. Nothing in this policy varies the terms of that agreement; where the terms of that agreement and this policy conflict as to publication ethics matters, this policy governs.

Substantive errors are addressed with public corrections. Retracted works remain visible with a clear retraction notice, preserving the scholarly record. Where a breach of this policy, of the Research Ethics policy, or of any other policy referred to above comes to light after publication including a failure to disclose a material conflict of interest or non-compliance with the requirements applicable to clinical or health-related content JQBio will assess the matter using the audit trail described in Section 7, in accordance with its editorial procedures, the Corrections and Retractions policy, and applicable COPE guidance, and may issue a correction, expression of concern, or retraction as it considers appropriate.