Ethics Statement
To support and promote integrity in research publication, Clifford fully endorses the following position statements for authors and editors.
Responsible research publication: international standards for authors
- The research being reported should have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and should comply with all relevant legislation.
- Researchers should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation.
- Researchers should strive to describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed by others.
- Researchers should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarised, and has not been published elsewhere.
- Authors should take collective responsibility for submitted and published work.
- The authorship of research publications should accurately reflect individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting.
- Funding sources and relevant conflicts of interest should be disclosed.
Responsible research publication: international standards for editors
- Editors are accountable and should take responsibility for everything they publish.
- Editors should make fair and unbiased decisions independent from commercial consideration and ensure a fair and appropriate peer review process.
- Editors should adopt editorial policies that encourage maximum transparency and complete, honest reporting.
- Editors should guard the integrity of the published record by issuing corrections and retractions when needed and pursuing suspected or alleged research and publication misconduct.
- Editors should pursue reviewer and editorial misconduct.
- Editors should critically assess the ethical conduct of studies in humans and animals.
- Peer reviewers and authors should be told what is expected of them.
- Editors should have appropriate policies in place for handling editorial conflicts of interest.
References
Wager E & Kleinert S (2011) Responsible research publication: international standards for authors. A position statement developed at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore, July 22-24, 2010. Chapter 50 in: Mayer T & Steneck N (eds) Promoting Research Integrity in a Global Environment. Imperial College Press / World Scientific Publishing, Singapore (pp 309-16). (ISBN 978-981-4340-97-7).
Kleinert S & Wager E (2011) Responsible research publication: international standards for editors. A position statement developed at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore, July 22-24, 2010. Chapter 51 in: Mayer T & Steneck N (eds) Promoting Research Integrity in a Global Environment. Imperial College Press / World Scientific Publishing, Singapore (pp 317-28). (ISBN 978-981-4340-97-7)
