5 August 2026
Editorial policies adopted before the first call for papers
The board has adopted the journal's full set of editorial policies, including peer review, ethics, plagiarism, licensing, self archiving and artificial intelligence disclosure.
The editorial board has adopted the journal’s complete set of editorial policies, and every one of them is published in full on this website. They were adopted before the first call for papers was issued, which is the order in which a journal ought to do these things.
The policies
- Peer review policy, including the seven review criteria, the decision categories, published timelines and an appeals route.
- Publication ethics and malpractice statement, following the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics, with a documented procedure for handling allegations.
- Plagiarism policy, setting a total similarity limit of ten per cent with no single source above five per cent.
- Copyright and licensing, under which authors retain copyright and articles appear under a CC BY 4.0 licence.
- Self archiving policy, permitting deposit of every version, anywhere, with no embargo.
- Open access and publication charges, confirming that the journal charges authors nothing at any stage.
- Privacy statement, terms and conditions and disclaimer.
Disclosure of artificial intelligence use
The board has adopted a specific rule on generative tools. They may be used for language editing, disclosed at submission with the tool named. They may not be used to generate data, results, analysis, images or references, and no such system may be listed as an author. Fabricated references, which these tools produce readily and convincingly, are treated as research misconduct. Reviewers may not upload manuscripts to any external system that retains submitted text.
Amendments
Any material change to a policy will be announced here with its date, and the previous position will be recorded in the announcement so that authors can see what changed and when.