Our publication ethics and publication malpractice statements are based on adherence to the following:

We abide by COPE’s Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and adhere to its Best Practice Guidelines. Two of our journals are COPE members.

The ICMJE's Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.

The US NIH Standards on Scholarly publishing as per the US NIH notice NOT-OD-18-011.

All research submitted for publication must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in 2013) and as per Good Clinical Practice.

For all research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants or their guardians in the case of children. Identifying information of any form will not be published unless it is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or guardian) gives written informed consent to publication. Should a manuscript report on research provide any material that needs informed consent, then an ad hoc "Statement of Informed consent" will be published in the pdf of the article alongside the ICMJE Conflict of Interest statement in the final published manuscript.

When reporting experiments on animals, the authors should indicate which institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. If a manuscript reports on research performed with animal subjects, an ad hoc "Statement of Animal Rights" will be published in the article's PDF alongside the ICMJE Conflict of Interest statement.

All research must have been approved by an appropriate research ethics committee or institutional review board (IRB). The editors will seek assurances that an appropriate ethics committee has approved all research and that ethics approval numbers will be requested prior to publication.

European Publishing investigates all cases of publication misconduct, and as a member of CrossCheck’s plagiarism detection initiative, it uses plagiarism detection software (Ithenticate) for all manuscripts that it publishes. The software checks submissions against millions of published research papers, documents on the web, and other relevant sources. All articles are assessed through Ithenticate before peer review and acceptance. If plagiarism or misconduct is found at the time of submission, the manuscript is rejected immediately. Should, for some reason, plagiarism or misconduct be identified after publication, then immediate actions will be taken, including but not limited to the retraction of the article, publication of a retraction notice, etc.

All submissions are integrated within our research integrity workflow, including but not limited to the following:

1) Assessment of plagiarism with published documents. We use Ithenticate for the assessment of overap.

2) Adherance to research ethics including research commttee approval where necessary.

3) Authorship conflicts of interest (COI). Further information on how w handle COI can be found here

All submitted articles undergo peer review. More detail on our peer review processess can be found here.

Should reviewers or editors identify aspects that need assessment, COPE and ICMJE guidelines are followed.

European publishing follows up on all concerns of readers raised about publications, in acordance to COPE policies as outlined below.

If authors or reviewers identify an error in a manuscript, a correction letter will be published indicating where the mistakes were made, and the original source will be immediately corrected. ICMJE guidelines for corrections are followed in this case. For articles in which a retraction is necessary, the COPE Guidelines for Retracting Articles will be adhered to. When faced with suspected misconduct, the editors are advised to follow the relevant COPE Flowcharts. Readers may also comment on published manuscripts through the submission of a letter to the editor.

Both European Publishing and the editors of the journals within our portfolio take affirmative action to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. In the event that the journal's publisher or editors are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in their journal, COPE's guidelines will be followed when dealing with allegations.

If any authors are unhappy with the decision on their article, they may appeal to the Editorial Office, giving a reason why they feel the decision was incorrect. The editor-in-chief (s) will review any appeal, and a final decision will be made. Please note that authors may only appeal once.

For any ethical concerns, please contact the editorial office of each journal or directly to research.integrity@europeanpublishing.eu