Publishing ethics

This journal publishes in accordance with Cambridge University Press’s research publishing ethics guidelines, which apply to authors, peer reviewers, the editorial office and the journal as a whole. Further details as applicable to this journal can be found below. Anyone who believes that these guidelines have not been followed should raise their concern with the editor or email publishingethics@cambridge.org.

Peer review

This journal usually requires a minimum of two independent peer reviewers to peer review manuscripts for consideration in the journal.

This journal uses a double-anonymous peer review model. This means that the identities of both the peer reviewers and the authors are kept hidden. Please check the journal's peer review information for full details of this process and any policy exceptions.

Authorship

All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. In the event of a dispute or change request, at any stage of the publishing process, this journal will be guided by the relevant COPE flowchart in deciding the appropriate action(s).

The following are qualifying criteria for authorship*

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and/or
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and/or
Final approval of the version to be published; and
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

*These criteria are based on the ICMJE guidelines on authorship. Although they were developed for medical journals, they provide a useful framework on which to base decisions on authorship which can be applied to non-medical fields.

The corresponding author is responsible for communicating with co-authors.

The corresponding author's specific responsibilities include:

Manuscript correction and proofreading. Handling the revisions and re-submission of revised manuscripts up to the acceptance of the manuscripts.
Agreeing to and signing the Author Publishing Agreement on behalf of relevant co-authors and/or arranging for any third-party copyright owners’ signature.
Arranging for payment of an APC (article processing charge) where one is required. The affiliation of the corresponding author is used to determine eligibility for discounted or waived APCs (Author Processing Charge) under read and publish agreements.
Acting on behalf of all co-authors in responding to queries from all sources post-publication, including questions relating to publishing ethics, reuse of content, or the availability of data, materials, resources etc.

Requests to change the corresponding author after submission will be subject to scrutiny and a formal process, as with any authorship change. This applies to both pre- and post-publication of the article.

Authorship statements should be transparent about who contributed to the work and in what capacity.

This journal's author instructions contain further information on submitting your author list with your manuscript.

Affiliations

Any article affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated. Knowingly providing false or fraudulent affiliation information is a form of misconduct, and may lead to article retraction.

Disclosure of interests and funding

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the presentation, review or publication of a piece of work. These may be financial, non-financial, professional, contractual or personal in nature. Conflicts of Interest do not necessarily mean that an author’s work has been compromised. All authors must include a competing interest declaration in accordance with this journal's author instructions. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article.

Peer reviewers are expected to declare any competing interests arising at any point during the peer review process. The editor will review the competing interest and work with the reviewer to mitigate the competing interest. Where a reviewer’s competing interest is too significant to mitigate, the reviewer should recuse themselves from reviewing. See Ethics in Peer Review for further information.

Editors are responsible for declaring any competing interests, whether they apply to individual articles or to their position as an editor of this journal, and recusing themselves as appropriate.

Anyone who suspects an undisclosed competing interest regarding a work published or under consideration in this journal should inform the relevant editor or email publishingethics@cambridge.org.

Funding statement

This journal requires authors to include a statement of funding in their manuscript. The source of funding for the authors’ research should be stated in accordance with the journal's author instructions.

Plagiarism

This journal adheres to Cambridge University’s definition of plagiarism. Plagiarism is defined as ‘using someone else’s ideas, words, data, or other material produced by them without acknowledgement.’ Plagiarism can occur in respect to all types of sources and media, including:

text, illustrations, musical quotations, extended mathematical derivations, computer code, etc.
material downloaded from websites or drawn from manuscripts or other media
published and unpublished material, including lectures, presentations, and grey literature

We do not tolerate plagiarism in any of our publications, and we reserve the right to check all submissions through appropriate plagiarism checking tools. Submissions containing suspected plagiarism, in whole or part, will be rejected. If plagiarism is discovered post-publication, we will follow our guidance outlined in the Retractions, Corrections and Expressions of Concern section of these guidelines. We expect our readers, reviewers, and editors to raise any suspicions of plagiarism, either by contacting the relevant editor or by emailing publishingethics@cambridge.org.

Duplicate and redundant publication

Duplicate or redundant publication occurs when a work, or substantial parts of a work, is published more than once by the author(s) of the work without appropriate cross-referencing or justification for the overlap. This can be in the same or a different language. We do not support substantial overlap between publications, unless:

it is felt that editorially this will strengthen the academic discourse; and
we have clear approval from the original publication; and
we include citation of the original source.

We expect our readers, reviewers and editors to raise any suspicions of duplicate or redundant publication, either by contacting the relevant editor or by emailing publishingethics@cambridge.org.

When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.

Corrections, Retractions and Expressions of Concern

Corrections

Minor changes such as those which would likely occur during copyediting, typesetting or proofreading may be made on accepted manuscripts, but will not normally be made to First View or Versions of Record unless they impact the interpretation of the article.

If an author is found to have made an error in a published article, a Corrigendum will be used. If the journal is found to have made an error, an Erratum will be used.

Retractions

This journal will consider retractions in line with COPE’s Retraction Guidelines*.

Retractions are usually reserved for articles that are so seriously flawed that their findings or conclusions should not be relied upon, or that contain substantial plagiarism or life-endangering content or report unethical research.

*Note that the list of reasons to retract in COPE’s guidelines is not exclusive. The editor may retract a publication for any reason that irreversibly undermines the article’s validity or integrity.

Expressions of concern

Occasionally, where the reliability or integrity of a publication is of concern, but where an investigation will take an unusually long time, or where an investigation is not possible, the editor may choose to publish an Expression of Concern on the article to alert readers to interpret the article content with caution.

Permanence of the published record

Cambridge University Press maintains a record of the existence of everything its journals publish with information (metadata) describing each publication. Where we are obliged to alter the publication record in any way, such as in the case of research misconduct leading to retraction of a publication, we preserve the academic record as far possible. In exceptional cases an article may be removed from online publication where it is deemed necessary to comply with legal obligations. This includes, without limitation, where there are concerns that the article is defamatory, violates personal privacy or confidentiality laws, is the subject of a court order, or might pose a serious health risk to the general public. In these circumstances, the article may be removed, and a notice published that clearly states why the full article has been removed.

Appeals

Appeals of editorial decisions will only be considered if they refer to a specific manuscript and must be based on evidence that either (1) an editor or reviewer made a significant factual error/a major misunderstanding of a manuscript, or (2) the integrity of the editorial decision making process was compromised. In general, only one appeal per manuscript per decision stage will be considered. For further information on how to appeal, please refer to this journal's peer review information.

This journal uses CrossMark, a multi-publisher initiative to provide a standard way for readers to locate the current version of a piece of content, view any changes that have occurred, and access additional information about that publication record. To check for updates on published content, click on the CrossMark logo.

Reprints, Supplements and Translations

This journal grants licenses in volume and subsidiary rights to third-parties which permit the reproduction, reuse or adaptation of our content in different contexts, languages and territories. For further information on rights and translations please see the Cambridge University Press rights and permissions page.

Supporting evidence

Cambridge University Press aims to provide authors with the ability to connect supporting evidence with their manuscripts, either on our own platform or through third party services.

Please see this journal's research transparency policy for details of any requirements regarding the sharing of supporting evidence.

This journal permits authors to submit and publish supplementary materials that are not essential for inclusion or that cannot be accommodated in the main text, but that would be of benefit to the reader. Data, code and other materials or supplementary files are reviewed in line with this journal’s peer review process and research transparency policy.

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