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Taylor & Francis Editorial Policies

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The following policies apply to all Taylor & Francis Group journals.

Where a journal is owned by and published on behalf of a learned society or association, you should refer to any additional requirements set out by that journal.

Please read these policies in full before submitting your article, to ensure you’ve correctly followed all the requirements.

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Affiliations

You and your co-authors must list all relevant affiliations to attribute where the research or scholarly work was approved and/or supported and/or conducted.

  • For non-research articles, you must list your current institutional affiliation.

  • If you have moved to a different institution before the article has been published, you should list the affiliation where the work was conducted, and include a note to state your current affiliation.

  • If you do not have a current relevant institutional affiliation you should state your independent status.

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Appeals and complaints

Taylor & Francis journals follow Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on appeals to journal editor decisions and complaints about a journal’s editorial management of the peer review process.

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We welcome genuine appeals to editor decisions. However, you will need to provide strong evidence or new data/information in response to the editor’s and reviewers’ comments.

Where you, as an author, wish to comment on aspects of the journal’s editorial management please contact us and select “Other” as the topic.

Please read the full Taylor & Francis guidance on peer review appeals and complaints from authors.

Authorship

Listing authors’ names on an article is an important mechanism to give credit to those who have significantly contributed to the work. It also ensures transparency for those who are responsible for the integrity of the content.

Authors listed on an article must meet all of the following criteria:

  1. Made a significant contribution to the work reported, whether that’s in the conception, study design, execution, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation, or in all these areas.

  2. Have drafted or written, or substantially revised or critically reviewed the article.

  3. Have agreed on the journal to which the article will be submitted.

  4. Reviewed and agreed on all versions of the article before submission, during revision, the final version accepted for publication, and any significant changes introduced at the proofing stage.

  5. Agree to take responsibility and be accountable for the contents of the article and to share responsibility to resolve any questions raised about the accuracy or integrity of the published work.

Defining authorship

It is the collective responsibility of all the individuals who have conducted the work to determine who should be listed as authors, and the order in which authors should be listed.

The journal editor will not decide on order of authorship and cannot arbitrate authorship disputes. Where unresolved disputes between the authors arise, the institution(s) where the work was performed will be asked to investigate.

Please read our guide to defining authorship. It includes details on:

  • Corresponding authors

  • Changes in authorship

  • Assistance from scientific, medical, technical writers or translators

  • Assistance with experiments and data analysis

  • Acknowledgments

  • Author name change policy

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Citations

Research and non-research articles must cite relevant, timely, and verified literature (peer-reviewed, where appropriate) to support any claims made in the article.

You must avoid excessive and inappropriate self-citation or prearrangements among author groups to inappropriately cite each other’s work, as this can be considered a form of misconduct called citation manipulation. Read the COPE guidance on citation manipulation.

If you’re the author of a non-research article (e.g. a Review or Opinion) you should ensure the references you cite are relevant and provide a fair and balanced overview of the current state of research or scholarly work on the topic. Your references should not be unfairly biased towards a particular research group, organization or journal.

If you are unsure about whether to cite a source you should contact the journal editorial office for advice.

  • Please read our full citation guidance, including instructions on the sources which should be added to your references list and those which should only be cited in the main text of your article.

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Competing interests

You and all of your co-authors must declare any competing interests relevant to, or which can be perceived to be relevant to the article.

  • A competing interest can occur where you (or your employer, sponsor or family/friends) have a financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organizations, or with the people working with them which could influence the research or interpretation of the results.

  • Competing interests can be financial or non-financial in nature. To ensure transparency, you must also declare any associations which can be perceived by others as a competing interest.

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Please read our guide to competing interests. This includes examples of financial and non-financial competing interests as well as information about the sponsorship of clinical trials.

Corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions

Sometimes after an article has been published it may be necessary to make a change to the Version of Record (VoR).

This will be done after careful consideration by the Editor who is also supported by Taylor & Francis staff to ensure any necessary changes are done in accordance with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Any necessary changes will be accompanied with a post-publication notice which will be permanently linked to the original article. This can be in the form of a Correction notice, an Expression of Concern, a Retraction and in rare circumstances a Removal. The purpose of this mechanism of making changes which are permanent and transparent is to ensure the integrity of the scholarly record.

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Data availability and deposition

Taylor & Francis supports a number of open data initiatives and offers a suite of data-sharing policies for journals.

Data sharing policies

Are you submitting your paper to a Taylor & Francis journal, and is there a data set associated with your work? Many Taylor & Francis journals have policies on data sharing which state how data associated with your article should be shared. The guide to understanding our data sharing policies will help you get to grips with the details and the steps you’ll need to take as an author.

Data repositories

A data repository is a storage space for researchers to deposit data sets associated with their research. And if you’re an author seeking to comply with a journal data sharing policy, you’ll need to identify a suitable repository for your data.

Read our guide to choosing a data repository which includes some generalist repositories you may wish to consider.

Community-endorsed public repositories

Where community-endorsed mandates exist for submission of data to public repositories, authors should submit the datasets to the appropriate repositories and provide the accession numbers (where available) in the paper.

Examples of repositories community-endorsed public repositories include:

Data type Suggested repositories
DNA and RNA sequences Genbank
DNA and RNA sequences EMBL Nucleotide Sequence Database (ENA)
Gene expression Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)
Gene expression ArrayExpress
Genetic polymorphisms dbSNP NCBI
Genetic polymorphisms dbVar NCBI
Genetic polymorphisms European Variation Archive (EVA)
Linked genotype and phenotype data dbGAP NCBI
Linked genotype and phenotype data European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA)
Protein sequences Uniprot
Proteomics data PRIDE
Proteomics data PeptideAtlas
Metabolomics data Metabolomics Workbench
3-D printable models NIH 3D Print Exchange
Neuroimaging data OpenNeuro
Neuroimaging data NeuroVault
Macromolecular structures Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BMRB)
Macromolecular structures Electron Microscopy Data Resource (EMDB)
Macromolecular structures Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB)
Macromolecular structures RCSB Protein Data Bank (PDB)
Crystallographic data Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre (CCDC)
Crystallographic data Crystallography Open Database (COD)
Earth and environmental science data PANGAEA
Earth and environmental science data NERC Data Centres
Earth and environmental science data World Data Center for Climate (WDCC)
Earth and environmental science data Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity (KNB)
Earth and environmental science data EarthChem
High Energy Physics Data HEPData
Archaeology Data Archaeology Data Service (ADS)
Paleontology Data Paleobiology Database
Humanities outputs CORE (Humanities Commons)

Custom computer codes, software tools, and mathematical algorithms

To enable full assessment of submissions, you must make available on request to Editors and/or reviewers any custom computer codes, software tools, or algorithms which have been used to generate the results and conclusions that are reported in your manuscript.

Designations of territories

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Taylor & Francis respects its authors’ decisions regarding the designations of territories in its published material.

Taylor & Francis’ policy is to take a neutral stance in relation to territorial disputes or jurisdictional claims in its published content, including in maps and institutional affiliations.

Where a journal is owned by and published on behalf of a society or other third party, Taylor & Francis will take into account that Society’s policy on this issue to the extent it differs from Taylor & Francis’ own.

Editor Code of Conduct

Taylor & Francis Group’s journal program provides a home for validated, trusted research from the world’s brightest and best minds.

The editor of a journal plays a vital role in advancing knowledge within fields of research. They do this by:

  1. Maintaining and improving the quality of work the journal publishes and the integrity of its peer review process

  2. Supporting the journal’s authors and reviewers

  3. Maintaining and improving the journal’s reputation in collaboration with the journal’s wider editorial team and Taylor & Francis.

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To support this role, our Editor Code of Conduct sets out the minimum standards for all Taylor & Francis and Routledge editors who have responsibility for decisions on journal content to help ensure our journals publish quality, trustworthy content.

Read the Taylor & Francis/Routledge Journal Editor Code of Conduct.

Harassment

Taylor & Francis will not tolerate any kind of harassment of our authors, editors, reviewers, staff, or vendors.

We expect to work in an environment of mutual respect and will work with the Taylor & Francis ethics team and legal team to deal with any cases of harassment.

Advice for researchers experiencing harassment: As a researcher, you should expect your work to be scrutinized by the public, policy makers, and campaigners. However, some researchers working on high-profile subjects that attract controversy have also found themselves targeted with online harassment.

To help researchers dealing with these issues, Taylor & Francis has supported the Science Media Centre in producing an updated guide, including tips on how to deal with social media harassment.

Images and figures

You should only use images and figures in your article if they are relevant and valuable to the work reported.

Please refrain from adding content of this type which is purely illustrative and does not add value to the scholarly work.

Read our policies on images and figures
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Using third party material

As a warranty in the Journal Author Publishing Agreement you make with us, you must obtain the necessary written permission to include material in your article that is owned and held in copyright by a third party, including – but not limited to – any proprietary text, illustration, table, or other material, including data, audio, video, film stills, screenshots, musical notation, and any supplemental material.

Obtaining permission to publish identifiable or protected content

Content (e.g. photographs, video or audio recordings, 3D models, illustrations, etc) which can reveal the identity of patients, study participants or study subjects can only be included if they (or parents/guardians if they are underage or considered unable to provide informed consent, or their next of kin if participants are deceased) have provided consent to publish.

If any of this type of content has been obtained from communities where additional permissions are required (e.g. an Elder or community leader in an indigenous community), or from a protected source (e.g. museum collections), then authors must obtain the required permissions for use prior to submission of the manuscript.

Please read our full policies on the use of images and figures.

Misconduct

Taylor & Francis takes all forms of misconduct seriously and will take all necessary action, in accordance with COPE guidelines, to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.

Examples of misconduct include (but are not limited to):

  • Affiliation misrepresentation

  • Breaches in copyright/use of third-party material without appropriate permissions

  • Citation manipulation

  • Duplicate submission/publication

  • “Ethics dumping”

  • Image or data manipulation/fabrication

  • Peer review manipulation

  • Plagiarism

  • Text-recycling/self-plagiarism

  • Undisclosed competing interests

  • Unethical research

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Read the full policy to find out more about the areas of misconduct listed above.

Peer review

Articles published in Taylor & Francis journals (including its imprints) undergo thorough peer review and Taylor & Francis journals endorse COPE guidelines for reviewers.

Journals may operate different peer review processes. Our guide to understanding peer review outlines several different peer review models, including:

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  • Single-anonymous peer review (also called ‘single-blind peer review’)

  • Double-anonymous peer review (also called ‘double-blind peer review’)

  • Open peer review

  • Registered Reports

Every Taylor & Francis journal publishes a statement describing the model of peer review used by the journal within the journal homepage. A minimum of two independent reviewers is normally required for every research article. The aims and scope of each journal will outline their peer review policy in detail.

The details of the comments as well as the overall recommendations by peer reviewers will be considered by the Editor when making a decision, but ultimate responsibility for acceptance or rejection lies with the Editor.

In accordance with COPE recommendations on ethical editing for new Editors, Editors will assign any submissions they cannot handle (e.g. if they are the author of an article submitted to their own journal) to a member of the Editorial Board or a guest editor.

Please note that Taylor & Francis journals do not permit you to recommend peer reviewers.

Confidentiality of peer review

It is a requirement to maintain confidentiality and integrity of the peer review and editorial decision-making process at all stages, complying with data protection regulations (including GDPR). The invited reviewer should declare any competing interest before submitting their report to the journal. If they wish to involve a colleague as a co-reviewer for an article, they should ask the journal editorial office before sharing the manuscript and include their names, affiliation and any relevant competing interests in the comments for Editors when they return their report.

In the process of investigating an ethical query, the submitted manuscript, author, reviewer, and any other person (including whistleblowers) involved will be treated in confidence. During an investigation it may be necessary for the Editor to share information with third parties, such as the ethics committee and/or the authors’ institution.

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Further peer review policies and guidance

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Plagiarism

Trust and integrity are among what readers value the most in scholarly peer-reviewed journal content. That’s why Taylor & Francis takes the issue of plagiarism very seriously.

“When somebody presents the work of others (data, words or theories) as if they were his/her own and without proper acknowledgment.”

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

For Taylor & Francis journals, this applies to data, images, words or ideas taken from any materials in electronic or print formats without sufficient attribution. The use of any such material either directly or indirectly should be properly acknowledged in all instances. You should always cite your source.

Preprints, preprint servers, and early reporting of scholarly work

We support the need for authors to share early versions of their work before peer review publication. There are also a number of options for Taylor & Francis authors to share the final Version of Record of their published article.

Preprints and preprint servers

A preprint, also known as the Author’s Original Manuscript (AOM), is your article before you have submitted it to a journal for peer review. Preprint servers are online repositories which enable you to post this early version of your research paper online.

If you upload your AOM to a non-commercial preprint server, you can subsequently submit the manuscript to a Taylor & Francis or Routledge journal. We do not consider posting on a preprint server to be duplicate publication and this will not jeopardize consideration for publication.

  • If you’ve posted your AOM to a preprint server, we ask that, upon acceptance, you acknowledge that the article has been accepted for publication as follows:

“This article has been accepted for publication in [JOURNAL TITLE], published by Taylor & Francis.”

  • After publication please update your preprint, adding the following text to encourage others to read and cite the final published version of your article (the “Version of Record”):

“This is an original manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in [JOURNAL TITLE] on [date of publication], available online: https://doi.org/[Article DOI].”

Find out more about preprints

Sharing your published article

If you’ve published in a Taylor & Francis or Routledge journal, there are many ways you can share different versions of your article with colleagues and peers.

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Research ethics and consent

All research published in Taylor & Francis journals must have been conducted according to international and local guidelines ensuring ethically conducted research.

Dependent on your area of research, please read our research ethics guide for STEM researchers, or our research ethics guide for AHSS researchers. The guides includes detailed information about:

Research involving humans

All research studies on humans (individuals, samples or data) must have been performed in accordance with the principles stated in the Declaration of Helsinki.

Prior to starting the study, ethical approval must have been obtained for all protocols from the local institutional review board (IRB) or other appropriate ethics committee to confirm the study meets national and international guidelines for research on humans.

A statement to confirm this ethical approval must be included within the manuscript, which must provide details of the name of the ethics committee and reference/permit numbers where available.

Ethical considerations for different human study designs

The policy on ethical considerations for different human study designs includes:

  • Prospective studies on humans

  • Clinical trials

  • Clinical Case reports

  • Organ or tissue transplants

  • Human embryos and human stem cells

  • Consent for research involving children, adolescents and vulnerable or incapacitated study participants

  • Retrospective studies

  • Survey studies

  • Covert observational research

  • Research on indigenous communities

  • Communication research

  • Social media research

    Participant/patient privacy and informed consent

    Taylor & Francis endorses the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which emphasizes that patients and study participants have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent.

    In accordance with the principles outlined in the Nuremberg Code, the Belmont Report, and the American Anthropological Association, informed consent must be voluntarily obtained from the participant who should be fully informed of the study including any of the benefits and risks involved.

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    Research involving animals, plants, and heritage sites

    Studies involving vertebrates or regulated invertebrates (e.g. cephalopods), field studies and other non-experimental research on animals must have been carried out after obtaining approval from the relevant institutional ethics committee or the institutional animal use and care committee. Research procedures must be carried out in accordance with applicable national or international guidelines. In field studies authors must have also obtained any necessary permits for access to lands.

    Authors must include a statement within the manuscript to provide details of the name of the ethics committee(s) which approved the study and include the permit or animal license numbers where available.

    Biosafety, biosecurity, and emerging biotechnology

    Taylor and Francis journals will only consider research which has been carried out in compliance with institutional biosafety and biosecurity policies, which in turn should be informed by national or international recommendations.

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    Standards of reporting

    Research should be communicated in a way that supports verification and reproducibility, and as such we encourage authors to provide comprehensive descriptions of their research rationale, protocol, methodology, and analysis.

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    To aid authors in this, a number of study-design specific consensus-based reporting guidelines have been developed, and we recommend you to use these as guidance prior to submitting your manuscript.

    A comprehensive list of reporting guidelines for medicine and health research can be accessed via the EQUATOR network website, and for biosciences research via the MIBBI Foundry portal.

    Read our list of key reporting guidelines across different disciplines, as well as requirements for statistical methods reporting, cell line authentication, and nomenclature.

    Use of third-party material

    You must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material in your article. These materials may include – but are not limited to – text, illustration, photographs, tables, data, audio, video, film stills, screenshots, or musical notation.

    The use of short extracts of text and some other types of material is usually permitted, on a limited basis, for the purposes of criticism and review without securing formal permission. If you wish to include any material in your paper for which you do not hold copyright, and which is not covered by this informal agreement, you will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission.

    Further resources on our Author Services site provide detailed FAQs on topics such as the use of Twitter quotes and screenshots, the use of images of old paintings, redrawn images and derivative copyright, the quotation of poetry or songs, and guidance on the use of third-party content in open access articles.

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