Editorial policies

Current Bioscience takes seriously all allegations of potential misconduct. Current Bioscience will follow the COPE guidelines outlining how to deal with cases of suspected misconduct.

In cases of suspected research or publication misconduct, it may be necessary for the Editor to contact and share manuscripts with third parties, for example, author(s)’ institution(s) and ethics committee(s). Current Bioscience may also seek advice from COPE and discuss anonymized cases in the COPE Forum. The editor may also involve Current Bioscience’s independent ombudsman.

A notice of suspected transgression of ethical standards in the peer review system may be included as part of the author’s and article’s bibliographic record.

Research misconduct

All research involving humans (including human data and human material) and animals must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework (see our Ethics policy for further information). If there is suspicion that research has not taken place within an appropriate ethical framework, the Editor may reject a manuscript and may inform third parties, for example, author(s)’ institution(s) and ethics committee(s).

In cases of proven research misconduct involving published articles, or where the scientific integrity of the article is significantly undermined, articles may be retracted. See our Retraction policy for further information.

Data falsification and fabrication

Data falsification is manipulating research data with the intention of giving a false impression. This includes manipulating images, removing outliers or “inconvenient” results, changing, adding or omitting data points, etc. Data fabrication means the making up of research findings.

Any questions regarding data integrity raised during or after the peer review process will be referred to the Editor. The Editor may request (anonymized) underlying study data from the author(s) for inspection or verification. If the original data cannot be produced, the manuscript may be rejected or, in the case of a published article, retracted. Cases of suspected misconduct will be reported to the author(s)’ institution(s).

Publication misconduct

Current Bioscience will follow the COPE guidelines outlining how to deal with cases of potential publication misconduct.

Plagiarism

The editors of Current Bioscience will run plagiarism check using the software Plagiarism Detector Lite for the submitted manuscripts before sending to the reviewers. If plagiarism is identified, the COPE guidelines on plagiarism will be followed.