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Developing and submitting manuscripts
This page is part of Taylor & Francis and Sense about Science's research integrity toolkit.
Publication ethics
There are a number of ethical issues to be aware of when submitting your research for publication in academic journals. These include the following:
AI
This is a fast-moving area, so check the latest guidance on the appropriate use of AI before submitting your article. While most publishers will allow you to use AI for tasks like language polishing, including AI-generated images in your article may not be permitted.
The key principle is to be transparent about the use of AI tools in your research or article writing. Please also note that AI does not meet the criteria for authorship, so it cannot be listed as a co-author of your article.
Authorship
Every author listed on a journal article must have made a significant contribution, and as an author or co-author, you share responsibility and accountability for it. This means you should not add someone's name to the author list if they have not been involved in the research (known as "gift authorship" or "guest authorship").
Equally, it is unethical to leave off anyone who has made a significant contribution to the paper (aka "ghost authorship"). It is not only traditional academic contributors who can be authors, but also, for example, technicians and undergraduates, provided they meet the criteria. Initiatives such as Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) enable authors to state the individual contributions of each listed author on the article. The order in which authors' names appear on the article (e.g., alphabetical, by seniority, level of contribution) can vary by region and field of study, so, to avoid disputes later on, it is best to agree on the format before you even start the research.
Defining authorship for your research paper
Authorship guidelines issued by COPE
UKRIO guidance on authorship integrity
I had an issue with authorship where both the other contributing authors were more senior than myself. Despite putting in the work that started the literature review and contributing more substantially, another researcher appeared in the paper ahead of me.
Citation manipulation
This is when authors excessively self-cite or prearrange with others to inappropriately cite each other's work. Only cite your own work or that of other researchers when it is genuinely relevant.
Conflicts of interest
When submitting your article, you and all co-authors must declare any conflicts of interest (aka competing interests). This will enable the editors, reviewers, and readers to take your declaration into account when considering your work. You should also detail all sources of funding that supported your research.
Data
It is essential that all data you use is accurate and representative of your research. Depositing your data in a repository and providing a data availability statement with your article will support transparency and reproducibility.
Images
Misconduct includes the inappropriate duplication, manipulation, or fabrication of images used in your article. You must not make any alterations to experimental photographic images that could mislead readers about the scientific interpretation.
Duplicate submission
You cannot submit your article to more than one journal for consideration at the same time. It risks duplicate publication: when the same article is published in more than one journal, compromising the scholarly record.
Spend time carefully deciding which journal to submit your work to first, and only if that journal rejects your article should you submit to another (after revising it based on any useful feedback from the first).
Paper mills
Paper mills are organizations or individuals that aim to profit from the creation, sale, peer review, and/or citation of manuscripts at scale, which contain low-value or fraudulent content and/or authorship, with the aim of publication in scholarly journals.
Paper mill articles frequently include plagiarism, manipulated images, and fake data. As outlined in the authorship section above, you should only ever put your name to an article when you have made a significant contribution to it and can take responsibility for its content.
Paper mills, profits, and perverse incentives
Publishers have had to retract many papers at once when systematic misconduct, such as fabricated data, paper mills, or coordinated peer review manipulation, was discovered across multiple articles.
How to avoid predatory journals
Predatory journals or publishers are those that charge authors a fee for publication without providing legitimate peer review or editorial services. Here's how to identify and avoid them:
Warning signs
- A journal title that can be easily confused with another journal
- Spams researchers with emails inviting for submissions
- Poor grammar and spelling in communications
- No publisher address or contact information
- Advertises/promises of unusually rapid publication
- Vague or misleading journal scope covering disparate fields
- Lack of information on the policies of the journal, such as peer review, licensing, and copyright
- Fake impact factors
- Unprofessional website with broken links or design issues
- Hidden publication fees/charges
- False claims about indexing in major databases such as DOAJ or PubMed
Verification steps
- Check if the journal is listed in reputable databases (DOAJ, Scopus, Web of Science)
- Verify publisher membership in recognized associations (COPE, STM, OASPA)
- Confirm editorial board members exist and are actually affiliated
- Review several published articles for quality
- Consult colleagues about journal reputation before submission
- Use the Think-Check-Submit checklist
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is passing off the work of others as your own. This might include the use of other researchers' data, images, and ideas, as well as their words. You can ensure you do not inadvertently plagiarize by properly citing any research and sources you've drawn on for your article.
You should also mark any verbatim text from other sources with quotation marks.
Self-plagiarism
Also known as "text recycling," self-plagiarism is the redundant reuse of your own work, without proper citation, which can create repetition in the scholarly record. If it is unavoidable for you to reuse your own previous work, make sure you cite it fully.
Third-party material
You should not use copyrighted material (e.g., text, photographs, film stills, musical notation) in your article without first getting permission from the copyright holder.
Rejections, corrections, and retractions
Most publishers have staff, technology, and processes in place to detect potential ethics and integrity issues in new manuscripts submitted to their journals. This includes software to spot plagiarism, image manipulation, and the undeclared use of AI.
A manuscript will most likely be rejected before publication if an ethical problem is identified.
If concerns are raised about an article after publication, the publisher may launch an investigation in line with their policies and COPE guidelines. You should be given the opportunity to respond to any concerns about an article you have authored.
While the investigation is underway, or if the investigation is inconclusive, the publisher may publish an expression of concern. This enables readers to exercise caution, especially in cases with a risk of harm, such as when medical decisions could be made based on the research article under investigation.
If it is found that there are problems with an article, the editor and publisher may choose to make a correction. A correction notice will be published alongside the article to give readers the details of the change.
For serious issues, including research or publication misconduct, or errors that invalidate the paper's conclusions, the article may be retracted. It will be clearly marked as retracted, and a separate retraction statement will be published, outlining the reasons for retraction.
Please remember that not every corrected or retracted article is the result of unethical activity. Sometimes genuine mistakes are made, and authors are often keen to correct the scholarly record.
If you discover that there is an error in one of your own published papers, the corresponding author should get in touch with the publisher to request an update.
Corrections, retractions, and updates after publication
Retraction Watch
UKRIO webinar dispelling myths around corrections
Benefits and challenges of preprints
A preprint is a complete draft of a research article that is made publicly available before peer review and formal publication on an online repository (e.g., arXiv for physics, bioRxiv for biology, and SSRN for social science).
When using preprints, you should be aware of the potential challenges and balance the benefits of rapid dissemination with responsible research practices, ensuring that your work meets ethical standards even before peer review.
Some obvious benefits and limitations of preprints include:
Benefits
- Rapid dissemination: Research findings become available immediately without lengthy peer review processes before publication, which helps speed up scientific progress.
- Priority publication: A preprint receives a DOI, which gives authors a public and citable record that protects their work against competition.
- Early feedback: Authors can receive community input before formal journal submission.
- Increased visibility and access: Open access nature allows wider readership and potential collaborations.
- Career development: Preprints offer early career researchers a track record of their productivity. Many funding bodies accept preprints in grant applications.
Challenges
- Quality assurance: Lack of formal peer review verification may lead to dissemination of flawed methods or conclusions.
- Misinformation risk: Unvetted papers may be misinterpreted by media or public, potentially spreading inaccurate information. Non-academic audiences may not know the difference between a preprint and a peer-reviewed article and could therefore be more easily misled.
- Research integrity: Without editorial oversight, ethical standards may not be consistently applied.
- Version control: Multiple versions can create confusion about which is the final version.
- Corrections/retractions: When an article is corrected/retracted, it may not be communicated in the preprint, so readers are unaware of the errors or retraction status.
To address quality concerns of preprints, a new preprint server VeriXiv by F1000 publishes verified preprints, where a preprint will go through a rigorous series of ethics and integrity checks (similar to those conducted on many journals) and a set of optional open research checks before being published.
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