Editorial Policies

Editorial direction rests with the Editor-in-Chief, working with the Executive Editors and the editorial board. Named editors take the decisions on this journal and are accountable for them.

Editorial authority sits with those editors. Commercial, financial and administrative functions are carried out separately from editorial assessment, and the editors reach their decisions on the scientific record in front of them.

Editorial Board lists every member with their role and affiliation. The expectations placed on editors and reviewers are set out in the Editors Guidelines and the Reviewer Guidelines.

All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal’s scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.

Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.

Reviewers advise the editor; the decision stays with the editor. Authors who want double-blind review should prepare the manuscript as described in the Instructions for Authors, and the corresponding handling rules for editors and reviewers sit in the Editors Guidelines and the Reviewer Guidelines.

Scope is assessed against the journal’s published remit on the Aims and Scope page.

Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.

Each of those criteria is applied to the manuscript as submitted. An editor may seek further specialist advice where a manuscript turns on a method or an analysis outside the handling editor’s own area.

Authors declare their funding sources, grant numbers and competing interests with the manuscript, and those declarations are published with the article.

An editor with a financial, institutional or personal interest in a manuscript stands aside, and a colleague handles it instead. Editors who submit their own work to the journal are handled by another editor, and their authorship is disclosed on the published article.

Reviewers are asked to declare any interest that would affect their assessment, and to decline the invitation where one exists.

Submitted manuscripts are treated as confidential. Editors and reviewers keep unpublished material to the assessment itself, and reviewers securely delete downloaded manuscript files once the review is submitted.

Reviewer identities are held in confidence under the single-blind model. A reviewer who wishes to be identified to the authors may ask the editor to sign the report on their behalf.

Authorship is reserved for those who made a substantive contribution to the work: to its conception or design, to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of the data, or to drafting and revising the manuscript. Every listed author approves the version submitted and takes public responsibility for it.

Other contributors are named in the acknowledgments. Any change to the author list after submission is made with the written agreement of all authors, including anyone added or removed, and is reviewed by the editorial office.

Corresponding authors act for the author group during assessment and after publication, and are the contact point for questions about the published record.

Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement.

On protein- and genome-scale work that statement is what lets a reader reach the evidence: the spectra, sequences, accessions, reference datasets and analysis code behind a result. Where a public repository exists for the data type, deposition there with an accession or identifier is the clearest form of the statement. Where access is restricted, the statement describes the restriction and the route by which a qualified researcher may request access.

Methods are reported in enough detail for the work to be repeated, including instrument and platform configuration, software names with versions and parameters, and the handling of replicates and controls. Manuscript preparation requirements, including reporting checklists, are set out in the Instructions for Authors, and archiving and permissions are described under Data Archiving and Permissions.

Research involving human participants, human material or identifiable human data is carried out with the approval of the relevant ethics committee or institutional review board, and with the informed consent of the participants. The manuscript names the approving body and the approval reference, and confirms that consent was obtained. Where an individual could be identified from the material presented, consent to publish is obtained as well.

Research involving animals is carried out under the applicable institutional and national approvals, and the manuscript reports the approving body, the reference and the welfare standards followed.

Interventional clinical trials must be registered in an accepted public trial registry at or before the first participant provides consent for enrollment. The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported in the manuscript.

Work with biological material, pathogens, genetic resources or field-collected specimens is conducted under the permits and biosafety approvals that apply to it, and the manuscript records them.

Authors remain responsible for every part of a submitted manuscript, including any passage prepared with the assistance of a generative AI tool. Such assistance is disclosed in the manuscript. Authorship is reserved for people.

Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured.

That requirement covers all unapproved externally hosted AI tools, and it applies to editors handling a manuscript in the same way.

Concerns about a submitted or published manuscript are examined by the editorial office. This includes fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, undisclosed duplicate submission or publication, image manipulation, and undeclared competing interests.

Submissions are screened with Crossref Similarity Check, powered by iThenticate. A similarity report is read in context by the editor, who considers what the overlapping text is and where it sits in the manuscript.

Where a concern is substantiated, the editors take it up with the authors and, where the matter warrants it, with their institution, and act on the published record through the measures described below. Anyone may raise a concern with the editorial office; the identity of the person raising it is held in confidence.

The published record is corrected in public. A correction notice is issued where an error affects part of the record but the findings stand; it is linked to the article and carries its own DOI, and the article states that it has been corrected.

A retraction is issued where the findings are no longer reliable, whether through error or through misconduct. The retracted article remains available and is marked as retracted, so the citation record stays intact and a reader arriving later sees the status of the work.

An expression of concern is published where a substantiated question about the work exists and the inquiry is still open. It is replaced by a correction, a retraction or a notice of resolution once the matter is settled.

An author who considers that a decision rested on a factual error or on a misunderstanding of the work may appeal. An appeal is sent to the editorial office and sets out the specific points at issue with the evidence that supports them.

Appeals are considered by a different editor from the one who took the original decision, who may seek further review. The outcome of an appeal is the editors’ decision on the manuscript.

Complaints about the conduct of the editorial process are handled the same way, by someone independent of the matter complained about, and the outcome is given to the person who raised it.

The article processing charge is USD 2,100, charged after acceptance only. There is no submission fee. The charge is administered by the editorial office and takes no part in the editorial decision: it is raised after a decision has been reached, by people other than the editors who reached it. The fee schedule is set out on the Article Processing Charges page.

Articles are published open access under CC BY 4.0, and authors retain copyright. The terms are set out under Copyright and License.

Withdrawal. Authors should contact the editorial office promptly and wait for written confirmation before submitting the work elsewhere.

Manuscripts withdrawn within 3 days of submission are not subject to a withdrawal charge.

Manuscripts withdrawn more than 3 days after submission incur a withdrawal charge equal to 30% of the journal’s APC.

Authors must receive official withdrawal confirmation before submitting the manuscript to another journal.