Editorial policy
Portland Press, the publishing arm of the Biochemical Society, prides itself on being a community-owned, ethical publisher, aligning with key industry partners such as COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) and the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors).
The Portland Press Editorial Policy is set out below. If you have any questions in regard to any aspect of the policy, or if something is not covered below, please contact the Editorial Office for clarification.
The full peer review process for all Portland Press journals is described in the Publishing Life Cycle. This includes information about how to appeal a decision received on a paper.
Ethical processes
a) Scientific publication
Portland Press is a member of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) and endorses its guidelines, including the Code of Conduct for Editors.
Portland Press believes that the Editorial Boards of its journals has a duty to protect the scientific record. Therefore, it will always fully investigate any matter of apparent misconduct that it becomes aware of with respect to both published and unpublished papers, in conjunction with the institution where the work was performed and/or with funding bodies as appropriate.
The Editorial Board will not accept papers where the ethical aspects are, in the Editorial Board’s opinion, open to doubt.
Portland Press journals follow the guidelines published by COPE in respect of the retraction of articles.
(i) Themed issues/article collections
Themed issues/article collections are used to disseminate research around a particular theme, which can be used to highlight the scope of our journal titles. Credentials of Guest Editors overseeing a themed issue or article collection are checked by the appropriate journal Editorial Board and Guest Editors area asked to agree to terms and conditions in relation to their role. Submissions to themed issues or article collections that are overseen by a Guest Editor have the same editorial oversight as any other publication, with the submission receiving full external independent peer review. Should a submission to a themed issue/article collection be accepted for publication, the article is highlighted as being part of that collection on the published article. Should a Guest Editor submit an article for consideration in the themed issue/article collection, the peer review of that submission is handled independently to other submissions within the collection, with oversight from the Editor-in-Chief or an appropriate Editorial Board member.
(ii) Plagiarism
Portland Press will not tolerate plagiarism in manuscripts submitted to its journals. Passages quoted or closely paraphrased from other Authors (or from the submitting Authors’ own published work) must be identified as quotations or paraphrases and the sources of the quoted or paraphrased material must be acknowledged. Use of unacknowledged sources will be construed as plagiarism. All papers are screened for plagiarism using Similarity Check. If any manuscript is found to contain plagiarized material, the review process will be halted immediately and the matter fully investigated.
(iii) Guidance on the use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) during the publishing process
For authors
We allow authors to use AI to aid in the writing or editing of a manuscript or in the collection and analysis of data. However, authors must disclose, in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of their paper, which AI tool was used and how it was used. If the AI tool is custom written, both the algorithm and the source of the data (or the data) on which it was trained should be made available to readers.
Authors shall not use AI tools in generating images or videos for inclusion in their manuscript.
Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool. AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work.
For reviewers
Reviewers shall not use AI tools to summarise content that they are being asked to review. Content submitted to the journal for review is confidential, and reviewers are given access to the content to review on the basis of confidentiality and privacy rules. Uploading any article under review, including the abstract, to an AI tool will be breaking the privacy rules and is not permitted.
Reviewers are permitted to use AI, where appropriate, to improve the language and readability of their reviewer report.
(iv) Duplicate submission and prior publication
Portland Press defines duplicate and prior publication as set out in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.
This does not preclude Portland Press from considering a paper that is an extension of preliminary work or work previously presented in abstract form; however, this should be clearly stated in the cover letter accompanying your submission.
Content published on preprint servers, such as bioRxiv, does not constitute prior publication. Portland Press is partnered with the bioRxiv B2J service where papers submitted as a preprint can be submitted to any Portland Press research journal for consideration with a click of a button.
(v) Images
During peer review or following acceptance, images within a paper can be checked for manipulation. The Editorial Board may request that Authors supply the original data for comparison against the prepared figures. If Authors are unable to comply with such a request, the paper may be withdrawn from the peer review process or the acceptance of the paper may be withdrawn.
Guidelines for preparation of figures are provided in the Portland Press Data Policy.
(vi) General authorship
Submission of a paper to any Portland Press journal implies that:
- it has been approved by all of the named authors;
- that all persons entitled to authorship have been named;
- that it reports unpublished work that is not under consideration for publication elsewhere (in any language);
- that conflicts of interest are declared;
- that, if the paper is accepted for publication, the authors will grant the Biochemical Society an exclusive licence to publish the paper.
Portland Press endorses the Vancouver Guidelines on authorship as defined in the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, namely that entitlement to authorship should be based on all of the following criteria:
- Substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
- Drafting the article or reviewing it for important intellectual content;
- Final approval of the version to be published;
- Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, does not justify authorship. All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgements section in the paper.
On submission of your work, you will be required to assign a CRediT contributor role to each author of the article. This will be published as part of the paper should your paper be accepted for publication.
Please note that the author list that is provided at submission (and on the accepted paper) is what will be included on the published paper and on abstracting and indexing services (for example, PubMed). Please ensure that the authorship is correct, and that author names are listed exactly as you would like them to appear on the published paper.
(vii) Changes to authorship
In general
As a general rule, extensive changes to the authorship for an article are not permitted. During submission of the original and revised versions of the paper, the corresponding author takes responsibility that all persons listed on the paper should be authors (and are eligible for authorship given the criteria listed above). Extensive changes to the author list will be investigated on a case-by-case basis, and if it cannot be ascertained why an extensive change to the authorship has taken place, the paper may be rejected on that basis.
Authorship changes on submission of a revised version of a paper
Depending on the nature of the revisions asked for in decision letters sent to authors, new author(s) might be added to a revised version of a paper (particularly if new experimental work has been requested as part of the peer review process) and if the contributions of previously unnamed persons now merit authorship listing on the revised manuscript (as they now meet the criteria for authorship described above).
An Authorship Change form must be fully completed and signed by all authors. This completed form must then be included with your revised submission.
In the event of the addition of authors at revision, the author contribution paragraph provided in the revised paper must be updated to reflect what the newly added authors contributed to the paper.
If any authors are being removed from a revised paper, then it should be clear why the author(s) has been removed, and written confirmation (via the Authorship Change form) should be obtained from all authors (including the author who has been removed) confirming that they are aware of and agree with the removal of the author.
The Editorial Office will investigate any changes in authorship for revised papers. If it cannot be ascertained that the change in authorship is justified, it may be refused and in certain circumstances the paper may be rejected on that basis.Authorship changes following acceptance of a paper and/or during the proofing process
Accepted papers have been through peer review and at least one round of revision by the authors and have received a final ‘accept’ decision from the Editorial Board. Given this, Portland Press do not support addition or removal of authors post-acceptance.
If, for whatever reason, you wish to change the authorship of your paper post-acceptance, please contact the Production Team where this will be considered on a case-by-case basis.
(viii) Language-editing services
To support our global author community, Portland Press has partnered with the Charlesworth Group to offer authors a 10% discount on their Charlesworth Author Services. Visit their website > or 请访问我们的中文网
b) Post-publication process
Portland Press/the Biochemical Society takes all potential issues surrounding the scientific validity of articles published across the portfolio seriously, and follows the guidelines recommended by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics). Concerns from readers regarding any of our articles can be sent to the Editorial Office. Please note that Portland Press does monitor concerns raised on the PubPeer platform; however, contacting the Editorial Office directly providing sufficient detail to help initiate an investigation is the most direct way to raise a concern. Concerns raised by readers will be reviewed with the Editorial Board and, where it is deemed appropriate, the journal will contact the authors and/or institution to complete an investigation and will take corrective action where it is deemed necessary.
All statements issued to articles in our journals will remain factual and objective.
(i) Withdrawals
Manuscripts that have been accepted by the journal (termed Accepted Manuscripts) but not formally published as the final Version of Record may be subject to withdrawal from the journal if any ethical concerns (e.g. image manipulation, image duplication, significant authorship changes, incorrect ethical approval, etc.) or content issues (e.g. incorrect images, incorrect methods, missing references, etc.) are identified.
Ethical concerns or extensive content issues may result in the article being permanently withdrawn, in which case the journal will not reconsider the manuscript for publication. Accepted Manuscripts that have been permanently withdrawn from the journal are generally not eligible for an article publishing charge (APC) refund.
Depending on the extent of the content issue(s) the Editorial Office and Editorial Board may agree to make updates to the article during the proofing stage or request that the article be resubmitted for peer review so that any updates to the manuscript can be formally assessed. In the latter case, a withdrawal notice will be issued to the Accepted Manuscript which remain available online after the updated manuscript is published.
(ii) Expressions of Concern
Papers under investigation by the Editorial Office with significant issues or that are expected to take a significant amount of time to resolve may be issued an Expression of Concern to alert readers to possible errors or issues in the article. Expressions of Concern may be followed by a Correction or Retraction (see below) to address an issue, or updated to a more extensive Expression of Concern if the Editorial Office and Editorial Board are unable to complete a conclusive investigation.
(iii) Corrections
Version of Record articles (those that have been accepted and been published following post-acceptance processes such as copyediting and proofing) may have a correction issued to them when an addressable issue has been identified (e.g. incorrect images, incorrect methods, missing references, missing funding information, corrections to affiliation or author names). Most corrections [except for author name corrections (please see section a(v) of this policy) or license type corrections] are issued as a separate publication, linked to the original article, so that the scholarly record can be fully maintained.
For corrections that affect the scientific understanding, methods, results or conclusions of the study, Editorial Board approval must be obtained before the correction can proceed.
Corrections to address small typographical errors that do not affect the scientific understanding of the article are generally not considered.
(iv) Retractions
Version of Record articles (those that have been accepted and been published following post-acceptance processes such as copyediting and proofing) may be retracted from the journal when ethical concerns or extensive content issues are identified, either by the Editorial Office, readers, or authors themselves. Please see the COPE Retraction Guidelines for more detail on issues that may be cause for a retraction. Whilst COPE states that retractions are not usually appropriate if an article’s authorship is disputed, Portland Press will issue a retraction if it is identified that a paper has originated from a paper mill (when there may be issues identified with authorship separately or in addition to article content). Retracted articles are not eligible for an article publishing charge (APC) refund.
In very rare exceptional cases, published content may need to be removed completely (e.g. IP infringement, defamatory content, right to privacy etc.). These will be handled on a case-by-case basis when necessary.
c) Conflicts of interest
Authors/reviewers should clearly declare any conflicts of interest. Examples of conflicts of interest that should be declared are (but not limited to):
Employment (where you will receive financial gain)
Consultancy (where you will receive financial gain)
Personal relationships
Academic competition
d) Animal experimentation
Portland Press endorses the ARRIVE Guidelines for the reporting of any experiments with animals. Experiments with animals should comply with national legislation and local Institutional Review Board requirements and there should be a statement to this effect in the paper. In the absence of any national regulations, Authors/Reviewers can contact the Editorial Office for advice. Please ensure that in your paper you state the site where the animal work has taken place and where the ethics approval has been obtained from. Important note: Research where chloral hydrate has been used as an anaesthetic will not be considered (and will be rejected without peer review) on the grounds that the agent does not provide analgesia and its use in animal experimentation no longer reflects best practice.
e) Human experimentation
Papers describing any experimental work with humans should include a statement that the research has been carried out in accordance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. Research should comply with national and Institutional Review Board requirements for ethical approval, and all individuals taking place in the study should provide written informed consent. In the absence of any national regulations, Authors/Reviewers can contact the Editorial Office for advice.
f) Open Access
Portland Press/the Biochemical Society fully supports open access across its publications, particularly supporting authors to be compliant with funder mandates.
For full details, please see our Open Access Policy.
g) Data
See our Data Policy for full information.
h) Reuse and permissions
For full details of the policy around reuse of work and requesting permissions (including the policy on sharing and public posting of articles), please see our Copyright and Permissions information.
Complaints against any Portland Press publication must be submitted in writing to the Editor-in-Chief. If a complaint is not resolved to the satisfaction of the complainant they have the option of referring the matter to COPE.
