What we expect, and what we do when it goes wrong

We follow the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics on authorship, plagiarism, data integrity and corrections. Where this page is silent on something, COPE guidance is what we will reason from.

These apply to everybody: authors, reviewers, editors, and the journal itself.

An author is someone who contributed substantially to the work and to the writing of it, who approved the version submitted, and who is willing to be accountable for it. All three, not one of them.

Supervision on its own, funding on its own, and providing materials or access on their own are contributions to acknowledge, not to name as authorship. Adding a senior name that did not contribute is as serious a problem as leaving out a junior one that did.

The order of authors is for the authors to settle before submitting. Any change to the list after submission needs the written agreement of everyone on it, including anyone being removed, and a reason. We will not make the change on one author’s word.

Send us work that is yours and that has not been published elsewhere. Cite what you drew on, including your own earlier work; reusing your own text without saying so is still a problem, and it is one that catches people who did not realise it counted.

Do not send the same manuscript to us and to another journal at the same time. If you want to withdraw and send it elsewhere, tell us and withdraw it.

A thesis chapter or a conference abstract you have already made public is usually fine. Say so on submission and let us judge it rather than discovering it later.

Declare your funding, and any role a funder had in the design, conduct, or reporting of the work. Declare your supervision. Declare anything that could reasonably look like an interest in the result.

Declare any use of generative tools, saying what you used and what you used it for. Using one is not a problem in itself. Not saying so is. A generative tool cannot be an author, because it cannot be accountable for the work.

Where the research involved people or animals, name the body that gave ethical approval and the reference it gave you. Where it involved people, confirm they consented. We may ask to see the approval.

Report what you found, including what did not work. Do not remove observations without saying that you did and why. Figures may be adjusted for legibility, never in a way that changes what they show.

Keep your data. We may ask for it while we are considering the work, and we may ask for it afterwards if a question is raised about the article.

An editor steps aside from any manuscript involving their own institution, their supervisor, or their collaborators, and takes no part in the decision. The managing editor arbitrates where opinions differ. A reviewer in the same position is expected to say so and decline.

Editors of this journal may submit to it. When they do, they are an author and nothing else: handled by another editor, with no access to the file and no sight of who assessed it.

Every submission is read by an editor and reviewed before a decision is made, and nothing is published without that review. Work is judged on its question, its method, and the honesty of its conclusions, not on the seniority of its authors or where they study.

Anyone assessing a manuscript treats it as confidential. It is not shared, not discussed outside the process, and not used in their own work. If they cannot assess it fairly, they say so and hand it back.

The journal does not undertake to explain a decision. Where an editor can usefully say something, they will, but you should not submit expecting it.

The published record is corrected in the open, never quietly. An article is never altered without a note saying what changed and when.

A correction is issued where an error affects part of the article but not its conclusions. A retractionis issued where the findings are unreliable, whether through honest error or misconduct, or where the work is substantially published elsewhere or infringes someone’s rights. A retracted article stays online, marked as retracted on every page of it, with a notice saying why. Removing it would leave the citations pointing at nothing.

Anyone can raise a concern about a published article, authors included. Tell us as soon as you know.

Where we have a credible concern about plagiarism, fabricated or manipulated data, duplicate publication, or authorship that has been misrepresented, we put it to the corresponding author and ask for an explanation before drawing any conclusion.

If it is not resolved, we may reject the submission, retract the article, or raise the matter with the author’s institution, which is the body able to investigate it properly. We record what we decided and why.

An allegation made in good faith that turns out to be wrong is not held against the person who made it.

To appeal a decision on your manuscript, write to icrrjournal@gmail.com within thirty days, saying what you think was misjudged. An editor who took no part in the original decision looks at it. Appeals are about the handling of the work, and disagreeing with the outcome is not by itself a ground.

To complain about how the journal or anyone acting for it behaved, write to the same address and say so plainly. We acknowledge within five working days and answer within thirty. If your complaint is about the managing editor, say so, and it will be handled by someone else.

Everything is open access from the day it appears. There is no charge to submit, no charge to publish, and no charge to read. Authors keep their copyright, and articles carry a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. The terms of use set out what that means in practice.

Each article is issued a persistent identifier and a PDF of record, so that a citation keeps working.