Ethical Oversight Policy

Before submitting a manuscript, authors are required to sign a Consent to Publication Form following which they are committed to adhere to the Journals Publication Policy, Author Guidelines and Ethical Rules.

The Journal adheres to the Griffith Responsible Conduct of Research policy and the Griffith Research Integrity Breach Investigation Procedure.

Publication on vulnerable populations

The Journal supports international ethical standards related to research and the publication of research relating to vulnerable groups and individuals. This includes the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research 2018, the Guide to Managing and Investigating Potential Breaches of the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research 2018, WMA Declaration of Helsinki-Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (affirmed July 2018), The Belmont Report, and Economic and Social Research Council in the UK as well as any other ethical standards supported by COPE. In addition to requiring research to be conducted responsibly, ethically and with integrity, these standards require that vulnerable populations and individuals from these populations receive specifically considered protections by all involved in the research enterprise, such as researchers and their teams, research sponsors and funders, the relevant research ethics approval committees, authors, editors, reviewers and publishers.

Ethical conduct of research

The Journal is committed to safeguarding the privacy, dignity, and safety of human subjects, observe proper care and treatment of animal subjects, comply with applicable laws and regulations governing the conduct of research, and ensure appropriate use of sensitive or confidential information. It is also committed to diligently review submitted work to ensure that it conforms with research ethics guidelines, a process which often involves grappling with questions surrounding the adequacy of consent, the need for ethical review, and other difficult issues, especially researches using animals, human subjects, handling confidential data and ethical business/marketing practices.

The Journal is open to receive and investigate concerns raised about the ethics of any article it has published. It is also willing to cooperate with research institutions charged with investigating research ethics complaints.

The Journal is also committed to preventing potential cases of academic misconduct by routinely checking for plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, citation manipulation, peer review manipulation, authorship misconduct, etc. It is committed to adhere to COPE guidelines on retractions in any case of research integrity misconduct.

Conflicts of interest

Conflicts of interest include any financial interests (including funding or connections, personal or professional), direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the presentation of data, its interpretation, or conclusions, and including bias relating to academic competition.

1 Authors

The Journal requires authors to declare any Conflict of Interest upon submission of their manuscripts. If the manuscript is published, where appropriate, this information will be communicated in a statement in the published article.

For cases of joint authorship, any potential Conflict of Interest should be clearly stated for each author. The Editors reserve the right to require further information before the paper is reviewed. The corresponding author is required to confirm with the co-authors whether they have any conflicts to declare.

2 Referees

All referees are either asked to decline to review a manuscript if they have a potential conflict or declare any potential conflict (eg including, but not confined to circumstances where they may be able to identify the author).

3 Editors

All Editors are required to declare if they have any affiliations or personal beliefs that may affect their opinion in their role as an Editor.

Editors would not handle the review of a manuscript if there was a potential conflict of interest, and instead would pass it on to another Editor