Tudor Journals International Peer-Reviewed Journals Platform
Sign In Register

Home  /  Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics

Tudor Journals is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and to following the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Effective date: 13 May 2026 · Version 1.0

1. Introduction

Tudor Journals (the “Publisher”) operates a multi-journal scholarly publishing platform. Each journal hosted on the platform is independently managed by an Editor-in-Chief and an editorial board, but every journal adheres to the same baseline ethical framework set out in this document.

These guidelines are based on the COPE Core Practices, the ICMJE Recommendations, and the DOAJ / OASPA / COPE / WAME Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. They apply equally to editors, reviewers, authors and platform staff.

2. Duties of editors

  • Editorial independence. Editors have full responsibility and authority to accept or reject manuscripts based on the manuscript’s importance, originality, clarity, validity, and relevance to the journal’s scope. Decisions are not influenced by commercial considerations.
  • Confidentiality. Editors must not disclose information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
  • Disclosure and conflicts of interest. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s own research without the explicit written consent of the author. Editors must recuse themselves from any submission where a competing interest exists.
  • Fair play. Editors evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
  • Investigation of misconduct. When ethical concerns are raised regarding a submitted or published article, editors are responsible for following the COPE flowcharts to investigate the allegation appropriately.

3. Duties of reviewers

  • Contribution to editorial decisions. Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and, through editorial communications with the author, may assist the author in improving the manuscript.
  • Promptness. Any reviewer who feels unqualified to review the assigned manuscript, or knows that its timely review will be impossible, should immediately notify the editor and decline the invitation.
  • Confidentiality. Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to, or discussed with, others except as authorized by the editor.
  • Standards of objectivity. Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
  • Acknowledgement of sources. Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors and flag any substantial similarity or overlap with other works.
  • Disclosure of competing interests. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

4. Duties of authors

  • Reporting standards. Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.
  • Originality. Authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.
  • Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication. Authors should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal of primary publication.
  • Disclosure of competing interests. All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
  • Fundamental errors in published works. When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

5. Duties of the publisher

  • Tudor Journals safeguards editorial independence and supports editors in following COPE procedures.
  • The publisher ensures that good practice is maintained to the standards outlined here, and supports editors and reviewers with appropriate training, infrastructure and policies.
  • The publisher provides transparent ownership, governance and contact information on each journal’s page.
  • In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question, including retraction where warranted.

6. Plagiarism & originality

All submissions are checked for originality. Manuscripts containing plagiarism — including self-plagiarism, paraphrasing without attribution, duplicate publication, or fabricated/falsified data — will be rejected. If plagiarism is identified after publication, editors will follow the relevant COPE flowchart and may issue a correction, expression of concern, or retraction as appropriate.

7. Use of generative AI

Generative AI tools (e.g. large language models such as ChatGPT or Claude) cannot be listed as authors. Authors who use such tools in the preparation of a manuscript — for writing, translation, data analysis, figure generation or any other significant contribution — must:

  • Disclose the tool, its version, and the specific way it was used in the Methods or Acknowledgements section.
  • Take full responsibility for the final content, including for any inaccuracies or fabricated references introduced by the tool.
  • Comply with the journal’s declaration on AI use during submission (Step 4 of the submission wizard).

8. Authorship & contributions

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study, in line with the ICMJE authorship criteria. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.

Tudor Journals supports the CRediT taxonomy — authors are asked to record their specific contributions (Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition) during submission.

Any change in authorship after submission (addition, removal or reordering) requires written agreement from all authors and must be approved by the editor.

9. Conflicts of interest

All parties involved in the publication process — authors, reviewers and editors — are required to disclose any relationship that could be perceived as a competing interest. This includes, but is not limited to:

  • Employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony.
  • Patent applications/registrations, royalties.
  • Grants or other funding from organisations with an interest in the outcome.
  • Close personal relationships with any of the parties involved.

Disclosed conflicts are reviewed by the handling editor and, when relevant, published alongside the article.

10. Data & reproducibility

Authors are encouraged to deposit primary datasets and code in community-recognised repositories (e.g. Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad, GitHub) and to include a Data Availability Statement. When data cannot be shared (for legal or ethical reasons) authors must state this explicitly.

11. Research involving humans or animals

Research involving human participants, human material, or human data must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. The name of the committee and the reference number of the approval must be stated in the Methods section. Informed consent must be obtained from all participants.

For studies involving animals, authors must confirm that all procedures complied with the ethical standards of the institution and national regulations. ARRIVE 2.0 guidelines should be followed where applicable.

12. Corrections, retractions & expressions of concern

If an honest error is identified in a published article, a Correction (erratum) will be issued and linked to the original article. The original article remains in place; the Correction is permanent, citable and freely accessible.

When findings are unreliable due to error or misconduct, or when the article has been published elsewhere without proper attribution, or when copyright has been infringed or there is some other legal issue, the article will be retracted following the COPE Retraction Guidelines. Retraction notices are linked bidirectionally with the original article and clearly marked.

Where concerns are serious but inconclusive, an Expression of Concern may be issued while investigation continues.

13. Handling misconduct allegations

Suspected research or publication misconduct (fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, image manipulation, ghost/guest/gift authorship, duplicate submission, citation manipulation, peer review manipulation, etc.) is investigated using the relevant COPE flowchart.

The process typically includes:

  1. Initial assessment by the handling editor and Editor-in-Chief.
  2. Confidential request for clarification from the authors / institution.
  3. Independent expert review when appropriate.
  4. Decision: no action, correction, expression of concern, or retraction.
  5. Notification of the authors’ institution where serious misconduct is confirmed.

14. Appeals & complaints

Authors who wish to appeal an editorial decision should write to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, providing a detailed response to the editorial and reviewer comments. Appeals are considered on a case-by-case basis; the editor’s final decision is binding.

Complaints about editorial process, ethics, or staff conduct should be sent to editorial@tudorjournals.com. We aim to acknowledge complaints within 5 working days and to provide a substantive response within 30 days.

15. Open access & licensing

All articles published on Tudor Journals are open access. Unless otherwise stated on the article page, content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited. Authors retain copyright of their work.

16. Archiving & preservation

Tudor Journals deploys redundant storage, automated daily database backups, and supports OAI-PMH harvesting so that journal metadata can be mirrored by national libraries and indexing services (DOAJ, BASE, CORE, OpenAIRE). Published articles receive a persistent DOI to ensure long-term citability.

17. Contact the editorial office

For any question regarding this Publication Ethics policy, or to report a concern, please contact:

Tudor Journals — Editorial Office
Email: editorial@tudorjournals.com
Web: https://tudorjournals.org/contact

This policy is reviewed annually and may be updated to reflect changes in COPE, ICMJE or DOAJ guidance. The effective date at the top of this page indicates the most recent revision.