Authors' Responsibilities
At Brieflands STM Publisher, authors are expected to adhere to the highest standards of academic integrity and ethical conduct throughout the publication process. Below are the key responsibilities that all authors must fulfill:
1. Originality of Work
Authors must certify that their manuscript is entirely their original work. It should not contain any material that has been plagiarized or improperly used from other sources.
2. Exclusivity of Submission
Authors must ensure that their manuscript has not been previously published elsewhere, nor is it under consideration or review by another journal. Submitting the same manuscript to multiple journals is strictly prohibited.
3. Participation in Peer Review
Authors are required to actively participate in the peer review process. This includes responding to reviewers' comments and making necessary revisions to the manuscript as advised.
4. Corrections and Retractions
Authors are obligated to promptly provide corrections or retractions if any mistakes or inaccuracies are discovered in their work. This ensures the integrity and accuracy of the published research.
5. Authorship Contributions
Every listed author must meet all four ICMJE authorship criteria: substantial contribution to conception, design, acquisition, analysis or interpretation; drafting or critically revising the work; final approval of the version to be published; and agreement to be accountable for the whole of it. Meeting only one or two is not authorship.
State who did what in an Authors’ Contribution section using the CRediT taxonomy’s 14 roles, and place contributors who do not meet the criteria in the Acknowledgements. An authenticated ORCID iD is required for the corresponding author. Adding or removing an author requires the written agreement of every author. Full rules: Authorship criteria, CRediT and ORCID.
6. Data Integrity
Authors must declare that all data presented in the manuscript are real, accurate, and authentic. Falsification or manipulation of data is strictly prohibited.
A Data Availability Statement is mandatory in every research article, Brief Report, Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis, placed immediately before the references. You choose what it says — deposited, available on request, or restricted for a stated reason — but the statement itself is required, and where you deposit, the dataset must be cited in the reference list. See Research Data and Reproducibility.
7. Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Authors must inform the Editors of any potential conflicts of interest that could influence the interpretation of their research findings.
8. Source Acknowledgment
Authors are required to properly identify and acknowledge all sources used in the creation of their manuscript. This includes citing relevant research and providing accurate references.
9. Error Reporting
If authors discover any errors in their published paper, they must immediately notify the Editors so that appropriate corrections can be made.
10. Relevance of Sources
Authors should not use irrelevant sources that do not contribute to the research presented in their manuscript. Citing unrelated sources solely to boost citations for other researchers or journals is unethical.
12. Reporting Guidelines
Report the study according to the reporting guideline for its design, and upload the completed checklist with the submission: CONSORT for randomised trials, PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses, CARE for case reports, ARRIVE for animal research, and the appropriate EQUATOR guideline otherwise. The full list by study design, with the checklists, is in Reporting guidelines by study design.
13. Ethical Approval, Consent and Trial Registration
Research on human participants must comply with the Declaration of Helsinki, carry an ethical approval code, and report that informed consent was obtained. Animal research must comply with the requirements in Animal Rights, including the 3Rs and ARRIVE.
Clinical trials must be registered before the first participant is enrolled, in a public registry meeting the ICMJE requirements, and the registration name and number must be given in the abstract. Retrospective registration is not accepted as a substitute. See Randomized Clinical Trials and Ethical Oversight.
14. Declaring the Use of AI
An AI tool cannot be an author. Where a generative AI tool was used in producing the manuscript, its use must be declared at submission, and for anything beyond language correction a full disclosure statement is required in the Methods. Non-disclosure may result in rejection, or in correction or retraction after publication. See the AI Authorship Policy.
11. Article Withdrawal
Authors may request the withdrawal of a manuscript at any stage before final publication, including while it is Ahead of Print. Requests are submitted to the journal and decided by the Editor-in-Chief; where a withdrawal follows a research-integrity finding, the publisher’s ethics committee decides. Brieflands does not charge a withdrawal fee. Once an article is finally published it can no longer be withdrawn — the available remedies are correction, an expression of concern, or retraction. See Withdrawal Regulations.
By adhering to these responsibilities, authors contribute to maintaining the integrity and quality of scholarly publishing at Brieflands STM Publisher.