Ethical guidelines for authorship and publishing in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle

Abstract

The principles of ethical authorship and publishing in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle (JCSM) are:

1. all authors listed on the manuscript have approved its submission and publication as provided to JCSM;

2. no person who has a right to be recognized as author has been omitted from the list of authors;

3. each author has made an independent material contribution to the work submitted for publication;

4. the submitted work is original and is neither under consideration elsewhere nor has it been published previously in whole or in part other than in abstract form;

5. all original research work is approved by the relevant bodies such as institutional review boards or ethics committees;

6. all conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, that may affect the authors’ ability to present data objectively have been duly declared in the manuscript;

7. the manuscript in its published form will be maintained on the servers of JCSM as a valid publication only as long as all statements in the guidelines on ethical publishing remain true;

8. if any of the aforementioned statements ceases to be true, the authors have a duty to notify the editors of JCSM as soon as possible so that the information available online can be updated and/or the manuscript can be withdrawn.

The Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle (JCSM) is a peer-reviewed international journal dedicated to publishing materials that are related to cachexia and sarcopenia as well as to body composition and its physiological and pathophysiological changes during the life span and in different illnesses from all fields of the life sciences. We share the view that academic publishing depends, to a great extent, on trust between authors, peer reviewers, editors, and the public [1]. Academic publications are made in an environment of competing interests that may be commercial, intellectual, and/or political in nature. Some of these issues create conflicts of interest. In this context, the Editors of JCSM see it as their duty to promote transparency and research integrity.

Therefore, all authors wishing to publish in JCSM are required to certify that they comply with the guidelines of publishing in JCSM outlined below. This should be done by stating as part of the published manuscript that “All authors of this manuscript comply with the guidelines of ethical authorship and publishing in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle”, providing reference to these guidelines by referencing this article.

Specifically, the corresponding author, on behalf of all co-authors,

1. certifies that all authors listed on the manuscript have approved its submission and publication as provided to JCSM;

2. certifies that no person who has a right to be recognized as author has been omitted from the list of authors;

3. certifies that each author has made an independent material contribution to the work submitted for publication;

4. certifies that the submitted work is original and is neither under consideration elsewhere nor has it been published previously in whole or in part other than in abstract form;

5. certifies that for all original research work, the relevant bodies such as institutional review boards or ethics committees have approved the studies. This rule is not applicable for review articles or editorial comments that give reference to other people’s work;

6. certifies that all conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, that may affect the authors’ ability to present data objectively, have been duly declared in the manuscript; and

7. understands that the manuscript in its published form will be maintained on the servers of JCSM as a valid publication only as long as all statements in the guidelines on ethical publishing remain true.

8. If any of the aforementioned statements ceases to be true, the authors have a duty to notify the Editors of JCSM as soon as possible so that that the information available online can be updated and/or the manuscript can be withdrawn.

We are happy to be able to start this new journal—we feel that there is a great need for it as there is a major unmet need for the medical problems it concerns. Despite these happy thoughts, we recognize that the world is not free of scientific misconduct that can come in many ways. The Editors of JCSM aim to keep a close eye on these issues. We want to take a lead in identifying, notifying, investigating, and reporting all occurrences of scientific misconduct, and we will withdraw papers if significant problems come to our attention. This shall be no surprise to anyone when it has to occur and hence, we request that these guidelines are cited in each article published in JCSM. As stated before, academic publishing is built on trust—we want JCSM to be a trusted source of best available scientific knowledge in the field. We hope that, together, we can achieve this objective and our journal can succeed in this ambition.