UCL Press Journals Editorial Policy

UCL (University College London, UK) and UCL Press regard it as fundamental that research should be conducted and published according to ethical guidelines. UCL Press outline here in this Journals Editorial Policy the high standards and publishing practices that all of its journals and published content adhere to.


  1. Open access policy and copyright
  2. Originality of article statement
  3. Authorship and author consent policy
  4. Ethics approval
  5. Research involving humans
  6. Clinical trial registration
  7. Consent for publication
  8. Research involving animals and plants
  9. Competing interests
  10. Textual overlap and suspected plagiarism
  11. Reviewer policy
  12. Editor policy
  13. Journal and article archiving
  14. Author self-archiving and repository policy
  15. Corrections and retractions
  16. Misconduct and grievance procedure
  17. Research misconduct
  18. Publication misconduct
  19. Appeals and complaints
  20. Advertising policy
  21. Article-processing charges
  22. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
  23. Journals statement about the use of metrics


Open access policy and copyright

All articles are published open access and are licensed under the CC-BY 4.0 International licence agreement. Under this licence authors retain copyright, and unrestricted reuse of the content is allowed as long as proper attribution is given to the original author of the work. Further information regarding this can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/and licensing terms and conditions can be found in the author contributor agreement.

Copyright in any open access article published by UCL Press is retained by the author(s).


Originality of article statement

All submitted articles must not be under consideration for publication anywhere else, nor have been published in any form prior to submission to any UCL Press journal. By submitting, authors are agreeing that the submission is original except for material in the public domain and such excerpts of other works that have written permission of the copyright owner. Where there is potential for duplication authors must correctly reference and cite the work.

Co-publication of an article, as agreed with the publisher and journal, may be considered in accordance with the ICMJE guidelines on overlapping publication, at the discretion of the Editor.


Authorship and author consent policy

All listed authors must have made a significant contribution to the article and have approved all its claims. Authors are required to include an authorship statement in their article to outline how each author contributed to the article, after any acknowledgements in the article.

UCL Press adheres to the statement of authorship as outlined by the ICMJE statement, and considers an author of an article to have:

  1. made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  2. drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  3. made final approval of the version to be published; AND
  4. agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.


For suspected and incorrect authorship, UCL Press will refer to the UCL description of authorship misconduct as outlined here and follow COPE guidelines.


Ethics approval

UCL Press is committed to ensuring the highest standards of integrity in all aspects of its publication activities and expects that all authors submitting to a UCL Press journal have secured all relevant ethics or institutional review board approval for their research. A statement declaring this must be included in the article, along with the name of the ethics or institutional review board granting approval.

Where ethics or institutional review board approval is waivered, a statement declaring this must be included in the article along with the name of the ethics or institutional review board granting waiver status. Authors also declare that by submitting to a UCL Press journal this information will be made freely available to the Editor(s) upon request.


Retrospective ethics approval

If a study has not been granted ethics or institutional review board approval prior to commencing, retrospective ethics approval usually cannot be obtained and it may not be possible to consider the article for peer review. The decision on whether to proceed to peer review in such cases is at the Editor’s discretion.


Research involving humans

Any work or research that involves collecting data from human participants must comply in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and authors must have received any and all relevant ethics or institutional review board approval. A statement declaring this must be included in the article, along with the name of the ethics or institutional review board granting approval.

Where ethics or institutional review board approval is waivered, a statement declaring this must be included in the article along with the name of the ethics or institutional review board granting waiver status. Authors also declare that by submitting to a UCL Press journal this information will be made freely available to the Editor(s) upon request.

If authors are unable to provide sufficient evidence to the Editor(s) upon request, the Editor(s) may reject the article and inform the author(s) institution and any other third parties where applicable.


Clinical trial registration

In line with ICMJE guidelines, UCL Press requires registration of all clinical trials that are reported in articles submitted to any of its publications.

The ICMJE uses the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of a clinical trial, which is “any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes”. This definition includes phase I to IV trials. The ICMJE defines health-related interventions as “any intervention used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome” and health-related outcomes as “any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants”. Authors who are unsure whether their trial needs registering should consult the ICMJE FAQs for further information.

Suitable publicly available registries are those listed on the ICMJE website.


Consent for publication

For all articles involving human subjects, including any images, videos, and any other personal and identifiable information, authors must have secured informed consent to participate in the study and to publication before submitting to the journal, and a statement declaring this must be included in the article.

Authors also declare that by submitting to a UCL Press journal this information will be made freely available to the Editor(s) upon request.


Research involving animals and plants

A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines and/or ethical approval (including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate) must be included in the article. Where ethics or institutional review board approval is waivered, a statement declaring this must be included in the article along with the name of the ethics or institutional review board granting waiver status. Authors also declare that by submitting to a UCL Press journal this information will be made freely available to the Editor(s) upon request. UCL Press and Editors reserve the right to contact the ethics committee for further information.

The below subheadings outline the policy regarding research involving animals and plants, however, authors are recommend to comply with the following, where applicable:

  1. Ethics and Animal Welfare Committeehttp://iclas.org/committees/ethics-and-animal-welfare-committee
  2. Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Florahttps://cites.org/
  3. IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinctionhttps://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/PP-003-En.pdf
  4. ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelineshttps://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines



Research involving animals

When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed. Authors should follow the Basel Declaration http://www.basel-declaration.org/basel-declaration/ to further advance the implementation of ethical principles such as the 3Rs whenever animals are being used and to call for more trust, transparency and communication on the sensitive topic of animals in research. The Editor will take account of animal welfare issues and reserves the right to reject an article, especially if the research involves protocols that are inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of animal research.

Field studies and other non-experimental research on animals must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines and/or appropriate permissions or licences must be included in the article at submission.



Research involving plants

Experimental research on plants (either cultivated or wild), including collection of plant material, must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. Field studies should be conducted in accordance with local legislation, and the article should include a statement specifying the appropriate permissions and/or licences. We recommend that authors comply with the IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction (https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/PP-003-En.pdf) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora https://cites.org/.

Voucher specimens must be deposited in a public herbarium or other public collection providing access to deposited material. Information on the voucher specimen and who identified it must be included in the article.


Competing interests

Following UCL’s (University College London’s) Disclosure of Conflict and Declaration of Interest Policy guidance, broadly speaking, a conflict or competing interest can occur when personal interests, personal relationships or duties to others, compete with obligations and are likely to be compromised, or may appear to be compromised, by personal gain or gain to your immediate family (or people you have a close personal relationship with).

Authors must declare any and all conflicts of interest and competing interests that may relate to the submitted article, including all financial and non-financial competing interests. This must be stated in their article after the main text and acknowledgements under the heading ‘Competing interests’. Where there are no conflicts of interests or competing interests, authors must clearly declare this under the same heading. The Editor may decide to reject a submission after considering any and all conflicts of interest and the reviewer will be informed of this decision. The Editor’s decision is final.

Reviewers must declare any and all conflicts of interests and competing interests when invited to review and when returning their review for the Editor’s consideration. Where there are no conflicts of interest or competing interests, reviewers must clearly declare this in the review form online, or by contacting the Editor. The Editor may decide to reject a review after considering any and all conflicts of interest and the reviewer will be informed of this decision. The Editor’s decision is final.

Editors must declare any and all conflicts of interests and competing interests when assessing an article, and therefore not be involved with a submission when they:

  1. have a recent publication or current submission with any author in the submission
  2. share or have recently shared an affiliation with any author in the submission
  3. collaborate or have recently collaborated with any author in the submission
  4. have a close personal connection to any author in the submission
  5. have a financial interest in the subject of the work of the submission
  6. feel unable to be objective
  7. are a named author of the submission


Textual overlap and suspected plagiarism

All authors are responsible for the content written and published in their articles. In cases where unacceptable textual overlap and suspected plagiarism is found, UCL Press Editors will follow COPE’s guidelines, as well as refer to UCL’s policy on plagiarism as outlined here. Editors also have access to use iThenticate plagiarism detection software.

UCL and UCL Press define plagiarism as the presentation of another person’s thoughts or words or artefacts or software as their own. Any quotation from another person’s published or unpublished works must be clearly identified as such by correct citation and referencing.

Self-plagiarism is defined as the presentation of a person’s own thoughts or words or artefacts or software where it has been previously published as a new publication, without clear identification as such by correct citation and referencing.

UCL Press journal Editors make every effort to ensure that published content does not infringe any person’s rights, or applicable UK laws. If you believe or have cause for concern that content in any of UCL Press journals may infringe on copyright, textual overlap, and/or plagiarism, please contact the Journal Editor who will review the complaint and take appropriate action.

To avoid such cases and for best practice, authors should be transparent and ensure proper and correct referencing and citation.


Reviewer policy

Reviewers must declare any and all conflicts of interests and competing interests when returning their review for the Editor’s consideration (please see Competing interests for further information). Where there are no conflicts of interest or competing interests, reviewers must clearly declare this in the review form online, or by contacting the Editor. The Editor may decide to reject a review after considering any and all conflicts of interest and the reviewer will be informed of this decision. The Editor’s decision is final.


Ethical Obligations of Reviewers of articles

To ensure the highest quality research in UCL Press publications, reviewers are expected to uphold the following when reviewing:

  1. Provide clearly written, unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly and/or scientific merits and value of the work, together with a documented basis for the reviewer’s opinion. Judge the paper on its merits without regard to personal bias, ethnic origin, race, religion, citizenship, language, political or other opinion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, appearance, age, or economic class, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s)
  2. Thoroughly address all review criteria provided by the journal
  3. Decline to review articles for which the reviewer lacks sufficient time, is not qualified, or has a conflict of interest with any of the authors, including personal or competitive relationships
  4. Explain and support judgments adequately so that Editors and authors may understand the basis of their comments. Any statement by a reviewer on an observation, derivation, or argument that has been previously published should be accompanied by the relevant citation
  5. Provide citations to relevant work by other scholars/scientist as appropriate
  6. Alert the Editor to any significant similarity between the article under consideration and any other published paper or article submitted concurrently to another journal. Report any plagiarism or the appearance of plagiarism by contacting the Editor
  7. Never use or disclose unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in an article under consideration, except with the consent of the author
  8. Never include personal criticism of the author in reviewing an article


Editor policy

Every Editor of a UCL Press journal has the responsibility to establish and maintain guidelines that adhere to the highest ethical standards for selecting and accepting article submitted to that journal. The UCL Press Board have responsibility to ensure the independence of the Editors and provide agreed-upon support so that the quality of publications is not compromised.

Editors must declare any and all conflicts of interests and competing interests (please see Competing interests for further information) when assessing an article, and therefore not be involved with a submission when they:

  1. have a recent publication or current submission with any author in the submission.
  2. share or have recently shared an affiliation with any author in the submission.
  3. collaborate or have recently collaborated with any author in the submission.
  4. have a close personal connection to any author in the submission.
  5. have a financial interest in the subject of the work of the submission.
  6. feel unable to be objective.
  7. are a named author of the submission


Where the Editor(s) cannot be involved with a submission due to a competing or conflicting interests, another Editor or Editorial Board Member will be assigned in place to manage the peer review process of the submission and make acceptance decisions for publication.

Editorial Board Members are guided in their duties by the terms of reference as outlined online at https://ucl-about.scienceopen.com/editorial-board-terms-of-reference/.


Journal and article archiving

UCL Press works to include journals in various indexes and open access depositories to ensure article permanency as far as possible. In addition to subject specific indexing, officially published articles are deposited into the Portico Preservation Service and to UCL’s institutional open access repository, called UCL Discovery, where articles are freely available to access and download. 


Author self-archiving and repository policy

UCL Press supports open sharing of research at all stages. Authors may deposit manuscripts on preprint servers, institutional repositories, or personal websites at any time, for the following versions:

  • Submitted version: Pre-peer review manuscript may be posted before or during journal submission.
  • Accepted version: Post-peer review, pre-typeset manuscript may be deposited once accepted.
  • Published version: Final version of record may be shared under the article’s Creative Commons licence; authors must include correct attribution to UCL Press, the journal title, and a link to the version of record.

Posting preprints or other versions is not considered prior publication and does not affect submission, peer review, or acceptance in UCL Press journals.

Authors may choose any licence for their preprint, including Creative Commons licences. Authors should be aware that the licence they select will determine how the preprint may be shared and reused.


Disclosure and updates

Authors should disclose details of any preprint of their manuscript (including DOI and licensing terms) when submitting the manuscript to any UCL Press journal or at any point during consideration with a UCL Press journal.

Once the article is published, authors are responsible for updating the preprint record with its publication reference, including the DOI and URL of the published version on the UCL Press journal website.


Citation of preprints

Preprints may be cited in the reference list of articles under consideration at UCL Press journals. For guidance on best practice and citation formatting, authors are encouraged to use the free citation generator available at https://citation.crosscite.org.


Corrections and retractions

When corrections and retractions are necessary to maintain the integrity of published content, UCL Press will publish erratum, corrigendum, addendum, and retraction articles but will not make alterations to the version of record initially published, other than to provide a URL link to the erratum, corrigendum, addendum, or retraction article.

UCL Press and Editors will follow COPE guidelines where corrections and retractions may be required.


Misconduct and grievance procedure

In the event of any suspected allegations of publication and/or research misconduct, UCL Press and Editors will follow COPE guidelines. This can result in UCL Press and Editors contacting the author’s institution raising concern over findings and can lead to sharing article and submission information to other third parties, including but not limited to: author(s); institution(s); ethics committee(s); other journals and publishers.


Research misconduct

Any research that involves humans, animals, or plants, must have been carried out within the appropriate ethical framework, as above. Should research submitted to a UCL Press journal be suspected of not having taken place within an appropriate ethical framework, the Editors may reject the article and inform the author’s institution and any other third parties where applicable. In addition, where misconduct has been proven, UCL Press will follow COPE retraction guidelines.


Publication misconduct

In the event of any suspected allegations of publication misconduct concerning any submission or publication, UCL Press journals will follow COPE guidelines.


Appeals and complaints

UCL Press journals follow the COPE code of conduct when dealing with any appeals and complaints. In the first instance, contact the Editorial office and Editor. Further information including contact information can be found in the individual journal’s information pages.


Advertising policy

UCL Press does not currently place any advertising on journals’ webpages or include any advertising in journal issues.


Article-processing charges

UCL Press Journals, as listed below, do not currently charge an Article-Processing Charge (APC). Authors of accepted papers will not be requested or required to make an APC payment before publication of their article. The list of these UCL Press Journals are:

  1. Advances in Perioperative Care
  2. Archaeology International
  3. Architecture_MPS
  4. Europe and the World: A Law Review
  5. Film Education Journal
  6. History Education Research Journal
  7. International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning
  8. International Journal of Social Pedagogy
  9. Jewish Historical Studies
  10. Journal of Bentham Studies
  11. Journal of Experimental Pragmatics
  12. The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society
  13. The London Journal of Canadian Studies
  14. London Review of Education
  15. Radical Americas
  16. Research for All
  17. UCL Open Environment


Artificial Intelligence (AI)

This policy outlines the acceptable use of AI in UCL Press Journals. For information on AI and copyright for UCL Press authors, please see https://uclpress.co.uk/information-on-ai-and-copyright-for-ucl-press-authors.


What do we mean by AI-assisted technologies and Generative AI?

Generative AI (Gen AI) is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) that automatically generates content in response to written prompts. The generated content includes texts, software code, images, videos and music. AI is trained using data from webpages, social media conversations and other online content. It generates its outputs by statistically analysing the distribution of words or pixels or other elements in the data that it has ingested and identifying and repeating common patterns (for example, which words typically follow which words). We acknowledge that AI and AI-assisted technologies and tools can be used responsibly in some of the following ways:

  1. Idea development and research design
  2. Language improvement and editing
  3. Literature review and synthesis
  4. Assistance on content development and structure
  5. Data analysis and management

Our guidance for authors, reviewers and journal Editors is that use of AI-assisted technologies and tools should not replace key authoring tasks and applying AI technology should be done with transparency and human oversight. All the work should be reviewed and edited carefully, because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, or biased.


Principles on the use of AI-assisted technologies in articles

It is understood that the use of AI-assisted technologies in research and writing is an evolving practice in a rapidly changing landscape and as such we will continue to review these guidelines, as appropriate. It is also generally accepted that the use of AI-assisted tools and technologies within research workflows can be beneficial but that appropriate ethical and transparent use of such tools is needed to maintain integrity and rigour of the published literature. Authors, Editors and Reviewers are also urged to consider the ecological and human costs connected to these applications before using such technologies.


Accountability

Authors are responsible and accountable for the originality, validity, and integrity of the content of their submissions. In choosing to use Generative AI tools, authors are expected to do so responsibly and in accordance with our editorial policies and publishing guidelines, particularly in relation to publishing ethics and plagiarism. Authors should be able to assert that there is no plagiarism in their paper, including in text and images produced by the AI. Humans must ensure there is appropriate attribution of all quoted material, including full citations.


Disclosure

Any use of AI assisted technologies in an article must be made apparent by way of clear disclosure of its use. Authors must declare how and where they have used AI-assisted technologies in their work. Authors should read the journals own author guidelines for further information about on how to declare this.


Authorship

The UCL Press Journals authorship policy states that every named author in an article must have made a significant contribution to the article and have approved all its claims. We therefore do not allow AI or LLM tools to be listed as an author on any research-based work published by UCL Press. AI (such as LLMs, chatbots or image creators) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work and these responsibilities are required for authorship. Therefore, humans are responsible for any submitted material that includes the use of AI-assisted technologies. Authors should carefully review and edit the result because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, or biased. Authors should also not cite AI as an author.


Use for translation

If you plan to use AI-assisted technologies for translation of non-English language material that you plan to include in your article, authors must also supply the original (not translated) version of the text before translation upon submission. Although these technologies may seem to offer an authoritative translation service, often there are inaccuracies that can only be identified by careful human oversight and editing.

For translations, please add an endnote to the text that has been translated to describe which tool you employed, the prompt(s) you used and the date it was used.


Use in images and figures

Broadly, the use of AI-assisted technologies in the creation, editing, manipulating, enhancing, adjusting, obscuring, moving, removing or introducing any new specific feature within an image or figure, is not accepted. Image forensics tools or specialised software might be applied to submitted manuscripts to identify suspected image and figure irregularities.

It would, however, be acceptable for AI-assisted technologies and tools that are used as part of research design or methodology (such as in AI-assisted imaging approaches to generate or interpret the underlying research data, for example in data visualisation), but this must be clearly declared as part of the methodology and full disclosure about what tools were used, how the tools were used, when this was used and explicably outline which images or figures were created using these tools. Where necessary, authors may be asked to provide pre-AI-adjusted versions of images and/or the composite raw images used to create the final submitted versions, for editorial assessment.


Principles on the use of AI-assisted technologies during review

UCL Press journals do not use Gen AI, LLMs or other generative technologies for assessing incoming manuscripts. However, we check for possible plagiarism using the iThenticate plagiarism screener tool which may also scan to check for any possible use of AI in writing the manuscript.

Editors and peer reviewers must treat a manuscript that is under review confidentially and must not submit the manuscript through an AI-assisted technology or tool. Submitting any manuscript or data the manuscript reports on through any AI-assisted technology or tool may incur a breach in confidentiality, proprietary rights and data, including personally identifiable information. Editors and peer reviewers must also not upload their report text through an AI-assisted technology or tool.


Journals statement about the use of metrics

UCL Press is committed to the responsible use of metrics for all of its journals and published outputs and follows the UCL’s Bibliometrics Policy and its 11 Principles for the responsible use of bibliometrics (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/research/strategy-and-policy/bibliometrics-ucl/ucl-bibliometrics-policy).

Bibliometrics (or simply metrics) is a term describing the quantification of publications and their characteristics and includes a range of measurement approaches, such as the use of citation data, to quantify the influence or impact of publications. Whilst no single metric should be used as a proxy for quality when assessing a journal or publication, various metrics are used across UCL Press Journals depending on where the journal is currently indexed and the age of the publication.

Bibliometrics are becoming a common way to analyse and assess research, but are often used inappropriately or misleadingly, often with good intentions. Bibliometric data is very sensitive to the assumptions made about interpreting it, and there are many factors that complicate the use of bibliometrics – for example, as they are focused on citation data from journal articles, they are less relevant in disciplines that are less reliant on journal publishing (read more about this at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/research-support/bibliometrics/guidance-using-bibliometrics).

Similarly, while the use of metrics is not mandatory, in cases where they are used they should meet certain requirements – the impact factor of journals should never be used to assess individual publications. Readers, authors, reviewers, and Editors of UCL Press Journals are strongly encouraged to value the published research based on its own merits and not on the merits of metrics alone.

Readers will find two broad types of metrics in use across UCL Press Journals:


Journal-level metrics

Provided by indexers (for example, by the Web of Science or Scopus indexers) to evaluate the collective impact of the journal’s total output and not the impact of an author’s individual contribution. Please note that indexers who provide these metrics do not provide metrics for all journals but rather they do so via a selective application process whereby the journal is assessed by the indexer and admitted into the index if they decide it meets their criteria (such as the journal’s publication output, ethical and research integrity practices, and other criteria).


Article-level metrics

These article-level metrics (for example, individual downloads, citations, or ‘Altmetric Scores’ – a commercial service measuring the attention a publication receives across news, social media, blogs, and other sources) provide further information specific to the article only and are displayed on the article page. These metrics can show detail about how the community have accessed the publication, share the publication using online networking tools, as well as how the publication may have been re-used or further built-upon.