Editorial policies and publication ethics

Frontiers’ authorship policy ensures that all intellectual contributors are appropriately credited for their involvement in the work, as well as ensuring authors and contributors take responsibility for the final published material.

We ask that individuals contributing to academic work are clearly defined as either named authors (published in the byline and details specified in the contributions statement) or contributors (credited for their contribution in the acknowledgments section).

Authors must list the institution at the time that the research was conducted as their primary affiliation. Further affiliations can be listed subsequently in the submission system.

Frontiers follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines which state that, in order to qualify for authorship of a manuscript, the following criteria should be observed.

• Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work

• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content

• Provide approval for publication of the content

• Agree 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

Contributors who do not meet these criteria but nonetheless provided important contributions to the final manuscript should be included in the acknowledgment section. It is the author's responsibility to get written approval from the persons named in the acknowledgment section.

Frontiers uses CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy), which provides a standardized framework for acknowledging individual contributions to research projects, including 14 roles that can be used to represent the roles typically played by contributors to research outputs.

During the submission process, the submitting author will be asked to specify each co-author's contributions to the manuscript by choosing from among the 14 CRediT roles (listed in the table below). The authors’ contributions statement will be generated automatically based on the information provided, for example: 'AB: Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization, Methodology, Project administration; CZD: Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization, Methodology; EF: Writing – original draft, Conceptualization, Methodology; CYD: Writing – review & editing, Formal Analysis; GH: Writing – review & editing; IJ: Writing – review & editing.'

To comply with Frontiers authorship policy and ICMJE authorship criteria, each of the co-authors must have participated in writing the original manuscript draft, and/or have critically reviewed and edited the manuscript. Contributors who do not fulfill all ICMJE authorship criteria must be included in the acknowledgments section of the manuscript with their permission.

The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal and editorial office during the submission process, throughout peer review, and during publication. The corresponding author is also responsible for ensuring that the submission adheres to all journal requirements, including, but not exclusive to, details of authorship, study ethics and ethics approval, clinical trial registration documents, and conflict of interest declaration. The corresponding author should also be available post-publication to respond to any queries or critiques.

The submitting author is expected to include all co-authors on the submission system during the manuscript submission process. Requests to change the authors’ list will be considered only in exceptional circumstances and only where the authorship change is in adherence with Frontier's existing authorship policy. Requests to modify the authors’ list after submission should be made to the editorial office using the authorship change request form. Authorship changes requested post-acceptance will be denied except in exceptional circumstances. In case of any concerns regarding potential authorship manipulation, Frontiers reserves the right to contact the authors’ institution(s) for further investigation and/or decline the requested changes.

The following policies ensure that Frontiers’ high standards of publication ethics is maintained. They discuss established best practices in publishing and definitions of scientific, academic or publishing misconduct. We advise that you review the policies below to ensure your submission meets the necessary requirements to ensure the integrity of submissions to Frontiers.

Where evidence of misconduct is found, we reserve the right to take action that may include rejection, retraction, and/or further follow-up with the institution.

Frontiers is committed to upholding and fostering an environment that champions diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) in all its aspects. It is our pledge to ensure that every individual has an equal opportunity to be a part of the scientific community.

Our mission at Frontiers is to make science open, and that means it should be accessible to everyone. To achieve this, our use of language must be culturally sensitive and inclusive of others - readers, authors, and staff alike. In recognition of the evolving nature of language, we must strive to remain on top of cultural nuances and shifts over time, while continuously reviewing our unconscious biases. What is deemed acceptable may not always be universal and will differ across geography and time.

Authors, reviewers, editors, and Frontiers' staff have a shared responsibility to ensure that articles submitted and published use language that is appropriate for the respective field and is free from terminology that could be interpreted as hostile or offensive to people based on group differences such as ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, or health.

We expect all authors to demonstrate receptiveness to feedback on their choice of words or language from the editors and reviewers. We are committed to suggesting alternative language to ensure that all publications adhere to our inclusive language requirements. Frontiers will endeavour to support authors to replace offensive, outdated or exclusionary terms during the review process, however, we reserve the right not to publish material that goes against this policy. In certain exceptional circumstances, and to uphold our commitment to diversity and equity, we may modify language pre- and post-publication to ensure compliance with this policy.

The process of using inclusive language relates to day-to-day communication as well as content published by Frontiers. As part of this, all individuals should be culturally sensitive and inclusive of others in all communications.

Material submitted to Frontiers must comply with the following policies to ensure ethical publication of academic work.

Frontiers only publishes original content. Authors confirm that the content they're submitting is original in the terms and conditions upon submission. Manuscripts submitted to Frontiers must not have been previously published or be under consideration for publication elsewhere, either in whole or in part. If an article has been previously submitted for publication elsewhere, Frontiers will only consider publication if the article has been definitively rejected by the other publisher(s) at the point of submission to Frontiers.

Submitting to multiple journals is classified as duplicate submission and is considered publication misconduct.

Fabrication and falsification
Frontiers opposes both the fabrication of data or images (that is, fake or made-up data) and falsification of data or images (that is, the intentional misrepresentation or deceptive manipulation of data).

Manuscripts prepared and written by commercial entities (fake-paper factories, ‘paper mills’) on behalf of researchers listed as authors on the manuscript do not meet Frontiers' policies and will not be considered for publication. We will take proactive action to reject suspicious manuscripts before peer review.

Redundant publication occurs when the same research (same or similar idea, data, results, and or drawn conclusions) is published more than once by the same or overlapping author groups. This includes adding small amounts of new data to an existing published paper and submitting it for review or publishing the same paper in multiple journals (sometimes known as salami slicing). This type of publication is unethical, and manuscripts where redundant publication is shown to have occurred will not be considered for publication in a Frontiers journal.

All submissions are screened for redundancy. To ensure the manuscript complies with our policy, authors must disclose any related publications and cite all related material where appropriate. It is advisable to discuss how the publication adds to the literature beyond any preliminary or related studies in the introduction.

Frontiers follows the COPE guidelines on redundant publication.

Plagiarism occurs when an author attempts to present previously published work as original content. Every manuscript submitted to Frontiers is screened for textual overlap by the software CrossCheck, powered by iThenticate. Manuscripts found to contain textual overlap will not be considered for publication by Frontiers.

We check all submitted manuscripts for plagiarism and duplication and publish only original content. Those manuscripts where plagiarism or duplication is shown to have occurred will not be considered for publication in a Frontiers journal. It is required that all submissions consist of content that has not been published previously. In accordance with COPE guidelines, we expect that "original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations." This condition also applies to an author's own work.

Theses and dissertations

Frontiers allows the inclusion of content that first appeared in an author's thesis so long as this is the only form in which it has appeared, is in line with the author's university policy, and can be accessed online. If the thesis is not archived online, it is considered original, unpublished data and is subject to the unpublished data restrictions of some article types. Inclusion of material from theses or dissertations should be noted in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and cited accordingly in the reference list. For some examples, please check the 'References' section of our author guidelines.

Conferences, proceedings, and abstracts

Manuscripts that first appeared as conference papers must be expanded upon if they are to be considered as original work. Authors are required to add a substantial amount of original content in the form of new raw material (experiments, data) or new treatment of old data sets, which lead to original discussion and/or conclusions, providing value that significantly exceeds the original conference version. As a rule of thumb, at least 30% of the content must be original. Authors submitting such work are required to:

• seek permission for reuse of the published conference paper if the author does not hold the copyright

• cite the conference in the acknowledgments section or the references section if applicable.

Blogs

Although permissible, extended manuscript content that previously appeared online in non-academic media, such as blogs, should be declared at the time of submission in the acknowledgments section of the manuscript.

Preprints

Our supportive preprint policy encourages full open access at all stages of a research paper, to share and generate knowledge researchers need to support their work. Authors publishing in Frontiers journals may share their work ahead of submission to a peer-reviewed journal, as well as during the Frontiers review process, on repositories or preprint servers (such as arXiv, PeerJ Preprints, OSF, and others), provided that the server imposes no restrictions upon the author's full copyright and re-use rights. Also note that any manuscript files shared after submission to Frontiers journals, during the review process, cannot contain the Frontiers logo or branding.

Correct attribution of the original source in repositories or preprint servers must be included within the manuscript on submission or added at re-submission if the deposition is done during the review process. We ask that the preprint is both listed within the acknowledgement section and the full citation included in the reference list.

If the article is published, authors are then strongly encouraged to link from the preprint server to the Frontiers publication to enable readers to find, access, and cite the final peer-reviewed version. Please note that we cannot consider for publication content that has been previously published, or is already under review, within a scientific journal, book or similar entity.

Translations

We accept manuscript submissions that are exact translations of previously published work. This should be clearly stated in the manuscript upon submission. Permission from the original publisher and authors needs to be sought and stated in the manuscript. Relevant documents should be provided as supplementary material for verification by the editor and the editorial office. The original work from which the manuscript has been translated should be clearly referenced.

Example: "This is a [LANGUAGE] language translation/reprint of [TITLE OF ORIGINAL] originally published in [PUBLICATION NAME]. [NAME] prepared this translation with support from [FUNDING SOURCE, if any]. Permission was granted by [NAME]."

Please note that Frontiers may request copies of related publications if there are any concerns about overlap or possible redundancy.

Frontiers takes concerns regarding image manipulation seriously. We do not accept that individual features within an image are modified (including enhanced, obscured, moved, recycled, removed, or added). Image processing methods (such as changes to the brightness, contrast, or color balance) must be applied to every pixel in the image, and the changes should not alter the information illustrated in the figure. Cropped images should be avoided where possible for gels and blots. Where cropped images are shown in figures, a full scan of the entire original gel(s) must be submitted as part of the supplementary material. Where control images are re-used for illustrative purposes, this must be clearly declared in the figure legend. If any form of image processing is legitimately required for the interpretation of the data, the software and the enhancement technique must be declared in the methods section of the manuscript. Image grouping and splicing must be clearly stated in the manuscript and the figure text.

Our artificial intelligence review assistant (AIRA) is trained to detect specific types of recycling, modifications, and manipulation. Any concerns raised over undeclared image modifications will be investigated, and the authors will be asked to provide the original images and data. Failure by authors to adequately address such concerns will result in rejection of the manuscript, and the issue may be raised with the authors' institutions. If it is brought to our attention post-publication, it will be investigated, and authors will be required to provide the original images. Failure to do so may result in retraction.

Frontiers opposes both the fabrication of data or images (that is, fake or made-up data) and falsification of data or images (that is, the intentional misrepresentation or deceptive manipulation of data).

Manuscripts prepared and written by commercial entities (fake-paper factories, ‘paper mills’) on behalf of researchers listed as authors on the manuscript do not meet Frontiers' policies and will not be considered for publication. We will take proactive action to reject suspicious manuscripts before peer review.

Frontiers is a member of COPE and upholds COPE’s standards for ethical peer review.

Authors, editors, and reviewers are required to fulfill their responsibilities in the review process objectively, honestly, and in accordance with ethical standards. All parties must take action if they become aware of any attempt to manipulate the peer review process and alert the journal in such instances.

Any intentional deception, manipulation, or misrepresentation in the peer review process is a serious act of publishing misconduct. Activities that constitute peer review manipulation include any of the following;

• Falsifying reviewer and editor identities or credentials

• Colluding with other parties to manipulate review outcomes

• Fabricating or plagiarizing review reports

• Engaging in coercive or biased reviewing practices (including peer review rings)

• Recommending reviewers with conflicts of interest known to the author without disclosing these conflicts

• Obfuscation or non-disclosure of known COIs of editors, reviewers or authors.

• Coercing reviewers to provide favorable or biased evaluations

• Any other actions that may reasonably compromise the objectivity and integrity of the peer review process.

Where an investigation yields evidence of peer review manipulation, Frontiers will take necessary action, including retraction of the affected publication or revocation of acceptance if the manuscript is still under review. Determination of what is considered reasonable evidence to constitute peer review manipulation remains at the discretion of Frontiers, with the aim of ensuring fairness and objectivity in the investigation process.

All concerns and allegations will be investigated in accordance with COPE guidelines and further details on how to raise a concern about unethical practices in peer review can be found in the section on complaints and allegations.

Authors are required to disclose in their manuscript legends the number of times experiments were conducted, with a minimum of three replicates (n=3) generally required for statistical robustness. Additionally, the specific statistical analyses performed must be clearly stated, facilitating transparency and reproducibility in research findings.

Frontiers' journals require that manuscripts primarily comprising solely of bioinformatics analyses, computational studies of public data, or findings from Mendelian Randomisation studies must include appropriate validation. Acceptable forms of validation include:

• independent clinical or patient cohorts

• biological validation, either in vitro or in vivo
  

Manuscripts lacking such validation may risk being considered unsuitable for publication, as they do not meet the required evidence standards necessary for scientific conclusions.

Authors are strongly encouraged to align their research with internationally recognized reporting guidelines. Relevant reporting guidelines and checklists should be uploaded as supplemental materials upon submission.

Reporting guidelines for common article types and study designs can be found below and checklists for additional study designs are available on the Equator Network website. The Equator library contains a comprehensive searchable database of reporting guidelines and links to other resources relevant to enhance quality of research reporting.

• Randomized controlled trials (RCTs): CONSORT guidelines, flowchart, and structured abstract checklist (see also: Clinical trial reporting standards)

• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses: PRISMA guidelines, flowchart, and structured abstract checklist

• Observational studies in epidemiology: STROBE guidelines (also refer to RECORD for observational studies using routinely collected health data) and MOOSE guidelines

• Animal pre-clinical studies: ARRIVE guidelines

• Web-based surveys: CHERRIES guidelines

• Studies using data from electronic health records: CODE-EHR guidelines

• Reporting of sex and gender information: SAGER guidelines
  

All clinical trials must comply with the policy details outlined below. Failure to meet the policy requirements at the time of submission may lead to the rejection of your manuscript.

Frontiers follow the World Health Organisation (WHO) definition of a clinical trial: “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. Interventions include but are not restricted to drugs, cells, and other biological products, surgical procedures, radiologic procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, process-of-care changes, preventive care, etc. This definition includes Phase I to Phase IV trials.”

Trial registration

In accordance with the recommendations and guidelines provided by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMEJ), WHO, and the Declaration of Helsinki, all clinical trials submitted to Frontiers must be registered prospectively in any Primary Registry in the WHO Registry Network or an ICMJE Approved Registry at or before the recruitment of the first subject. This applies to all clinical trials that began enrolment after 1 July 2005. Frontiers will reject retrospectively registered clinical trials.

Reporting standards

• Information on the clinical trial registration within the abstract, including the Clinical Trials Unique Identifier, Registry Name, and URL, must be presented in the abstract.

• Any changes made since the registration of the trial must be communicated using the CONSERVE guidelines. Unreported discrepancies may lead to rejection of the manuscript.

• For randomized trials: Clinical trials with randomization should comply with the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) 25-item checklist and include a CONSORT flow diagram in the figures or supplementary material.

• Clinical trials and artificial intelligence (AI): Clinical trials with AI components should adhere to the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials-Artificial Intelligence extension.

• N-of-1: Case reports investigating intervention effectiveness in a single participant should follow the CONSORT extension for N-of-1.

• Clinical study protocols: Protocols must be registered in a public clinical trial registry and follow the Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials (SPIRIT) guidelines and checklist.

• Clinical study protocols and artificial intelligence (AI): Clinical study protocols evaluating interventions with an AI component, should conform to the Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials–Artificial Intelligence (SPIRIT-AI) extension.

For clinical protocols

All submissions should follow the Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials (SPIRIT) guidelines and checklist. For Study Protocols of Clinical Trials that use AI components, please follow the Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials–Artificial Intelligence extension.

Please include the registry name, unique identifier, and URL in the abstract.

A conflict of interest can be anything potentially interfering with, or that could be perceived as interfering with, full and objective peer review, decision-making, or publication of articles submitted to Frontiers. Personal, financial, and professional affiliations or relationships can be perceived as conflicts of interest.

All authors and members of Frontiers editorial boards are required to disclose any actual and potential conflicts of interest at submission or upon accepting an editorial or review assignment.

The Frontiers review system is designed to guarantee the most transparent and objective editorial and review process, and because the handling editor's and reviewers' names are made public upon the publication of articles, conflicts of interest will be widely apparent.
Failure to declare competing interests can result in the rejection of a manuscript. If an undisclosed competing interest comes to light after publication, Frontiers will take action in accordance with internal policies and Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines.

Anything that can be perceived as a potential conflict of interest should be disclosed within the statements section during submission. A conflict of interest statement will be automatically generated, included in the generated PDF file for peer review, and in the final publication version of the article.

What should I disclose?

As an author, disclosure of any potential conflicts of interest should be done during the submission process. Consider the following questions and make sure you disclose any positive answers.

If you failed to disclose potential conflicts of interest during submission, or in case of doubt, please contact the Frontiers editorial office at editorial.office@frontiersin.org with the details of the potential conflicts as soon as possible.

For commercial affiliations, all authors must be accounted for. We recommend using the following template:

• [AUTHOR NAME] was employed by [COMPANY]. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

For commercial funding, the role of the funder must be declared. We recommend the following statements:

• The authors declare that this study received funding from [FUNDER NAME]. The funder had the following involvement with the study: [DESCRIPTION OF INVOLVEMENT]

• The authors declare that this study received funding from [FUNDER NAME]. The funder was not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article, or the decision to submit it for publication.

What about editors and reviewers?

Handling editors and reviewers will be asked to consider the following potential conflicts of interest before accepting any editing or review assignment.

In line with guidance from The World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), editors can submit manuscripts to their journals. However, they must recuse themselves from any involvement in the peer review process, editorial handling or editorial decision-making for their own articles. To offer a greater assurance of impartiality, every effort will be made to remove any editorial bias from the process and another editor on the editorial board will handle these submissions (in line with COPE recommendations). A submitting editor will not be involved in reviewer selection and their paper will follow the same single-blind peer review process. Given that our peer review process is transparent since we publish the names of editors and reviewers, it reduces the risk of hidden conflict of interest. 

Editors submitting their own work to Frontiers' journals are required to list their appointment at Frontiers in the conflicts of interests statement upon submission. 

We acknowledge that some of our employees may also be active researchers and authors. In instances where a current employee submits a manuscript to a Frontiers journal, the following requirements apply: 

1. The employee must notify the research integrity team upon submission of the manuscript. 

2. The employee must recuse themselves from any involvement in the manuscript's peer review or processing. 

3. A Conflict of Interest (COI) statement must be included in the manuscript, stating: 

"Since [Year], the co-author [XX] has been employed by Frontiers Media SA. [XX] has declared their affiliation with Frontiers. In accordance with company policy, they have not participated in the peer review process. The handling editor confirms that the peer review process adhered to the standards of fair and objective review." 

Details of all funding sources must be provided in the funding section of the manuscript, including grant numbers, if applicable. All Frontiers articles are published with open access under the CC-BY Creative Commons attribution license. Articles published with Frontiers automatically fulfill or exceed the requirements for open access mandated by many institutions and funding bodies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Medical Research Council, Research Councils UK, and the Wellcome Trust. Frontiers submits funding data to the Open Funder Registry, which is a funder identification service from CrossRef resulting from collaboration between scholarly publishers and funding agencies.

Frontiers’ open science and open data policies advocate for making research outputs freely accessible and transparent. We request that authors familiarise themselves with the following policies. We aim to achieve the best community standards regarding data availability, ensuring increased levels of transparency and reproducibility in our published articles.

Our policies on data availability are informed by community-driven standards, which we endorse, such as the Transparency and Openness (TOP) guidelines and the joint declaration of data citation principles produced by FORCE11.

Authors are required to make all materials used to conduct their research available to other researchers. Research materials necessary to enable the reproduction of an experiment should be clearly indicated in the Materials and Methods section. Relevant materials such as protocols, analytic methods, and study material should preferably be uploaded to an online repository providing a global persistent link/identifier. If this is not possible, authors are strongly encouraged to make this material available upon request to interested researchers, and this should be stated in the manuscript.

Authors wishing to participate in the FORCE11 Resource Identification Initiative should cite antibodies, genetically modified organisms, software tools, data, databases, and services using the corresponding catalog number and Research Resource Identifier (RRID) in your current manuscript. More information about the project and how to search for an RRID, is available here.

Frontiers requires that authors make the minimal data set (ie data underlying the findings described and used to reach the conclusions of the manuscript) available to any qualified researchers. The data should be FAIR – findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable – so that other researchers can locate and use the data.

Authors are required to deposit mandatory data types in public, community-supported repositories, such as those listed below, before publication. It is the authors' responsibility to ensure that their data is publicly available before their manuscript is published.

Issues found post-publication regarding inaccessible mandatory data types will be assessed in line with our policies and publication ethics and may lead to escalation to institutions or the publication of Corrigendum and Expression of Concern articles.

Authors are encouraged to contact our data availability office at datapolicy@frontiersin.org before submission with any queries concerning data reporting.

We strongly encourage sharing the maximal amount of data; however where ethical, legal or privacy issues are present the data should not be shared. In cases where some or all data cannot be shared for legal, ethical or privacy restrictions, the authors should make these limitations clear in the Data Availability Statement at the time of submission. They include:

• Where there are ethical, legal, or privacy-related concerns with sharing the data

• Case reports or case series of fewer than three individuals

Authors are responsible for ensuring that the data shared are in accordance with the ethical consent provided by participants on the use of confidential/identifiable human data. We require that the authors demonstrate that publication of such data does not compromise the anonymity of the participants or breach local data protection laws.

In situations where access is restricted to protect confidential or proprietary information, authors are required to explain the restrictions on the dataset and make the data available upon request with permission of the third party. The Data Availability Statement should include all necessary contact information to request access to the dataset.

Authors are encouraged to cite all datasets generated or analyzed in the study. Where datasets are cited, they should be included in the references list to maximize future usability.

The following format should be used:
[DATASET] Author names. (year) Data Title. Repository name. Version. Persistent identifier

Data availability statements are required for all articles published with Frontiers. During the submission process, authors will be asked to detail the location of the raw data underlying the conclusions made in the manuscript, and whether it will be made available to other researchers following publication. Authors will also be asked for the details of any existing datasets that have been analyzed in the manuscript. These datasets should be cited in accordance with our data citation guidelines.

A statement will be automatically generated using the information provided in the submission form; however, manuscripts containing incomplete or incorrect statements will be prevented from entering the review process.

• Original datasets are available in a publicly accessible repository:
  The original contributions presented in the study are publicly available. This data can be found here: [link/accession number].

• Existing datasets are available in a publicly accessible repository:
  Publicly available datasets were analyzed in this study. This data can be found here: [link/accession number].

• Information for existing publicly accessible datasets is contained within the article (such as for studies using more than 10 accession numbers):
  The datasets presented in this study can be found in online repositories. The names of the repository/repositories and accession number(s) can be found in the article/supplementary material.

• All relevant data is contained within the article:
  The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

• Restrictions apply to the datasets:
  The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because [VALID REASON]. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to [text input].

• Data has been obtained from a third party:
  The data analyzed in this study was obtained from [SOURCE], the following licenses/restrictions apply [RESTRICTIONS]. Requests to access these datasets should be directed to [NAME, EMAIL].

• Datasets are available on request:
  The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
  

Authors are required to deposit the following mandatory data types in public, community-supported repositories, such as those listed below, before publication of an associated manuscript.

*Genetic sequence variants should be annotated according to the guidelines established by the Human Variome Project.

Authors are encouraged to consider deposition in public, community-supported repositories of the data-types listed below.

Studies employing RNASeq for comparative transcriptomic analyses must contain at least three biological replicates (unless otherwise justified). Each biological replicate should be represented in an independent library, each with a unique barcode if libraries are multiplexed for sequencing. Validation on a number of key transcripts highlighted in the study is also highly recommended.

Full data accompanying these experiments must be made available to reviewers at the time of submission in a freely accessible resource, eg the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) or European Nucleotide Archive (ENA). Depending on the question addressed in a manuscript, de novo assemblies of transcriptomes may also require multiple replicates, and assembled sequences together with sequence annotation must be made freely available, such as in figshare or Dryad.

Authors should provide relevant information relating to how peptide/protein matches were undertaken, including methods used to process and analyze data, false discovery rates (FDR) for large-scale studies, and threshold or cut-off rates for peptide and protein matches. Further information should include software used, mass spectrometer type, sequence database and version, number of sequences in database, processing methods, mass tolerances used for matching, variable/fixed modifications, allowable missed cleavages, etc.

Authors should provide as supplementary material the information used to identify proteins and/or peptides. This should include information such as accession numbers, observed mass (m/z), charge, delta mass, matched mass, peptide/protein scores, peptide modification, miscleavages, peptide sequence, match rank, matched species (for cross-species matching), number of peptide matches, etc. Ambiguous protein/peptide matches should be indicated.

For quantitative proteomics analyses, authors should provide information to justify the statistical significance, including biological replicates, statistical methods, estimates of uncertainty, and the methods used for calculating error.

For peptide matches with biologically relevant post-translational modifications (PTMs) and for any protein match that has occurred using a single mass spectrum, authors should include this information as raw data or annotated spectra, or submit data to an online repository (recommended option; see table below).

Raw or matched data and 2-DE images should be submitted to public proteomics repositories such as those participating in ProteomeXchange. Submission codes and/or links to data should be provided within the manuscript.

We encourage authors to consult the Standards for Reporting Enzymology Data (STRENDA) guidelines when reporting and publishing enzyme kinetics data. The STRENDA guidelines aim to support authors to comprehensively report kinetic and equilibrium data from their investigations of enzyme activities. The following is the prose description of those parameters that need to be provided in scientific publications.

All reports of kinetic and binding data must include a description of the identity of the catalytic or binding entity (enzyme, protein, nucleic acid or other molecule). This information should include the origin or source of the molecule, its purity, composition, and other characteristics such as post-translational modifications, mutations, and any modifications made to facilitate expression or purification. The assay methods and exact experimental conditions of the assay must be fully described if it is a new assay or provided as a reference to previously published work, with or without modifications.

The temperature, pH, and pressure (if other than atmospheric) of the assay must always be included, even if previously published. In instances where catalytic activity or binding cannot be detected, an estimate of the limit of detection based on the sensitivity and error analysis of the assay should be provided. Ambiguous terms such as “not detectable” should be avoided. A description of the software used for data analysis should be included along with calculated errors for all parameters.

First-order and second-order rate constants should be reported in units of s-1 and M-1•s-1, respectively. Equilibrium binding constants should normally be reported as dissociation constants with concentration units (M, mM, µM, nM). The values kcat, kcat/Km and Km from steady-state enzyme kinetics should be reported in units of s-1, M-1•s-1 and concentration (mM, µM, nM), respectively. The steady-state specific activity of an enzyme should normally be reported as a kcat. If there is considerable uncertainty in the molar concentration of the catalyst, the specific activity should be reported as a Vmax (nmol, µmol) of product formed per amount of protein per unit time (eg µmol•mg-1•s-1).
The minimum information required to correctly describe assay conditions can be found in List 1A, and enzyme activity data in List 1B.

We strongly encourage authors to make available all statistical analysis code used to conduct their research available to other researchers. Code necessary to enable the reproduction of an experiment should be clearly indicated in the Materials and Methods section, and where possible code should be uploaded to an online repository (such as github.com or code ocean) providing a global persistent link/identifier.

We strongly encourage sharing original code where possible. In situations where custom code is proprietary, an exception will be granted providing that all relevant software needed to replicate the results of the study are available commercially for researchers. Details of the proprietary software used should be listed in the materials and methods section.
At submission, authors should declare any intellectual property relating to the code and themselves in a conflict of interest statement.

Frontiers requires that all statements concerning quantitative differences should be based on quantitative data and statistical testing. For example, if a quantitative statement is made regarding the abundance of a certain protein based on a western blot, we request that the blot be scanned and the abundance assessed quantitatively using the correct analytic software (such as ImageJ) and statistics in order to support that statement.

Statistics should/must be applied for independent experiments. The number of independent samples and the deviation parameters (such as standard error of the mean, standard deviation, confidence intervals) should be clearly stated in the Methods or the Figure legends. In general, technical replicates within a single experiment are not considered to be independent samples. Where multiple comparisons are employed (such as microarray data or genome-wide association studies), any analysis should correct for false positive results. Descriptions of statistical procedures should include the software and analysis used, and must be sufficiently detailed to be reproduced.

This policy covers acceptable uses of generative AI technologies such as Large Language Models (ChatGPT, Jasper) and text-to-image generators (DALL-E 2, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion) in the writing or editing of manuscripts submitted to Frontiers.

If AI tools have been used to generate main text, then this must be clearly disclosed in the acknowledgments. Authors should not list a generative AI technology as a co-author or author of any submitted manuscript. Generative AI technologies cannot be held accountable for all aspects of a manuscript and consequently do not meet the ICMJE criteria required for authorship.

If the author of a submitted manuscript has used written or visual content produced by or edited using a generative AI technology, this use must comply to all Frontiers guidelines and policies. Specifically, the author remains responsible for checking the factual accuracy of all content created using generative AI technology. This includes, but is not limited to, any quotes, citations, or references.

Figures produced by or edited using a generative AI technology must be checked to ensure they accurately reflect the data presented in the manuscript. Authors must also check that any written or visual content produced by or edited using a generative AI technology is free from plagiarism.

If the author of a submitted manuscript has used written or visual content produced by or edited using a generative AI technology, such use must be acknowledged in the acknowledgments section of the manuscript and the methods section, if applicable. This explanation must list the name, version, model, and source of the generative AI technology.

We encourage authors to upload all input prompts provided to a generative AI technology and outputs received from a generative AI technology in the supplementary files for the manuscript.

Generative AI technologies should not be used to review the content of a submitted manuscript or used to make decisions as to the acceptance or rejection of a manuscript. Responsibility for the integrity of the review process must remain with the editors and reviewers who have accepted their roles as relevant experts.

The use of generative AI technologies in the writing or editing of a submitted manuscript remains under the discretion of the author following the policy outlined above.

All research submitted to Frontiers for consideration must have been conducted in accordance with Frontiers guidelines on study ethics. In accordance with COPE guidelines, Frontiers reserves the right to reject any manuscript that editors believe does not uphold high ethical standards, even if authors have obtained ethical approval or if ethical approval is not required. Frontiers encourages authors to follow the ARRIVE guidelines for the design, analysis, and reporting of scientific research.

All research involving regulated animals (that is, all live vertebrates and higher invertebrates) must have been reviewed and approved by an ethics committee before commencing the study and performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations. Frontiers follows the International Association of Veterinary Editors (AVMA) guidelines for publication of studies including animal research. Clinical studies involving animals and interventions outside of routine care require ethics committee oversight as per the American Veterinary Medical Association. Authors must provide ethics approval information within the submission system, which generates an ethics statement to be included in the submission. The generated ethics statement will be included in the reviewer file, in the following format:

"The animal study was reviewed and approved by [Full name and affiliation of ethics committee]."

If the study is exempt from ethics approval, authors need to state the reasons for exemption within the generated statement. Studies involving client-owned animals (non-commercially available animals such as pets or livestock) should demonstrate the best practice veterinary care and confirm that written informed consent has been granted by the owner(s), or the legal representative of the owner(s). Here is an example of a generated statement for a study involving client-owned animals:

"The animal study was reviewed and approved by [Full name and affiliation of ethics committee]. Written informed consent was obtained from the owners for the participation of their animals in this study."

Studies involving animals should be conducted according to internationally accepted standards and are expected to comply with the three Rs principle (Replace, Reduce, Refine). Frontiers endorses the ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) for reporting experiments involving live animals. Authors are encouraged to use the ARRIVE checklist and to submit this checklist with manuscripts involving animal research; Frontiers' editors reserve the right to request this checklist.

Editors can request additional documentation, including approval forms and/or relevant citations from the literature, if experimental details described in a study deviate from common practice in animal research. Editors also reserve the right to reject a manuscript if research involves protocols that are inconsistent with commonly accepted norms for animal welfare, independent of ethics committee approval or previously published articles using such protocols.

Authors are advised to consult the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals (2020) for guidance on veterinary best practice for the anesthesia and euthanasia of animals. Studies involving euthanasia protocols involving chloral hydrate, ether, and chloroform overdose are strongly discouraged. Authors are encouraged to provide a full description of any anesthetic, surgical or euthanasia procedures performed during a study.

All manuscripts describing studies where death is an endpoint will be subject to additional ethical considerations. Frontiers reserves the right to reject manuscripts lacking appropriate justification.

Studies involving human participants

Research involving human participants should have been conducted in accordance with the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki. Studies involving human participants must be performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines, with the appropriate institutional ethics committee's prior approval and informed written consent from all human subjects involved in the study including for publication of the results. Confirmation of this approval is required upon submission of a manuscript to Frontiers; authors must provide ethics committee information within the submission system, which generates an ethics statement to be included in the submission. Information regarding subjects' (or when appropriate, the parent's or guardian's) consent for participation should be provided within the submission system.

Frontiers requires that consent for participation is both informed and written, unless waived by an ethics committee or otherwise not required as per local legislation. The submission system will generate an ethics statement in the following format (the statement will also be included in the final manuscript version for publication):

"The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by [Full name and affiliation of ethics committee]. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study."

If the study is exempt from ethics approval or consent procedures, authors need clearly to state the reasons in the generated statement. Frontiers may request a letter from the authors, obtained from an ethics committee in cases where full review and approval has been waived by the committee.

To protect subject anonymity, identifying information should not be included in the manuscript unless such information is absolutely necessary for scientific purposes AND explicit approval has been granted by the subjects.

Studies involving vulnerable populations

Our research integrity team may request extra information from authors conducting research on vulnerable populations. This may include:

• the recruitment procedures and rationale for population use

• a copy of the consent form that was read and signed by participants

• the study protocol approved by the ethics committee

• any other standard documents such as ethical approval certificate of consent form(s).
  

For studies on vulnerable populations, authors must ensure that the data is summarised and does not include any individual data. The following data availability statement can be used to direct researchers to access your data: 'The datasets for this article are not publicly available due to concerns regarding participant/patient anonymity. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to the corresponding author.'

Inclusion of identifiable human data

Frontiers follows the ICMJE recommendations on the protection of research participants, which state that patients have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. We require nonessential identifiable details to be omitted from all manuscripts, and written informed consent will be required if there is any doubt that anonymity can be maintained.

It is the responsibility of the researchers and authors to ensure that these principles are complied with, including the obtaining of written informed consent for publication of any potentially identifiable data or images.

Written informed consent can be documented on a form provided by an institution or ethics committee, and it must clearly state how the identifiable data will be used. Frontiers' own consent form may be used for this purpose, although not required if an alternative form of consent, meeting the ICMJE recommendations, is used. We consider it to be the author's duty to encourage participants or patients whose consent for publication is required to read and understand the ICMJE guidelines, for their information prior to completing the consent form. Participants should also be encouraged to ask any questions and to ensure they are comfortable before they sign the consent form.

The completed consent forms should be stored by authors or their respective institutions, in accordance with institutional policies. Completed forms should not be included with your Frontiers submission. However, consent forms should be made available upon request from the editor or editorial office, during the review process or post-publication.

The determination of what constitutes identifiable data lies with our editors and editorial office staff, and manuscripts may be rejected if the required consent documents cannot be provided. Please note that written informed consent for publication is required for all case report articles where the patient or subject is identified or identifiable. Information regarding participant/patient consent for publication of identifiable data should be provided within the submission system. This will generate an ethics statement that will be directly included in the manuscript.

Authors are required to specifically state in their legends how many times experiments were performed (in general we require n=3 as a minimum) and what specific statistical analysis was performed.

Authors conducting research outside of their own country or utilizing biological, geological material, conflict minerals, or any cultural resources outside of their community (such as those belonging to Indigenous communities) should be mindful of the potential or perceived power and resource differential, particularly in cases where research is conducted in limited-resource settings.

Authors are encouraged to adhere to the guidelines depicted in the Global Code of Conduct for Equitable Research Partnerships (TRUST Code) when conceptualizing, designing, performing, and reporting research on global settings. If permits/licenses were required for conducting research in a country outside of the authors’ country/countries of residence, authors should include the permit/license number, date and name of the authority that issued the permit/license in the Methods section of the manuscript.

Frontiers reserves the right to contact the authors to request any of this information at any time.

Name and pronoun changes can occur for many reasons, including, but not limited to, marital status, religion, and gender identity. To request a name or pronoun change, please complete the name change request form and email it to research.integrity@frontiersin.org. Please make sure your request includes the following information.

• Reason for name change

• Your former name, new name, email address, and ORCID ID

• Your role as an author, editor, and/or reviewer

• A list of your Frontiers publications, and/or Frontiers editing/reviewing assignment

• Preference on whether this update is silent, or by means of a Corrigendum (see below for more information)

Once your form has been received and the change is confirmed, your previous publications and/or editing and reviewing assignments will be updated to reflect your new name/pronoun.

Depending on your preference, we’ll update your name/pronoun ‘silently’, ie, without requiring a new article or correction to be published or by means of a correction. You are free to notify your co-authors if you choose to do so; Frontiers will only notify the corresponding author of any silent name or pronoun updates.

Silent and non-silent updates will also be notified to PMC, PubMed, and CrossRef, however Frontiers cannot be held responsible for updates to third party databases, which may have their own policies regarding such changes. The requesting author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal and editorial office. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure their Loop profile is updated.

Frontiers recognizes its responsibility to correct scientifically relevant errors in previously published articles. Corrections can be submitted if:

• a small portion of an otherwise reliable publication proves to be misleading OR

• there is an error in a figure that does not alter the conclusions OR

• there is an error in statistical data not altering conclusions OR

• there are mislabeled figures OR

• the wrong slide of microscopy was provided OR

• the author/contributor list is incorrect when a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included.

A correction must be submitted through our submission system (check our help center for detailed instructions on how to submit a correction), and it's advised to use these Word and LaTeX templates. The contribution to the field statement should be used to clearly state the reason for the correction and the title of the submission should have the following format: 'Corrigendum: [Title of original article].'

If the error was introduced during the publishing process, please contact Frontiers' production office.

As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Frontiers abides by their guidelines and recommendations in cases of potential retraction.

We also abide by two other key principles, as recommended by COPE:

• Retractions are not about punishing authors

• Retraction statements should be public and linked to the original, retracted article.

All potential retractions will be judged on their own merits and will be the subject of an internal investigation or, where satisfactory, the recommendations from the institutional investigation of the author(s). Frontiers considers the following reasons as giving cause for concern and potential retraction.

• Clear evidence that findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (such as data fabrication) or honest error (such as miscalculation or experimental error)

• Findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution, permission or justification (that is, cases of redundant publication)

• Major plagiarism

• The reporting of unethical research, the publication of an article that did not have the required ethics committee approval

• Legal issues pertaining to the content of the article, such as libelous content

• Major authorship issues, such as proven or strongly suspected cases of ghostwriting or sold ('gift') authorship

• Politically motivated articles where objectivity is a serious concern

• The singling out of individuals or organizations for attack

• Faith issues (such as intelligent design)

• Articles that have made extraordinary claims without concomitant scientific or statistical evidence (such as pseudoscience).

Readers who would like to draw the editors' attention to published work that might require retraction should contact the authors of the article and write to the journal, making sure to include copies of all correspondence with authors.

Frontiers' rebuttals and appeals policy provides authors with a fair and impartial mechanism to raise concerns with the editorial process or decision-making. All rebuttals and appeals must adhere to the guidelines provided in this policy to be considered. Your submission will be reviewed objectively and in accordance with our established procedures to ensure the integrity of the peer review and publication process.

To submit a rebuttal or appeal, your submission must align with one of the following criteria:

Rebuttal to editor or reviewer feedback: If you disagree with specific points raised by the editor or reviewers in their feedback, you may submit a rebuttal to the points raised. In your rebuttal, you should articulate your points of disagreement and provide any additional information or clarifications that you believe are necessary to address their concerns.

Appealing compliance with policies: If you think your submission was rejected because the journal's policies were misapplied or your adherence was misunderstood, you can appeal. When submitting an appeal, please provide clear details showing compliance with our policies and point out any misunderstandings or alternate interpretations that you believe may have led to a false rejection.

Please be aware that we will not consider rebuttals or appeals under the following circumstances:

• When one appeal or rebuttal has already been evaluated for the manuscript

• Where authors display a lack of professionalism, courtesy, or respect towards any individuals or our editorial staff, such as containing personal criticisms, accusations, or inappropriate language.

• Solely appealing scope/fit for the journal

• Concerning a manuscript rejected due to legal complexities whereby it may require legal resources to determine if revisions can meet minimum legal requirements.

• Does not provide substantive evidence or detail to justify why the manuscript should be reinstated

Lastly, assessment of all rebuttals and appeals remains at the discretion of the journal and all decisions are final.

Frontiers has a highly interactive and transparent publishing model which was established, in part, to engage all the players in scholarly publishing to act responsibly and professionally. All papers are published with the names of the handling editor and the reviewers, who have publicly validated the academic validity of each article. However, our duty as a publisher includes correcting the literature whenever it is brought to our attention that an article contains scholarly errors or that authors have committed unethical or illegal acts in relation to their published work. The aim of our policy for comments and complaints is to reflect the founding principles of Frontiers by providing a mechanism that is community-driven through our editors, and that fosters scholarly debate. All complaints are handled in accordance with the guidelines published by the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE).

If errors are identified in an article, the authors have the possibility of publishing a correction or amendment as a corrigendum. If ethical, legal, or scholarly concerns are raised or identified after publication of a nature that could warrant further action, including retraction, Frontiers follows the steps outlined below to consult the editors and carry out their decisions.

See our full comments and complaints policy

Handling of vexatious complaints

To ensure a fair and transparent handling of complaints while safeguarding against unwarranted disruptions, where we consider a complaint to be vexatious, we reserve the right to handle complaints outside of our standard processes. This may include replying outside of the usual time frames or, where necessary, closing down any further communications with the complainant to ensure the efficiency and professionalism of our editorial endeavors. Complaints will be classified as vexatious if they exhibit one or more of the following:

• Lack of substantive content or evidence.

• Repetitive nature without offering new information.

• Intent to harass or intimidate individuals or disrupt the editorial process.

• Failure to engage in constructive dialogue or refusal to accept reasonable resolutions.

• Include unreasonably personal details, derogatory language, or relate solely to allegations unrelated to editorial content or the responsibilities of Frontiers

Frontiers remains neutral with regards to published territorial descriptions, maps, and author affiliations. All territorial claims are solely those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, the publisher, the editors, or reviewers.

In our commitment to continuously improve our user experience and support to the research communities, we welcome your feedback, questions and suggestions. Please visit our help center to find guidance on our platform or contact us at support@frontiersin.org.