Research Integrity
How Similarity Screening Works (and How to Read a Similarity Report)
A "38% similarity" result is not a verdict of plagiarism — and a 5% result is not proof of innocence. Here is what similarity software actually measur...
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Directive Academy
Guides on peer review, research integrity & scholarly publishing — for authors, reviewers and editors
Research Integrity
Authorship Disputes: How to Prevent and Resolve Them
Authorship arguments stall more papers than bad data ever will. Almost all of them trace back to a conversatio...
Directive Editorial Team · 2 min
Peer Review
Suggesting Reviewers: Who You Can Recommend and Who You Can't
Almost every submission form asks you to suggest reviewers, and almost nobody explains how. Done well, it spee...
Directive Editorial Team · 2 min
Peer Review
Fake Peer Review and Reviewer Fraud: How It Happens and How Journals Stop It
Thousands of papers have been retracted because the "reviewers" were the authors themselves. Here is how revie...
Directive Editorial Team · 2 min
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Open Science
Preprint, Accepted Manuscript, Version of Record: Article Versions Explained
Your paper exists in several versions, and they are not interchangeable. Knowing which is which tells you what you may share, what to cite, and what a...
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ICMJE Recommendations: A Medical Author's Guide
If you publish in medicine, one document shapes more of the rules than any other. Here is what the ICMJE Recommendations require — authorship, trial r...
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COPE Core Practices Explained for Authors
Most journals say they "follow COPE". Here is what that actually means — the ten Core Practices, what they oblige a publisher to do, and how to use th...
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Digital Preservation: What Happens to Your Article in 50 Years
Journals close. Servers fail. Publishers are sold. Digital preservation is the quiet infrastructure that keeps your paper readable decades from now —...
Scientific Writing
Statistical Reporting Done Right: p-values, Confidence Intervals and Effect Sizes
Reviewers scrutinise your statistics closely — and a p-value on its own rarely tells the story. Here is how to report results so they are honest, comp...
Scientific Writing
How to Write a Discussion Section
The discussion is where you turn results into meaning — and where weak papers fall apart by simply repeating the numbers. Here is how to structure a d...
Scientific Writing
The Corresponding Author's Responsibilities
Being corresponding author is a job, not a courtesy title. You are the point of contact and, in many ways, the guarantor of the paper. Here is what th...
Scientific Writing
Preparing Supplementary Materials
Supplementary materials let you support your paper without cluttering it — but only if you put the right things there. Here is what belongs in the sup...
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