How Directive Publications safeguards the accuracy, honesty, and permanence of the research we publish — in line with the COPE Core Practices and the ICMJE Recommendations.
Research integrity is the foundation on which every article we publish stands. At Directive Publications, an international open-access publisher of peer-reviewed journals across medicine, the life sciences, and public health, we regard the trustworthiness of the scholarly record as a shared responsibility of authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher alike. This statement sets out the standards we uphold, the behaviours we expect, and the processes we follow when the integrity of published or submitted work is called into question. It applies to all of our journals and to every stage of the publication lifecycle.
We are committed to publishing work that is original, rigorously reviewed, honestly reported, and openly available under a CC BY licence. We make editorial decisions on scholarly grounds, we correct the record openly when it is warranted, and we act on credible concerns regardless of who raises them or whom they concern. We do not tolerate research or publication misconduct, and we treat every allegation seriously, confidentially, and fairly.
Our editorial and ethics policies are aligned with the COPE Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics and the ICMJE Recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. We also observe the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing and align our operations with widely recognised criteria for high-quality open-access publishing.
Concretely, our policies address the full range of COPE practice areas: allegations of misconduct; authorship and contributorship; complaints and appeals; conflicts of interest; data and reproducibility; ethical oversight; intellectual property; journal and publisher management; peer-review processes; and post-publication discussions and corrections. Related policies are detailed on our Publication Ethics, Editorial Policies, and Peer Review pages.
Editorial decisions are based solely on a manuscript's scholarly merit, validity, and relevance to the journal — never on an author's ability to pay. The editorial decision is made entirely independently of the commercial side of the organisation: article-processing charges, described on our Publication Charges page, play no part in whether a manuscript is accepted, and fee waivers are available so that cost is not a barrier to publication. Decisions are not influenced by an author's nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, or political beliefs. Editors recuse themselves from any manuscript in which they have a competing interest, which is then handled by an independent editor.
Every research article is evaluated through double-blind peer review by independent experts who are not members of our editorial staff. Author and reviewer identities are mutually concealed to reduce bias. Reviewers must treat manuscripts as confidential, must not use or disclose unpublished content for any purpose, and must declare any conflict of interest before agreeing to review. We welcome new referees through our Become a Reviewer programme and encourage reviewers to register an ORCID iD.
Authorship is based on the four ICMJE criteria: (1) substantial contributions to conception, design, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; (2) drafting or critically revising the work; (3) approval of the final version; and (4) accountability for the accuracy and integrity of the work. Individuals who contribute but do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged as contributors rather than listed as authors. Gift, guest, and ghost authorship are prohibited. Any change to the author list requires written justification and the agreement of all authors. The corresponding author is responsible for communication, declarations, and ensuring all named authors approve the submission. We encourage every author to provide an ORCID iD; see our Author Guidelines for details.
All participants must disclose relationships that could be perceived to bias the work. Authors declare financial and non-financial competing interests and all sources of funding, using an ICMJE-style disclosure statement. Reviewers decline or disclose conflicts, and editors declare and step aside where a competing interest exists. Disclosed interests do not automatically disqualify a submission; non-disclosure does undermine trust and is treated as a breach of our policies.
Submissions must be original, not under consideration elsewhere, and free of plagiarism. All submissions undergo plagiarism and similarity screening. Redundant or duplicate publication, undisclosed overlap with the authors' own prior work (self-plagiarism), and salami-slicing a single study into minimal publishable units are not acceptable. Reused text, figures, or data must be properly cited and, where required, accompanied by permission from the rights holder. Further detail is on our Plagiarism Policy page.
Fabrication (inventing data or results) and falsification (manipulating or selectively reporting data) are serious forms of misconduct. Authors are expected to retain their raw data, to provide a data-availability statement, and to share underlying data where it is ethically and legally possible to do so, enabling others to verify and build on their findings.
Figures and images must accurately represent the original data. Adjustments applied to enhance clarity must be applied to the whole image and must never obscure, splice, move, remove, or selectively enhance features in a way that misrepresents the results. Authors should retain unprocessed originals and provide them on request.
Studies involving human participants must have prior approval from an institutional review board or research-ethics committee and must comply with the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors must document informed consent, and obtain explicit consent to publish any identifiable personal data, including in case reports. Research involving animals must have appropriate institutional approval and follow recognised welfare and reporting standards, such as the ARRIVE guidelines. Clinical trials should be prospectively registered in a public registry, with the registration identifier reported in the manuscript. We require these statements from authors; primary responsibility for ethical conduct rests with the investigators and their institutions.
Generative AI tools cannot be listed as an author, because they cannot take responsibility or be accountable for a work. Any use of AI or AI-assisted technologies in producing a manuscript must be disclosed, and authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of everything they submit. Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts or unpublished content to public AI tools, which would breach author confidentiality.
We are alert to organised threats to the integrity of the literature — paper mills, fabricated or manipulated peer review, citation manipulation and coercive citation, and authorship-for-sale. Where we detect or suspect such activity, we investigate in line with COPE guidance and take appropriate action, which may include rejection, correction, or retraction and notification of the authors' institutions.
When the published record needs to be amended, we follow a defined ladder that mirrors COPE's guidance: corrigenda and errata for correctable errors, an Expression of Concern where a serious issue is unresolved, and retraction where findings are unreliable or the work is fundamentally compromised. Notices are published, openly available, and bidirectionally linked to the article. The version of record is preserved: it is never silently altered or removed. Journal-level notices are collected on each journal's corrections page, and our approach is described on the Corrections Policy page.
Anyone may raise a concern about work we have published or are considering, by writing to [email protected]. Please include the article or manuscript details, a clear description of the concern, and any supporting evidence. We assess every concern on its merits, regardless of the seniority or standing of those involved, and we handle it confidentially, protecting good-faith complainants from retaliation. Investigations follow the relevant COPE flowcharts. Authors are given a fair opportunity to respond before any conclusion is reached. Where a formal finding of research misconduct may be required, the appropriate body to adjudicate is the author's institution or employer; we cooperate with such investigations and act on their outcomes. Possible publication outcomes include no action, a correction, an Expression of Concern, or retraction.
Concerns about the conduct of our editorial process, and appeals against an editorial decision, are handled separately from misconduct reporting. Authors who wish to appeal a decision should contact the handling journal with a point-by-point response; the appeal is considered by an editor who was not responsible for the original decision. This route is described on our Editorial Policies page.
Authors retain copyright in their work. Every article is published open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence, which permits anyone to share and adapt the work for any purpose provided the original authors and source are properly credited. See our Copyright and Open Access pages for full terms.
Every published article is assigned and registered with a Crossref DOI (prefix 10.52338), giving it a persistent, citable identifier. Article metadata is openly available for harvesting and discovery via OAI-PMH and JATS XML. Content is maintained on off-site backups, and we are pursuing a formal digital-archiving arrangement to ensure long-term preservation. We are also working toward inclusion in recognised indexing services, including application to the Directory of Open Access Journals, as our journals mature.
| Role | Core responsibilities |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ensure originality and honest reporting; meet the ICMJE authorship criteria; disclose conflicts and funding; obtain ethics approval and consent; disclose any AI use; retain data and image originals; cooperate with corrections. |
| Reviewers | Provide fair, constructive, timely assessment; maintain confidentiality; declare conflicts; never use or disclose unpublished content; avoid public AI tools for manuscripts. |
| Editors | Decide on merit alone, independent of commercial factors; protect reviewer and author confidentiality; recuse where conflicted; act on integrity concerns and issue corrections. |
| Publisher | Uphold editorial independence; provide transparent policies, fees, and governance; support investigations; preserve the version of record and maintain persistent identifiers. |
We publish under the name Directive Publications, with a registered editorial and postal contact at 30 N Gould St, Sheridan, WY 82801, USA. Questions about our policies, or about a specific article, can be directed to [email protected]. Our contact details, fees, licensing terms, and editorial policies are published openly so that authors and readers can make informed decisions, and our team responds to correspondence about integrity matters as a priority.
Upholding the standards described here is a continuing commitment rather than a one-time declaration: we keep our policies under review as best practice evolves and as our journals mature. Authors who share these values are warmly invited to submit their research, and prospective referees are encouraged to join our reviewer community through the Become a Reviewer page. Together, authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher sustain a scholarly record that readers can trust.