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Scientific integrity

Editorial standards

How records are verified, how authorship is credited and how the scientific record is corrected.

Verification

How library records are verified

RecordHow it is checked
ArticlesTitle, authors, journal, volume, pages, date and licence are taken from Crossref using the DOI. PubMed and PMC identifiers come from NCBI.
BooksAuthors, editors, edition, publisher, year and ISBN-13 are checked against the publisher’s page or a library catalogue such as Open Library.
Registered studiesStatus, design, sponsor, investigators, dates and enrolment come from the ClinicalTrials.gov record, and the registry’s last-updated date is shown.
ImagesCreator, licence and source are taken from Wikimedia Commons metadata, and the image is credited on every page where it appears.
SummariesSummaries are written by Sterling IMRES editors in their own words. Original abstracts stay with the publisher.
IdentifiersDOIs, PMIDs and ISBNs are shown only when a real identifier exists. None are invented.
Policies

Editorial policies

Authorship

Authors are people who made substantial contributions, drafted or revised the work, approved the final version and accept accountability, following ICMJE criteria. Other contributors are acknowledged.

Peer review

Institutional publications are reviewed by people with relevant expertise who declare conflicts of interest and keep manuscripts confidential.

Conflicts of interest

Authors, reviewers and editors disclose financial and non-financial interests relevant to the work.

Corrections

Material errors are corrected openly with a dated notice rather than silently replaced.

Retractions

Work found to be unreliable is retracted with a notice explaining why, and the record remains visible.

Predatory publishing

Institute authors are advised against journals that fail recognised standards of transparency and peer review.

Workflow

Content states

  1. 1. Draft
  2. 2. Under review
  3. 3. Changes requested
  4. 4. Approved
  5. 5. Scheduled
  6. 6. Published
  7. 7. Corrected
  8. 8. Archived

Read the full corrections policy and governance roles.

Evidence

Research on peer review and publishing