Publishing Ethics Statement

PUBLISHING ETHICS STATEMENT

The International Journal of Biomedical Image Intelligence (IJBII) is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics, academic integrity, transparency and responsible scholarly communication.

The journal expects authors, reviewers, editors and all participants in the publication process to act with honesty, fairness, confidentiality and professional responsibility.

Authors' Responsibilities

Authors are expected to:

• Submit original and previously unpublished work.
• Ensure that manuscripts are not simultaneously under consideration by another journal.
• Report research methods, data, analyses and findings accurately and transparently.
• Properly acknowledge all sources, prior work and intellectual contributions.
• Avoid plagiarism, fabrication, falsification and inappropriate manipulation of research data or images.
• Ensure that all listed authors meet appropriate authorship criteria and have approved the submitted manuscript.
• Disclose relevant financial, personal, professional or institutional competing interests.
• Disclose funding sources where applicable.
• Obtain appropriate ethical approval for research involving human participants, patient information, biological materials or animals where required.
• Protect patient confidentiality and privacy.
• Obtain informed consent where applicable.
• Disclose substantive use of generative artificial intelligence where required by the journal's Generative AI Policy.
• Promptly inform the journal of significant errors or integrity concerns identified before or after publication.

Editors' Responsibilities

Editors are responsible for:

• Evaluating manuscripts fairly and objectively.
• Making decisions based on scholarly quality, originality, methodological rigour, ethical compliance and relevance to the journal.
• Maintaining confidentiality throughout the editorial and peer-review process.
• Selecting reviewers with appropriate expertise and reasonable independence from the submitted work.
• Managing actual or potential conflicts of interest appropriately.
• Protecting the integrity of the peer-review process.
• Ensuring that commercial, institutional, personal or other inappropriate influences do not determine editorial decisions.
• Taking reasonable and proportionate action when credible allegations of research or publication misconduct arise.

Where an editor has a relevant conflict of interest regarding a submission, responsibility for the manuscript should be transferred to another appropriate editor.

Reviewers' Responsibilities

Reviewers should:

• Provide objective, constructive and timely assessments.
• Evaluate manuscripts according to scientific and scholarly merit.
• Maintain confidentiality of manuscripts and review materials.
• Declare actual or potential conflicts of interest.
• Decline a review where they cannot provide an impartial or appropriately qualified assessment.
• Identify relevant published work that may have been overlooked where appropriate.
• Refrain from using unpublished information obtained during peer review for personal, professional or competitive advantage.
• Avoid attempting to identify authors in the journal's double-anonymous review process.
• Refrain from uploading confidential manuscripts or review materials to external generative AI systems where confidentiality cannot be assured.

Research Ethics and Participant Protection

Research involving human participants, patient data, clinical images or biological materials should comply with applicable ethical, legal and institutional requirements.

Where appropriate, authors should provide:

• The name of the ethics committee or institutional review board.
• Approval or reference numbers.
• Information on informed consent.
• Appropriate justification where consent or ethical approval was waived.

Personally identifiable patient information must not be disclosed without appropriate authorization.

Research involving animals should comply with applicable institutional and national ethical standards.

Data, Image and Research Integrity

IJBII requires accurate representation of research data and scientific evidence.

The journal does not permit:

• Fabrication of data or results.
• Falsification of research findings.
• Inappropriate manipulation of biomedical or medical images.
• Misrepresentation of experimental or clinical evidence.
• Undisclosed alteration of datasets.
• Fabrication of references or citations.
• Use of artificial intelligence to generate false scientific evidence.

Image processing or enhancement must not alter the scientific meaning of the original material.

Research and Publication Misconduct

IJBII does not tolerate:

• Plagiarism.
• Fabrication or falsification.
• Duplicate or redundant publication.
• Authorship misconduct.
• Citation manipulation.
• Peer-review manipulation.
• Undisclosed competing interests.
• Inappropriate image or data manipulation.
• Misleading use of generative AI.
• Other serious forms of academic or publication misconduct.

Handling Allegations of Misconduct

Where credible concerns arise, the journal may request clarification, supporting documentation, original data or other relevant information.

Depending on the nature and seriousness of the concern, editorial action may include:

• Further investigation.
• Rejection of a manuscript.
• Suspension of editorial processing.
• Publication of a correction.
• Publication of an expression of concern.
• Retraction of a published article.
• Other appropriate measures necessary to protect the scholarly record.

Corrections and Retractions

IJBII is committed to maintaining an accurate and trustworthy scholarly record.

Where significant errors or misconduct are identified after publication, the journal may issue corrections, editorial notices, expressions of concern or retractions as appropriate.

Retractions and corrections should be clearly identified and linked to the affected article wherever technically possible.

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are made independently on the basis of scholarly merit, scientific quality, ethical compliance and relevance to IJBII.

The publisher does not require editors to accept or reject manuscripts for commercial, personal or institutional reasons.

Commitment to Research Integrity

IJBII is committed to responsible research, rigorous peer review, ethical biomedical and clinical scholarship, academic integrity and the advancement of trustworthy biomedical imaging and artificial intelligence research.