Purpose

These ethics guidelines set out the journal-level expectations that apply to authors, reviewers, editors, guest editors, board members, and others involved in the journal’s editorial and publication processes.

Core Expectations

The journal expects all submitted and published work to be:

• original;
• honestly reported;
• ethically conducted;
• transparently documented;
• appropriately attributed; and
• suitable for confidential, fair, and responsible editorial evaluation.

Unacceptable Practices

BJBM does not accept:

• plagiarism or unattributed appropriation of others’ work;
• duplicate submission or duplicate publication;
• misleading text recycling or redundant publication;
• fabrication or falsification of data, methods, results, citations, approvals, or reviewer identities;
• deceptive image, table, or figure manipulation;
• unethical research practice;
• inappropriate authorship practices;
• manipulated peer review;
• undisclosed material conflicts of interest; or
• other serious forms of publication misconduct.

Shared Responsibilities

Authors, reviewers, and editors all share responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record. Ethical publishing depends on honest conduct, good-faith communication, proper record keeping, and appropriate escalation where concerns arise.

Fairness and Respect

Editorial assessment and peer review must be conducted fairly and without discrimination. Scholarly disagreement is acceptable; personal attack, harassment, retaliation, and discriminatory conduct are not.

Confidentiality

Manuscripts under review, reviewer reports, editorial communications, and integrity investigations must be handled confidentially and only disclosed where necessary for legitimate editorial, institutional, or legal purposes.

Transparency

The journal expects appropriate disclosure of authorship, contributorship, funding, conflicts of interest, ethics approval or exemption, informed consent where relevant, data availability, use of generative AI where material, and any prior dissemination of the work.

Misconduct Allegations

BJBM takes allegations of misconduct seriously whether they arise before publication or after publication. This section provides a summary only. The journal’s full reporting routes, conflict-handling arrangements, institutional and inter-journal contact principles, whistleblower protections, indicative timelines, and corrective measures are set out in the journal’s Research Integrity and Ethical Oversight policy under “Allegations of Misconduct”. The journal may request clarification, supporting evidence, institutional input, or other documentation and may take proportionate editorial action before or after publication.

Whistleblowers and Good-Faith Concerns

The journal will consider well-founded concerns raised by authors, reviewers, readers, institutions, anonymous whistleblowers, or other sources. Concerns are assessed on their substance and available supporting information, not dismissed solely because of the source, anonymity, tone alone, or the professional position of the complainant. Full procedural details are set out in the journal’s Research Integrity and Ethical Oversight policy under “Allegations of Misconduct”.

Sanctions and Editorial Action

Where serious misconduct or major non-compliance is established, BJBM may reject a submission, rescind acceptance, issue a correction or retraction, decline future submissions for a period of time, notify institutions or funders where appropriate, or take other proportionate action.

Related Policies

These ethics guidelines should be read together with the journal’s policies on peer review, corrections and retractions, conflict of interest, plagiarism, ethical oversight, reviewer guidelines, editor guidelines, and complaints and appeals.

Reporting Concerns

Concerns about publication ethics should normally be sent to editorbjbm.gcbs@rub.edu.bt and copied to crc.gcbs@rub.edu.bt. If the concern directly involves the Editor-in-Chief or another normal recipient, it should instead be sent to crc.gcbs@rub.edu.bt and bjbm.gcbs@rub.edu.bt. Full procedural details are set out in the journal’s Research Integrity and Ethical Oversight policy under “Allegations of Misconduct”.