Scope

This policy is especially relevant to research involving:

• human participants;
• personal or sensitive data;
• interviews, surveys, focus groups, and classroom-based studies;
• experiments or interventions;
• organisational access and confidential institutional material;
• proprietary or commercially sensitive data;
• vulnerable populations or higher-risk settings; and
• other ethically sensitive methods or sources.

Ethics Approval or Exemption

Where applicable, authors must state whether ethics approval, ethics exemption, organisational permission, gatekeeper approval, or other formal oversight was obtained. The approving body and reference number should be provided where relevant and possible.

Informed Consent

Where research involves human participants or identifiable data, authors should explain how consent was obtained, how participation was voluntary where appropriate, and how confidentiality or anonymity was protected. Where written consent was not feasible or not required, authors should explain the basis for the approach used.

Confidentiality, Privacy, and Data Protection

Authors must respect privacy, confidentiality, data protection obligations, and any lawful restrictions on disclosure. Identifiable information should not be published without appropriate legal and ethical basis.

Organisational and Proprietary Material

Research using confidential organisational information, administrative access, internal records, or proprietary datasets must be conducted and reported responsibly. Authors should ensure that permissions, confidentiality undertakings, and lawful access conditions are respected.

Vulnerable Populations and Sensitive Contexts

Where research involves potentially vulnerable participants or contexts involving unequal power, risk, or sensitivity, authors should show that the work was designed and conducted with appropriate safeguards.

Honest Reporting

Methods, data, analyses, quotations, and findings must be reported honestly and without fabrication, falsification, deceptive omission, or misleading presentation.

Editorial Ethics Screening and Verification

BJBM may conduct proportionate ethics and integrity screening before review, during review, before acceptance, and after publication where concerns arise. This screening complements, and does not replace, the more detailed requirements set out in the journal’s Plagiarism Policy, Conflicts of Interest Policy, Peer Review Policy, Data Availability and Transparency requirements, and Research Integrity and Ethical Oversight policy.

• textual overlap and originality screening, normally using iThenticate or an equivalent similarity-detection service, together with editorial judgment under the Plagiarism Policy;
• review of authorship, contributorship, affiliation, and disclosure information, and requests for clarification or institutional verification where authorship or affiliation concerns arise;
• review of ethics approval, ethics exemption, informed consent, organisational permission, and confidentiality statements where relevant to the study design;
• assessment of citation patterns, source use, and attribution where citation manipulation, misleading sourcing, or other integrity concerns appear possible;
• scrutiny of reviewer reports for signs that they are formulaic, insufficiently reasoned, unreliable, or inappropriately generated with AI or similar tools; such reviews may be disregarded and editors remain responsible for making independent editorial decisions; and
• requests for underlying data, code, or related materials where results, data patterns, analyses, tables, images, or reported findings appear abnormal, inconsistent, insufficiently supported, or otherwise raise a data-integrity concern.

Submitted work should comply with applicable disciplinary norms, institutional requirements, national law, and relevant international ethical and integrity principles where appropriate, including, where relevant to the study design and context, principles reflected in The Belmont Report (1979) and the Singapore Statement on Research Integrity (2010).

Concerns and Action

Where ethical concerns arise before or after publication, the journal may seek clarification, request documentation, consult institutions or oversight bodies, pause processing, or take editorial action including correction, rejection, expression of concern, or retraction. Published studies remain subject to ethics and integrity review if credible new concerns emerge after publication.

Allegations of Misconduct

BJBM takes allegations of research misconduct, publication misconduct, and peer review misconduct seriously. Allegations may relate to, among other things, plagiarism, redundant publication, fabricated or falsified data, deceptive image manipulation, unethical research, undisclosed competing interests, authorship irregularities, reviewer misconduct, editorial misconduct, citation manipulation, breach of confidentiality, or attempts to interfere improperly with editorial or peer review processes.

Reporting Concerns

Concerns should normally be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief at editorbjbm.gcbs@rub.edu.bt and copied to the College Research Committee (CRC) at crc.gcbs@rub.edu.bt. The CRC serves as an independent college-level body for ethics and integrity oversight in matters arising in connection with the journal.

If the concern directly involves the Editor-in-Chief, a member of the CRC, or another normal recipient of misconduct reports, the concern should instead be sent to crc.gcbs@rub.edu.bt and bjbm.gcbs@rub.edu.bt. In such cases, the matter will be assigned to the Managing Editor or another journal editor who is free from the relevant conflict, with appropriate independent oversight.

Concerns may be raised by authors, reviewers, editors, readers, institutions, publishers, whistleblowers, or other parties. Concerns may be submitted by a named source or anonymously. The journal will assess concerns on their substance and available supporting information and will not dismiss a concern solely because it is raised anonymously, by a third party, by a junior colleague, by a student, or by a professional competitor.

Where contact details are available, the journal will normally acknowledge receipt within 7 calendar days and, where feasible, provide a preliminary process update within 21 calendar days. These timeframes are indicative rather than absolute and may be extended where a matter is unusually complex, evidence-dependent, or subject to institutional or legal processes.

Initial Assessment and Case Handling

The journal will normally handle allegations in the following sequence: receipt and logging of the concern; preliminary assessment of specificity, credibility, seriousness, and supporting material; decision on whether to seek clarification, additional documentation, expert input, or temporary editorial measures; and decision on whether institutional or inter-journal referral is required.

The Editor-in-Chief is ordinarily responsible for the initial editorial receipt and logging of the concern. The CRC provides independent oversight of ethics and integrity issues and may review the matter separately from routine editorial handling. Where a matter cannot be resolved at journal or college level, or where broader institutional handling is required, the Research Officer (RO) may coordinate institutional correspondence and reporting in consultation with the CRC. Where necessary and appropriate under University procedures, the matter may be escalated through the Research and Development Division (R&DD) and, as relevant, to the Research and Innovation Committee (RIC), the Academic Board (AB), the University Council (UC), or other competent University bodies.

The journal may make editorial and publication-integrity determinations for its own processes, but it does not substitute for a formal institutional employer investigation or disciplinary process. Where questions extend beyond the journal’s editorial remit, the matter may be referred to the appropriate institution or competent body.

Any editor, reviewer, or adviser with a relevant conflict of interest must recuse themselves from the handling of the matter. A conflicted individual must not influence receipt, reviewer selection, correspondence, evidence assessment, institutional contact, or final decision-making. The journal may appoint an alternative editor or seek additional independent oversight where needed to ensure fairness, impartiality, and confidentiality.

Logging, Documentation, and Confidentiality

All allegations will be logged with the date received, manuscript or article identifier where applicable, the nature of the concern, the source of the concern where known, and any supporting material provided. The journal will keep a confidential record of key communications, evidence received, actions taken, and decisions reached.

The journal will handle allegations as confidentially as reasonably possible. However, complete confidentiality cannot be guaranteed where disclosure is necessary for fair assessment, institutional referral, legal compliance, protection of participants, protection of the scholarly record, or other legitimate investigatory purposes. Where appropriate, the journal will explain these limits to the complainant or whistleblower.

Supporting Information and Evidence

Persons raising concerns are encouraged to provide as much specific information and supporting material as possible, including manuscript identifiers, article citations, screenshots, documents, correspondence, similarity evidence, image concerns, or a clear explanation of the suspected problem. A concern will not be rejected solely because the complainant cannot provide complete proof at the outset, provided that the concern appears credible and sufficiently specific to justify preliminary assessment.

Communication with Authors, Institutions, and Other Journals

Where the journal considers it appropriate to contact an author’s institution, employer, ethics committee, funder, publisher, or another journal, the matter will normally be reviewed first by the Editor-in-Chief in consultation with the CRC. Such contact will generally be considered where the matter involves substantial concerns about fabrication, falsification, manipulated peer review, serious authorship disputes that cannot reasonably be resolved internally, major ethical approval or consent concerns, repeated misconduct, or other cases where institutional or inter-journal action may be necessary to protect the scholarly record. Where institutional coordination is required, the Research Officer may correspond and report in consultation with the CRC and in accordance with University procedures.

Authors will normally be informed before external institutional or inter-journal contact is made, unless the journal reasonably believes that prior notice may compromise evidence, create a risk of concealment, intimidation, or retaliation, breach a legal or safeguarding duty, or otherwise prejudice the fair handling of the case. The journal may share only such information as is reasonably necessary for assessment, referral, or protection of the scholarly record. Material communications with institutions and other journals will be documented through email correspondence sent from editorbjbm.gcbs@rub.edu.bt and copied to bjbm.gcbs@rub.edu.bt, or through an alternative conflict-free route where required.

Whistleblowers and Anonymous Allegations

The journal welcomes good-faith concerns raised for the purpose of protecting research integrity and the scholarly record. The journal will consider anonymous allegations on their merits and will not dismiss them solely because the complainant’s identity is unknown. Where contact details are available, the journal will normally acknowledge receipt in line with the indicative timelines stated above and may request clarification or additional information where needed.

The journal will assess anonymous or named allegations according to the specificity, credibility, seriousness, and supporting material available. The journal may close a matter without further action where the allegation is too vague to assess, unsupported after reasonable preliminary review, plainly frivolous, abusive, or intentionally malicious. However, the journal will not reject a concern merely because it is strongly expressed or because the complainant has a professional interest in the matter.

The journal will seek to avoid retaliatory treatment of any person who raises a concern in good faith. This includes avoiding adverse editorial treatment, unnecessary disclosure of identity, dismissive handling based solely on status or source, or other avoidable prejudice to a complainant, whistleblower, reviewer, junior co-author, student, or staff member who has raised a credible concern.

At the same time, the journal may limit what it discloses to a complainant or whistleblower in order to protect confidentiality, privacy, due process, legal obligations, or the integrity of any investigation. Where appropriate and feasible, the journal may inform the complainant or whistleblower that the matter has been received, is under consideration, has been referred, or has been closed, but the journal is not obliged to provide full investigatory details, internal correspondence, or institutional communications.

Outcomes and Corrective Action

Depending on the nature and seriousness of the concern, the journal may take one or more proportionate actions, including requesting clarification or correction, pausing review or publication, rejecting the manuscript, publishing a correction, expression of concern, or retraction, notifying institutions or other relevant bodies, restricting future submissions or review activity for an appropriate period, or taking any other measure reasonably necessary to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.

Concerns About Data Integrity, Fabrication, or Falsification

Where substantial concerns arise regarding the authenticity, completeness, consistency, provenance, or integrity of reported data, images, analyses, or supporting records, the journal may request underlying data, analytic files, code, audit trails, documentation, or other supporting material reasonably necessary for editorial assessment. If the concern cannot be adequately resolved through clarification or documentation, the journal may pause review or publication, seek expert assessment, or refer the matter for institutional consideration in accordance with the journal’s Research Integrity and Ethical Oversight procedures.

Contact

Questions or concerns regarding research ethics or publication misconduct 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.