Journal of Family Medicine · ISSN 2640-690X
Editorial Policies
The rules this journal works to, in one place. They bind authors, reviewers and editors alike, and they apply to every manuscript from the moment it is submitted.
Two questions are kept apart throughout. Whether a manuscript is in subject for this journal is settled by the aims and scope. Everything on this page concerns how the work is done, reported and handled.
Assessment
Peer review and editorial decisions
All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal’s scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.
Review model
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by two to three independent subject-matter experts. Where double-blind review is requested, editors must ensure that author-identifying information is not shared with reviewers.
Decision criteria
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal. Reviewer assessments inform the handling editor’s decision; the decision itself rests with the editor.
Confidentiality
A submitted manuscript is a confidential document. Editors and reviewers must not disclose its existence or content, discuss it outside the review process, or use unpublished material for any purpose of their own.
Editorial independence
Editorial decisions remain independent of fees, memberships, optional services, and editorial or reviewer roles. Neither payment of an article processing charge, nor membership, nor the use of language editing affects whether a manuscript is sent for review or accepted.
Competing interests and recusal
Editors recuse themselves from decisions on their own submissions, which are handled independently. The same applies where an editor or reviewer has a personal, professional, institutional or financial interest that could affect judgment. Reviewers who identify a competing interest should decline and say so.
Appeals and complaints
An author who considers a decision to rest on a factual or procedural error may write to the editorial office setting out the grounds. An appeal is considered by an editor who was not responsible for the original decision. Complaints about editorial conduct are directed to the same address and handled independently of the editor concerned.
Authorship and declarations
What authors are responsible for
Each requirement below applies to every submission. The practical form each takes at submission is set out in the instructions for authors.
- Authorship
- Authorship follows the ICMJE criteria Every listed author must have contributed substantially to the work, have approved the final manuscript, and be able to account for its integrity. Contributions that do not meet the criteria are acknowledged rather than credited as authorship. Changes to the author list after submission require the written agreement of all authors.
- Competing interests
- All financial and non-financial competing interests are declared at submission This includes employment, consultancy, grants, patents, honoraria, paid expert testimony, and personal or institutional relationships that a reader might reasonably consider relevant. A declaration that there are none is itself required.
- Funding
- The role of every funder is stated Name each source of support and describe what part, if any, the funder took in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, or the decision to publish.
- Ethics approval
- Research involving people, their data or their tissue requires approval or a documented exemption Name the approving committee and give the approval reference. Research involving animals requires the equivalent approval. Work conducted without either cannot be published.
- Consent
- Participants give informed consent, and identifiable individuals consent to publication A case report, image, video or detailed description from which a person could be recognized requires that person’s written consent to publication, or that of a legal representative. Removing a name is not sufficient where other details identify.
- Privacy
- Personal data are protected throughout Report the minimum necessary, de-identify wherever the scientific point survives it, and describe the safeguards applied to data held or shared.
- Data availability
- Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement. The statement says where the data supporting the findings can be found and on what terms, or explains why they cannot be shared. Deposit in a recognized repository is encouraged.
- Trial registration
- Interventional clinical trials must be registered in an accepted public trial registry at or before the first participant provides consent for enrollment. The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported in the manuscript.
- Reporting standards
- Reports follow the guideline for their design CONSORT for randomized trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews, CARE for case reports, STARD for diagnostic accuracy, SQUIRE for quality-improvement work, COREQ for qualitative research, and ARRIVE for animal studies.
- Permissions
- Reused material carries written permission Figures, tables, instruments or long quotations taken from another work require permission from the rights holder unless the license under which they were published already allows the reuse, and the source is cited either way.
Research integrity
Originality, misconduct and the published record
The journal assesses originality on submission and acts on concerns raised afterward. Correcting the record is treated as part of publishing it.
Originality and prior publication
A submitted manuscript must be the authors’ own work and must not be under consideration elsewhere. Submissions are screened for textual similarity with Crossref Similarity Check, powered by iThenticate. A similarity report is read in context by an editor: a matched methods sentence and a matched results paragraph are different findings, and no fixed percentage decides an outcome.
Duplicate and redundant publication
Publishing the same study, or substantially the same data, more than once without disclosure and citation is duplicate publication. Secondary analysis of a dataset already reported is welcome provided the earlier report is cited and the new contribution is stated. Prior presentation as a conference abstract or deposit as a preprint does not prevent submission; both should be declared.
Misconduct
Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, image manipulation, undisclosed competing interests, breaches of consent or ethics approval, and authorship misrepresentation are all grounds for rejection, and for retraction after publication. Concerns may be raised with the editorial office at any time and are assessed on the evidence, with the authors given the opportunity to respond, and with the authors’ institution informed where the matter warrants it.
Corrections and retractions
Where a published article contains an error that affects the record, the journal issues a correction linked to and from the original. Where the findings are unreliable, or the work breaches the standards above, the journal issues a retraction notice that states the reason and who requested it. Published articles are not removed: the notice is attached and the article remains available, so the record of what was published stays intact.
Use of AI
Authors disclose any use of generative AI in the preparation of a manuscript, naming the tool and describing what it was used for. AI systems cannot be authors, because they cannot take responsibility for the work. Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured. The same applies to editors.
Licensing and copyright
Authors retain copyright. Articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which allows anyone to share and adapt the work, including commercially, provided the original is attributed, the license is linked and changes are indicated.
Charges
Fees and the editorial process
An article processing charge applies after acceptance. It is a publishing charge, not a submission charge, and it has no part in the editorial decision. The current schedule, what the charge covers and how it is paid are published on the fee page.
Withdrawal policy
Authors should contact the editorial office promptly and wait for written confirmation before submitting the work elsewhere.
Manuscripts withdrawn within 3 days of submission are not subject to a withdrawal charge.
Manuscripts withdrawn more than 3 days after submission incur a withdrawal charge equal to 30% of the journal's APC.
Authors must receive official withdrawal confirmation before submitting the manuscript to another journal.
Preservation and access
Keeping the record available
Every article is openly available on publication, carries a registered Crossref DOI, and is covered by the publisher’s digital preservation arrangements. What those arrangements are, and what they do and do not establish about indexing, is set out on the indexing page.
Related guidance
Where each procedure is set out
This page states the policy. The pages below say how it is carried out by the person doing the work. Questions about any of it, and reports of a concern with a published article, go to the editorial office at [email protected].
Digital preservation
This journal’s content is committed to Portico, a not-for-profit digital-preservation archive run by ITHAKA (the organization behind JSTOR). As articles are deposited they enter Portico’s permanent archive, so the scholarly record stays available for the long term — even if a title one day ceases to publish. Read our preservation policy.