A. Preamble

Zenith Publishing is committed to upholding the highest standards of scholarly publishing integrity. These policies govern authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher across all our current and future journals—from Emergency/Critical Care and Cardiology to Clean Energy, Biotechnology, and Technology Management. They reflect established best-practice guidelines (e.g., COPE, ICMJE, DOAJ).

B. Governance & Responsibilities

• Editorial Independence
• • Editors, including the Editor-in-Chief of each journal, are appointed on the basis of their academic credentials, ethical standing, and publication record. They must confirm an absence of undue influence from commercial or institutional entities.
  • Editorial boards must publish full listings of members, including affiliations, ORCID (where available), and duration of term.
  • The publisher (Zenith) will not influence editorial decisions. Commercial, sponsorship or advertising relationships will be strictly separated from editorial processes.
• Research Integrity Office (RIO)
  • Zenith will establish a central Research Integrity Office responsible for handling allegations of misconduct, coordinating investigations, tracking outcomes, and publishing annual integrity reports.
  • All editors, reviewers and authors will have access to RIO policies and a clear channel to raise concerns.
  • Investigations will follow COPE flowcharts and best practice. 

C. Authorship & Contributorship

• All submitted manuscripts must include a contributorship statement mapped to the CRediT taxonomy (e.g., conceptualization, data curation, methodology, writing – review & editing).
• Authors must meet all the following (adapted from ICMJE):
  1. Substantial contributions to conception, design, data acquisition/analysis/interpretation.
  2. Drafting or critically revising the manuscript.
  3. Approval of the final version.
  4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
• Ghost authorship (unnamed contributors), honorary/guest authorship (those who did not contribute significantly) are prohibited.
• Changes to the author list after submission require:

• a written request signed by all authors (existing and added/removed),
• justification of the change, and
• approval by the Editor-in-Chief.

• All corresponding authors must provide their ORCID iD and institutional affiliation; all authors must disclose any relevant institutional/funding relationship.

D. Peer Review & Editorial Responsibilities

• Default peer review model: double-blind (both author and reviewer identities masked) for biomedical, clinical, and management titles; for certain technology/AI journals, open or single-blind review may be permitted with full transparency (to be defined in each journal’s “Information for Authors” page).
• Reviewer selection: Editors will choose reviewers based on subject-expertise, recency of publication in the field, absence of prior COI, and no recent collaboration with the author(s).
• Reviewers must comply with:
  • confidentiality of manuscript contents,
  • timely completion of review (as defined by journal service standards),
  • disclosure of any conflict of interest (financial, professional, personal) prior to accepting the review invitation.
• Use of generative-AI or large-language-models (LLMs) by reviewers/editors for assessing manuscripts is prohibited unless explicitly approved and disclosed.
• Editors must manage conflicts of interest: An editor who holds a significant COI for a submission must recuse themselves and delegate the decision.
• Decisions must be based solely on academic merit, relevance and integrity—not on author institution, funding source, or potential commercial outcomes.

E. Research Misconduct

• Submission screening: All manuscripts will undergo plagiarism checks (e.g., iThenticate/Turnitin) prior to peer review. Image manipulation screening is mandatory for disciplines that employ imaging data (biomedical, clinical, microscopy).
• Defined misconduct includes:
  • fabrication of data/results,
  • falsification of data/materials/processes,
  • plagiarism (text, ideas, or words without proper attribution),
  • duplicate or redundant publication (salami slicing),
  • undeclared conflicts of interest,
  • manipulation of peer review (e.g., suggesting fake reviewer identities),
  • improper authorship practices.
• Investigation process:
  • Upon receipt of an allegation, RIO acknowledges within 5 business days.
  • A preliminary assessment is made within 30 days.
  • If warranted, a full investigation follows, with documentation, institution/funder notification (if appropriate), and outcome decision (correction, retraction, expression of concern).
• Outcomes: Retractions/corrections will follow industry best practice (e.g., COPE retraction guidelines) and will be clearly labelled, linked to the original article, and publicly accessible.
• If misconduct is confirmed, sanctions may include: bar on future submissions, removal from editorial/reviewer roles, and institutional notification.

F. Human & Animal Research Ethics (for biomedical titles)

• Biomedical journals (e.g., Emergency/Critical Care; Cardiology; Oncology; Pediatrics; Neurology; Gastroenterology; Obstetrics & Gynaecology; Dentistry & Oral Health; Plastic Surgery; Surgery; Case Reports) must adhere to:
  • The Declaration of Helsinki (latest version) for human research.
  • Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Ethics Committee approval; authors must provide the approval reference number or explanation for absence.
  • Informed written consent from human participants (or legally authorized representative) when required; if identifiable images/data are used authors must supply consent-to-publish documentation.
  • Animal studies must comply with recognized guidelines (e.g., ARRIVE) and institutional animal-care protocols.
  • Clinical trials must be registered prior to participant enrolment in a recognized public registry (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov). Authors must provide the trial registration number in the manuscript.
• The manuscript must contain a clear Ethics Statement indicating approval/consent. Omissions will lead to return of the manuscript without review.

G. Data Availability, Materials & Open Science

• All journals will require a Data Availability Statement (DAS) in the main manuscript, indicating whether data are publicly available, deposited in a repository (with link and identifiers), or access is restricted (with justification).
• Authors are strongly encouraged to deposit datasets, code, and materials in recognized repositories (e.g., Dryad, Zenodo, Figshare, GenBank).
• The reproducibility of results is central: data, code and materials must be sufficient to allow independent verification.
• Exceptions (e.g., privacy, proprietary data, bio-hazards) must be clearly explained; embargoes or restricted access must be justified and automatically reviewed by the editor.
• For AI/algorithmic work (e.g., in HealthAI Frontier), authors must supply model/code access where possible, provide input/output descriptions, and include bias/robustness evaluation.

H. Preprint & Prior Dissemination Policy

• Authors may submit manuscripts that have appeared as preprints (e.g., arXiv, bioRxiv) prior to peer review, provided they declare the preprint DOI in their submission.
• Authors must ensure that any reuse or citation of preprint versions is clearly acknowledged in the submission.
• Once accepted for publication, authors must update the preprint with a cross-link to the published version (via its DOI).
• Duplicate submission of the same content to multiple journals simultaneously is prohibited.

I. Generative AI & Computational Tools Policy

• Authors must disclose any use of generative-AI or large-language models (LLMs) in manuscript preparation, including the tool used, version, purpose (e.g., language editing, summary generation), and what validation/checks were applied.
• AI tools/LLMs may not be listed as authors or take responsibility for the content.
• Editors and reviewers must not upload manuscripts to external LLMs or AI systems that would compromise confidentiality or author rights.
• Usage of AI in data generation, image synthesis, or analysis must be clearly identified, validated, and accompanied by detailed methodology and provenance.
• All AI-generated output must be carefully validated by human authors and the validation process described in the manuscript.

J. Conflicts of Interest & Funding Transparency

• All authors must submit a Conflict of Interest (COI) Disclosure Form at submission. This includes financial, personal, institutional or intellectual interests that could be perceived to influence the research or publication.
• COI statements are published with the article (in a dedicated section) and tagged in the metadata for indexing.
• Reviewers and editors must also disclose any COIs before accepting review or editorial assignment; such declarations will be recorded.
• Funding sources must be declared in each article, including grant numbers, institutional support, and any commercial sponsorship. If sponsors influenced data access, study design, analysis or manuscript writing, this must be stated.
• Editors must publish their COI policy; they must not handle manuscripts where they hold a COI.

K. Open Access Licensing, Copyright & Reuse

• All Zenith journals operate under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license unless otherwise stated, allowing free reuse provided attribution is given.
• Authors retain copyright; Zenith is granted a non-exclusive license to publish and disseminate.
• Any third-party materials (figures, tables, images) included in articles must include rights clearance, and this must be indicated in figure/table legends.
• Published articles will be free to access upon publication (no embargo) and will include clear metadata about reuse licenses.
• Hybrid or delayed-access journals must clearly declare fees, embargo periods, and open access options (in line with DOAJ transparency).

L. Archiving, Metadata & Indexing

• Each article will receive a DOI (via Crossref) and include full metadata: ORCID iDs of authors, submission/acceptance/publication dates, journal version history.
• For biomedical titles seeking indexing in PubMed Central (PMC), published XML will conform to PMC’s DTD requirements including structured metadata and funding/COI tagging.
• Zenith will deposit content in long-term preservation systems (e.g., CLOCKSS, LOCKSS) to ensure permanent access.
• Journal websites will publish editorial board lists, peer review model, ISSN(s), license terms, archiving and indexing status, and publication ethics policy (as per DOAJ best practice and COPE requirements).

M. Complaints, Appeals & Ethical Misconduct Handling

• A Complaint & Whistle-blowing Policy is published on each journal’s website includes contact details (RIO), confidentiality promise, timeframe for acknowledgement (≤ 5 business days) and preliminary review (≤ 30 days).
• Appeals from authors (e.g., against editorial decisions, misconduct findings) will be heard by an independent Ethics Appeals Panel, composed of senior editorial board members without prior involvement in the case.
• Final decisions (corrections, retractions, expressions of concern) will be publicly documented and permanently linked to the article.
• If institutional or funding-agency involvement is required (e.g., major misconduct), the publisher will notify the relevant bodies.

N. Advertising, Sponsorship & Editorial Integrity

• Zenith will separate editorial functions from advertising/sponsorship. Advertisements will be clearly marked as such, and no article decisions will be influenced by sponsors.
• Sponsored supplements or special issues will adhere to the same peer review standards, transparency and integrity as regular issues.
• All sponsorship arrangements will be disclosed on the journal website.

O. Discipline-Specific Addenda

Given your portfolio of 12 launching journals plus future fields, each journal will append a short “Journal-Specific Ethics Addendum” highlighting discipline-specific standards:

• Biomedical/Clinical Titles (e.g., Oncology, Cardiology): add statements on clinical trial registration, patient safety, adverse event reporting, reporting guidelines (CONSORT, PRISMA, STROBE, CARE).
• AI & Computational Titles (HealthAI Frontier): add statements on algorithmic fairness, data/data‐set provenance, code availability, model interpretability, bias testing.
• Clean Energy / Physical & Chemical Sciences: add statements on environmental safety, experimental reproducibility, hazardous material protocols, sustainability disclosures.
• Biotechnology Titles: add biosafety/bioethics statements, genetic data privacy, dual‐use issues.
• Management & Technology Titles: add statements on human subjects in management research, confidentiality of corporate data, informed consent for surveys.

P. Implementation, Training & Compliance Monitoring

• All new editors and reviewers will complete a mandatory ethics training module during onboarding; refresher training will be provided annually.
• Zenith will conduct an annual ethics audit that reviews: peer review turnaround times, rejection/acceptance ratios, misconduct cases, author/resubmission statistics, data availability compliance. The audit summary will be published in the annual Integrity Report.
• Policy versioning: Each policy document will carry a version number, date of enactment and last review date. A changelog will be publicly available.

Q. Versioning & Policy Updates

• This policy document is Version 1.0, effective [insert date]. It will be reviewed annually or sooner if industry standards evolve (e.g., AI use, data mandates). Revisions will be documented and dated; previous versions will remain archived for transparency.