Related Elsevier policies, documents and initiatives
This section provides a comprehensive overview of links to Elsevier policy and procedures documents.
Legal guide for editors concerning ethics issues
This document contains clear definitions of all ethical problems that an editor might encounter and general guidelines on how an editor should deal with issues when they arise.
Plagiarism detection (CrossCheck)
In addition to making available this Publishing Ethics Resource Kit, Elsevier is also active in other publishing ethics initiatives, internally and externally. With the CrossRef Association it is involved in a plagiarism software project called CrossCheck. This link provides more information about this initiative.
Elsevier policy on article withdrawal
A description is given of circumstances when a published article must be withdrawn, retracted, replaced or removed.
Changes to authorship
In general, authors are expected to carefully consider the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript, and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names should be made only before the manuscript has been accepted and only if approved by the journal editor(s). To request such a change the corresponding author must send the handling editor: (a) the reason for the change in the author list and (b) a written confirmation from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. You are advised to consult the relevant guide for authors for specific information on the journal in question and in addition, you are recommended to make yourself aware of the CRediT author statement information.
Competing interests
This page includes information on what constitutes (potential) competing interests.
Declaration of interests
Transparency in research is important. To help our readers make their own judgments of potential bias, the corresponding author must disclose any potential competing or non-financial interests on behalf of all authors of the manuscript. This page includes a tool that authors can use to generate their declaration of interest.
Figure manipulation
Whilst it is accepted that authors sometimes need to manipulate images for clarity, manipulation for purposes of deception or fraud will be seen as scientific ethical abuse and will be dealt with accordingly. This page describes what is and what is not allowed. (Rossner and Yamada, 2004. The Journal of Cell Biology, 166, 11-15. https://jcb.rupress.org/content/166/1/11.full 打開新的分頁／視窗)
Patient details
Studies on patients or volunteers required ethics committee approval and informed consent, which should be documented in the paper. This links provides information on the requirements that authors need to adhere to.