Author Guidelines

• The award of authorship should balance intellectual contributions to the conception, design, analysis and writing of the study against the collection of data and other routine work. If there is no task that can reasonably be attributed to a particular individual, then that individual should not be credited with authorship.
• To avoid disputes over attribution of academic credit, it is helpful to decide early on in the planning of a research project who will be credited as authors, as contributors, and who will be acknowledged.
• All authors must take public responsibility for the content of their paper. The multidisciplinary nature of much research can make this difficult, but this can be resolved by the disclosure of individual contributions.

• Published studies do not need to be repeated unless further confirmation is required.
• Previous publication of an abstract during the proceedings of meetings does not preclude subsequent submission for publication, but full disclosure should be made at the time of submission.
• Publication of the same data two (or more) times in primary journals is a clear violation of scientific ethics.

Good research should be well justified, well planned, appropriately designed, and ethically approved.

• Research protocols should seek to answer specific questions, rather than just collect data.
• Protocols must be carefully agreed by all contributors and collaborators, including, if appropriate, the participants.
• The final protocol should form part of the research record.
• Early agreement on the precise roles of the contributors and collaborators, and on matters of authorship and publication, is advised.
• Statistical issues should be considered early in study design, including power calculations, to ensure there are neither too few nor too many participants.

Peer reviewers are experts chosen by editors to provide written opinions, with the aim of improving the study.

• Suggestions from authors as to who might act as reviewers are often useful, but there should be no obligation on editors to use those suggested.
• The duty of confidentiality in the assessment of a manuscript must be maintained by expert reviewers, and this extends to reviewers' colleagues who may be asked (with the editor's permission) to give opinions on specific sections.
• The submitted manuscript should not be retained or copied. Reviewers and editors should not make any use of the data, arguments, or interpretations, unless they have the authors' permission.
• Reviewers should provide speedy, accurate, courteous, unbiased and justifiable reports. If reviewers suspect misconduct, they should write in confidence to the editor.

Plagiarism ranges from the unreferenced use of others' published and unpublished ideas, including research grant applications to submission under "new" authorship of a complete paper, sometimes in a different language.

• It may occur at any stage of planning, research, writing, or publication: it applies to print and electronic versions.
• All sources should be disclosed, and if large amounts of other people's written or illustrative material is to be used, permission must be sought.

Data should be appropriately analysed, but inappropriate analysis does not necessarily amount to misconduct. Fabrication and falsification of data do constitute misconduct.

• All sources and methods used to obtain and analyse data, including any electronic pre-processing, should be fully disclosed; detailed explanations should be provided for any exclusions.
• Methods of analysis must be explained in detail, and referenced, if they are not in common use.
• The post hoc analysis of subgroups is acceptable, as long as this is disclosed. Failure to disclose that the analysis was post hoc is unacceptable.
• The discussion section of a paper should mention any issues of bias which have been considered, and explain how they have been dealt with in the design and interpretation of the study.