Publication Ethics and Plagiarism Policy

Research on Frontiers is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics. The policies below follow the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Responsibilities of authors

  • Originality. Manuscripts must be the authors' own original work and must not have been published, in whole or in substantial part, elsewhere.
  • No duplicate submission. A manuscript must not be under consideration by another journal at the same time.
  • Authorship. Authorship is limited to those who have made a substantive contribution to the conception, design, execution or interpretation of the research. Everyone who meets these criteria must be listed, and anyone who does not must not be. All authors must approve the submitted version.
  • Acknowledgement of sources. The work of others must be properly cited. Data, text and ideas taken from other sources must be attributed.
  • Data. Authors may be asked to provide the underlying data or code for editorial review, and should be prepared to retain it for a reasonable period after publication.
  • Conflicts of interest. Any financial or other interest that could be seen to influence the work must be disclosed in the manuscript.
  • Use of AI tools. Large language models and other generative AI tools cannot be listed as authors. If such tools were used in preparing a manuscript, their use must be disclosed in a statement.
  • Errors. Authors who discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work must notify the editorial office promptly.

Plagiarism and similarity screening

Every manuscript submitted to this journal is screened for textual similarity before it is sent for review. Submissions whose similarity to previously published material exceeds acceptable limits — or which contain unattributed passages, self-plagiarism, or translations of the authors' own earlier work presented as new — are returned to the authors or rejected. Deliberate plagiarism results in immediate rejection and, in serious cases, in a ban on future submission to the journal.

Responsibilities of reviewers

  • Reviewers must treat manuscripts as confidential documents and must not disclose or use their content.
  • Reviewers must decline an invitation if they have a conflict of interest, or if they cannot assess the manuscript competently and within the agreed timeframe.
  • Reviews must be objective, constructive and free of personal criticism.
  • Reviewers must draw the editor's attention to any suspicion of plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication or other ethical misconduct.

Responsibilities of editors

  • Editors evaluate manuscripts solely on academic merit and take decisions free of commercial or personal influence.
  • Editors must not use unpublished material from a submitted manuscript in their own research.
  • Editors must withdraw from handling a manuscript where a conflict of interest exists, and must protect the identity of reviewers.

Research involving human or animal subjects

Research involving human participants must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee, and the manuscript must state the name of the approving body and the approval number. Informed consent must have been obtained. Research involving animals must comply with the relevant institutional and national guidelines.

Corrections, retractions and complaints

Where a published article is found to contain an error, the journal publishes a correction linked to the original article. Where the findings are shown to be unreliable — whether as a result of honest error or of misconduct — the article is retracted, with a retraction notice that remains linked to the original record. Complaints about the conduct of authors, reviewers or editors should be sent to rof@nacrp.ca and will be handled by an editor with no involvement in the case.