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Publishing Policies

Overview

1. CTOR PRESS and INNOVATION adhere to the following Publishing, Editorial and Research policies:
2. Additions to or modification of these policies are detailed on the CTOR PRESS and INNOVATION websites.

Author Agreements

1. Authors must read and agree to adhere to all publishing, editorial and research policies set by CTOR PRESS and INNOVATION.
2. Authors must agree to provide any additional information requested from the INNOVATION Editor and/or Reviewers, as deemed necessary to meet all research, editorial and publishing policies set by CTOR PRESS and INNOVATION.
3. All co-authors must agree to the INNOVATION Terms of Submission.
4. All co-authors must read and agree to the content of the manuscript. All co-authors are then accountable for the accuracy, integrity and ethical standards of the manuscript as detailed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
5. All co-authors must confirm that the manuscript is original, has not been published anywhere else, and has not been submitted to any other journal. Publication on a preprint server (arXiv or BioRxiv) is permitted.
6. All co-authors must sign the INNOVATION Author Declaration Form.
7. The corresponding author must submit a cover letter that includes the following:

  • Manuscript title and brief description of the study
  • Indicate why you elected to submit and publish your manuscript INNOVATION
  • Explain why you failed to follow any of the CTOR PRESS and/or INNOVATION guidelines in your submission, if applicable
  • Reference to the invited review or special issue, if applicable.
  • Acceptance or non-acceptance of the Open Data Policy.

Manuscript Fee

All accepted manuscripts will be published for free.

Copyright, Licensing and Creative Commons

The copyright on any article published by CTOR PRESS in INNOVATION is retained by the author(s).

 

Authors must sign a Licensing Agreement giving CTOR PRESS the right to publish their article in INNOVATION and identify CTOR PRESS as the original publisher.

 

Authors may grant any third party the right to use their INNOVATION article freely with the understanding that the manuscript is not to be altered, all authors are to be listed in the proper citation and CTOR PRESS is acknowledged as the publisher of the original manuscript. CTOR PRESS abides by the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY).

 

CTOR PRESS adheres to an Open Data policy by applying the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication Waiver to all published data in INNOVATION. Authors who choose not to adhere to the Open Data policy must state this and give their justification in the Cover Letter. This will not influence acceptance of the manuscript.

Access to Publications

INNOVATION is an Open Access journal. Every manuscript published in INNOVATION will be freely accessible in HTML and PDF formats.

 

CTOR Press is applying to submit INNOVATION articles to PubMed Central. Once granted permission, ll accepted manuscripts will be deposited immediately upon publication, without embargo, in XML with declared DTD format in PubMed Central.

 

The author(s) or copyright owner(s) irrevocably grant(s) to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the published article in its entirety or in part, in any format or medium, provided that no substantive changes are introduced to the content, full attribution of authorship and citation are provided, and no changes are made to the bibliographic details.

 

CTOR PRESS is committed permanently to maintaining this Open Access Publishing policy for INNOVATION, retrospectively and prospectively, in all eventualities, including any future changes in ownership.

Availability of Materials and Data

All manuscripts must include an ‘Availability of data and materials’ statement. Data availability statements should include information on where data supporting the results reported in the article can be found including, where applicable, hyperlinks to publicly archived datasets analysed or generated during the study. By data we mean the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate and build upon the findings reported in the article. We recognise it is not always possible to share research data publicly, for instance when individual privacy could be compromised, and in such instances data availability should still be stated in the manuscript along with any conditions for access.
Data availability statements can take one of the following forms (or a combination of more than one if required for multiple datasets):

  • The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS]
  • The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
  • All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].
  • The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due [REASON WHY DATA ARE NOT PUBLIC] but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
  • Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.
  • The data that support the findings of this study are available from [third party name] but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of [third party name].
  • Not applicable. If your manuscript does not contain any data, please state ‘Not applicable’ in this section.

INNOVATION also requires that authors cite any publicly available data on which the conclusions of the paper rely in the manuscript. Data citations should include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI) and should ideally be included in the reference list. Citations of datasets, when they appear in the reference list, should include the minimum information recommended by DataCite and follow journal style. Dataset identifiers including DOIs should be expressed as full URLs. For example:

 

Hao Z, AghaKouchak A, Nakhjiri N, Farahmand A. Global integrated drought monitoring and prediction system (GIDMaPS) data sets. figshare. 2014. 

 

With the corresponding text in the Availability of data and materials statement:

 

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT WEB LINK TO DATASETS], [Reference number].
Authors submitting a manuscript to INNOVATION must agree to make materials used in, and all raw data from, the study freely available to any researcher who intends to use these materials and data for non-commercial purposes. If these materials or data are from human subject research, the researchers making the request must confirm that they will adhere to the National Institutes of Health’s Human Subjects Research Guidelines to ensure research subject privacy.

 

CTOR PRESS is committed to making all datasets from manuscripts published in INNOVATION publicly available, via 1) deposition in public repositories (see below for links), 2) in the manuscript or 3) in Supporting Data that is submitted with the manuscript. These datasets should be in a software-readable format (e.g. spreadsheet) that allows outside researchers to perform independent analyses. If authors opt to not make their raw data publicly available, they must state this in the “Availability of Materials and Data Section,” as described below.

 

Availability of Materials and Data Section. Authors must explicitly state where the materials and data from their study can be obtained or found. Authors who do not wish to share their data must explicitly state this, and give the reason.

 

CTOR PRESS adheres to the Force11 Data Citation Synthesis Group Principles, which requires that all publicly available datasets be fully credited and attributed. INNOVATION requires that such shared datasets be listed in the references with an accession number or unique identifier (e.g., digital object identifier (DOI).

Repositories

List of recommended repositories. Below is a list of recommended repositories by subject area and data type. If you are a repository and would like to be added to the list below, or an author who would like a repository added, please contact the INNOVATION Editor.
Nucleic acid sequences

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Annotated collection of all publicly available nucleotide sequences and their translated amino acid sequences

Database

DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ)

Data scope and type

Nucleic acid sequence, gene, genome

Database

European Molecular Biology Laboratory Nucleotide Sequence Database (EMBL/EBI)

Data scope and type

Nucleic acid sequence, gene, genome

Database

GenBank (National Center for Biotechnology Information)

Data scope and type

SNPs, variation

Database

dbSNP

Data scope and type

Variation

Database

European Variation Archive (EVA)

Data scope and type

Variation

Database

dbVar

Data scope and type

Variation, structural variants

Database

Database of Genomic Variants Archive (DGVa)

Data scope and type

Metagenome, sequence alignment, sequence information

Database

EBI Metagenomics

Data scope and type

Sequencing

Database

NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA)
Protein sequences

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Protein information

Database

Universal Protein Resource (UniProt)
Mass spectrometry

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Mass spectrometry

Database

MassIVE
Proteomics

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Proteome

Database

ProteomeXchange through the PRIDE website

Data scope and type

Mass spectrometry

Database

MassIVE
Structures

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Protein structures

Database

Worldwide Protein Data Bank

Data scope and type

Nucleic acid structures

Database

Nucleic Acid Database

Data scope and type

Crystal structure data

Database

Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre

Data scope and type

Crystal structure data, atomic coordinates

Database

Crystallography Open Database (COD)

Data scope and type

Microscopy, electron density map, structure

Database

Electron Microscopy Data Bank (EMDB)

Data scope and type

Imaging (all types)

Database

Coherent X-ray Imaging Data Bank (CXIDB)
Neuroscience

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Raw fMRI data

Database

OpenfMRI

Data scope and type

Resting-state fMRI, DTI, phenotypic information

Database

Functional Connectomes Project International Neuroimaging Data-Sharing Initiative

Data scope and type

Human brain statistical maps

Database

NeuroVault

Data scope and type

Digitally reconstructed neurons

Database

NeuroMorpho
Chemical structures and essays

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Chemical structures

Database

PubChem Substance

Data scope and type

Bioactivity screens

Database

PubChem BioAssay

Data scope and type

Nanomaterials and their composition, nanomaterial characterizations from physico-chemical characterizations, nanomaterial characterizations from in vitro characterizations

Database

aNanoLab

Data scope and type

Metabolite concentrations (time-series and steady-state), flux data, and enzyme measurements and tools to build ODE-based kinetic models

Database

Kinetic Models of Biological Systems (KiMoSys)
Functional genomics data (such as microarray, RNA-seq or ChIP-seq data)
Author should adhere to the standards set by the Functional Genomics Data Society  and deposit microarray data in a MIAME-compliant format in a public repository.

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Microarray

Database

ArrayExpress

Data scope and type

Microarray

Database

Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)

Data scope and type

Expression, epigenetics, phenotype, genotype, genomic variants (GWAS studies)

Database

Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP)

Data scope and type

Protein-protein interaction, protein-DNA interaction, molecular interactions, protein-RNA interaction

Database

IntAct Molecular Interaction Database (IntAct)

Data scope and type

miRNA sequences and annotation

Database

miRBase
Biological materials

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Microarray

Database

ArrayExpress

Data scope and type

Microarray

Database

Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)

Data scope and type

Expression, epigenetics, phenotype, genotype, genomic variants (GWAS studies)

Database

Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP)

Data scope and type

Protein-protein interaction, protein-DNA interaction, molecular interactions, protein-RNA interaction

Database

IntAct Molecular Interaction Database (IntAct)

Data scope and type

miRNA sequences and annotation

Database

miRBase
Phylogenetic data
Environmental and ecological data
Other data
If authors cannot find a suitable repository for their data, general repositories are available.

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Microarray

Database

ArrayExpress

Data scope and type

Microarray

Database

Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)

Data scope and type

Expression, epigenetics, phenotype, genotype, genomic variants (GWAS studies)

Database

Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP)

Data scope and type

Protein-protein interaction, protein-DNA interaction, molecular interactions, protein-RNA interaction

Database

IntAct Molecular Interaction Database (IntAct)

Data scope and type

miRNA sequences and annotation

Database

miRBase
Publication of clinical datasets
For datasets containing clinical data, authors have an ethical and legal responsibility to respect participants’ rights to privacy and to protect their identity. Authors must obtain Informed Consent for Publication of the dataset from participants at the point of recruitment to the trial. If this is not possible, authors must demonstrate that publication of such data does not compromise anonymity or confidentiality or breach local data protection laws, for the dataset to be considered for publication. Authors must consider whether the dataset contains any direct or indirect identifiers (Hrynaszkiewicz et al., 2010. Trials. 11:9.) and consult their ethics committee or other appropriate body before submission if there is any possibility that participants will not be fully anonymous. Authors must state in their manuscript on submission whether Informed Consent for Publication was obtained from each study subject (or parent or caregiver, where appropriate). If Informed Consent for Publication was not obtained, authors must state the reason for this, and which body was consulted in the preparation of the dataset.
Software and code
Any previously unreported software application or custom code presented in the manuscript should be available for testing by reviewers in a way that preserves their anonymity. The manuscript should include a description in the Availability of Data and Materials section of how the reviewers can access the unreported software application or custom code. This section should include a link to the most recent version of your software or code (e.g. GitHub or Sourceforge) as well as a link to the archived version referenced in the manuscript. The software or code should be archived in an appropriate repository with a DOI or another unique identifier. For software in GitHub, we recommend using Zenodo. If published, the software application/tool should be readily available to any scientist wishing to use it for non-commercial purposes, without restrictions (such as the need for a material transfer agreement). If the software application/tool is not made freely available, then the manuscript should focus clearly on the development of the underlying method and not discuss the tool in any detail.
Gene nomenclature
Standardized gene nomenclature should be used throughout. Human gene symbols and names can be found in the HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC) database. The HGNC FAQs page can be found here.
Reporting sequence variants
We endorse the recommendations of the Human Variome Project Consortium for describing sequence variants (Human Genome Variation Society) and phenotypes (Human Phenotype Ontology).
Data
To promote the maximum re-use and utility of published research, we expect authors to comply with available field-specific standards for the preparation and recording of data. Please see the BioSharing website for information on field-specific data standards. Authors must comply with best practice in their field for sharing of data, with particular attention to maintaining patient confidentiality.
Authors using unpublished genomic data are expected to abide by the guidelines of the Fort Lauderdale and Toronto agreements. Based on broadly accepted scientific community standards, the key requirement of third parties using genomic data is to contact the owners of unpublished data (i.e. the principal investigator and sequencing center) prior to undertaking their research, to advise them about their planned analyses.
Guidelines and Databases for Describing New Taxa

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Microarray

Database

ArrayExpress

Data scope and type

Microarray

Database

Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)

Data scope and type

Expression, epigenetics, phenotype, genotype, genomic variants (GWAS studies)

Database

Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP)

Data scope and type

Protein-protein interaction, protein-DNA interaction, molecular interactions, protein-RNA interaction

Database

IntAct Molecular Interaction Database (IntAct)

Data scope and type

miRNA sequences and annotation

Database

miRBase

Reporting Standards

BioMed Central advocates complete and transparent reporting of biomedical and biological research. Please refer to the Minimum Standards Reporting Checklist for reporting standards. CTOR PRESS and INNOVATION also require that authors refer to the minimum reporting guidelines for health research hosted by the EQUATOR Network  when preparing their manuscript, and FairSharing for reporting checklists for biological and biomedical research. Authors must adhere to these guidelines when drafting their manuscript, and peer reviewers will be asked to refer to these checklists when evaluating such studies.
Checklists are available for a number of study designs

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Microarray

Database

ArrayExpress

Data scope and type

Microarray

Database

Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)

Data scope and type

Expression, epigenetics, phenotype, genotype, genomic variants (GWAS studies)

Database

Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP)

Data scope and type

Protein-protein interaction, protein-DNA interaction, molecular interactions, protein-RNA interaction

Database

IntAct Molecular Interaction Database (IntAct)

Data scope and type

miRNA sequences and annotation

Database

miRBase
*Authors of systematic reviews should also provide a link to an additional file from the manuscript’s Methods Section detailing the search strategy. For an example of how a search strategy should be presented, see the Cochrane Reviewers’ Handbook.

Conflict of Interest

CTOR PRESS requires authors to declare all Conflicts of Interest Internal link (COI) related to their manuscript submission. All submitted manuscripts must include a “Conflict of Interest” Section at the end of the manuscript listing all COI ([financial] and [non-financial]). Where authors have no Conflicts of Interest, the statement should read “The author(s) declare(s) that they have no Conflicts of Interest”. The INNOVATION Editor may ask any of the manuscript’s authors for further information relating to COI.
Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any COI and will be excluded from the peer review process if a COI exists.
Definition of Conflict of Interest (COI)
A COI exists when the authors’ presentation and/or interpretation of data may be influenced by their financial or non-financial relationship with other people or organizations. Authors must disclose any financial or non-financial COI that may introduce bias into the manuscript.
Financial Conflicts of Interest
Financial Conflicts of Interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the manuscript, either now or in the future
  • Holding stocks or shares in an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the manuscript, either now or in the future
  • Holding, or currently applying for, patents relating to the content of the manuscript
  • Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript

Permanency

CTOR PRESS guarantees that all published INNOVATION manuscripts will be deposited in an open access digital archive to ensure readers will have access to the manuscripts in perpetuity.

Corrections and Retractions

If the integrity of CTOR PRESS or INNOVATION is deemed to be threatened by misconduct in published manuscripts, Corrections or Retractions will be published.
In line with CTOR PRESS’s Permanency Policy, Corrections or Retractions will be made by publishing an Erratum or a Retraction Note with the published manuscript. The original article will not be altered beyond the Erratum or Retraction Note and will remain indexed in the public domain. If needed, the published manuscript will be removed from the archive, per CTOR PRESS’s Removal Policy.
Corrections
Corrections that do not alter the conclusions of the manuscript or invalidate it in any way will be published as an Erratum that will be linked and indexed to the original publication. Corrections may also be utilized to change authorship and will be published as an Erratum that will be linked and indexed to the original publication. The decision to publish the Erratum will be made by the INNOVATION Editor.
Retractions
If convincing evidence of misconduct (including, but not limited to falsification of data or other scientific information, unethical study design or conflict of interest) in a published article is uncovered, the published article will be retracted. CTOR PRESS will adhere to the COPE guidelines in such cases. Retraction articles will remain indexed and linked to the original article.

Appeals and Complaints

CTOR PRESS and INNOVATION adhere to the COPE guidelines regarding appeals to editorial decisions and complaints.

Removal

CTOR PRESS will make every effort to maintain an archive of all manuscripts published in INNOVATION. However, CTOR PRESS reserves the right to remove publications that we have been advised are potentially defamatory or that infringe any intellectual property right, or are otherwise unlawful from our website and any archive(s) in which we have deposited the manuscript.

 

If CTOR PRESS takes this action, the manuscript will remain indexed, in place of the manuscript the following will appear:

 

“CTOR PRESS regrets that this manuscript is no longer available due to possible legal actions related to content in the manuscript”.

Duplicate Publication

Any manuscript submitted to INNOVATION must be original. Simultaneous consideration of the manuscript by INNOVATION and any other journal is prohibited. If the submitted manuscript appears in any citable form, INNOVATION may consider it for publication under specific conditions (see Table below). In such cases, the corresponding author must state the specific condition in the cover letter accompanying their submission.
Acceptable and non-acceptable forms of duplicate publication

Data scope and type

Database

Data scope and type

Microarray

Database

ArrayExpress

Data scope and type

Microarray

Database

Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO)

Data scope and type

Expression, epigenetics, phenotype, genotype, genomic variants (GWAS studies)

Database

Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGaP)

Data scope and type

Protein-protein interaction, protein-DNA interaction, molecular interactions, protein-RNA interaction

Database

IntAct Molecular Interaction Database (IntAct)

Data scope and type

miRNA sequences and annotation

Database

miRBase

Promoting Your Publication

CTOR PRESS actively and broadly promotes all published manuscripts via email, sponsorship at scientific conferences, symposia and workshops. All authors are encouraged to promote their published INNOVATION manuscripts.