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Ethics and Policies

We are a Diamond/Platinum Open Access publisher. We make every effort to ensure high quality scholarship in all articles and conference papers we publish and host on our research platform.

Our core priority is to promote Open Access publishing best practices and accelerate the advancement of academic research across the world.

At KnE Publishing, we aim to ensure everything we publish is ethically sound and complies with the policies and principles set out by:

KnE Publishing takes all forms of misconduct extremely seriously and will take action in accordance with COPE guidelines to protect the integrity of our journals.

The following policies apply to all the journals owned by Knowledge E and those published on behalf of scholarly societies and academic institutions. Additional requirements are also set out by the individual journals on their web pages

Copyright

All articles published by Knowledge E and hosted on this platform are published under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY) or (CC-BY-NC).

Under this license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but CC-BY allows anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publisher as long as you give appropriate credit.

With regards to third-party content, all authors are required to sign a declaration that they have obtained all necessary permissions for third-party content included in their manuscript.

Archiving

To preserve scholarly literature published in electronic form and to ensure that these materials remain available to future generations of scholars and researchers, Knowledge E content is archived in Portico, a not-for-profit organisation with a mission and singular focus to provide a permanent archive of electronic scholarly content. Portico representative offices are located in New York, New Jersey, and Michigan.

Authorship and Correspondence

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below: 

    • Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;

    • Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and

    • Final approval of the version to be published.

Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship.

The journal follows  COPE’s Guidelines on Authorship and AI Tools and does not consider an AI tool as an author of a paper. Authors who use an AI tool for the writing of their manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data must disclose clearly in the  Materials and Methods (or similar) section of the paper how and which AI tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, including the parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.

In submitting their work for consideration, authors offer a personal guarantee that the work does not infringe on any existing copyright.

All authors assume full responsibility for all parts of the research and commit to investigating and resolving any questions regarding the integrity, objectivity and validity of the manuscript and its findings. We encourage all authors and those involved in the editorial process of the manuscript to familiarise themselves with  COPE’s Guidelines on Authorship Disputes.

Preprint Policy

KnE Publishing supports the sharing of research via preprint servers, and our authors are permitted to share a Preprint of their article.

Authors must not transfer or assign copyright when sharing the preprint version of their manuscript or make it available under an exclusive licence (i.e. the preprint must be open access).

We accept articles previously available as preprints, provided the authors retain copyright in their work during the preprint process. However, this must have taken place prior to submission to the journal, and the author must notify the journal of the existence of the preprint at the time of submission.

For more information, visit individual journal pages.

Plagiarism

We do not tolerate any type of plagiarism, including but not limited to published and non-published material, images, text and downloads from websites.

    • We strongly suggest that authors do not modify or manipulate any images used in the manuscript, especially when modifications may lead to falsification or manipulation of results.

    • Fraudulent results may result in a retraction following a thorough investigation of the claims of misconduct.

    • Manuscripts containing any form of plagiarism will be rejected. Policies outlined in the  Retraction section will be imposed if plagiarism is detected following publication.

Peer Review

All articles submitted to the journal undergo an initial assessment by the journal’s Editor-in-Chief or a member of the editorial board.

    • If considered suitable for peer review, articles are then reviewed by two reviewers who are experts in the subject area and are not part of the journal’s editorial team. These reviewers are selected through effective systems to ensure they vigorously and fairly review all submissions.

    • We operate a double-blind peer review model in which neither the author nor the reviewer knows the identity of the other.

    • Reviewers are expected to communicate any signs of research misconduct or manipulation and support the journal in investigating any misconduct claims. Based on reviewers’ reports, the journal decides whether to reject the submission, return with minor or major suggestions for improvements, submit to a different journal or accept.

    • Authors are notified of the final decision through the journal’s submission system within four to eight weeks.

Conflicts of Interests

All conflicts of interest – financial, non-financial, professional or personal – that may affect the objectivity of the research must be declared upon submission. Editors and reviewers are likewise responsible for disclosing any conflicts of interest. Authors should also disclose conflicts of interest with products that compete with those mentioned in their manuscript.

Informed Consent

Participants in studies have the right to determine how their personal information is used, including what happens to their statements during a study or interview and any photographs taken of them. Whether the material or information is collected from living or deceased patients, prior written consent must be obtained from every participant or, if the patient is deceased and no pre-mortem decision was made, from their family or guardian. A statement confirming consent received must appear in the manuscript. All individual rights of participants must be respected.

Corrections, Expressions of Concern and Retractions

To address issues involving serious ethics or integrity concerns, the journal follows ICMJE and COPE guidelines. In line with that, we publish three types of post-publication notices: Corrections, Expressions of Concern and Retractions.

Corrections

Corrections are issued if the errors are minor and do not alter the results or conclusion of the reported research. If an author is found to have made an error, the journal will issue a corrigendum, and if the journal’s editorial team is found to have made an error, they will issue an erratum.

Corrigenda and Errata are assigned DOIs and linked to the original articles.

Expressions of Concern (EoC)

Expressions of Concern (EoC) are issued by the journal’s Editor-in-Chief if they have substantial doubt about the honesty and integrity of a published article. An EoC is published as a PDF and linked to the original article, similar to an Erratum or Corrigendum. After an EOC is published, the article may be corrected or retracted.

Retractions

We follow  COPE’s Retraction Guidelines. As such, a retraction may be considered in cases of:

    • A significant unintentional error (miscalculation or experimental error) invalidates the findings or conclusions of the authors.

    • Fabricated or falsified data, or other misconduct

    • Figure or image manipulation

    • Plagiarism

    • Copyright infringement

    • Redundant publication: Publication of the findings elsewhere without proper attribution or permission

    • Use of unethical research practices in conducting the study

    • Identification of a primary competing interest which was not disclosed and is thought to have potentially influenced the results or their interpretation

In extreme circumstances, the journal may remove an article from its website. Such events include legal obligations like a court order, privacy infringements, endangerment of an individual or the general public, and defamation.

Grievance Procedure

We draw from the  guidelines presented by the  Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to Manage Complaints and Disputes. Should a complaint and/or dispute arise, they may be directed to  publishing@knowledgee.com.

Integrity of Record

We maintain a record of all its metadata, including article titles, author information, volume, issues page numbers, etc. The journal ensures that the metadata is accessible to all within a jurisdiction without violating the law of the land and modifying the research content to suit geographical, linguistic or cultural diversity. In the event of a retraction or correction, when the journal needs to alter the publication record in any way, we preserve the indexing and accessing information as much as possible.

We do not modify or manipulate the representation of the academic record of the article in its marketing activities.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used for the stated purposes of this journal.

Upon publishing, all authors will be automatically registered for content alerts from the publication. To stop receiving the alerts, authors can subsequently unsubscribe through the link provided in the email.

These email addresses will not be made available to any other party.

For more details on our ethics and policies as a publisher, in collaboration with the various journals we host and publish boards, please visit the ethics and policies pages for the individual journals.