Publication Ethics

The Journal of Healthcare Analytics and Informatics is committed to the highest standards of publication ethics. The Journal aligns its practices with the Core Practices and Best Practice Guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This page sets out the Journal's expectations of authors, reviewers, and editors, and the procedures the Journal follows when ethical concerns arise.

What this statement covers

This statement addresses the following areas, in line with the requirements for a Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement expected by indexing and abstracting services:

Authorship and contributorship
Complaints and appeals
Allegations of research misconduct
Conflicts of interest
Data sharing and reproducibility
Ethical oversight of research
Intellectual property, plagiarism, text recycling, and citation manipulation
Post-publication discussions and corrections
Corrections and retractions
Integrity of the scholarly literature

Each area is addressed in the numbered sections below.

1. Authorship and contributorship

The Journal applies COPE authorship principles and the CRediT contributorship taxonomy. Full details, including the prohibition of ghost, gift, and guest authorship, the requirement for all authors to approve the submitted manuscript, and the procedure for authorship changes during review, are on the Authorship and Contributorship page.

2. Conflicts of interest

All authors, reviewers, and editors must declare any personal, financial, institutional, or intellectual interests that could reasonably be perceived to influence their conduct in relation to a manuscript. Detailed expectations for each role are on the Conflicts of Interest page. The Journal applies a documented protocol for handling submissions from members of the editorial team and the active reviewer pool, described on the Editorial Independence page.

3. Originality and similarity screening

Every submission is reviewed for originality as part of the Journal's editorial screening process. The Editor-in-Chief and handling editors examine each submission for evidence of unattributed similarity with previously published work, including text reuse from prior publications by the same authors (self-plagiarism), text recycling, and citation manipulation. Submissions with substantial unattributed similarity to other works are returned to the authors with an opportunity to address the issue, or rejected if the issue is severe. The similarity-detection tool used by the Journal and the screening workflow are described on the Plagiarism Policy page.

The Journal applies the COPE flowcharts for suspected plagiarism in a submitted or published manuscript. Authors should ensure that all sources of information, ideas, methods, figures, and data are properly cited, that quotations are clearly marked, and that prior work by the same authors is cited and discussed where it overlaps with the present submission.

Text recycling refers to the reuse of substantial portions of an author's own previously published text without appropriate attribution or disclosure. Even where the reused text is the authors' own, undisclosed recycling misrepresents the originality of the submission. Authors should follow the COPE-endorsed Text Recycling Guidelines when reusing their own prior work.

Citation manipulation refers to the inclusion of citations that do not contribute to the scholarly content of a manuscript but are included to artificially inflate citation metrics, whether of the authors' own work, the Journal, or a third party's work. Manuscripts found to contain manipulated citations will be rejected or retracted, and the matter may be reported to the authors' institutions.

4. Redundant and overlapping publication

The Journal does not publish manuscripts that have been previously published elsewhere or that are currently under consideration by another journal. Authors must disclose any prior or concurrent submission of related work to any other publication venue. Conference papers may be developed into journal submissions only if the journal version includes substantial new content beyond the conference paper; this development must be declared at submission, and the prior conference paper must be cited in the journal manuscript.

5. Data fabrication, falsification, and manipulation

The fabrication or falsification of data, results, or images is research misconduct and is grounds for immediate rejection. Where misconduct is discovered after publication, the Journal proceeds to retraction in accordance with COPE guidelines. Authors must not manipulate figures, charts, or images in ways that misrepresent the underlying data. Acceptable image processing, including cropping and brightness or contrast adjustment applied uniformly to the whole image, must be disclosed where it could affect interpretation. Selective enhancement, deletion, or addition of features within an image, including within medical images such as radiographs, scans, or histopathology slides, is not acceptable. For health analytics and clinical modeling work, this principle extends to the selective reporting of results: authors must not omit unfavorable model runs or patient cohorts, cherry-pick validation datasets or outcome measures, or present internal development performance as external or prospective validation without disclosure.

6. Use of artificial intelligence tools

Authors are required to declare any use of generative AI in the preparation of a manuscript and to comply with the responsibilities set out on the AI Use Policy page. Reviewers are required to comply with the confidentiality and disclosure rules governing AI use in review. AI tools cannot be listed as authors and cannot be assigned authorship responsibilities under any circumstances.

7. Data availability and reproducibility

Authors must include a Data Availability Statement in every manuscript and, where applicable, make analysis code available alongside the data. The Journal's full expectations, including FAIR-aligned repository recommendations and the handling of restricted-access health data, are on the Data Availability and Reproducibility Policy page.

8. Ethical conduct of research

Research involving human participants must have been reviewed and approved by an appropriate ethics committee or institutional review board, and authors must state the approval reference and the date in the manuscript. Studies should be reported in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Research involving animals must comply with the relevant national and institutional regulations and must be reviewed by the appropriate ethics body. Where research involves identifiable individuals or their personal or health data, informed consent for participation and for publication must have been obtained where required, and the procedure described in the manuscript. Authors working with de-identified patient records or secondary health datasets must state the basis for use, including any ethics committee waiver of consent. Authors are responsible for retaining records of ethics approval and consent and for making them available to the Journal on request.

9. Corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions

The Journal handles post-publication concerns in line with the COPE Retraction Guidelines. Three forms of notice are used:

Correction notice (corrigendum or erratum): issued for honest errors that affect the interpretation or accuracy of the article but do not invalidate its findings. The original article is retained, and a correction notice is published with bidirectional links between the original article and the correction.
Expression of concern: issued where there is well-founded but inconclusive concern about the integrity or reliability of an article, while investigation is in progress. The original article is retained, and the expression of concern is published with bidirectional links.
Retraction: issued where the findings of an article are unreliable due to error, fabrication, falsification, or substantial misconduct. The original article is retained on the platform but is clearly marked as retracted, with a retraction notice published and bibliographic databases notified.

10. Allegations of misconduct

Allegations of misconduct concerning a submitted or published manuscript may be raised in confidence with the Editor-in-Chief through the Contact page. The Journal takes all allegations seriously, applies the relevant COPE flowcharts, and may consult the authors, the authors' institutions, and other relevant parties as the investigation requires. The Journal will not name a complainant without their consent except where required by law. Allegations are investigated regardless of the seniority of the parties involved or the time elapsed since publication.

11. Complaints and appeals

Complaints about editorial process may be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief through the Contact page. Authors who believe their manuscript has been declined in error may appeal as described on the Peer Review Policy page; appeals are considered only on grounds of demonstrable process error or factual misunderstanding by reviewers, and must address each reviewer's substantive concerns directly. Complaints that cannot be resolved at editor level may be escalated to COPE, of whose published guidance the Journal observes the principles.

12. Whistleblowing protection

Individuals who raise concerns about ethics or misconduct in good faith are protected from retaliation. The Journal will treat their identity as confidential to the extent permitted by law and will not communicate with their institution, employer, or other parties about the concern without their consent.

13. Editorial confidentiality

Editors and reviewers do not disclose information about a submission to anyone outside the editorial process. Material under review must not be shared, cited as a personal communication, or used for any purpose other than evaluation of the submission. Where conflicts of interest require recusal, the editor or reviewer is excluded from access to the submission and from any discussion of it.

14. Editorial independence

Editorial decisions are made by the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial team on the basis of scholarly merit, methodological soundness, and scope-fit, as assessed through external peer review. The publisher has no role in editorial decisions on individual manuscripts. Manuscripts authored by members of the editorial team are subject to the Journal's Editorial Submissions Policy, which requires double-blind review by external reviewers and removes the author-editor from any role in the editorial process for their own submission. The Journal's full statement is on the Editorial Independence page.

15. Effective date and revision

This Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement is effective from 27 June 2026. The Journal reviews this statement annually and updates it as practice evolves and as new guidance is issued by COPE and other relevant bodies. Material revisions are dated.