Publication Ethics and Research Integrity

To qualify as an author of a manuscript submitted to ADES, an individual must meet all four of the following criteria, as defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE):

Individuals who contributed technically but do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section. Honorary, guest, or gift authorship — where individuals who did not contribute substantively are listed as authors for reasons of seniority, institutional affiliation, or reciprocal favour — is considered a form of research misconduct and may result in rejection of the manuscript. Changes to authorship after submission require a formal written request from the corresponding author, countersigned by all listed and affected authors, and must be approved by the handling editor. No changes to authorship will be permitted after acceptance.

Research Involving Human Participants

All research involving human participants must have been approved by a recognised institutional ethics committee or review board prior to data collection. The Methods section must state the name of the approving institution, the approval reference number, and confirm that all participants provided voluntary informed consent. Manuscripts that cannot demonstrate ethics approval will not be considered for publication. Authors reporting studies involving vulnerable populations (children, prisoners, individuals with diminished capacity) should note any additional safeguards in place. ADES follows the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki in all matters relating to human subjects research.

Research Involving Animals

All research involving vertebrate animals or higher invertebrates must have been conducted in accordance with the applicable national guidelines and institutional committee approvals. Authors must confirm compliance with the ARRIVE 2.0 guidelines for the reporting of in vivo animal studies. The Methods section must identify the institutional animal ethics committee that approved the experiments, the approval number, and confirm that all procedures were conducted in accordance with applicable laws and regulations.

All manuscripts submitted to ADES are screened using CrossCheck/iThenticate plagiarism detection software upon receipt. Plagiarism — including unattributed copying of text, tables, figures, or ideas from any source, including the authors' own prior work — is treated as a serious breach of publication ethics. Manuscripts in which significant textual overlap with published or submitted work is detected will be rejected without peer review, and the authors' institution may be notified. Text recycling (reuse of substantial portions of previously published text without proper attribution) is considered self-plagiarism and is also prohibited, even when the recycled text appears in a different language. Legitimate restatement of previously published methods or background, when clearly attributed, is permitted.

Fabrication (inventing data or results) and falsification (manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented) are forms of research misconduct that may result in immediate rejection, retraction of published work, and notification of the authors' institutions. The ADES editorial board takes all allegations of data manipulation seriously and will investigate credible concerns brought to its attention, following COPE guidelines.

Submitting a manuscript that has been published or accepted elsewhere, or that is currently under review at another journal, is not permitted. Authors who have submitted related work elsewhere while a manuscript is under review at ADES must disclose this in writing to the editorial office immediately. Partial or "salami" publication — splitting a single study into multiple minimal publications to artificially inflate the number of publications — is also a form of duplicate publication and is subject to the same sanctions.

All images submitted to ADES must accurately represent the original data. Adjustments to brightness, contrast, or colour balance that apply uniformly to the entire image and are clearly disclosed are acceptable. Selective adjustment, removal, addition, enhancement, or movement of features in an image is not acceptable, regardless of the purpose. Gel and blot images must not be spliced without clear indication. Microscopy images must be representative of the wider dataset and include scale bars. ADES reserves the right to request original, unprocessed image files at any stage of review or post-publication.

All authors must declare, at the time of submission, any financial or non-financial interests that could be perceived to influence the reported work. These include, but are not limited to: current or recent employment; consultancy relationships; equity or ownership; honoraria; patent applications or registrations; research funding; and membership of an advisory board or editorial board of a journal with overlapping scope. If no conflicts exist, authors must state this explicitly. Competing interest declarations are published as part of the article and are therefore part of the permanent record. Editors and reviewers are also required to declare and manage their own conflicts of interest and must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in which a conflict arises.

ADES requires a Data Availability Statement in all submitted manuscripts. This statement must describe, specifically and truthfully, where the data supporting the findings of the study can be accessed. Accepted statements include:

ADES strongly encourages deposition of underlying data in recognized public repositories (e.g., Zenodo, Dryad, Figshare, PANGAEA, or discipline-specific repositories). Datasets deposited with persistent identifiers (DOIs) must be cited in the reference list.

ADES is committed to the accuracy and integrity of the published record. When errors or concerns are identified in published articles, the following actions may be taken in accordance with COPE guidelines:

ADES will investigate all credible post-publication concerns brought to the attention of the editorial office and will communicate findings to concerned parties in accordance with COPE flowcharts and recommendations.

Authors, reviewers, or readers who wish to raise a complaint about the editorial process, the conduct of reviewers, or a potential breach of publication ethics should contact the Editor-in-Chief in the first instance at: ades-ethics@[yourdomain].com. If the concern is not satisfactorily resolved at journal level, parties may escalate to the journal's publishing organisation. ADES follows COPE guidelines for handling complaints and appeals. All complaints will be acknowledged within five working days and investigated within 30 days.