Intellect is committed to setting and upholding high standards of ethical behaviour and to this end we support the standards and best practices set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). What follows is a summary of the ethical standards we expect Authors, Editors and peer reviewers to meet.

Artificial intelligence (AI) usage

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies should only be used to enhance readability and language, with human oversight and careful review to correct any errors or biases. AI should not be considered or used as an author or co-authors. Authors must disclose their use of AI in a new section in their article/chapter, taking full responsibility for the content. Basic grammar and spelling tools do not require disclosure.

When relevant, the statement below should be inserted into a section labelled ‘Acknowledgment of the Use of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies’, at the end of the article.

Statement: Throughout the preparation of this work, the author(s) employed [NAME OF TOOL / SERVICE] to [PURPOSE]. Following the utilization of this tool/service, the author(s) thoroughly reviewed and edited the content as necessary, assuming full responsibility for the publication's content.

Please also refer to our Artificial Intelligence page and the COPE page on Authorship and AI tools.

Author name change policy

Intellect will change an Author’s (or Editor’s) name and/or pronouns in any published article, chapter or book on request from the Author. Author name changes can be requested for many reasons; Intellect will respect Authors’ privacy and never require Authors to disclose the reason for the change, only the details needed to trace the article. Intellect will adjust names and pronouns if necessary, re-upload the work to all third parties, and amend the print files for any future reprints (though we cannot withdraw copies already in circulation). Authors should contact info@intellectbooks.com to update any of their articles.

Author and Editor name order

Authors and Editors will be listed alphabetically by surname as standard. If any Authors or Editors require a different order, this should be negotiated at contract stage for a journal or book, or acceptance stage for an article or chapter. In the case of disagreements, Intellect will revert to our standard order.

Authors’ responsibilities

To assert that the work in the article/chapter is that of the Author.
To assert that the article/chapter/book submitted is original and not under consideration or accepted for publication elsewhere.
To obtain written permission from copyright holders for reproducing any images, tables, figures or other material that have previously been published elsewhere.
To obtain informed consent from/for any human or animal subjects referenced in the research, following the guidelines listed below.
To acknowledge and cite content reproduced from other sources.
To assert that the work contains no material which is obscene, hateful, libellous, in breach of privacy, or otherwise in contravention of the relevant law.
To promptly inform the Editors of any significant inaccuracies or misleading statements in their work post-publication.
To declare any potential conflicts of interest.
To communicate in a professional and courteous manner at all times.

Authorship policy

Before article/chapter production can begin, Authors are required to complete a licence form specifying that:

The Accepted Contribution is the Author’s original work, and that it has not been previously published.
The Accepted Contribution does not infringe on copyrights held by others, or on any other right legitimately claimed by a third party.
- If the Accepted Contribution contains material copyrighted by others, all required written permissions have been secured for the re-publication of such material in accordance with the scope of the Intellect licensing requirements: the Accepted Contribution contains no material that is obscene, hateful, libellous, in breach of privacy or otherwise in contravention of the relevant law.
All statements asserted as facts are either true, or else based upon generally accepted professional research practices.
Each of the named Authors has contributed substantially to the material, research, interpretation and analysis present in the article, and is accountable for the work and its published form.

Editors should use COPE’s guidance on ‘How to recognise potential authorship problems’ and ‘Ghost, guest, or gift authorship in a submitted manuscript’ if they have any concerns over the Authors’ contributions.

If an Author has passed away any time between preparing the research and production, the publishing agreement must be signed, or written consent given, by a family member or legal proxy.

Book Editors’ responsibilities

Conduct all editorial duties in a responsible, ethical, and fair manner, ensuring an unbiased review process.
Avoid discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, ethnicity, or geographical origin of the author.
Maintain professional, respectful, and courteous communication with all stakeholders, including authors, reviewers, and publishers.
Act as the primary liaison between contributors and the publisher, ensuring clear communication of timelines, expectations, and editorial feedback.
Provide necessary documentation and supplementary materials required for publication.
Support the book’s visibility and impact by promoting it through academic channels, organising launch events, and participating in discussions related to its content.

Book peer reviewers’ responsibilities

Maintain strict confidentiality regarding the manuscript, its content, and the review process.
Avoid sharing or discussing the manuscript with others without permission from the publisher.
Complete a peer review report, providing unbiased, constructive, and respectful feedback, focusing on the content rather than personal opinions.
Disclose any potential conflicts of interest (e.g., personal, professional, or financial relationships with the author, editor, or publisher) that might affect objectivity.
Decline the review if the conflict of interest cannot be managed.
Complete the review within the agreed-upon timeframe or communicate promptly if an extension is needed.
Accept only assignments within your area of expertise and decline if the manuscript falls outside your knowledge.
Avoid using any information from the manuscript for personal advantage before publication.
Do not reproduce, distribute, or use the manuscript’s content for any purpose other than the review.

Complaints and concerns

Editors should be the first point of contact for any complaints or concerns. Editors should acknowledge receipt of a complaint or concern promptly (within four working days) and should provide a clear timeline for their investigations (this may be up to six weeks, depending on the severity of the issue). Editors shall follow the procedure set out by COPE on dealing with concerns about the integrity of published research. Editors shall seek the advice of the Publisher in difficult situations. If necessary, a concern may be escalated to any of the following: Intellect journals/books manager and directors, COPE, an independent ombudsman or the Research Integrity Officers from the affected parties’ institutions.

Appealing an editorial decision

Where Authors are confident an error has been made in an editorial decision, they shall contact the Editors with an appeal letter, outlining in detail and with evidence why they feel the decision is mistaken. Authors must ensure that the appeal is based on a careful assessment of the editorial feedback, supplying additional data or evidence that address the peer reviewers' or Editors’ concerns. Authors must have substantial reason to believe the decision was based on misunderstandings or errors. Appeals may be given lower priority than new submissions and, as a result, may take longer to process.

The appeal shall be addressed by two members of the editorial team who were not involved in the initial decision process in question. Results will be communicated to the Author and Publisher by those Editors.

If the appeal is unsuccessful and/or the Author remains concerned about the editorial process, they can refer their case to COPE and to their organization’s ombudsman or Research Integrity Officers.

Complaints against Editors

We expect our Editors to act professionally and courteously at all times, and to follow our Editors’ responsibilities. If an Author feels that an Editor has acted unethically or unprofessionally, they should contact the Journals or Books Manager with evidence of this behaviour. The Journals or Books Manager will acknowledge receipt of a complaint or concern promptly (within four working days) and should provide a clear timeline for their investigation (this may be up to six weeks, depending on the severity of the issue). Complaints against the Editors will be investigated by the Publisher in the first instance, but may be referred to an independent ombudsman, COPE or the Editors’ Research Integrity Officers for advice if appropriate.

Conflicts of interest

A conflict of interest, also known as a competing interest, can occur when an Author, Editor, peer reviewer or their employer or sponsor, have a financial, commercial, legal or professional relationship with other organizations, or the people working with them, that could influence the research.

Each journal article must carry a Conflict of Interest statement, whether there is a potential conflict or not. If no conflict of interest exists, the following statement will be used: ‘The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.’

Authors’ and peer reviewers’ conflict of interest.

Authors and peer reviewers must disclose any financial relationships that could influence their work. This includes, for example, consultancies, employment, stock ownership, patents or promised benefits as an outcome of the work. Authors and peer reviewers should also disclose any personal relationships, academic collaborations or other non-financial associations that might present a potential conflict of interest. This includes, for example, receipt of goods or resources as an outcome of publication, involvement in legal action or dispute or assistance from a person or group that might benefit from the work.

Editors’ conflict of interest

Editors should disclose any potential conflicts of interest to their editorial team and, where necessary, to the Publisher. If there is a significant conflict of interest, pre-production and production management of the relevant manuscript or issue shall be passed to an unaffected member of the editorial team. Editors shall request advice from the Publisher if they are unsure as to the severity of a conflicting interest.

Editorial team authorship

Editors are permitted to submit their own research to their journal. Journal Editors publishing their own work must adhere to the Authors’ responsibilities and conflict of interest guidelines above.

Editors must not be involved in the affected work’s pre-production or peer-review process. Such submissions will undergo the standard anonymous peer-review process, overseen by another Editor.

Editors must provide a Conflict of Interest statement with their authored articles disclosing their role in the journal and describing how the peer-review process was managed. Editors should limit their work to one article per volume of the journal that they edit (this does not include editorials).

Peer reviewer selection

Editors shall select reviewers based on their expertise, with confidence in their ability to provide unbiased assessment. They must avoid selecting reviewers who have potential conflicts of interest with the Authors or the content of the manuscript.

Ethical Statement

An Ethical Statement must be provided at the end of a journal article, whether approval was required for the research or not. If approval was gained, please ensure an Ethical Statement is included alongside submission, including:

The name of the institutional or national research ethics committee that approved the research and the approval number given. If the research received a waiver of approval or did not require approval, please explain why. The Author should have clearly communicated any risk assessment, research purpose, method overview and the contribution’s implementation, etc.
For investigations involving animal experimentation, state which animal care and use guidelines were followed.
For investigations involving human participants, state that all participants (or a parent or legal guardian, in the case of children under 16) gave written informed consent to participate in the study and publish the results.

If no approval was required, the following statement will be used: ‘This article was researched and written to the standards of Intellect’s Ethical Guidelines: https://www.intellectbooks.com/ethical-guidelines. No approvals or subject consent were required.’

Use of human or animal subjects

If the submitted work involves live subjects (human or animal), the Author must seek written consent from the party or caregiver. All research involving animal subjects must have been reviewed and approved by an ethics committee prior to commencing the study and performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations. In either case, a statement identifying the institutional and/or licensing committee approving the experiments must be included in the ethics statement in the article. If the study is exempt from ethics approval, Authors need to state the reasons for exemption.

These considerations additionally apply to research that includes polling or questionnaire data from participants, quantification or quotation of participant responses, photographs of participants or their intellectual property, etc.

Funding declaration

A Funding statement must be provided at the end of a journal article, whether funding was received or not. Specific grants from any public, commercial or not-for-profit agency to aid in the research or writing of an article must be declared, and the name and grant number should be provided where possible. If no funding was provided, the following statement will be used: ‘The authors received no specific grant from any public, commercial or not-for-profit agency to aid in the research or writing of this article.’

Journal Editors’ responsibilities

Intellect supports editorial independence. Editors are accountable and responsible for everything published within their journal/book, and Intellect will not intervene unless there are concerns over best practices. It is the Editors’ responsibility:

To carry out all editorial duties in a responsible and fair way, without discrimination on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, ethnic or geographical origin of the Author.
To communicate in a professional and courteous manner at all times.
To consider and accept submissions exclusively on their academic merit, without commercial or other influence that may compromise intellectual standards.
To assess and approve any consent required from human or animal subjects in submitted research, considering the guidelines listed below.
To promptly correct any significant inaccuracies or misleading statements in published work once they have been brought to the Editors attention.
To treat all manuscripts under review as confidential documents.
To investigate all complaints made against an Author using open and fair procedures, allowing the Author reasonable opportunity to respond to the complaint and to retain all documentation associated with the complaint.
To disclose any conflicts of interest in a timely manner.
To produce clear aims and scope for the journal and to ensure that all Calls for Papers are unambiguous and not open to misinterpretation.
To appoint a diverse international Editorial Board whose knowledge and experience reflect the aims and scope of the journal, who act as ambassadors for the journal, and who are willing to act as peer reviewers for the journal.

Editors shall not act as representatives of the Publisher or make statements to the media, post comments or write editorials claiming to represent the Publisher without the Publisher’s prior agreement.

Guest Editors’ responsibilities

These above responsibilities are also incumbent on Guest or Special Issue Editors, for the term and within the scope of their temporary Editorship. Intellect strongly recommends that Editors sign a contract with any Guest Editors to set expectations on timelines and working practices.

Should there be any disagreement regarding the content of a Special Issue, the final decision usually rests with the Editors. If a resolution cannot be reached, Editors and Guest Editors may seek advice or mediation from the Publisher. Guest Editors should follow COPE’s ‘Best practices for guest edited collections’.

Journal peer reviewers’ responsibilities

All Intellect articles are peer reviewed externally by experts in the field, who are independent from the team responsible for making editorial decisions. Peer review is organized and overseen by the Editors of each journal. This process will often involve members of a journal's Editorial Board or Advisory Board, who serve in an advisory capacity to the journal. Intellect will never guarantee acceptance, request money for peer review, or promise a shortened peer review time. Peer reviewers’ responsibilities are:

To ensure papers remain confidential while under review and not retain or copy the papers. Information obtained through manuscript peer review must not be used for personal advantage nor disclosed to unauthorized parties.
To notify the Editors of any personal conflicts of interest that might affect their ability to provide an unbiased review, and halt review until guidance is received.
To review papers objectively and in a timely manner.
To review papers in a professional and courteous manner.
To inform the Editors immediately of any potential misconduct related to a paper such as fraudulent material, plagiarism, undisclosed conflict of interest or other unethical behaviour.
To follow the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

Journal publication charges

Intellect does not charge submission, peer review or publication fees. The only fee that may be applicable is if an Author chooses to publish Gold Open Access, in which case an Article Processing Charge (APC) will need to be paid. Diamond Open Access journals do not charge an APC. If Authors receive an email requesting payment from anyone claiming to be connected to the journal, they should check with the Editors in the first instance.

Editors have the option to include additional colour pages in an issue at a cost of £10 per page, or exceed the Publisher’s agreed page count at the cost of £10 per extra page.

Plagiarism

Intellect follows COPE’s definition of plagiarism, in which an author ‘presents the work of others (data, words or theories), as if it was their own without acknowledgement’.

Suspected cases of plagiarism should be declared to the Editors in the first instance. The COPE guidelines for plagiarism in a submitted manuscript or for plagiarism in a published article should be followed.

The Author will be officially notified by the Editors, after which a comparison of the text will investigate the issue. In the case of a significant overlap, the Editors will ask the Author to provide an explanation. Editors may also (with the Authors’ permission) use a plagiarism checker tool in their investigation. Should plagiarism be confirmed, the Editors will make a reasonable judgement and present their recommendation to the Publisher for correction or retraction. In the case of correction or retraction, the Author’s organisation’s Research Integrity Officers will be informed.

Predatory publishers

Authors should be aware that predatory publishers may impersonate legitimate publishers and journals. Predatory publishers usually charge fees for submission, peer review and/or publication, and do not provide the services expected from an ethical publisher. Authors should be particularly wary of: hidden or unclear author fees, lack of quality peer review processes, and the guarantee of acceptance or very short review/publication times. Intellect recommends that Authors use the Think.Check.Submit site to help ensure they are submitting to a trustworthy site. All Journal Editors should use the Pubkit submission system to reduce the risk of author submissions being hijacked.

Publication date policy

Upon publication in an issue, four dates will be visible for each Intellect article: received date, accepted date, published online date and cover (or copyright) date.

The received date is when the article was first submitted to Intellect.
The accepted date is when the article passed peer review and was accepted for publication by the Editors.
The published online date is when the article was first available online, either as an online first article, or within an issue.
The cover (or copyright) date of an issue refers to the subscription year of that volume and must fall within the journal's usual frequency.

If a journal is running late, it is occasionally necessary for the cover date to appear in the past. This is to ensure subscribers are able to access all issues to which they are subscribed. All of the actual publication dates are captured with the received, accepted and published online dates.

Publishing translations

Intellect allows the publication of translated works, provided that the translator has secured all necessary permissions from any copyright holders, and that the translation can be considered an original piece of work. Intellect does not provide a budget for translation work. Translations that have been published elsewhere fall under our redundant publication policy. Translators must reference the original source, and the translation must be peer-reviewed to ensure it aligns with the aims and scopes of the journal. Authors must check their chosen journal’s policies around accepted foreign-language articles, as these may vary.

Retractions and corrections

Intellect follows the COPE guidelines on retractions. To maintain the integrity of its journals, Intellect reserves the right to retract articles where there is clear evidence of unreliable or unethical research (error, fabrication, falsification), where findings have been published previously elsewhere and permission for republication was not sought or given, where material has been used without permission from the source, where copyrights have been infringed, where there has been a conflict of interest or where the peer review process has been manipulated.

In case of retraction, notice will be given promptly and clearly, and the article will be identified as retracted online. A retraction notice will be published in the journal, and this will be free for all readers.

If factual errors or omissions are found which do not undermine the integrity of the research but are confusing to the reader, the Editors may decide to correct a published article and print an erratum note (or corrigendum) in the next possible issue of the journal.

Text recycling/self-plagiarism and redundant publication

COPE defines text recycling/‘self-plagiarism’ as: ‘Reusing one’s own previous writing without being transparent about this or appropriately referencing/quoting from the original.’ While Authors are expected to continue developing their ideas in new publications, the work submitted to Intellect must be original in order to be considered for publication, and Authors sign a publishing agreement to this effect. Recycling text from a previous work constitutes redundant publication, and may also have copyright implications. Editors will need to assess text recycling on a case by case basis, reviewing the amount of overlap and the authors’ transparency. Correction or retraction are both possible outcomes if significant self-plagiarism is found. Editors should follow COPE’s guidance on ‘Redundant (duplicate) publication in a published article’ and ‘Redundant (duplicate) publication in a submitted manuscript’.

This page was last updated on 1 April 2025.

Ethical Guidelines

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