Does Your Paper Have All The Key Declarations for Journal Submission?

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As a researcher intending to publish your work in a peer-reviewed journal, you have a responsibility to ensure that any and all ethical guidelines have been met and the relevant ethical declaration is present in your paper.

Ethical declarations are a critical part of the submission process and non-adherence could result in desk rejection. Some of these include declaring any conflicts of interest, adding an ethics statement, etc. If you’re not certain, check out Paperpal Preflight, which provides a handy guide to everything you need to know about the key ethical declarations for journal submission.

How can Paperpal Preflight work for you?

Paperpal Preflight was designed to perform key pre-submission language and technical checks to ensure you – the researcher – has not only polished your work but also included all the necessary information in your paper before submission. So, when you submit your manuscript for a check on Paperpal Preflight, any declaration for journal submission that you may have left out is instantly flagged for your attention. This allows you to address these critical issues and submit a complete manuscript that can help speed up the entire process.

Which ethical declarations does Paperpal Preflight cover?

Along with a host of other technical checks, Paperpal Preflight will notify you of any key declarations required for journal submission that are missing in your work.

Figure 1: Paperpal Preflight Processing Report checking key declarations for journal submission

Here’s a look at the main ethical declarations Preflight can help you check for in your paper:

• Conflict of interest statement

This key ethical statement highlights any potential conflicts of interest the journal or readers need to be aware of when reviewing your work. These could be conflicts in terms of authorship, funding, etc. If you have no conflicts of interest to declare, you still need to include this ethical declaration in your paper to eliminate any uncertainty on the matter.

• Data access statement

A data access or data availability statement helps identify where the data that supports your research work can be found. A key declaration for journal submission, this statement should also specify if there are any conditions that need to be fulfilled for someone to be able to access this data.

• Ethics statement

It is important to declare in your paper that your research work has fulfilled all relevant ethical guidelines including statements of approval/consent. For example, if your work involves the study of live subjects – human or animal – you’ll need to have an ethical declaration that the necessary permissions were obtained, and guidelines followed for your study. This ethical declaration should also confirm that approval was obtained from institutional/national research ethics review boards as required for ethical research and submission. If ethical approval was not needed for your study, you’ll need to mention that as well.

• Funding statement

Finally, ensure you add information about the source of funding for your study. This ensures that journal editors, peer reviewers, and readers are aware of any financial support you received such as grants or institutional/corporate funding. If no external funding was obtained, you can mention that as well.

Adding these relevant ethical declarations ensures transparency when you submit your manuscript and when it is finally published. This will also help reduce the back-and-forth with the editor’s desk post submission.

Want to see your manuscript move to peer review more quickly? Go ahead and give Paperpal Preflight a try before your next submission!

Paperpal Preflight is currently advocated by 13 leading publishers carrying over 300 journals and is available to use directly from the journal website. If you do not have a target journal in mind, you can use the standard configuration and check your work with Paperpal for Manuscripts.

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