Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

This statement is the editorial policy of the journal. It is public, and it binds editors, referees and authors alike.

Peer review

Every submission is assessed by the editor for scope, and those within scope are sent to at least two independent referees. Review is single-anonymous: referees know the identity of the authors, authors do not know the identity of the referees. A referee who prefers to sign a report may do so.

Referees receive the manuscript together with its data and code, as the editorial policy requires. Reports assess the clear, assessable contribution, appropriate comparisons, the supporting artefacts, the correctness and relevance of formal results, and the limits of the evidence. Reviewers state which main results they independently checked and which they could not check. Positive, negative and limited findings are assessed by the same standards.

The editor may desk-reject submissions outside the journal's scope or lacking a clear, assessable contribution. A contribution may establish a useful distinction, test a proposed distinction and find that it fails, identify a limitation, or provide a relevant formal result, replication, reanalysis or methodological resource. The direction of an empirical finding is not a criterion for acceptance. Other decisions follow from referee reports; where reports conflict, a third referee is sought.

Conflict of interest

An editor does not handle a submission by a current or recent collaborator, by a colleague at the same institution, or by anyone with whom they have a personal or financial relationship. In such cases the submission is transferred to another editor and the transfer is recorded.

Submissions by members of the editorial board are handled by an editor who is not a co-author and are reviewed under the same standard as any other. Board membership confers no advantage in review.

Referees are asked to decline where a comparable relationship exists. Authors may request the exclusion of specific referees, stating a reason.

Authorship

Authorship is limited to those who contributed substantially to the conception, execution or interpretation of the work and who approve the submitted version. Acquiring funding, supervising a group, or holding an institutional position does not by itself constitute authorship.

Changes to the author list after submission require the written agreement of all authors, including the one added or removed. The corresponding author is responsible for the accuracy of the author list.

Originality and plagiarism

Submissions must be original and must not be under consideration elsewhere. Deposit of a preprint in a public repository does not constitute prior publication.

Every submission is checked for textual similarity before review, using plagiarism-detection access available to the editorial team. The procedure is applied to all submissions without exception, including those authored by members of the editorial board.

Data, code and reproducibility

Empirical claims require the data and analysis code that produced them, available to referees at the time of review and deposited in a public repository on publication. Where data cannot be shared for legal or ethical reasons, the submission must state which data, on what grounds, and provide whatever allows the claim to be assessed.

Formal claims verified by computation require the script or the exhaustive check that verified them. A claim that cannot be examined against the artefact that produced it will not be published.

Use of generative artificial intelligence

Generative AI tools may be used in the preparation of a manuscript, and their use must be declared in the submission, stating which tool and for what purpose.

Generative AI cannot be listed as an author: authorship entails responsibility for the work, and a tool cannot hold it. Authors are accountable for the whole content of their manuscript, including any part produced with such assistance.

Referees may not submit a manuscript, or any part of it, to a generative AI service. Manuscripts under review are confidential, and such a submission would breach that confidentiality.

Corrections and retractions

Where an error is found that does not affect the conclusions, a correction notice is published and linked to the article.

Where an error invalidates the conclusions, or where misconduct is established, the article is retracted. The retraction notice states the reason, is signed by the editor, and remains permanently accessible. The original article is not removed: it is marked as retracted and remains readable, so that the record of what was published is preserved. A retracted article keeps its DOI.

Allegations of misconduct

Allegations may be made to the editorial office by anyone, including anonymously. The editor examines the allegation, gives the authors an opportunity to respond, and where the matter is substantial, consults the editorial board.

Where a finding involves an author's institution, the institution is informed. The outcome is published as a correction or retraction as appropriate. The journal follows the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in handling such cases.

Editorial independence

No fee is charged to authors or to readers at any stage. No decision is influenced by the affiliation, nationality, seniority or funding of an author. Submissions from the editorial team, from the publishing association, and from any research programme connected to either, are reviewed under exactly the standard applied to submissions from outside.

Independent handling of editorial submissions and appeals

For a submission authored by the Editor-in-Chief, the editorial board designates a handling editor with no relevant conflict of interest. The Editor-in-Chief takes no part in selecting referees, evaluating reports or deciding that submission. If no eligible editor is available within the board, a qualified independent guest editor is designated before review proceeds. The designation, conflict check and decision responsibility are recorded in the editorial file; authors are informed of the handling editor, while referee confidentiality is preserved.

Appeals concerning such a submission, or a decision by the Editor-in-Chief, are referred to an independent editor designated by the board who was not involved in the original decision and has no relevant conflict. Editors with a conflict do not participate in the designation or appeal. The appeal outcome and reasons are recorded and communicated to the author.

JEPR welcomes submissions, replications and critical assessments from researchers outside its founding network. Contributions that challenge methods or hypotheses associated with the editors, publishing association or a connected research programme are assessed under the same standards.

Complaints

An author who considers that a decision was reached improperly may write to the editorial office setting out the grounds. The editor responds in writing. Where the complaint concerns the editor, it is referred to the editorial board.