Editorial Policies
The rules the journal applies to peer review, conflicts of interest, research ethics, publication integrity and the correction of the published record.
ISSN 2574-450X Peer review single-blind by default License CC BY 4.0
Peer review
How a manuscript is handled from arrival to decision.
- Model
- Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
- A request for double-blind review is made at submission. For double-blind review, remove author names, affiliations, acknowledgments, funding details, institution names, and other identifying information from the reviewer manuscript. Provide identifying information separately in the title-page file or submission form.
- Screening
- All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal's scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.
- Reviewers
- Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
- Reviewers are selected for subject expertise in the area the manuscript addresses, and are checked for conflicts before they are invited.
- Decision
- Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
- Reviewer reports inform the decision; they do not make it. The handling editor takes the decision and is accountable for it.
Editorial independence
What may and may not influence an editorial decision.
Payment, an author’s ability to pay, membership of any program, and the use of any publisher service have no influence on peer review, on the editorial assessment, or on the decision to accept or reject a manuscript.
An article processing charge is payable only after acceptance, and the decision that produced the acceptance is taken before any charge arises. Editorial decisions are equally independent of any role a person holds with the journal and of any commercial relationship the publisher has.
Editorial authority rests with the journal’s editors. The publisher does not overrule an editorial decision on a manuscript.
Conflicts of interest
Disclosure is the minimum. Where the interest is material, the person steps away.
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Authors
What must be declared
- All funding sources, including grant numbers where they exist.
- Any financial or non-financial interest that a reasonable reader would want to know about.
- In this field that explicitly includes an interest in an anti-obesity medication, a medical device, a bariatric technology, a commercial weight-management product, program or service, a dietary supplement, or a food or nutrition industry sponsor.
- Employment, consultancy, speaker fees, advisory roles, equity and patents relating to the subject of the manuscript.
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Editors and reviewers
Recusal, not disclosure alone
An editor or reviewer with an institutional, financial, commercial or personal interest in a submission is recused from handling it and the manuscript is reassigned. This applies to a submission from an editor’s own institution or research group as much as to commercially sponsored work.
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Editor-authored work
An editor does not handle their own manuscript
A manuscript submitted by a member of the editorial board is handled independently of its author. The editor concerned takes no part in selecting reviewers, has no access to the review file, and takes no part in the decision.
Research ethics
Obesity research runs on human participants, on drug, device and surgical therapy, on children, and on measurements from which a person can be recognized.
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Participants
Ethics approval and consent
- Research involving human participants, identifiable information or biological material requires an ethics statement naming the approving committee and its reference number, or explaining an applicable exemption.
- Authors must state whether consent to participate was obtained where required. Written consent for publication is required for identifiable case material, including any photograph, body measurement or combination of details from which a participant could be recognized.
- Research involving children and adolescents must report how assent and parental or guardian consent were obtained.
- Research involving animals requires a statement of institutional animal-care approval.
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Trials
Registration
- Interventional clinical trials must be registered in an accepted public trial registry at or before the first participant provides consent for enrollment. The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported in the manuscript.
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Weight-sensitive data
Handling and reporting
- Weight, body-composition and metabolic data are health data about identifiable people and are reported in a form that does not allow a participant to be identified, including through combinations of indirect details.
- Manuscripts use person-respectful terminology. Obesity is described as a condition that is assessed, prevented and managed, not as a personal failing or a matter of appearance.
Publication integrity
What the journal will not publish, and what happens when it already has.
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Originality
Plagiarism and duplicate publication
Submitted work must be original and must not be under consideration elsewhere. Text, data or figures reused from any source, including the authors’ own earlier work, must be attributed and permitted. Submissions are screened for similarity; a similarity report is assessed by an editor in context and is never applied as an automatic threshold.
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Data and images
Fabrication and falsification
- Data must not be fabricated, and results must not be selectively reported to favour a conclusion.
- Images must not be manipulated in a way that changes what they show. Adjustments applied to an image must be applied to the whole image and must be disclosed. Original images and underlying data may be requested during review.
- Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement.
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Authorship
Who may be named
Authorship requires a substantial contribution to the work and to the manuscript, together with agreement to be accountable for it. Contributors who do not meet that standard are acknowledged rather than listed as authors. Guest, gift and ghost authorship are misconduct. Changes to the author list after submission require written agreement from every author.
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The record
Corrections, retractions and expressions of concern
Published work found to contain a material error is corrected in public and in the version of record. Work that is unsound or that was published in breach of these policies is retracted, with the reason stated. Where a serious concern is under investigation and not yet resolved, an expression of concern may be published and later replaced by a correction or retraction. Corrections and retractions are linked to the article they concern and the original remains available.
Artificial intelligence
Where an AI tool may be used, and where it may not.
- Authors
- An AI tool cannot be an author: authorship requires accountability. Any use of a generative tool in preparing a manuscript — text, code, figures or analysis — is disclosed in the manuscript, naming the tool and what it was used for. The authors remain fully responsible for the content, including anything a tool produced.
- Reviewers
- Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured.
- Editors
- Editors do not upload a manuscript or any part of it to a tool where confidentiality cannot be assured, and do not delegate an editorial judgment to one.
Appeals, complaints and misconduct
How to raise a concern, and how it is handled.
- Appeal a decisionWrite to the editorial office stating the manuscript, the decision and the specific scientific grounds for the appeal. An appeal is considered by an editor who did not take the original decision. A new decision may be to uphold, to seek further review, or to reverse.
- Raise a concern about a published articleWrite to the editorial office with the article, the specific concern and any supporting evidence. Concerns are assessed on the evidence, not on who raises them, and an anonymous concern is considered on the same basis.
- InvestigationThe authors are given the concern and an opportunity to respond. Where the matter involves research conduct rather than the publication itself, the authors’ institution is notified and asked to investigate. The journal does not adjudicate institutional research misconduct; it acts on the published record.
- OutcomeThe outcome is a correction, a retraction, an expression of concern, or no change, and it is recorded against the article. The person who raised the concern is told the outcome.
Concerns and appeals go to [email protected].
Access, license and copyright
The terms on which published work may be used.
- License
- Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license, which permits reuse and adaptation in any medium provided the original work is credited.
- Copyright
- Authors retain copyright in their work.
- Access
- Every article is open access from publication. There is no subscription and no reader charge. Publication is funded by an article processing charge, described in full on the article processing charges page.
- Preservation
- This journal’s content is committed to Portico, a not-for-profit digital-preservation archive run by ITHAKA (the organization behind JSTOR). As articles are deposited they enter Portico’s permanent archive, so the scholarly record stays available for the long term — even if a title one day ceases to publish.
- Read our preservation policy
Journal of Obesity Management (JOM) · ISSN 2574-450X · Crossref DOI prefix 10.14302 · published open access by Open Access Pub under CC BY 4.0, authors retain copyright · instructions for authors · for editors · for reviewers.
Digital preservation
This journal’s content is committed to Portico, a not-for-profit digital-preservation archive run by ITHAKA (the organization behind JSTOR). As articles are deposited they enter Portico’s permanent archive, so the scholarly record stays available for the long term — even if a title one day ceases to publish. Read our preservation policy.