Editorial Policies

On this page: Authorship | Disclosure | Communication with the Media | Communication between Scientists | Preprint policies | Permissions | Human and Other Animal Experiments | Clinical Trials | Availability of Data and Materials | Registration of Novel Biological Reagents and Data | Gene Nomenclature | Biosecurity Policy | Correction and Retraction Policy | Scientific Misconduct | Plagiarism Detection | SAGER Guidelines 

Any changes to the author list after submission, such as a change in the order of the authors, or the deletion or addition of authors, needs to be approved by a signed letter from every author. Moreover, articles found to have been "ghost authored" (e.g., written by unacknowledged freelance writers) will be considered to have violated Pediatric Research’s authorship policy. 

An author who has changed their name for reasons such as gender transition or religious conversion may request for their name, pronouns and other relevant biographical information to be corrected on papers published prior to the change.  The author can choose for this correction to happen silently, in which case there will be no note flagging the change on either the pdf or the html of the paper, or alternatively they may do so by a formal public Author Correction.

Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not currently satisfy our authorship criteria. Notably an attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Use of an LLM should be properly documented in the Methods section (and if a Methods section is not available, in a suitable alternative part) of the manuscript.

Pediatric Research also has important formatting instructions for group authors, which clarify both group and individual authorship. Authors should adhere to those guidelines wherever consortia or working groups are present.

On joint and equally contributing co- and corresponding authors: Pediatric Research does not limit the number of corresponding authors; however, ScholarOne allows only one (as opposed to multiple) author to be designated as “Corresponding author” for the purposes of the technical submission. Submitters should note that, if provided, only the corresponding author designated as such in ScholarOne will have their verified ORCID ID automatically linked to the publication. On the title page of the manuscript itself, joint corresponding authors should be listed as: “Contact” followed by the authors’ names.

Pediatric Research also allows co-authors to be specified as having contributed equally to the work and one set of co-authors to be specified as having jointly supervised the work. Other equal contributions are best described in author contribution statements. The style for submitting these, so they are published and indexed as intended, are by a footnote number. The associated footnotes must follow this exact wording: 
“These authors contributed equally:” followed by the author names. 

The journal also requires an Author Contributions section. Authors are required to include an “Author Contributions” section which follows the Acknowledgements and Funding section of the manuscript. This section should specify the contributions of every author either explicitly or by the definition of authorship to which the journal adheres (see “Preparation of Articles”).

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Funding

A statement of financial support from extramural sources (e.g. from grants, government, industry) must be included in all manuscripts. If no financial assistance was received in support of the study, please include a statement to this fact.

Competing interests

In the interests of transparency and to help readers form their own judgments of potential bias, authors must declare whether or not there are any potential competing financial interests in relation to the work described. This information must be included in their cover letter and in their manuscript. In cases where the authors declare a competing interests, a statement to that effect is published as part of the article. If no such conflict exists, the statement should simply read that the authors have nothing to disclose.

For the purposes of this statement, competing interests are defined as those of a financial nature that, through their potential influence on behavior or content, or from perception of such potential influences, could undermine the objectivity, integrity or perceived value of a publication.

They can include any of the following:

1. Funding: Research support (including salaries, equipment, supplies, reimbursement for attending symposia, and other expenses) by organizations that may gain or lose financially through this publication. The role of the funding body in the design of the study, collection and analysis of data and decision to publish should be stated;
2. Employment: Recent (while engaged in the research project), present or anticipated employment by any organization that may gain or lose financially through this publication;
3. Personal financial interests: Stocks or shares in companies that may gain or lose financially through publication; consultation fees or other forms of remuneration from organizations that may gain or lose financially; patents or patent applications whose value may be affected by publication.

It is difficult to specify a threshold at which a financial interest becomes significant, but note that many US universities require faculty members to disclose interests exceeding $10,000 or 5% equity in a company. Any such figure is arbitrary, so we offer as one possible practical alternative guideline: Declare all interests that could embarrass you were they to become publicly known after your work was published. We do not consider diversified mutual funds or investment trusts to constitute a competing financial interest.

The statement must contain an explicit and unambiguous statement describing any potential conflict of interest, or lack thereof, for any of the authors as it relates to the subject of the report. Examples include “Dr. Patel receives compensation as a consultant for XYZ Company,” “Dr. Patel and Dr. Smith have financial holdings in ABC Company,” or “Dr. Patel owns a patent on the diagnostic device described in this report.” These statements must be included in the manuscript under the heading “Competing interests.”  The disclosure should also appear in the cover letter and in the manuscript submission process.

Potential competing interest should be provided for all authors, including compensation for professional services. Neither the precise amount received from each entity nor the aggregate income from these sources needs to be provided. Professional services include any activities for which the individual is, has been, or will be compensated with cash, royalties, fees, stock or stock options in exchange for work performed, advice or counsel provided, or for other services related to the author’s professional knowledge and skills. This would include, but not necessarily be limited to, the identification of organizations from which the author received contracts or in which he or she holds an equity stake if professional services were provided in conjunction with the transaction

Examples of declarations are:

Competing interests

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Competing interests

Dr. Li has received compensation as a member of the scientific advisory board of Pine Pharmaceuticals and owns stock in the company. She also has consulted for Sunshine Pharma and received compensation. Dr. Smith and Dr. Jones declare no potential conflict of interest.

Explicit statements of financial support for the study should be listed in the article’s Funding section, and include support from any extramural sources (e.g., from grants, government, industry). If no financial assistance was received in support of the study, please include a statement to this fact here. 

Editorial board members and external editors are welcome to submit papers to the journal. These submissions are not given any priority over other manuscripts, and editorial board member or external editor status has no bearing on editorial consideration.
However, where an editorial board member or external editor is on the author list, they must declare this in the competing interests section on the submitted manuscript. These submissions are subject to the exact same review process as any other manuscript. For more information about our peer review processes, including managing potential conflict of interest, please visit our “For Referees” page.

 

Communication with the Media

Material submitted must not be discussed with the media. We reserve the right to halt the consideration or publication of a paper if this condition is broken. If a paper is particularly newsworthy, the press release will be sent to our list of journalists in advance of publication with an embargo that forbids any coverage of the manuscript, or the findings of the manuscript, until the time and date clearly stated. Authors whose papers are scheduled for publication may also arrange their own publicity (for instance, through their institution’s press offices), but they must strictly adhere to our press embargo and are advised to coordinate their own publicity with our press office. 

Communication between Scientists

We do not wish to hinder communication between scientists. We ask you to communicate with other researchers as much as you wish, whether on a recognized community preprint server, by discussion at scientific meetings or by online collaborative sites such as wikis, but we do not encourage premature publication by discussion with the press (beyond a formal presentation, if at a conference).

Consent statement

Pediatric Research requires a statement regarding the patient consent that was required for your paper after the Acknowledgements section; if patient consent was not required, please state this.

Preprint policies

A preprint is defined as the pre-peer review version of a primary research manuscript. Springer Nature and the journal encourage authors to take advantage of their chosen preprint servers (i.e. BioRxiv) and/or authors' and institutional websites, as it encourages open communication with/among those in the field. An author may post their original manuscript at any time during the peer review process. Preprints are not considered as prior publications and will not jeopardize their consideration at the journal. Click here for more information.

Should an author choose to upload a preprint of their manuscript, they must state the preprint DOI and licensing terms upon submission to the journal or at any other point during consideration. Additionally, it is the author's responsibility to ensure that the preprint record is updated with the appropriate official publication record (DOI and/or link) of the article should it be published by the journal.

Authors may select any license of their choice for the preprint, including Creative Commons licenses. Click here for more information. Please note that, as with a published article, the type of license selected will affect how the preprint may be shared and reused. Additionally, should an author choose to cite a preprint, they should use the following format:

Babichev, S. A., Ries, J. & Lvovsky, A. I. Quantum scissor: teleportation of single-mode optical states by means of a nonlocal single photon. Preprint at http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0208066 (2002).

Springer Nature's policy on communication with the media applies to preprints as well. Researchers may respond to queries from the media regarding preprints and/or conference presentations by providing explanations, clarifications, and/or context. In these circumstances, media coverage will not jeopardize the submission. Please note, however, that such coverage may reduce or pre-empt coverage by other media at the time of publication. For authors approached by reporters about preprints, we encourage an explicit statement that the preprint has not undergone peer review and the findings are may change.”

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Permissions

If a table or figure has been published before, the authors must obtain written permission to reproduce the material in both print and electronic formats from the copyright owner and be prepared to produce it upon request. This follows for quotes, illustrations, and other materials taken from previously published works not in the public domain. The original source should be cited in the figure caption or  table footnote. Color figures can be reproduced if necessary; please note the Pediatric Research charges.

Human and Other Animal Experiments

For primary research manuscripts reporting experiments on live vertebrates and/or higher invertebrates, the corresponding author must confirm that all experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. The manuscript must include in the Methods section a statement identifying the institutional and/or licensing committee approving the experiments, including any relevant details regarding animal welfare, patient anonymity, drug side effects and informed consent. Please include the full name of the institution approving your study in your statement.

For experiments involving human subjects, authors must identify the committee approving the experiments and indicate whether the procedures were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) or with the Helsinki Declaration, and include with their submission a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

Any article that contains personal medical information about an identifiable living individual requires the patient’s explicit consent before Pediatric Research can publish it. If there is any chance that a patient may be identified from a photograph or other static or moving image, or from its legend or accompanying text, Pediatric Research requires a statement in the published paper affirming that they have obtained informed consent for publication of the images as well. All reasonable measures must be taken to protect patient anonymity. Black bars over the eyes are not acceptable means of anonymization.

For manuscript reporting studies involving vulnerable groups (for example unconscious patients) where there is the potential for coercion (for example prisoners) or where consent may not have been fully informed, manuscripts will be considered at the editor’s discretion. In the case of articles describing human transplantation studies, authors must include a statement declaring that no organs/tissues were obtained from prisoners and must also name the institution(s)/clinic(s)/department(s) via which organs/tissues were obtained.

Clinical Trials

As defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), a clinical trial is any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention and comparison groups to study the cause-andeffect relationship between a medical intervention and a health outcome. A medical intervention is any intervention used to modify a health outcome and includes but is not limited to drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioral treatments, and process-of-care changes. A trial must have at least one prospectively assigned concurrent control or comparison group in order to trigger the requirement for registration. Nonrandomized trials are not exempt from the registration requirement if they meet the above criteria.

All clinical trials must be registered in a public registry prior to submission. Pediatric Research follows the trials registration policy of the ICMJE  and considers only trials that have been appropriately registered before submission, regardless of when the trial closed to enrolment. Acceptable registries must meet the following ICMJE requirements:

• Be publicly available, searchable, and open to all prospective registrants
• Have a validation mechanism for registration data
• Be managed by a not-for-profit organization
• Examples of registries that meet these criteria include:

The registry sponsored by the United States National Library of Medicine (www.clinicaltrials.gov) ; The International Standard Randomized Controlled Trial Number Registry (www.controlled-trials.com); and The European Clinical Trials Database (https://eudract.ema.europa.eu/). 

All clinical trials submitted to Pediatric Research should be accompanied by a trial registration number, Institutional Review Board approval statement and completed CONSORT checklist. A CONSORT flowchart should also be provided as a Figure or as Supplemental Material. Please find the flowchart here. Springer Nature endorses the toolkits and guidelines produced by the following bodies:

1. Committee on Publication Ethics  
2. Medical Publishing Insights and Practices Initiative  

Availability of Data and Materials

Pediatric Research adheres to Springer Nature’s Data Policy Type 3. This means that a submission to Pediatric Research implies that materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any researcher wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality. It also means that a Data Availability Statement (see this page for more details on this Statement) is required by the journal.

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Registration of Novel Biological Reagents and Data

Pediatric Research requires that information regarding protein and nucleic acid sequences and genomic, proteinomic and crystallographic data be deposited in publicly available databases prior to acceptance for publication. Data and accession number should be available, and noted in the text, prior to acceptance for publication, and access to the information in the respective database must be available at the time of publication.

Protein and nucleic acid sequences. Newly reported nucleotide or protein sequences must be deposited with GenBank, EMBL, or the DNA Data Bank of Japan.  

Genomic and proteinomic studies. Authors of papers that include genomic, proteomic, or other high-throughput data are required to submit their data to the NCBI gene expression and hybridization array data repository (GEO).

Crystallographic Studies. Authors of papers describing new structure determinations must submit to the Protein Data Bank at Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics.  

Gene Nomenclature

Authors should use approved nomenclature for gene symbols, and use symbols rather than italicized full names (Ttn, not titin). Please consult the appropriate nomenclature databases for correct gene names and symbols. Approved human gene symbols are provided by HUGO Gene Nomenclature Committee (HGNC).  Approved mouse symbols are provided by The Jackson Laboratory. For proposed gene names that are not already approved, please submit the gene symbols to the appropriate nomenclature committees as soon as possible, as these must be deposited and approved before publication of an article. Avoid listing multiple names of genes (or proteins) separated by a slash, as in 'Oct4/Pou5f1', as this is ambiguous (it could mean a ratio, a complex, alternative names or different subunits). Use one name throughout and include the other at first mention: 'Oct4 (also known as Pou5f1)'

Biosecurity Policy

The editor may seek advice about submitted papers not only from technical reviewers but also on any aspect of a paper that raises concerns. These may include, for example, ethical issues or issues of data or materials access. Occasionally, concerns may also relate to the implications to society of publishing a paper, including threats to security. In such circumstances, advice will usually be sought simultaneously with the technical peer-review process. As in all publishing decisions, the ultimate decision whether to publish is the responsibility of the editor of the journal concerned.

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Correction and Retraction Process

Content published as Advance Online Publication (AOP) is final and cannot be amended. The online and print versions are both part of the published record; hence, the original version must be preserved and changes to the paper should be made as a formal correction. If an error is noticed in an AOP article, a correction should accompany the article when it publishes in print. An HTML (or fulltext) version of the correction will also be created and linked to the original article. If the error is found in an article after print publication, the correction will be published online and in the next available print issue.

Decisions about corrections are made by the editors (sometimes with peer-reviewers' advice), and this sometimes involves author consultation. Requests to make corrections that do not affect the paper in a significant way or impair the reader's understanding of the contribution (a spelling mistake or grammatical error, for example) are not considered.

In cases where co-authors disagree about a correction, the editors will take advice from independent peer-reviewers and impose the appropriate correction, noting the dissenting author(s) in the text of the published version.

Author Name Change

An author who has changed their name for reasons such as gender transition or religious conversion may request for their name, pronouns and other relevant biographical information to be corrected on papers published prior to the change.  The author can choose for this correction to happen silently, in which case there will be no note flagging the change on either the pdf or the html of the paper, or alternatively they may do so by a formal public Author Correction.

 

Scientific misconduct

Pediatric Research takes seriously all possible misconduct, and handle these concerns at Pediatric Research on a case by case basis while following guidance produced by bodies that include the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), of which Pediatric Research is a member, the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and the International  Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). WAME gives a useful overview of misconduct, using a slightly amended version of the US Office of Research Integrity definition of scientific misconduct and including these behaviors:

1. Falsification of data ranges from fabrication to deceptive reporting of findings and omission of conflicting data, or willful suppression and/or distortion of data.
2. Plagiarism is when an author attempts to pass off someone else's work as his or her own. Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing the appropriate references. Please see “Plagiarism Detection” for more information.
3. Improprieties of authorship: This is the improper assignment of credit, such as excluding others, misrepresentation of the same material as original in more than one publication, inclusion of individuals as authors who have not made a definite contribution to the work published, or submission of multi-authored publications without the concurrence of all authors.
4. Misappropriation of the ideas of others: An important aspect of scholarly activity is the exchange of ideas among colleagues. Scholars can acquire novel ideas from others during the process of reviewing grant applications and manuscripts. However, improper use of such information can constitute fraud. Wholesale appropriation of such material constitutes misconduct.
5. Violation of generally accepted research practices: Serious deviation from accepted practices in proposing or carrying out research, improper manipulation of experiments to obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, or improper  reporting of results are not tolerated by the journal.
6. Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting research: This includes but is not limited to serious or substantial, repeated, willful violations of applicable local regulations and law involving the use of funds, care of animals, human subjects, investigational drugs, recombinant products, new devices, or radioactive, biological or chemical materials.
7. Inappropriate behavior in relation to misconduct includes unfounded or knowingly false accusations of misconduct, failure to report known or suspected misconduct, withholding of information relevant to a claim or misconduct and retaliation against persons involved in the allegation or investigation.

Many journals, including Pediatric Research, also include redundant publication and duplicate publication, lack of declaration of competing interests and of funding/sponsorship, and other failures of transparency to be forms of misconduct.

Readers that suspect misconduct in a published article are encouraged to report this to the relevant journal editor and/or the journal publisher.

Plagiarism Detection

Papers must be original and not published or submitted for publication elsewhere. This rule also applies to nonEnglish language publications.

CrossCheck is a multi-publisher initiative to screen published and submitted content for originality. Pediatric Research uses CrossCheck to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts.

If a case of plagiarism comes to light after a paper is published, the journal will conduct a preliminary investigation, utilizing the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics. If plagiarism is proven, the journal will contact the author's institute and funding agencies as appropriate. The paper containing the plagiarism may also be formally retracted or subject to correction.

Sex and Gender in Research (SAGER Guidelines)

We encourage our authors to follow the ‘Sex and Gender Equity in Research – SAGER – guidelines’ and to include sex and gender considerations where relevant. Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) carefully in order to avoid confusing both terms. Article titles and/or abstracts should indicate clearly what sex(es) the study applies to. Authors should also describe in the background, whether sex and/or gender differences may be expected; report how sex and/or gender were accounted for in the design of the study; provide disaggregated data by sex and/or gender, where appropriate; and discuss respective results. If a sex and/or gender analysis was not conducted, the rationale should be given in the Discussion. We suggest that our authors consult the full guidelines before submission.

Definition of Sex and Gender (taken from Office of Research in Women’s Health, NIH).

Sex - refers to biological differences between females and males, including chromosomes, sex organs, and endogenous hormonal profiles.

Gender-  refers to socially constructed and enacted roles and behaviors which occur in a historical and cultural context and vary across societies and over time.

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Last Updated: March 2022