Rules of Good Practice

PoEM is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record and will follow the COPE guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation is helped by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include:

• The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.
• The submitted work should be original and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work. (Please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the concerns about text-recycling ('self-plagiarism').
• A single study should not be split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (i.e. 'salami-slicing/publishing').
• Results should be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation (including image based manipulation). Authors should adhere to discipline-specific rules for acquiring, selecting and processing data.
• Excessive and inappropriate self-citation or coordinated efforts among several authors to collectively self-cite is strongly discouraged.
• Authors should make sure they have permissions for the use of software, questionnaires/(web) surveys and scales in their studies (if appropriate).
• Authors should avoid untrue statements about an entity (who can be an individual person or a company) or descriptions of their behavior or actions that could potentially be seen as personal attacks or allegations about that person.
• Authors have an obligation to correct mistakes once they discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their published article. The author(s) is/are requested to contact the journal and explain in what sense the error is impacting the article. A decision on how to correct the literature will depend on the nature of the error. This may be a correction or retraction. The retraction note should provide transparency which parts of the article are impacted by the error.
• Authors are welcome to suggest suitable reviewers and/or request the exclusion of certain individuals when they submit their manuscripts. When suggesting reviewers, authors should make sure they are totally independent and not connected to the work in any way. It is strongly recommended to suggest a mix of reviewers from different countries and different institutions. When suggesting reviewers, the Corresponding Author must provide an institutional email address for each suggested reviewer, or, if this is not possible to include other means of verifying the identity such as a link to a personal homepage, a link to the publication record or a researcher or author ID in the submission letter. Please note that the Journal may not use the suggestions, but suggestions are appreciated and may help facilitate the peer review process.

Declarations and Conflicts of Interest

Conflict of Interest

A potential conflict of interest exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest, such as the validity of research, may be at risk of being unduly influenced by a secondary interest, such as financial gain or career advancement. Authors must disclose their/their institutions' financial, personal, political, or academic relationships and activities that could influence their work, or that could be perceived by others as influencing their work.

PoEM follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors in terms of the author's responsibility to disclose conflicts of interest. When submitting a manuscript, you will be asked to Download the ICMJE form and submit it with your manuscript.

In the interest of transparency, we ask you to disclose all relationships/activities/interests that are related to the content of your manuscript. "Related" means any relation with for-profit or not-for-profit third parties whose interests may be affected by the content of the manuscript. Disclosure represents a commitment to transparency and does not necessarily indicate a bias. If you are in doubt about whether to list a relationship/activity/interest, it is preferable that you do so.

The author's relationships/activities/interests should be defined broadly.

Report all support for the work reported in this manuscript without time limit. For all other items, the time frame for disclosure is the past 36 months.

Authors' Declarations

In addition to information regarding sources of funding, financial or non-financial interests, authors must communicate relevant ethical information to the journal. These statements will be published along the final version of the manuscript:

• For research conducted with human or animal subjects, the author(s) must include a statement that the study was approved by the local Institutional Review Board (IRB) or ethical committee. For those who do not have IRB or formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed. An electronic copy of the permission letter, from the institution that granted permission to conduct the research study may be requested by PoEM. If the Ethical Statement is not in English, an English translation may also be requested.
• For research conducted with human subjects, subjects should sign an informed consent, and their privacy rights should be protected. Besides, photographs of identifiable persons, must be accompanied by signed releases, whether the involved persons are patients or staff. Identifiable persons should state that they give the authors permission to use their photograph in the article.
• The use of AI Tools in the manuscript preparation process must be declared by adding a statement at the end of the manuscript when the paper is first submitted. The statement will appear in the published work and should be placed before the references list. The declaration does not apply to the use of basic tools, such as tools used to check grammar, spelling and references. If you have nothing to disclose, you do not need to add a statement.

Authorship and Contributorship

According to the ICMJE's Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals authorship credit must satisfy all of four conditions:

• Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or the analysis and interpretation of the data;
• Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
• Final approval of the version submitted for publication.
• Agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

The role of each author should be specified in the first page of the manuscript below the byline.

For a better description of individual contribution to the scholarly output, and in order to avoid authorship disputes, PoEM adopts the CRediT taxonomy that identifies 14 contributor roles. An author can be involved in some or all of these roles, however, not all roles can be applicable to an article.

Authors are strongly advised to ensure the author group, the Corresponding Author, and the order of authors are all correct at submission. Adding and/or deleting authors during the revision stages is generally not permitted, but in some cases may be warranted. Reasons for changes in authorship should be explained in detail. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

Authors preparing a manuscript can use AI Tools to support them. However, these tools must never be used as a substitute for human critical thinking, expertise and evaluation. AI technology should always be applied with human oversight and control.

Ultimately, authors are responsible and accountable for the contents of their work.

Authors must not list or cite AI Tools as an author or co-author on the manuscript since authorship implies responsibilities and tasks that can only be attributed to, and performed by, humans.

Authors must declare the use of generative AI in the manuscript preparation process upon submission of the paper. (see Declarations)

Plagiarism

No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author's own ('plagiarism'). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks (to indicate words taken from another source) are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions secured for material that is copyrighted.

Avoid plagiarism by carefully citing the materials used in the writing, whether verbatim substantially copied, or paraphrased.

All manuscripts submitted to PoEM are screened for originality before starting the review process. Plagiarism in all its forms is unacceptable and will lead to immediate rejection of the paper along with possible sanctions against authors.

Reviewing Ethics

PoEM abides by the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

Reviewers are expected to disclose any conflict of interest that could influence their appraisal of the papers they are tasked to review, whether it's a personal or economic relationship.

When a conflict of interest arises with an editor or a reviewer, the reviewing process is restarted with a different set of experts.

Papers authored by PoEM editors will be handled by a different editor.

The use of AI to handle or facilitate reviewing tasks is not allowed.

If an Editor or Reviewer identifies or is made aware of a potential misconduct, they should notify PoEM editorial office as soon as possible.

Misconduct

If there is suspicion of misbehaviour or alleged fraud the Journal and/or Publisher will carry out an investigation following COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, there are valid concerns, the author(s) concerned will be contacted under their given e-mail address and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the Journal's and/or Publisher's implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

• If the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
• If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction:
  • an erratum/correction may be placed with the article
  • an expression of concern may be placed with the article
  • or in severe cases retraction of the article may occur

The reason will be given in the published erratum/correction, expression of concern or retraction note. Please note that retraction means that the article is maintained on the platform, watermarked "retracted" and the explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article. The author's institution may be informed.