Editorial policies

Review happens in two stages.

1. AI review. Our review system checks every reference, the required statements, hidden text, figures, the reporting checklist, the study design, the claims against the results, related literature and the writing. It writes a reviewer-style report with quoted evidence for every finding, and proposes one of five decisions: acceptance candidate, major revision, missing statements, rejection with resubmission allowed, or rejection.
2. Expert confirmation. No paper is accepted by AI alone. Two independent expert reviewers read the blinded manuscript and the AI report and confirm or overturn every acceptance. If either raises a concern, an editor decides. Reviewers are named to the editor but not to the authors.

Rejections and revision requests rest on the evidence quoted in the report. Authors can appeal any decision (see Appeals below).

The AI reviews a blinded copy: author names, institutions, countries and acknowledgements are removed. Decisions never depend on who the authors are.

Every article is published with its review: the AI assessment, the letter to the authors and the comments of the experts who confirmed it. Expert comments are published without names unless a reviewer chooses to sign. Reviews of papers that are not accepted are never published.

After acceptance the authors give any details they masked for blind review, such as the name of the ethics committee and the approval number, agree to the licence and may upload a final Word file. An editor checks these before the article is published.

Peer review is free. Everything a decision rests on is shown free in the report. Every finding, every design weakness and every overstated sentence is shown free, with the language verdict. Optional services, such as revision help, do the rewriting for the authors; buying them never changes a decision, its speed or its priority. Editors and reviewers never see whether an author has paid for any service. There is no paid fast track.

Any article processing charge applies only after acceptance. See Fees.

Each author with an ORCID iD can submit 3 new manuscripts a year. Revisions of a submitted manuscript are free and do not count against this. A manuscript can be revised up to 3 times; after that, an editor decides whether further review is useful.

A revision must be a revised version of the same paper. Uploading a different paper as a revision is not accepted.

Studies involving people or their data must state ethics approval (with the committee and reference number) or why approval was not needed, and how consent was obtained or waived. Trials must be registered before enrolment and give the registration number.

For blind review you may mask identifying details, such as the name of the ethics committee or hospital (for example “Ethics Committee of XXX”). Masked details never count against the paper; we ask for the full details after acceptance, before publication.

We follow the COPE Core Practices for handling ethical concerns.

The corresponding author signs in with ORCID. Every co-author receives a request to confirm their authorship and declare competing interests; all must confirm before acceptance. Authorship follows the ICMJE criteria.

Authors declare all funding and competing interests, including ownership of or payments from companies whose AI products are studied. Editors and reviewers declare theirs for every manuscript and step aside when they have one.

Every manuscript includes a data availability and a code availability statement. Say where the data and code are, how to request them, or why they cannot be shared. Placeholders such as "NA" or "not applicable" are not accepted for studies that analyse data or train models.

Authors may use AI tools for writing and analysis. They remain responsible for every word, number and reference. AI tools cannot be authors.

Manuscripts are processed by contracted AI services under agreements that forbid using them to train models. We keep manuscripts, reviews and decisions as the journal's editorial record, also for papers that are not accepted. Reviewers keep manuscripts confidential and may not upload them to other AI tools.

Errors that affect the results or conclusions are corrected with a linked correction notice. Articles with unreliable findings, misconduct or plagiarism are retracted following the COPE retraction guidelines; the retraction notice stays linked to the original, which remains readable and clearly marked.

Authors can appeal any decision from their submission page. A human editor who was not involved answers within 7 days. Complaints about the journal's process can be sent to the editorial office; they are handled under COPE guidance.

Authors keep copyright. Articles are published open access under CC BY 4.0. Each article will receive a DOI, and published content will be deposited with a long-term digital preservation service before the first articles appear.