Editorial Standards and Evaluation Criteria

At ICRP, we are committed to ensuring every manuscript submitted to our journals is assessed fairly and equitably. To uphold this commitment, we have established a clear set of editorial standards that serve as the benchmark for evaluating submissions.

Editorial Threshold

Our policy emphasizes the importance of scientific quality over perceived novelty or impact. Editors and reviewers are instructed to focus on the scientific merit of a paper, assessing whether it represents a significant advance, replication, or presents important null/negative results. Our criteria for publication include:

• Scientific Validity: The research must adhere to the accepted standards of the scientific community.
• Technical Accuracy: Methods and results presented should be precise and reliable.
• Significance: The manuscript should contribute a specific advance, replication, or valuable null/negative result.
• Reproducibility: We encourage the sharing of data, code, and any supporting materials to facilitate replication and verification of results.
• Ethical Integrity: The research must follow best practices for ethical considerations, including animal and human studies, consent to publish, and a transparent declaration of any potential conflicts of interest.

Our commitment to open science means we prioritize the sharing of knowledge without undue emphasis on novelty, interest, or perceived impact. Furthermore, our online publication model eliminates concerns over article length or space constraints, allowing us to focus solely on the quality and integrity of the work submitted.

Clarifying Novelty

It's important to differentiate between novelty and quality. A manuscript's suitability for publication should not hinge solely on its novelty. We recognize the value in research that builds upon existing studies, offering confirmation, replication, or expansion of known data. Such contributions, no matter how incremental, are deemed valuable to the scientific discourse.

Handling Out-of-Scope Manuscripts

Manuscripts that do not align with the journal's scope should be promptly rejected prior to peer review. However, if these submissions are of reasonable quality and scientific rigor, we encourage editors to recommend alternative journals or more relevant subject areas within the ICRP portfolio. This approach ensures that all meritorious research finds a suitable platform for publication, aligning with our mission to disseminate scientific knowledge broadly and effectively.