Research and Publication Ethics

Literary Studies Statement
All submitted manuscripts must conform to Literary Studies’s policies as outlined. Literary Studies, in all instances, closely follows the principles of publication ethics outlined in the core practice documents of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Their recommendations provide support for addressing issues such as conflicts of interest, authorship and contributorship issues and disputes, misconduct allegations and data issues, overlap and plagiarism, and peer review integrity.

Literary Studies Editorial Boards are independent, and the publisher will not interfere with the editorial decision-making process. In cases where ethical or legal concerns are present, decisions may be changed; the acceptance of a manuscript may be rescinded if an ethical issue or conflict with policies is identified. Manuscripts that do not conform to Literary Studies’s ethical policies may be withdrawn from submission by the publisher.

Literary Studies performs checks on all manuscripts to verify their compliance with the Publication Ethics Guidelines. Some of the checks described are performed with the assistance of automated checks facilitated by SuSy, while others are carried out manually by the Journal Editorial Office teams. Where potential issues are flagged, these are confirmed by a human decision-maker. When a manuscript is found not to comply with policies or is flagged during the checks, in many cases, an Academic Editor will be consulted.

Publication Ethics Statement

We fully comply with COPE's Core Practices and Guidelines for Literary Studies.

Literary Studies upholds a rigorous peer-review process together with clear ethical policies and standards to support the addition of high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. When made aware of ethical issues, we are committed to investigating and taking necessary action to maintain the integrity of the literature and ensure the safety of research participants.

Submitted manuscripts should conform to Literary Studies’s editorial and ethical policies as outlined on this webpage and on the Literary Studies Instructions for Authors page. In addition, submissions should adhere to the specific guidelines of the journal.

Principles:

• Prevention—early detection and flagging of potential ethical issues via automated and manual checks of peer review and manuscript.

• Neutrality—making evaluations to be fair and objective, and correcting the literature where needed.

• Transparency—keeping all parties informed when possible and appropriate, and providing time for them to respond.

• Consistency—ensuring standard processes are followed for the investigation of issues and applicability of policies, and the principles and flowcharts of COPE are applied.

Ethical Guidelines for Authors
Authors seeking to publish in Literary Studies should ensure that their manuscripts are ethically sound and meet the industry-recognized standards that are reflected in Literary Studies policies.

Authors who submit their manuscripts to Literary Studies must:

• Present research findings accurately and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.

• Uphold accurate authorship, by including all and only those who qualify for authorship and clearly stating their contributions.

• Disclose any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest at submission.

• Present their data and methods with attention to detail. Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the manuscript so that other researchers can replicate their work. Raw data must be made publicly available unless there is a compelling reason otherwise (e.g., patient confidentiality).

• Be aware that simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not permitted.

• Original research results must be novel and previously unpublished, and any translations must abide by our policy on translations.

• Obtain permission to publish from the copyright holder for any previously published content (including quotations, figures, or tables).

• Communicate errors and inaccuracies found after publication promptly.

This list is not exhaustive, and authors should be aware of local regulations and accepted norms within academic publishing.

Authorship
Literary Studies follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines which state that authors should meet all four criteria to qualify for the authorship of a manuscript:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

• Final approval of the version to be published; AND

• Agreement 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.

Those who have contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be listed in the acknowledgments. More detailed guidance on authorship is provided by ICMJE.

Different disciplines adopt their own criteria, for example, the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) guidelines are well-known in biomedical fields, APA (American Psychological Association) guidelines are used in Psychology, EuChemS (European Chemical Society) guidelines are adopted in Chemistry, whereas in the arts, humanities, and social sciences, publications by single authors are more common. However, the minimum recognized requirements for authorship are making a significant contribution to the research and being responsible for the work undertaken (COPE Discussion document: authorship).

Any change to the author list during the editorial process or after publication should be approved by all authors, including any who have been removed. We reserve the right to request evidence of authorship, and changes to authorship after acceptance will be made at the discretion of Literary Studies.

Author Contributions

For complete transparency, all submitted manuscripts should include an author contributions statement that specifies the individual contributions of each author to the work. For research articles with multiple authors, a short paragraph specifying their individual contributions must be provided.

The following statements should be used: Conceptualization, X.X. and Y.Y.; methodology, X.X.; software, X.X.; validation, X.X., Y.Y., and Z.Z.; formal analysis, X.X.; investigation, X.X.; resources, X.X.; data curation, X.X.; writing—original draft preparation, X.X.; writing—review and editing, X.X.; visualization, X.X.; supervision, X.X.; project administration, X.X.; funding acquisition, Y.Y. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Please refer to the CRediT taxonomy for an explanation of terms. Authorship must be limited to those who have contributed substantially to the reported work.

The corresponding author should act as a point of contact between the editor and the other authors, keep co-authors informed, and involve them in major decisions about the publication.

Joint first authors can be indicated by the inclusion of the statement “X and X contributed equally to this paper” in the manuscript. The roles of the equal authors should also be adequately disclosed in the contributions statement.

For review articles where individual statements are less applicable, a statement should be included that clarifies who was responsible for the ideation, who performed the literature search and/or data analysis, and who drafted and revised the work.

For articles that are primarily based on a student’s dissertation or thesis, Literary Studies recommends that the student should be listed as the principal author.

Consortium/Group Authorship

If authorship is retained by the consortium or group, the consortium or group should be listed as an author. Individual consortium/group author members listed in the author byline must qualify for authorship according to the ICMJE guidelines.

If the work is presented by the author(s) on behalf of a consortium or group, this should be clarified in the author list, for example, “Author A on behalf of XXX Consortium/Group”. The consortium/group will not retain authorship and will only appear in the author list.

If provided, the consortium/group members will be listed in a separate section at the end of the article in Acknowledgments, Appendix, or Supplementary Materials.

Deceased Authors

If a manuscript is submitted with a deceased author included in the authorship or if an author passes away during peer review, the corresponding author, or co-authors should inform the editorial office. If the deceased author was the corresponding author, the authorship group should nominate a co-author for this role. The corresponding author should confirm the contribution of the deceased author and any potential conflicts of interest. Upon publication, a note will be added under the author list.

Changes to Authorship

Authors are expected to consider carefully the authorship before submitting their manuscript. Any changes to the author list should be made during the editorial process, before manuscript acceptance. Authorship changes, including any addition, removal, or rearrangement of author names, will require the approval of all authors, including any to be removed. To request any change in authorship, the journal must receive a completed authorship change form that includes the signatures of all authors, and a rationale for the change. Any changes to authorship requested after manuscript acceptance will result in a delay in publication. If the manuscript has already been published, requests for a change in authorship will be evaluated and require the publication of a Correction. We reserve the right to request evidence of authorship, and changes to authorship after acceptance will be made at the discretion of Literary Studies.

Authorship Disputes

Literary Studies follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines in cases of disputes over authorship that may occur during processing or after publication. Here, the COPE guidelines clearly state that Journals are not in a position to adjudicate on appropriate authorship contributions (https:/publicationethics.org/resources/discussion-documents/authorship) and that “disputed authorship is not usually grounds for retraction when there is no reason to doubt the validity of the findings” (https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines).

In cases where disputes cannot be settled by the affected parties, Literary Studies will refer the case to an appropriate Institution or Governing Body for final adjudication.

Artificial Intelligence
Literary Studies acknowledges the opportunities and challenges presented by the rapid development of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI), such as ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs). To provide transparency to the academic community, Literary Studies has developed the following policies based on the general guidance provided by the STM and Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) position statement.

Manuscript Preparation

If GenAI has been used for purposes such as text, data, graphics, study design, or data collection, analysis, or interpretation of data, authors are required to declare this during the submission process. Furthermore, for transparency, authors are required to disclose details of how the GenAI tool was used in the “Materials and Methods” section and provide product details of the GenAI tool in the “Acknowledgments” section.

Suggested acknowledgment statement:
“During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [name of tool, version information] in order to [reason for use]. The authors reviewed and edited the output and take full responsibility for the content of this publication."

Use of GenAI tools for the purpose of text editing (e.g., checking grammar, structure, spelling, punctuation, and formatting) is outside this scope and does not need to be declared.

Authors are fully responsible for the originality, validity, and integrity of the content of their manuscript, including any material contributed by GenAI tools, and must ensure, through careful review, that this content complies with all of Literary Studies’s publication ethics policies including, but not limited to, Plagiarism, Data Falsification and Image Manipulation, and Intellectual Property.

Authorship

GenAI tools and other large language models (LLMs) cannot be listed as authors. These tools do not meet Literary Studies’s authorship requirements.

Use of GenAI by Peer Reviewers

GenAI tools and other large language models (LLMs) should not be used by peer reviewers in preparing their review reports. Peer reviewers are fully responsible for the content of their reports, and the use of these tools may violate confidentiality, proprietary, and data privacy rights. Some limited use to improve the written quality of the review report, such as checking grammar, structure, spelling, punctuation, and formatting may be acceptable but should be disclosed upon submission of the review report. Peer reviewers must not upload, under any circumstances, in whole or in part, papers under review; images; figures; tables; or any communication into any GenAI tool as doing so violates Literary Studies’s confidentiality policy regarding peer review. If inappropriate use of AI tools in the preparation of a review report is detected, the report will be discarded.

Use of GenAI in Editorial Decision Making

Academic Editors (Editors-in-Chief, Editorial Board Members, and Guest Editors) play an important role in peer review to ensure the integrity and rigor of the process. Given this important responsibility, Academic Editors must not use GenAI tools in the editorial review or decision-making process. Academic Editors must not upload, under any circumstances, in whole or in part, papers under review; images; figures; tables; or any communication into any GenAI tool as doing so violates Literary Studies’s confidentiality policy regarding peer review.

Plagiarism, Data Falsification, and Image Manipulation
Plagiarism is not acceptable in Literary Studies. Plagiarism involves copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving credit to the original source.

Reuse of text that is copied from another source must be between quotation marks, and the original source must be cited. If a study's design or the manuscript's structure or language has been inspired by previous studies, these studies must be explicitly cited.

All Literary Studies submissions are checked for plagiarism using the industry-standard software iThenticate. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, an investigation will take place and action will be taken in accordance with our policies.

Literary Studies reserves the right to request, upon submission, original images at a sufficiently high resolution and unedited data files during peer review as well as for the purpose of post-publication investigation.

Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image. Irregular manipulation includes: 1) the introduction, enhancement, movement, or removal of specific feature(s) from the original image, 2) the grouping of images that should obviously be presented separately (e.g., from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels), or 3) the modification of the contrast, brightness, or color balance to obscure, eliminate, or enhance some information.

Concerns raised regarding undeclared image modifications during manuscript processing or after publication will be investigated, and the authors will be asked to provide original images and unprocessed data. In case these data are unavailable upon request, the Editorial Office will halt the peer review process until the issues are satisfactorily resolved. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, the publisher may reject the manuscript. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we may correct or retract the article, and the issue may be raised with the authors’ institutions.

Data presented must be original and not inappropriately selected, manipulated, enhanced, or fabricated. This includes: 1) exclusion of data points to enhance the significance of conclusions, 2) fabrication of data, 3) selection of results that support a particular conclusion at the expense of contradictory data, 4) deliberate selection of analysis tools or methods to support a particular conclusion (including p-hacking). We strongly encourage the preregistration of methods and analysis.

Literary Studies encourages authors to retain unedited data and metadata files for at least five years after publication by archiving their datasets on their laboratory or institutional servers or in public, community-supported repositories.

Research Involving Human Subjects
Institutional Review Board Statement

When reporting on research that involves human subjects, human material, human tissues, or human data, authors must declare that the investigations were carried out following the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975, revised in 2013. According to point 23 of this declaration, an approval from the local Institutional Review Board (IRB) or other appropriate ethics committee must be obtained before undertaking the research to confirm the study meets national and international guidelines. As a minimum, a statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board should be stated in the 'Institutional Review Board Statement' Section of the article.

Example of an ethical statement: “The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code) on [date of approval].”

For non-interventional studies (e.g., surveys, questionnaires, social media research), all participants must be fully informed if the anonymity is assured, why the research is being conducted, how their data will be used, and if there are any risks associated with participation. As with all research involving humans, ethical approval from an appropriate ethics committee must be obtained prior to conducting the study. If ethical approval is not required, authors must either provide an exemption from the ethics committee or refer to the local or national legislation that indicates that ethical approval is not required for this type of study. Where a study has been granted an exemption, the name of the ethics committee that provided this should be stated in the 'Institutional Review Board Statement' Section along with a full explanation of why ethical approval was not required.

Informed Consent Statement

Articles reporting on studies involving human participants, human data, or human tissue must contain an informed consent statement for participation in the research. Verbal informed consent to participate in a study may be acceptable in some circumstances (as in ethnographic studies). Authors should explain the rationale for using this type of consent in the “Informed Consent Statement” Section. For verbal informed consent, a copy of the script used should be provided at the submission stage.

Research of Concern Involving Dual Use
Literary Studies follows the practical framework defined in Guidance for Editors: Research, Audit and Service Evaluations and introduced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Research that could pose a significant threat with broad potential consequences to public health or national security should be clearly indicated in the manuscript, and the research of concern with the potential for dual use should be explained in the cover letter upon submission. Areas of concern include but are not limited to biosecurity, nuclear and chemical threats, and research with a military purpose or application, etc. For these manuscripts to be considered for peer review, the benefits to the general public or public health must outweigh the risks. The authors have a responsibility to comply with relevant national and international laws.

Potential Conflicts of Interest
According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, “Authors should avoid entering into agreements with study sponsors, both for-profit and non-profit, that interfere with authors’ access to all of the study’s data or that interfere with their ability to analyze and interpret the data and to prepare and publish manuscripts independently when and where they choose”.

Authors must identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the presentation or interpretation of the reported research results. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include but are not limited to financial interests (such as membership, employment, consultancies, stocks/shares ownership, honoraria, grants or other funding, paid expert testimonies, and patent-licensing arrangements) and non-financial interests (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, and personal beliefs).

Any role of the funding sponsors in the design of the study; in the collection, analysis, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results must be declared in this section. If there is no role, please state, “The funding sponsors had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results”.

Authors can disclose potential conflicts of interest via the online submission system during the submission process. The corresponding author should include a summary statement in a separate section “Conflicts of Interest” placed just before the reference list in the manuscript. The statement should reflect all the collected potential conflict of interest disclosures in the form.

See below for examples of disclosures:

Conflicts of Interest: Author A has received research grants from Company A. Author B has received a speaker honorarium from Company X and owns stocks in Company Y. Author C has been involved as a consultant and expert witness in Company Z. Author D is the inventor of patent X.

If no potential perceived conflict exists, the authors should state:

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Intellectual Property i.e., Copyright, Patent, and Licensing
For all articles published in Literary Studies, the copyright is retained by the authors. Articles are licensed under an open-access Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 license, meaning that anyone may download and read the article for free. In addition, the article may be reused and quoted, provided that the original published version is cited. These conditions allow for maximum use and exposure of the work while ensuring that the authors receive proper credit.

In exceptional situations, articles may be licensed differently. If you have a special condition that does not allow this license (such as one linked to funding), please inform the Editorial Office of the journal during submission. Exceptions will be granted at the discretion of the publisher.

For previously published content, it is essential that prior to submission, authors obtain permission to reproduce any published material (figures, tables, text, etc.) that is not in the public domain or for which they do not hold the copyright.

Permission is required for:

• Your own works published by other publishers and for which you did not retain copyright.

• Substantial extracts from anyone's works or a series of works.

• Use of tables, graphs, charts, schemes, and artworks if they are unaltered or slightly modified.

• Photographs for which you do not hold the copyright.

Permission is not required for:

• Reconstruction of your own table with data published elsewhere. Please note in this case you must cite the source of the data in the form of “Data from...” or “Adapted from...”.

• Very short quotes are considered fair use and therefore do not require permission.

• Graphs, charts, schemes, and artwork that are completely redrawn by the authors and significantly changed beyond recognition do not require permission. However, you may need to check the copyright permissions of any underlying data.

Once you have obtained permission, the copyright holder may give you instructions on the form of acknowledgment to be followed. Alternatively, we recommend following the style: “Reproduced with permission from [author], [book/journal name]; published by [publisher], [year]”.

Translations

Literary Studies may consider high-quality content that has previously been published in a different language for publication, provided that the original study is appropriately referenced in the Acknowledgments section.

• Authors should clearly declare that their article is a translated version in the cover letter during submission;

• All authors from the original publication must appear on the submitted manuscript;

• Appropriate permission must be sought and granted from the publisher, copyright holders, and/or authors of the original article prior to manuscript submission;

• Relevant documentation relating to these permissions must be uploaded to the Supplementary Materials section during submission;

• The journal editor must be informed about the publishing history of the previously published content;

• The original article must be referenced in the Acknowledgments section.

“This is a translation/reprint of (insert title here) originally published in (insert language) by (insert publisher) (insert journal name, year, issue/volume number, page numbers). This translation was prepared by (insert name) with support from (insert name of funder, if any). Permission was granted by (insert publisher, copyright holder, and/or author name).”

Translated articles that do not follow the above guidelines are not acceptable. Those that pass the pre-check will be peer-reviewed in accordance with Literary Studies’s editorial process.

Citation Policies
Authors should ensure that where material is taken from other sources (including their own published writing), the source is clearly cited and that where appropriate permission is obtained.

Authors should not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work.

Authors should not copy references from other publications if they have not read the cited work.

Authors should not preferentially cite their own or their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications.

Authors should not cite advertisements or advertorial material.

In accordance with COPE guidelines, we expect that “original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations”. This condition also applies to an author's own work. COPE has produced a discussion document on citation manipulation with recommendations for best practice.

Data Availability Statements

Data availability statements are required for all articles published with Literary Studies. During the peer review and editorial decision process, authors may be asked to share existing datasets or raw data that have been analyzed in the manuscript, and whether they will be made available to other researchers following publication. Authors will also be asked for the details of any existing datasets that have been analyzed in the manuscript.

Below are the recommended Data Availability Statements:

Data Preservation

Literary Studies acknowledges that researchers, institutions, journals, and data repositories have a shared responsibility to ensure the long-term preservation of data, and Literary Studies encourages authors to select data repositories with this goal in mind.

Literary Studies encourages authors to commit to preserving their datasets on their laboratory or institutional servers for at least five years after publication. If, during that time, the repository to which the data were originally submitted disappears or experiences data loss, we may ask the authors to upload the data to another repository and publish a correction or update to the original publication.

If authors remove their data from the original public repository or change access criteria in a manner that is inconsistent with the publication, we may ask authors to notify the editorial office as soon as possible.

How to Choose an Appropriate Data Repository

Literary Studies encourages the submission of data to community-recognized data repositories where possible. We recommend the authors visit re3data.org or fairsharing.org to help identify registered and certified data repositories relevant to their subject area if no community resource is available. If the authors’ institution has a generalist data repository this can be used to host authors’ data as long as the repository can mint DataCite DOIs, and allows data to be shared under open terms of use (for example the CC0 waiver).

Data Repository Criteria

The following criteria should be considered when selecting an appropriate repository, ensure that platforms:

• Ensure long-term persistence and preservation of datasets in their published form;

• Provide stable identifiers for submitted datasets (DOIs in most cases);

• Allow public access to data without barriers, such as logins or paywalls;

• Support open licenses (CC0 and CC-BY, or their equivalents, are required in most cases);

• Provide confidential review of submitted datasets without the requirement for reviewers to provide identifying information.

Data Citation

Authors are encouraged to formally cite any datasets stored in external repositories that are mentioned within their manuscript, including the main datasets that are the focus of the submission, as well as any other datasets that have been used in the work. For previously published datasets, authors should cite both the related research articles and the datasets themselves. Appropriate citation of data is checked and enforced by Journal Editorial staff before publication.

Guidelines for Reviewers and Editors
Along with the Editorial Office, all participants in the peer-review process, including Editors-in-Chief, Editorial Board Members, Guest Editors, and Reviewers, take responsibility for overseeing the integrity of Literary Studies’s editorial process.

If a participant in the peer-review process has concerns about a manuscript submitted for review or decision, or receives information about a possible ethical issue after publication, they should contact the Editorial Office as soon as possible. The Editorial Office will then conduct an investigation as per the Literary Studies Comments and Complaints Policy and in accordance with COPE guidelines.

Before and during peer review, the following checks are performed by Managing Editors and Assistant Editors in the Editorial Office. However, concerns from Reviewers and Editors should still be reported to the Editorial Office.

• Ethics approval and permissions for research involving human subjects, animals, or cell lines.

• Plagiarism, duplicate publication, and necessary permission from the copyright holder to include already-published figures or images.

• Clinical Trials Registration and reference to the registration in the Methods Section.

• Other compliance, ethics, and research integrity checks in accordance with Literary Studies policies and guidelines.

When making a recommendation or final acceptance decision on a manuscript, Reviewers and Editors should consider the following:

• Any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest must be disclosed, and authors must disclose any conflicts of interest relating to their manuscript or study prior to submission.

• Authors must accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.

• Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the manuscript so that other researchers can replicate their work.

• Whether or not the submission fits the scope of the journal.

• Reviewers provided sufficient feedback and were suitable to review the submission.

Potential Conflicts of Interest

We support transparency, and all those involved in the peer-review process must carefully consider and declare any conflicts of interest when participating in the review, decision-making process, and publication of a manuscript. All associations that interfere with, or could be potentially perceived as interfering with, the full and objective assessment, peer review, and decision-making process must be declared.

Even if a Reviewer or Editor believes that the existence of a conflict of interest, or several conflicts of interest, will not impact the peer review or decision-making process, the Reviewer or Editor should remove themselves from the process in order to avoid the perception of a conflict of interest and to protect the integrity of the peer-review process.

Types of Conflicts of Interest

Personal or Collaborative

Neither Reviewers nor Editors should take part in the review of manuscripts submitted by authors who are affiliated with their own institution, by authors who are research or project collaborators, or by any authors who are personal friends, family members, or spouses. Reviewers or Editors should not take part in the review or decision-making process of manuscripts submitted by authors who currently represent or have represented a mentor or mentee role or relationship in the past, or with whom they have collaborated or coauthored in the last 3 years.