PeerJ Chemistry journals require that all parties involved in a publication (i.e. the authors, reviewers and academic editors) should transparently declare any potential Competing Interests (also known as Conflicts of Interest). The disclosure of a Competing Interest does not necessarily mean that there is an issue to be addressed; it simply ensures that all parties are appropriately informed of any relevant considerations while they work on the submission.

Authors are asked to declare all competing interests upon submission. Reviewers are expected to consider any competing interests before agreeing to review, and to confirm that they have no competing interests before submitting their review. Academic Editors are expected to recuse themselves from handling a manuscript if they feel they have a competing interest.

Potential competing interests should be declared even if the individual in question feels that these interests do not represent an actual conflict. Examples of Competing Interests include, but are not limited to: possible financial benefits if the manuscript is published; prior working, or personal, relationships with any of the authors; patent activity on the results; consultancy activity around the results; personal material or financial gain (such as free travel, gifts, etc.) relating to the work; personal convictions (religious, political, etc.) which may have a bearing on the work, and so on.

It is a potential competing interest for any reviewer to suggest a citation to their own work as part of their peer-review. When a peer-reviewer suggests a self-citation they must (1) declare this as a potential competing interest and (2) provide clear justification in their review as to why this citation is relevant to the study. Authors are told that additional references suggested during the peer-review process should only be included if they are in agreement that they are relevant and useful. For further information regarding the ethical responsibilities of peer-reviewers, please see COPE guidelines here.

While possible financial benefits should appear here, actual funding sources (institutional, corporate, grants, etc.) should be detailed in the funding disclosure statement.

The discovery of undisclosed competing interests may result in the journal taking actions which could include cancellation of the review process for affected submissions, removal of involved individuals, or retraction of affected publications.

Separately from declaring Competing Interests, PeerJ Chemistry journals also require that authors disclose the financing which made their work possible.

The Funding statement is published in the final article. This disclosure provides added transparency.

Where applicable, PeerJ Chemistry journals require that authors provide an Ethics statement which details the relevant ethical standards which were met when conducting the research.

In addition to providing an Ethics statement upon submission (for review purposes), this same statement should also be provided in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript.

The authors must provide an ethics statement as part of their Materials and Methods section detailing full information regarding their approval (including the name of the granting organization, and the approval reference numbers).​​ If an approval reference number is not provided, written approval must be provided as confidential supplemental file.

When research is conducted in any location other than at the researchers’ institution or a permanent field station then appropriate permission (aka ‘field research permit’) to access the site must have been obtained according to applicable laws and norms.

• Adequate proof of this permission or a clear indication of how the access was allowed under local or international law must be provided at submission.
• If verbal permission was obtained then the name and authority of the person who gave it must be provided.

If material (samples, specimens, etc.) were collected then the field permit or a separate collection permit must be provided to show that this was permitted by the appropriate authority.

If materials were exported then documentation must also be provided to show that this was approved by the authority in the source and destination countries according to relevant national and international laws.

Camera Traps, Drones and Passive Acoustic Monitoring: Wildlife studies using recording devices to record still/video images and/or audio have the potential to capture human subjects. This has implications for privacy, and — in the event that illegal acts are captured — a duty on the part of the researcher to report them. There might also be issues of personal safety in the latter case. See https://doi.org/10.1002/2688-8319.12033 and https://doi.org/10.1111/csp2.374 for more information.

Ideally, this should have been considered by the authors and their ethics committee before the study was approved but we understand that this is not currently a widespread practice. While the field is reaching a consensus on this matter, we ask authors who are reporting data from such studies to explain how the ethical approval/field permit they obtained relate to these issues, or explain why this was not considered necessary.

Where the study uses mobile platforms such as uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs/drones) these must have been operated in accordance with all applicable regulations.

This policy is likely to adapt as the field develops.

This documentation is not necessarily published, but by requiring these documents we aim to ensure the legality and integrity of the science we publish.

On a case by case basis, PeerJ Chemistry journals reserve the right to consider whether or not a submission could be considered as sensitive in this context.

If an author, editor or reviewer feels that a submission may be subject to concerns surrounding dual use then it is incumbent on them to report this concern to staff.

PeerJ Chemistry journals are committed to improving scholarly communications and as part of this commitment, authors must make materials, code, data, and associated protocols available at the time of submission for peer review and publication. The preferred way to meet this requirement is to publicly deposit as noted below. Cases of non-compliance will be investigated by PeerJ Chemistry journals which reserves the right to act on the results of the investigation.

• Large domain-specific datasets should be deposited in a public repository ( e.g. GenBank, Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank, Cambridge Structural Database, ChemSpider, EMDataBank, Crystallography Open Database, PeptideAtlas, Protein DataBank, PubChem, NP-MRD, MassIVE, MassBank , etc) and an accession number or access address provided in the published article.
• Authors are encouraged to extend the utility of their manuscripts with the inclusion of helpful meta-data so that published works can find connections to other works in the public domain. Journal manuscripts are often scanned by text-mining software that locates and extracts core data elements, like gene function. Adding standard ontology terms, such as the Gene Ontology or others from the OBO Foundry can enhance the recognition of your contribution and description. This will also make human curation of literature easier and more accurate. Depending on the details of the data being presented, this information may be requested by editors.
• Where suitable domain-specific repositories do not exist, authors may deposit in Dryad, Dataverse, the Open Science Framework, or an institutional repository and provide the access information with the manuscript. Alternately, authors may choose to deposit non-standard data (including figures, posters, rich media) on Figshare for example. In all cases, the DOI reference (where applicable) should be provided in the article.
• Any supporting data sets for which there are no suitable repositories may be made available as publishable Supplemental Information files by PeerJ Chemistry journals.
• Data should be provided in an appropriate, machine-readable format. Note: formats such as PDF, Powerpoint, and images of tables etc. are not considered suitable for raw data sharing.
• Where novel research compounds are used, their chemical identity must be disclosed. Rigorous evidence for both the purity and identity of the materials must be provided so that the reliability of the experimental results can be assessed.
• Publications using commercial antibodies should report the supplying company and code number for all antibodies used. We recommend reporting using the following format:
  The following antibodies were used: Mouse anti-protein A monoclonal antibody (company E, catalogue number #1000) was used for Western blotting with human cells, as validated in (figure X or reference Y or validation profile Z).
• In accordance with the principles in Sharing Publication-Related Data and Materials (National Academies Press, 2003), research using proprietary data must also evaluate a piece of comparable public data if the authors cannot or do not make the proprietary data available.
• For software papers, 'materials' are taken to mean the source code and/or relevant software components required to run the software and reproduce the reported results. The software should be open source, made available under an appropriate license, and deposited in an appropriate archive. Data used to validate a software tool is subject to the same sharing requirements as any data in PeerJ publications.

• PeerJ Chemistry journals is committed to improving scholarly communications and as part of this commitment, authors must make materials, code, data, and associated protocols available at the time of submission for peer review and publication. The preferred way to meet this requirement is to publicly deposit as noted below. Cases of non-compliance will be investigated by PeerJ Chemistry journals which reserves the right to act on the results of the investigation.

  • All code needed to reproduce the results of the submission, as well as all raw data, must be made available either:
    • In a repository such as GitHub/GitLab (in which case a DOI, available via Zenodo, is a requirement), OR
    • As a supplementary file, to be published alongside the article
  • GitHub repositories can be archived directly by Zenodo, which creates a DOI. GitLab repositories must be "released", downloaded as a .zip file and then uploaded to Zenodo to obtain a DOI. Other similar archival repositories (e.g. figshare, institutional repositories) may also be used.
  • Third-party code must be cited appropriately, with a DOI (referred) or Software Heritage ID provided where available. Authors should make all reasonable attempts to ensure that the unpublished third-party code can be found by subsequent readers, and encourage the code writer to preserve their project by obtaining a persistent identifier.
  • Data should be provided in an appropriate, machine-readable format. Note: formats such as PDF, Powerpoint, and images of tables etc. are not considered suitable for raw data sharing.
  • Any supporting datasets for which there are no suitable repositories may be made available as publishable Supplemental Information files by PeerJ Chemistry journals.

In all cases, accession / deposition reference numbers must be provided in the manuscript.

Some repositories offer authors the option to host data associated with a manuscript confidentially, and provide anonymous access to PeerJ Chemistry journals for reviewing purposes. In those cases it is the authors' responsibility to coordinate prompt public release of the data with the repository upon acceptance, if kept confidential during peer review.

Any potential restrictions on data, code or materials (for example: proprietary data, material limitations, or information relating to human subjects), including how other researchers might attempt replication without this data, must be disclosed at the time of submission. PeerJ Chemistry journals reserve the right to refuse consideration of such articles.

Where data can only be made available with restrictions, you must provide clear instructions on how these may be accessed. Authors may not act as sole contacts for data access so these data must be submitted to a suitable third party such as a data protection or ethics committee at your institution.

Any data or code not already available publicly without restrictions must be submitted for review. These will be handled in confidence by the Academic Editor and reviewers.

We strongly recommend (and in some cases require) that authors adhere to the reporting standards which have been adopted by their field (or which apply to their study design).

Authors should indicate which standards were followed and should, where appropriate, provide checklists, protocols, flowcharts etc as Supplemental Information as part of their article submission. Where accession or reference numbers have been obtained, these should also be provided in the text.

As a general statement, data should be referred to by the most specific identifier available for the database archive it is submitted to.

All statistical results should be reported in full, including the test that was performed, the reason for choosing that test, the corresponding test statistic, sample size, degrees of freedom, the exact p-value expressed up to 2 decimal spaces unless 'p<0.001' or confidence interval, and effect sizes. Where multiple testing is performed, suitable corrections must be made.

Do not report inferential statistics such as p values or confidence intervals for known quantities such as baseline measurements. The spread of the data can be indicated by descriptive statistics such as standard deviation, or quantiles and ranges.

Where appropriate, we recommend that you overlay bar graphs with scatter plots showing individual data points, or use another method to show the distribution of the data, such as boxplots, violin plots, etc.

PeerJ Chemistry journals consider fully validated methodological papers. The article should include a rationale for why it is needed, describe who it is intended for, and include a description of the procedures used to ensure it is comprehensive and reliable. Current limitations of methodologies in the literature should be clearly identified. We recommend that your article is structured following the guidelines for Method Development Articles in standard sections.

For research conducted on regulated animals (which includes all live vertebrates and/or cephalopods), prospective approval must have been obtained according to either international or local laws and regulations. Before conducting the research, approval must have been obtained from the relevant body (in most cases an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, Ethics Committee, or a government body). The authors must provide an ethics statement as part of their Methods section detailing full information as to their approval (including the name of the granting organization, and the approval reference numbers). If an approval reference number is not provided, written approval must be provided as a confidential supplemental information file.

For research conducted on non-regulated animals, a statement should be made as to why ethical approval was not required.

Submissions must follow discipline-specific guidelines, where available. For example:

• We require all authors to comply with the 'Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments' ARRIVE 2.0 guidelines, developed by NC3Rs. A completed full (21-point) ARRIVE 2.0 checklist must be submitted as a supplemental file with any submission that describes an interventional study on regulated animals.
• Manuscripts describing studies of wildlife must show in their Methods section that they adhere to the ARROW guidelines.
• Research on non-human primates is subject to specific guidelines from the Weatherall (2006) report, The Use of Non-Human Primates in Research.

Experimental animals must have been handled according to the highest standards. The manuscript must include details of:

• where the animals were obtained
• animal care, feeding, housing, and enrichment
• what experimental interventions were carried out, including details of any analgesia given. If no analgesia, justify this decision.
• what outcomes were measured
• sampling techniques, including any anesthetic procedures. If no anesthesia was given, justify this decision
• details of euthanasia method(s) used. Please refer to the current edition of the AVMA Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals for acceptable methods.
• criteria for euthanizing animals prior to the planned end of the experiment and whether this was needed
• what happened to any surviving animals at the conclusion of the experiment
• for studies involving tumors in animal models, all tumor sizes must be reported and photographic evidence provided as a Figure or Supplemental file. The protocol must ensure that experimental animals are humanely euthanized if the tumor size reaches a maximum dimension of 20 mm in mice or 40 mm in rats, or the combined volume of tumors in a single animal reaches 2000 mm³ (mice) or 4000 mm³ (rats).

Articles must be specific in descriptions of the organism(s) used in the study. The description must indicate strain names when known.

For experiments involving human subjects, appropriate prospective approval must have been obtained from the relevant approval body (in most cases the authors’ Institutional Review Board, or ethics committee). The authors must provide an ethics statement as part of their Materials and Methods section detailing full information regarding their approval (including the name of the granting organization, and the approval reference numbers). If an approval reference number is not provided, written approval must be provided as a confidential supplemental information file. Any research must have conformed to the Declaration of Helsinki. If approval was not obtained, the authors must provide a statement explaining why it was not needed.

Authors must include a statement confirming whether informed consent was obtained from all subjects, and what form it took. If consent was written, an empty copy of the consent form/information sheet used must be provided as a Confidential Supplemental Information file. If consent was verbal instead of written, then an explanation should be provided (in the Materials and Methods section), and verbal consent must have been approved by the IRB which gave permission for the study. If the need for consent was waived by the IRB then proof of this must be provided.

Individual privacy and anonymity must be protected. Identifying information (such as names, photographs, identifying data) should not be included in the manuscript. Exceptions can be made only when evidence is provided that the individuals in question have given explicit approval. More information about individual privacy, anonymity, and informed consent can be found in the ICMJE Privacy and Confidentiality guidelines.

Authors may request that specific individuals be prevented from seeing their submission (a practice known as 'opposition').

Requests to oppose individuals should be limited in nature, should refer to specific individuals (not broad lists or categories of people), and should be made only with good reason.

While we will attempt to accommodate reasonable requests, we cannot guarantee that all requests will be honored.

If an author strongly believes that a decision has been made which is not in accordance with the PeerJ Chemistry journals editorial criteria they may appeal the decision by emailing editor@peerj.com

Appeals cannot be prioritised over new submissions and often take some time to be resolved. PeerJ will aim to respond to the initial appeal within two weeks.

Appeals must be submitted with detailed information as to why the original decision was in error, including a point by point response to all reviewer/Academic Editor comments in the decision letter.

PeerJ will review the Appeal and may involve a member of the Editorial Board to decide whether the Appeal should be granted. In some cases this process might involve re-review of the article.

The decision resulting from this process will be considered final.

PeerJ Chemistry journals do not consider articles which have previously appeared in a recognized peer-reviewed journal (as this represents dual publication).

PeerJ Chemistry journals accept submissions which have previously appeared on preprint servers (including PeerJ Preprints, ChemRxiv and arXiv); have previously been presented at conferences; or have previously appeared in other ‘non journal’ venues (for example: blogs or posters).

We encourage authors to discuss and disseminate their findings as they wish. If they are discussing submissions which have not yet been formally accepted, then they should state this fact. If they are discussing with journalists, they should inform the editorial office so that we are aware of potential news deadlines.

When an article is selected to be Press Released, PeerJ Chemistry journals will set an embargo on news coverage corresponding to the publication date of the article. Once it is set, we request that news media do not publish stories ahead of this embargo (primarily as the final article itself will not be available until that date).

Once accepted and press released, authors may not prevent journalists from discussing an embargoed article with other researchers (for example by requiring an NDA to be signed).

PeerJ requires that all public comments follow the normal standards of professional discourse.

All commenters are named and their comments are associated to their PeerJ profile.

PeerJ does not allow anonymous or pseudonymous commenting or user profiles.

If a Commenter has any possible Conflict of Interest, they should declare this conflict as part of their Comment.

PeerJ does not tolerate language that is insulting, inflammatory, obscene, or libelous.

PeerJ reserves the right to edit/remove all or parts of Comments to bring them in line with these policies. Repeat offenders will have commenting rights removed. PeerJ is the final arbiter as to the suitability of any comments.

PeerJ Chemistry journals publish accepted manuscripts under a CC BY license.

It is the author’s responsibility to obtain the appropriate permissions from the original publisher to republish any previously published text, figures, tables, Supplementary Information, etc., in an Open Access journal under a CC BY license.