Policies & Procedures

Open, ethical, and adhering to discipline-specific best practices.

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All PeerJ Computer Science articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (see each article for the exact CC BY version used). With this license, Authors retain copyright, but allow any user to share, copy, distribute, transmit, adapt and make commercial use of the work without needing to provide additional permission, provided appropriate attribution is made to the original author or source.
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By using this license, all PeerJ Computer Science articles meet or exceed all funder and institutional requirements for being considered Open Access.
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Authors cannot use copyrighted material within their article unless that material has also been made available under a similarly liberal license.

Individual Memberships and Article fees

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The submitting author will have created a free PeerJ account at the time of submission. Any co-authors will receive an email after submission with directions on how to confirm their co-authorship. Remember to check spam folders for missing PeerJ email, and we recommend you add accounts@peerj.com to your email contact lists.
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After receiving a final decision of "Accept" and before the manuscript will move into production, you must decide how to pay for the publication of your article. There are three options:
  • All named authors can pay for PeerJ Individual Lifetime Memberships - a one-time payment which allows you to publish in PeerJ journals for life. If a manuscript has more than twelve authors then only twelve need to have PeerJ Individual Lifetime Membership plans. The remaining authors must have at least a free PeerJ account.
  • Alternatively, you can choose to pay a single article processing charge (APC) to publish the accepted article.
  • If your institution has an agreement with PeerJ then apply for fee assistance as as explained on your institution's application page. Find out if your institution has a prepaid plan.
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Waiver Policy: Authors from countries that are classified by the World Bank as Low-income economies can request a waiver of our individual membership requirements for a single publication, one per submitting author, per year. If every co-author on a submission is from a country classified by the World Bank as a Low-income economy we will waive the individual membership requirements for every author upon request, thus making publication free.
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Undergraduate Waiver Policy: If the authors choose the PeerJ Individual Lifetime Membership route, any co-author who was an undergraduate at the time of the research may request a one-time waiver of the Individual Membership requirement, provided the paper has senior co-author(s) who have a paid Individual Lifetime membership plan.
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Authors should indicate their request and reason for a waiver in the "Confidential Notes to Staff" field upon submission. Academic Editors and reviewers are not made aware of the waiver request.

Author Policies

The Submission Admin's Role and Responsibilities are to:

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Inform all co-authors of the submission of the manuscript to PeerJ Computer Science (note: each co-author will receive a confirmation email upon submission and will need to confirm their authorship).
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Ensure that the manuscript is in full adherence with all journal policies (including such items as publication ethics, data deposition, materials deposition, etc). Additionally ensure that all co-authors are aware of, and in compliance with, all PeerJ Computer Science policies and procedures.
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Manage all correspondence between PeerJ and all co-authors, keeping the full co-author group apprised of the manuscript progress.
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Designate a substitute correspondent for times of unavailability.
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Ensure that by the point of Editorial Acceptance all co-authors have paid publishing plans or assume responsibility for their publication charges (note: authors can pay for a publishing plan at any point up to, and including, Editorial Acceptance).
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The submission must be created (and completed) by one of the co-authors, not by an agency or by some other individual who is not one of the co-authors.
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Ensure the submission is free from spelling errors; grammatical errors; and unclear expression.
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Ensure author names entered online exactly match those listed on your article's Author Cover Page.
The Publication Corresponding Author's Role and Responsibilities are to:

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Review the proofing PDF and respond to all production queries to ensure the article is ready for publication
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Post Publication: Respond to all queries pertaining to the published manuscript, provide data and materials as requested.

Authorship Criteria

  • Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3.
  • When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript (3). These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship/contributorship defined above, and editors will ask these individuals to complete journal-specific author and conflict-of-interest disclosure forms. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the submission admin should clearly indicate the preferred citation and identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments. The NLM indexes the group name and the names of individuals the group has identified as being directly responsible for the manuscript; it also lists the names of collaborators if they are listed in Acknowledgments.
  • Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship.
  • All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.
  • Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

Group authorship

  • When authors meet our Authorship Criteria, they should be named individually in the byline.
  • The formal group that the authors are representing must be named last in the author list.
  • When individual members of the group were active in the study work but did not meet our Authorship Criteria, they should be named in the Acknowledgements section.

Name Change Policy

  • PeerJ understands that an author might need to change their name for a variety of reasons. For some, including trans people, legal name changes might not be available, and it might not be appropriate to perpetuate a previous name. Therefore, we are happy to change an author's name on request, with as few barriers as we can. We do not require a reason or any proof of a legal name change.
  • Names will be changed in PeerJ publications both online and in PDFs and the publication(s) will be republished. The DOI will remain unchanged and the updated metadata will be transmitted to our indexing partner(s) with the intent that future citations will be associated with the correct name.
  • We suggest (but do not require) that the requestor inform their co-authors of the change to ensure that they update the way they cite the article. PeerJ can do this on their behalf (if requested) but will not contact the co-authors unless specifically asked to do so. Neither will we post any notice of the change on the article.
  • To request a name change, please email editor@peerj.com in confidence and we will do our best to implement the change as quickly and seamlessly as we can. The request should come from the author themself. If a third party is making a request on behalf of an author, we must be able to confirm that it is with the knowledge, and at the request, of the author involved.
  • PeerJ will endeavor to follow the prevailing best practices in these matters, as recommended by COPE.

Author type limits

  • Up to two authors can be designated Corresponding Authors.
  • Up to two authors can be designated Submission Admins (responsible for the submission and liasing with the journal).
  • Up to two authors can be designated Equal first authors, either the:
    • first and the second author, or
    • first and last author

Confidentiality

PeerJ Computer Science keeps all details about a submitted manuscript confidential, does not publicly comment about submitted or rejected manuscripts and maintains reviewer confidentiality unless given permission to reveal identities. Authors, reviewers and editors must also treat correspondence as confidential unless explicitly stated otherwise. PeerJ Computer Science may share materials with relevant parties when possible misconduct is being investigated.

Open Peer Review

PeerJ Computer Science is a formally peer-reviewed journal. All publications in the journal undergo a single-blind peer review process where reviewers know the identity of the authors but authors do not, by default, know the identity of the reviewers.

However, PeerJ Computer Science encourages full transparency in the peer review process via a process sometimes known as ‘open peer review’. This takes two forms:
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Peer reviewers are encouraged (but not required) to provide their names to the authors when submitting their peer review. If they agree to provide their name, then their personal profile page will reflect a public acknowledgment that they performed a review (even if the article is rejected). If the article is accepted, then reviewers who provided their name will be associated with the article itself.
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All reviews of published articles are made public. This includes manuscript files, peer review comments, author rebuttals and revised materials. Note: For submissions created before 13 February 2023, authors were able to opt-opt of publishing their peer review history.
View examples of open peer review.

Publication Ethics

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PeerJ Computer Science adheres to the prevailing industry standards and procedures for investigating publication ethics.
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PeerJ Computer Science does not allow dual publication (the same material published twice in the peer reviewed literature), or dual submission (the same material simultaneously submitted to more than one journal).
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Specifically, PeerJ Computer Science does not tolerate plagiarism, data or figure manipulation, knowingly providing incorrect information, copyright infringement, inaccurate author attributions, attempts to inappropriately manipulate the peer review process, failures to declare conflicts of interest, fraud, and libel. This list is not exhaustive - if there is uncertainty of what constitutes such actions, then more resources may be found at the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Council of Science Editors (CSE), or the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).
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Artificial Intelligence ("AI") is a rapidly evolving tool that can be used (among other things) to write text, generate images and figures, and generate data. PeerJ is aware that any proscriptive policy regarding the use of AI will be quickly overtaken by new developments, however, as a general rule such tools must not be used to deceive or to manipulate any aspect of the peer-review and publication process. AI models may not be listed as an author or used as a peer-reviewer. The use of an AI for any purpose must be clearly declared. Any undeclared use, or attempt to hide the use of AI tools will be treated as a breach of publication ethics.
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PeerJ Computer Science will rigorously enforce our standards, and follow up on any transgressions. In extreme cases, this may call for individuals to be reported to their institutions and/or for manuscripts to be retracted. Any complaints should be directed to editorial.support@peerj.com

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

PeerJ Computer Science adheres to the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines. We follow recommended COPE procedures whenever we are alerted to an issue which requires investigation.

Competing Interests

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

Funding Disclosure

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Separately from declaring Competing Interests, PeerJ Computer Science also requires that authors disclose the financing which made their work possible.
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The Funding statement is published in the final article. This disclosure provides added transparency.

Ethics Statement

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Where applicable, PeerJ Computer Science requires that authors provide an Ethics statement which details the relevant ethical standards which were met when conducting the research.
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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.
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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.

Field Research Permits and Permissions

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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.

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

Dual Use Research of Concern

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The publication of certain information may be considered harmful - for example the publication of dangerous software vulnerabilities.
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On a case by case basis, PeerJ Computer Science reserves the right to consider whether or not a submission could be considered as sensitive in this context.
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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.

Code and Data Availability

PeerJ Computer Science 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 Computer Science 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 Computer Science.

Reporting and Study Guidelines

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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).

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

Discipline Specific Standards

The following is a non-exhaustive list of standards that should be followed depending on the study type.

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PeerJ journals consider timely and well-balanced literature reviews of fields with broad cross-disciplinary interest within the journal's scope. While we do not impose a hard limit, we recommend a maximum of 8,000-12,000 words in order to keep the review focused. The review 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 that it is comprehensive and unbiased (for example, the search strategies that were employed). Gaps in the literature, future avenues of research and opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaborations should be clearly identified. Unbalanced reviews that are performed with the intention of supporting a particular interpretation or point of view will not be considered.

Since, by their nature, literature reviews rely heavily on the published work of others, it is especially important to avoid inadvertent plagiarism by copying and pasting sections of text from the original source. In addition, it is very important, when quoting or paraphrasing, to correctly acknowledge your sources.

We recommend that your review is structured following the guidelines for Literature Review Articles in standard sections.

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AI Application articles present research relating to the study of artificial intelligence techniques (for instance, machine learning, deep learning, algorithms, computer vision, natural language processing, and intelligent systems) and the application of these techniques to areas that need not necessarily be related to computer science (e.g. medicine, life sciences, social sciences, geographic sciences, chemistry, education, business, etc.). Simple application (or cross-evaluation) of existing tools to datasets without a clear articulation of the need for, and limitations of, the method(s) will not be considered.

AI Application articles must describe the need for the technique, and demonstrate how the machine learning techniques discussed can be used to solve practical problems. The article must include a research methodology that demonstrates improvement to current practices in the relevant field. Where possible, the technique should be compared to existing methods, to demonstrate the improvement.

Submitted articles must be technically robust and clearly presented; code and data (original or third party) must also be freely available to ensure sound science and reproducibility.

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PeerJ's journals do not consider bibliometric/scientometric analyses for peer-review in their own right. A bibliometric analysis will only be considered if it forms part of a literature review or a research article, where it serves to identify the knowledge gap that is addressed by the research.
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Informatics studies that are based on the analysis of previously published datasets must both (i) answer a question not considered in the original publication (if there is one) or reassess the data to arrive at a different conclusion AND (ii) either comprehensively and robustly validate the findings using at least two of the following: independent public data, previously unreported data and/or new experimental results OR apply original computational tools.
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In the interests of inclusivity, PeerJ does not condone the use of images such as Lena/Lenna and Tiffany without a strong scientific justification. Suitable substitutes are available. If you must use the image to compare the performance of your algorithm to a published paper where the algorithm is not available, please avoid reproducing the image in your figures and only report the numerical results (e.g. histograms, etc.).

Human Subjects Research

In general, it is expected that work involving human subjects will be submitted to PeerJ - the Journal of Life and Environmental Science, but if the intended audience is the computer science community and the human experiments are a minor part of the overall work then it will be considered for publication in PeerJ Computer Science, so long as it complies with the usual ethical requirements.

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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.
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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.
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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.

'Critique' submissions

Submissions that are a critique or reanalysis of another published article, or the work of an individual, group or organization may be considered provided they are otherwise in scope for peer review as a research article (for example, they must include a substantial reanalysis of the data, or presentation of new data). In such cases, it is PeerJ policy to invite the critiqued party to comment as a (non-anonymous) reviewer and at least two additional reviewers will also be sought.

Procedures

Reviewer and Editor Opposition

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Authors may request that specific individuals be prevented from seeing their submission (a practice known as 'opposition').
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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.
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While we will attempt to accommodate reasonable requests, we cannot guarantee that all requests will be honored.

Appeals

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If an author strongly believes that a decision has been made which is not in accordance with the PeerJ Computer Science editorial criteria they may appeal the decision by emailing editor@peerj.com
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The decision resulting from this process will be considered final.

Blogs, Embargoes, and the Media

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PeerJ Computer Science does not consider articles which have previously appeared in a recognized peer-reviewed journal (as this represents dual publication).
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PeerJ Computer Science accepts submissions which have previously appeared on preprint servers (including PeerJ Preprints and arXiv); have previously been presented at conferences; or have previously appeared in other ‘non journal’ venues (for example: blogs or posters).
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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.
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When an article is selected to be Press Released, PeerJ Computer Science 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).
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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).

Commenting Policies

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PeerJ requires that all public comments follow the normal standards of professional discourse.
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All commenters are named and their comments are associated to their PeerJ profile.
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PeerJ does not allow anonymous or pseudonymous commenting or user profiles.
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If a Commenter has any possible Conflict of Interest, they should declare this conflict as part of their Comment.
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PeerJ does not tolerate language that is insulting, inflammatory, obscene, or libelous.
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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.
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PeerJ Computer Science publishes accepted manuscripts under a CC BY license.
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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.

Retraction Policy

PeerJ Computer Science reserves the right to retract articles which are found to be fraudulent (for example subject to deception such as data manipulation) or in serious breach of one of our policies.

These policies are made available under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license and can be copied for reuse with attribution.