General Principles

To strengthen academic integrity, regulate manuscript preparation, submission, peer review, and publication processes, and prevent academic misconduct, Acupuncture Research has established ethical guidelines for authors, editors, reviewers, and publishers. These guidelines are formulated in accordance with the Publishing Ethics for Scientific and Technical Journals and adapted to the specific practices of this journal.

1) The term “publication ethics” in this document refers to the moral principles, professional conduct, and behavioral standards that all parties involved in scholarly publishing must follow.

2) Academic misconduct refers to actions that violate academic norms and professional ethics. In general, academic misconduct includes the following three primary behaviors:

① Fabrication — making up data or results that do not exist;

② Falsification — manipulating, modifying, or misrepresenting data or results;

③ Plagiarism — appropriating or modifying another person's work as one's own, including full or partial copying of another's work or altering its form/content to a certain extent while maintaining the same purpose or usage. 

Forms of academic misconduct include plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, improper authorship, duplicate submission, redundant publication, salami publication, and violations of research ethics involving human or animal subjects.

3) For manuscripts with a high degree of textual or content similarity, the journal will consider:

① Whether the duplicated content constitutes key results or major conclusions. If so, the manuscript will not be accepted.

② Whether, after removing duplicated content and replacing it with appropriate citations, the remaining original content is sufficient to support a complete and publishable manuscript. If not, the manuscript is deemed to lack publication value.

4) Conflicts of interest refer to situations in which secondary interests (such as financial benefit, personal relationships, etc.) may conflict with the primary responsibilities of scientific work (such as ensuring the objectivity of research results). Conflicts may occur between individuals or groups, or between individual and institutional interests.

 

1. Author Ethics

1) Authors are responsible for the authenticity of their manuscripts. They must cooperate with editorial requests to provide supporting materials, including original images, raw data, project approval documents, project titles, grant numbers, and other relevant evidence.

2) At submission, authors must ensure the authenticity of all manuscript content (including data and author information), confirm that the manuscript has not been submitted elsewhere, does not involve confidentiality issues, and that authorship is undisputed.

3) Authors must adhere to the “Five Prohibitions” in manuscript preparation: (1) No third-party ghostwriting of the manuscript; (2) No third-party submission of the manuscript; (3) No third-party modification of the manuscript content; (4) No provision of falsified peer reviewer information; (5) No violation of authorship norms (see items 4–7). Authors must firmly reject authorship by individuals who have not made a substantive academic contribution.

4) Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantive contributions, including:

① Making significant contributions to the conception or design of the study, or to data acquisition, analysis, or interpretation;

② Drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content;

③ Approving the final version to be published;

④ Agreeing to be accountable for all aspects of the work and ensuring that any questions related to accuracy or integrity are properly investigated and resolved.

Individuals who do not meet all four criteria (such as those providing only technical assistance or financial/material support) should not be listed as authors but may be acknowledged.

5) In principle, authors should be listed in order of contribution, as jointly agreed upon by all listed authors at the time of submission. After submission or publication, changes to author names or affiliations are generally not permitted. If a change is necessary, the corresponding author and first author must submit a written request to the editorial office explaining the reasons. The change must be approved and signed by all authors, including any newly added or removed authors. No unauthorized changes may be made in the revised manuscript.

6) Normally, only one corresponding author should be designated. If the research is the result of multi-institutional collaboration and genuinely requires more than one corresponding author, an additional corresponding author may be allowed—usually no more than two. Additional corresponding authors must be academic leaders from different participating institutions or independent research groups.

7) Authors with equal contributions should be identified as such at the time of submission. Typically, no more than two authors should be listed as equal contributors. In genuinely collaborative, multi-institutional studies where more than two authors have made equal contributions, additional equal contributors may be allowed. These additional equal contributors should come from different institutions or independent research groups involved in the collaboration.

8) Authors must provide their full names and institutional affiliations when submitting a manuscript. The listed affiliations should be relevant to the research described in the paper. If an affiliation is not directly related to the research, the author should explain their specific contribution to the study, or the institution should provide a statement certifying the author's involvement in the research.

9) When the author's current institutional affiliation differs from the institution where the study topic was proposed, the research plan was designed, the research was carried out, and the necessary conditions were provided (e.g., graduates who have left their training institution, visiting scholars, joint research projects), the institution that provided the research facilities and where the work was actually completed should be listed as the primary affiliation.

10) For studies involving human participants, authors must take all necessary measures to protect the privacy of research subjects. Manuscripts must not include identifiable personal information such as patient names, hospital ID numbers, etc. For medical research using identifiable human materials or data, informed consent must be obtained through appropriate procedures, and any identifying features (especially facial images) should be obscured as much as possible in the submitted materials.

11) For studies involving animals, authors must take all necessary measures to ensure that experimental animals are treated humanely and receive appropriate care, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Guidelines for Ethical Review of Laboratory Animal Welfare.

12) At the time of submission, authors must declare whether any conflicts of interest exist. If there are conflicts of interest, authors must disclose all financial relationships that may influence the research results (e.g., any commercial relationships with pharmaceutical or medical companies, and whether such companies provided funding or support for study design and implementation, data analysis, manuscript preparation, or publication).

13) If authors have objections to the reviewers' comments or to the review decision, they may submit a written appeal to the editorial office, providing detailed explanations and responses to each specific comment.

 

2. Reviewer Ethics

1) Reviewers should uphold academic integrity and respect academic freedom, providing honest, objective, and fair evaluations of manuscripts. Reviewers must not show prejudice or discrimination based on the authors' country, institution, ethnicity, or other personal attributes, and must not disclose any part of the authors' research.

2) If a reviewer has a conflict of interest with the author(s)—including familial, teacher–student, alumni, colleague, or competitive relationships—the reviewer must promptly inform the editorial office to obtain further guidance, in order to ensure fairness in the review process.

3) If a reviewer finds that the author's research is closely related to their own work, the review must not contain unverified or malicious criticism, nor should it include unfair comments. Reviewers should avoid making unfounded accusations.

4) Reviewers should complete manuscript evaluations in a timely manner as agreed. If unable to meet the deadline, reviewers should inform the editorial office promptly and decline the review; recommendations of alternative qualified reviewers are welcome. Without the consent of the editorial office, reviewers must not delegate the review task to their students, colleagues, or any third party.

5) If a reviewer encounters a manuscript that they have previously reviewed, they are obligated to inform the editorial office and provide an evaluation according to the journal's editorial and acceptance standards.

 

3. Editor Ethics

1) Editors should handle all manuscripts fairly, impartially, and promptly. Decisions on acceptance or rejection should be based on the importance, originality, scientific rigor, timeliness, readability, authenticity of the research, and the relevance of the manuscript to the journal.

2) Editors must adhere to strict confidentiality principles. They must keep reviewer identities confidential and must also protect the confidentiality of authors' research content.

3) Editors must not allow personal or financial interests to influence the peer review process. They should ensure that peer reviewers are able to evaluate manuscripts independently, thereby upholding fairness and impartiality in peer review.

4) When authors recommend potential reviewers, editors should verify the authenticity of the reviewer information provided. The editor will decide whether to use the recommended reviewers based on their research expertise, suitability, and any potential conflicts of interest with the authors.
If an author requests that a particular expert be excluded from reviewing their manuscript and the request is reasonable, editors should respect this request.

5) When selecting reviewers, editors should avoid choosing individuals from the same institution as the authors and must not select any of the listed authors as reviewers.

6) If an editor has a conflict of interest with an author—such as a familial, teacher–student, alumni, colleague, or competitive relationship—the editor must recuse themselves from handling that manuscript.

7) Editors should handle authors' appeals with care and seriousness. When necessary, they should organize collective discussions within the editorial office or request that reviewers re-evaluate the manuscript.

8) Editors should consider publishing negative results obtained through rigorous scientific research, in order to prevent unnecessary duplication of work by other researchers.

9) Editors are responsible for preventing duplicate submission and redundant publication. They must conduct plagiarism checks twice—once upon initial submission and again before publication—and review the results carefully.

10) Editors have an obligation to remind authors of potential copyright or intellectual property issues that may arise when changing authorship, affiliations, or the order of authors' names.

11) Editors should provide authors with detailed revision suggestions or clear reasons for rejection whenever possible.

12) Editors must objectively describe the review process and must not make personal judgments or attacks against reviewers or authors.

 

4. Publisher Ethics

1) The journal strictly adheres to objectivity and fairness throughout the manuscript review and evaluation process.

2) If academic misconduct is identified in a manuscript that has already been finalized and accepted, the journal reserves the right to withdraw the acceptance and, when appropriate, notify the authors' institution and relevant journals.

3) If academic misconduct is discovered in an article that has already been published, the article will be retracted and a retraction statement will be publicly posted.

4) The journal should provide authors with comprehensive guidance (such as submission guidelines and writing instructions) and update such information promptly.

 

5. Ethics for the Use of GenAI

The policy on the use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) technology in the submission and review process is as follows:

1) GenAI cannot assume the corresponding responsibility of an author, and the journal does not accept GenAI, its products or teams listed as authors.

2) GenAI cannot be used to write entire papers or important parts of papers, such as methods, results, and interpretation and analysis of results. All content falling within the realm of scientific contribution or intellectual work should be completed by humans. If the main content of a paper is completed by GenAI, the editorial office will regard the case as academic misconduct.

3) GenAI can be used for literature search, topic selection, statistical analysis, language polishing, figures production, format checking, etc., if necessary for the research. Authors are fully responsible for the content produced by GenAI tools, and are thus liable for any breaches of publication ethics or infringement.

4) In order to improve efficiency and reduce workload, GenAI may be used to assist the daily work of the editorial office, but it is prohibited to assist manuscript evaluation or decision-making process. It must be human editors who are responsible for the manuscript review, decision-making, and communication with authors. To avoid risks of infringement, privacy breach, and confidential breach, it is prohibited to upload manuscripts and supplementary materials to publicly available GenAI platforms during the review process.

5) If, upon investigation, the editorial office determines that authors have violated GenAI usage policies in their scientific writing, the manuscript will be rejected or retracted. In severe cases, the journal will blacklist the author. If reviewers violate our GenAI policies during the review process, which results in information leakage or infringement, they will be prohibited from participating in review work and shall bear consequent responsibilities.