Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Purpose and Scope

This Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement applies to all articles submitted to and published by this journal. The journal exclusively publishes review articles and scholarly evidence syntheses. Depending on the journal's aims and scope, these may include systematic reviews, meta-analyses, scoping reviews, narrative reviews, integrative reviews, conceptual reviews, bibliometric reviews, qualitative evidence syntheses, and overviews of reviews.

This statement defines the ethical responsibilities of authors, the Principal Editor, handling editors, members of the Editorial Board, peer reviewers, and the publisher, LITPAM. The policy is informed by principles of publication integrity aligned with guidance developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) .

The journal is committed to editorial independence, fair peer review, methodological transparency, accurate representation of the scholarly literature, responsible authorship, disclosure of competing interests, and appropriate correction of the scholarly record.

Ethical Principles for Review-Only Publishing

Although review articles normally analyse previously published literature rather than report newly collected primary data, they must still make an original scholarly contribution. Originality may arise from the review question, conceptual framework, methodological approach, analytical structure, evidence synthesis, interpretation, theoretical development, or conclusions.

Authors, editors, and reviewers must recognize that the integrity of a review article depends on the transparent and balanced identification, selection, appraisal, synthesis, interpretation, and citation of relevant sources. Selective inclusion, distorted citation, fabricated search records, manipulated extraction data, and unsupported conclusions are serious threats to publication integrity.

Duties of Editors

Editorial Independence and Fairness

Editors must evaluate submitted manuscripts impartially and exclusively on their scholarly merit, methodological quality, relevance, originality, clarity, and consistency with the journal's aims and scope. Editorial decisions must not be influenced by commercial interests, institutional affiliation, nationality, gender, ethnicity, religious belief, political orientation, personal relationships, or other factors unrelated to the academic quality of the submission.

Editors must respect the intellectual independence of authors and provide authors with a reasonable opportunity to respond to reviewer comments, editorial concerns, allegations of error, or allegations of misconduct.

Initial Editorial Assessment

During the initial assessment, editors should determine whether the manuscript:

• falls within the journal's aims, scope, and accepted review-article categories;
• clearly identifies the type, purpose, and contribution of the review;
• provides sufficient justification for conducting a new review;
• explains its contribution beyond existing reviews of the same or a closely related topic;
• applies a review method appropriate to its stated objectives;
• transparently reports how literature was identified, selected, appraised, analysed, and synthesized;
• follows an appropriate reporting guideline where such a guideline exists;
• presents conclusions that are supported by the evidence included in the review; and
• does not contain plagiarism, fabricated references, manipulated evidence, or substantial redundant publication.

Confidentiality

Editors and members of the Editorial Board must treat submitted manuscripts, reviewer reports, editorial correspondence, supplementary files, and related records as confidential. Information about a submission may be disclosed only to individuals directly involved in the editorial and peer-review process.

Unpublished arguments, data, analyses, interpretations, methods, frameworks, or ideas contained in a submitted manuscript must not be used for an editor's own research or personal advantage without the authors' prior written permission.

Peer-Review Management

Manuscripts that pass the initial editorial assessment will normally be evaluated by at least two independent peer reviewers with relevant expertise. Where feasible, reviewers should provide complementary expertise in the subject area and in review methodology.

Editors are responsible for selecting qualified reviewers, avoiding inappropriate reviewer assignments, safeguarding confidentiality, considering declared competing interests, and ensuring that reviewer reports are constructive, respectful, evidence-based, and sufficiently detailed.

The journal will manage reviewer and author identities in accordance with the peer-review model described on its Peer Review Process page. Editors must apply that model consistently.

A reviewer may be removed or excluded from future review assignments if the reviewer submits a report that is abusive, discriminatory, unprofessional, substantially inadequate, improperly generated, affected by an undisclosed competing interest, or submitted substantially after the agreed deadline without reasonable explanation.

Publication Decisions

The final decision to accept, request revision, or reject a manuscript rests with the responsible editor. The decision must take account of the manuscript's scholarly contribution, methodological integrity, reviewer reports, ethical compliance, and consistency with the journal's editorial standards.

Peer-review recommendations inform but do not determine the final editorial decision. Editors remain responsible for evaluating the reasoning, relevance, and quality of reviewer comments.

Editorial Conflicts of Interest

An editor must withdraw from handling a manuscript when a personal, professional, academic, institutional, ideological, or financial relationship could affect, or reasonably appear to affect, impartial judgment.

When an editor has a relevant competing interest, responsibility for the manuscript must be transferred to another qualified editor who has no such conflict.

Identification of Misconduct

Editors must take reasonable steps to identify and investigate suspected publication misconduct. Suspected misconduct may include, but is not limited to:

• plagiarism or substantial unattributed copying;
• duplicate or redundant publication;
• fabricated or falsified references;
• fabricated search results or screening records;
• manipulated study-selection figures;
• falsified data-extraction records;
• fabricated risk-of-bias or quality-appraisal results;
• manipulated effect sizes, statistical analyses, or visualizations;
• deliberate omission of relevant evidence;
• duplicate counting of participants, studies, or datasets;
• undisclosed post hoc changes designed to influence conclusions;
• citation manipulation or systematic misrepresentation of sources;
• inappropriate authorship attribution;
• undisclosed conflicts of interest; or
• compromised or manipulated peer review.

Editors must distinguish, as far as reasonably possible, between honest error, methodological disagreement, negligent practice, and deliberate misconduct.

Duties of Reviewers

Expertise and Acceptance of Review Assignments

Reviewers must accept assignments only when they possess sufficient expertise to evaluate the manuscript and can complete the review within the agreed period. Reviewers must provide accurate information about their identity, qualifications, affiliations, and areas of expertise.

A reviewer must decline or withdraw from an assignment when they lack appropriate expertise, cannot provide an objective assessment, cannot meet the deadline, or have a relevant competing interest.

Objectivity and Professional Conduct

Reviews must be conducted objectively, respectfully, and constructively. Reviewer comments should address the manuscript and its scholarly content rather than the personal characteristics of the authors.

Reviewers should explain the basis of their recommendations and identify major methodological, conceptual, interpretive, or reporting concerns with sufficient clarity to support editorial decision-making and author revision.

Review-Specific Evaluation

In evaluating a review article, reviewers should consider, where applicable:

• whether the review type is clearly identified and appropriate to the research question;
• whether the need for a new review is adequately justified;
• whether relevant existing reviews are acknowledged and differentiated;
• whether the review objectives, questions, or propositions are clearly formulated;
• whether the information sources and search dates are reported;
• whether the search strategy is sufficiently transparent and appropriate;
• whether eligibility criteria are clearly stated and consistently applied;
• whether study selection and data extraction are adequately described;
• whether the quality, credibility, or risk of bias of the included sources is assessed where appropriate;
• whether the synthesis method is appropriate to the characteristics of the evidence;
• whether multiple reports from the same study or dataset have been identified and handled appropriately;
• whether conflicting or non-supportive evidence is fairly represented;
• whether the conclusions are proportionate to the quality, quantity, consistency, and limitations of the available evidence;
• whether limitations of the review process are reported; and
• whether the manuscript follows the reporting standard appropriate to its review type.

Reviewers must not impose systematic-review requirements on narrative, conceptual, or theoretical reviews when those requirements are incompatible with the stated review design. Nevertheless, all review types must provide a transparent and academically defensible account of how literature was selected and interpreted.

Confidentiality

Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential. Reviewers must not share, copy, distribute, upload, discuss, or use the manuscript or its contents for personal, professional, or commercial advantage without prior authorization from the editor.

Reviewers must not upload confidential manuscripts or related files to external artificial intelligence systems or other third-party services unless the journal has expressly authorized their use and adequate data protection is assured.

Identification of Sources and Misconduct

Reviewers should identify important relevant publications that appear to have been omitted and should alert the editor to substantial overlap between the submitted manuscript and other work of which they are aware.

Reviewers must confidentially report suspected plagiarism, fabricated references, manipulated evidence, undisclosed duplicate publication, inappropriate citation practices, or other suspected misconduct to the editor.

Reviewer Conflicts of Interest

Reviewers must disclose any relationship or circumstance that could affect, or reasonably be perceived to affect, their impartiality. A reviewer should normally withdraw when:

• there is a direct supervisory, employment, or reporting relationship with an author;
• there has been recent and substantial collaboration with an author;
• the reviewer is involved in the project, protocol, dataset, or publication under review;
• the reviewer has a close personal relationship or significant dispute with an author;
• the reviewer has a financial interest in the publication outcome; or
• the reviewer believes that an objective assessment cannot be provided.

Duties of Authors

Originality and Scholarly Contribution

Submitted manuscripts must present an original and previously unpublished scholarly synthesis, interpretation, methodological contribution, or conceptual advancement. Although review articles use existing literature, the review question, analytical framework, synthesis, argument, interpretation, and conclusions must constitute an original contribution.

Authors must not submit substantially the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Material that has been published, deposited, presented, or disseminated previously must be disclosed and cited appropriately.

Justification for a New Review

Authors must identify relevant existing reviews and explain why a new review is necessary. A new review may be justified by:

• the availability of substantial new evidence;
• an updated search period;
• a broader or more clearly defined evidence base;
• a different population, context, discipline, or conceptual focus;
• an improved review methodology;
• a different form of synthesis or analysis;
• correction of important methodological limitations in an earlier review;
• the use of a new theoretical or analytical framework; or
• another clearly articulated scholarly contribution.

A manuscript that substantially duplicates an existing review without a meaningful methodological, evidential, analytical, or conceptual contribution may be rejected as redundant scholarship.

Review Protocols and Registration

Authors of systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and other review types for which prospective planning is appropriate should register or publicly deposit a protocol before formal study selection or data extraction begins, whenever a suitable registry or repository is available.

The manuscript should report the protocol title, registration or repository information, registration date, and registration number or persistent identifier, where applicable.

Authors must transparently disclose and justify substantive deviations from a registered, published, or deposited protocol. Undisclosed changes to eligibility criteria, outcomes, analytical methods, or synthesis procedures are unacceptable when they could materially influence the review's findings or conclusions.

Reporting Standards

Authors must follow the reporting guideline appropriate to the type and purpose of the review.

• Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should follow PRISMA 2020 or a relevant PRISMA extension.
• Scoping reviews should follow PRISMA-ScR .
• Review protocols should follow an appropriate protocol-reporting standard, such as PRISMA-P , where applicable.
• Other review types should follow an established reporting framework where one is available and must provide a transparent explanation of their review methods.

Reporting guidelines improve transparency but do not replace sound methodology. Authors remain responsible for selecting and applying methods appropriate to the review question and evidence base.

Transparency of Literature Identification and Selection

Authors must accurately report how literature was identified, screened, selected, appraised, extracted, coded, analysed, and synthesized. The level of detail should be appropriate to the review design.

Where applicable, authors should report:

• databases, registers, repositories, websites, and other sources searched;
• the date on which each source was last searched;
• complete or reproducible search strategies;
• language, date, document-type, and publication-status restrictions;
• eligibility criteria and their rationale;
• the number of reviewers involved in screening and extraction;
• procedures for resolving disagreements;
• the number of records identified, excluded, and included;
• reasons for exclusion at the full-text stage;
• data-extraction and coding procedures;
• quality-appraisal or risk-of-bias methods;
• methods used to synthesize and interpret the evidence; and
• any sensitivity, subgroup, moderator, or robustness analyses.

Integrity of Evidence Selection

Authors must not selectively include, exclude, cite, classify, or interpret sources to support a predetermined conclusion. Evidence that challenges the authors' preferred interpretation must not be omitted solely because it is inconsistent with that interpretation.

Any search restrictions must be disclosed and justified. Authors should consider the risk of publication bias, language bias, database bias, citation bias, and selective outcome reporting where relevant.

Integrity of Data Extraction and Synthesis

Search records, screening decisions, extracted data, coding decisions, appraisal results, effect sizes, statistical outputs, study characteristics, and synthesis findings must be reported honestly and accurately.

Fabrication or falsification of any component of the review process constitutes serious publication misconduct. This includes:

• inventing studies, references, records, or search results;
• fabricating screening numbers or reasons for exclusion;
• altering extracted findings without justification;
• fabricating quality-appraisal or risk-of-bias judgments;
• creating unsupported effect sizes or statistical results;
• counting the same study, sample, or dataset more than once;
• omitting outcomes or studies to alter the direction of findings; or
• misrepresenting the certainty, consistency, or strength of the evidence.

Balanced Interpretation and Limitations

Conclusions must be supported by the evidence included in the review and must reflect its quality, quantity, consistency, relevance, and limitations. Authors must avoid causal claims, generalizations, or policy recommendations that exceed what the evidence can reasonably support.

Authors must discuss important limitations of the review, including limitations related to search coverage, eligibility criteria, study quality, risk of bias, heterogeneity, missing evidence, analytical assumptions, and generalizability.

Citation Integrity

Citations must accurately represent the arguments, methods, findings, and conclusions of the cited sources. Authors must personally verify the existence, relevance, and accuracy of all references included in the manuscript.

The following practices are prohibited:

• citing sources that do not exist;
• citing sources that the authors have not adequately verified;
• misrepresenting a secondary citation as a primary source;
• citing an abstract as though the full article had been evaluated;
• irrelevant or excessive self-citation;
• citation padding intended to increase citation counts;
• coercive citation;
• citation of irrelevant sources to satisfy editors or reviewers; and
• distortion of a source's findings or conclusions.

Retracted, Corrected, and Withdrawn Literature

Authors must take reasonable steps to determine whether included or cited publications have been corrected, withdrawn, or retracted.

Retracted publications must not be treated as valid evidence unless their inclusion is explicitly justified for historical, methodological, or research-integrity analysis. When a retracted source is discussed, its retracted status must be clearly identified.

If a source included in a published review is later retracted or materially corrected, the authors should notify the journal when that development could affect the review's analysis, findings, or conclusions.

Data and Materials Availability

Authors should make the materials necessary to audit or reproduce the review process publicly available whenever legally, ethically, and technically possible.

Relevant materials may include:

• complete search strategies;
• screening records;
• full-text exclusion logs;
• data-extraction forms;
• coding manuals and codebooks;
• quality-appraisal or risk-of-bias decisions;
• analytical datasets;
• effect-size calculations;
• statistical code;
• bibliometric datasets; and
• supplementary tables and visualizations.

Authors must respect database licensing, copyright, confidentiality, and contractual restrictions. The journal does not require authors to distribute copyrighted full-text publications without permission.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship must be limited to individuals who have made substantial contributions to the conception, design, conduct, analysis, interpretation, or preparation of the review and who accept accountability for the published work.

All listed authors must approve the final manuscript and agree to its submission. Individuals who contributed to the work but do not qualify for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately.

Guest authorship, honorary authorship, gift authorship, ghost authorship, and the exclusion of qualified contributors are prohibited.

The journal may require an author-contribution statement using the CRediT taxonomy or another recognized contributorship framework.

Conflicts of Interest and Funding

Authors must disclose all financial and non-financial interests that could influence, or reasonably be perceived to influence, the conduct, interpretation, or publication of the review.

Relevant disclosures may include employment, consultancy, funding, personal relationships, institutional relationships, advocacy roles, intellectual commitments, membership of organizations, ownership of relevant products, and involvement in studies or reviews evaluated in the manuscript.

Authors must identify all sources of financial and material support and describe the role of the funder in the design, conduct, analysis, preparation, and publication of the review.

Copyright and Permissions

Authors must respect copyright, licensing, and attribution requirements when reproducing or adapting tables, figures, diagrams, instruments, taxonomies, frameworks, or substantial textual material from existing publications.

Authors are responsible for obtaining any permissions required before publication and for providing appropriate attribution.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence tools, large language models, chatbots, and similar systems must not be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility or accountability for a published work.

Authors remain fully responsible for the originality, accuracy, integrity, citations, methods, analyses, interpretations, and conclusions of the manuscript.

Material use of artificial intelligence in any stage of the review must be transparently disclosed. This may include its use for:

• developing or refining search terms;
• literature searching;
• title, abstract, or full-text screening;
• data extraction;
• coding or classification;
• quality appraisal;
• statistical analysis;
• bibliometric analysis;
• translation;
• visualization; or
• drafting or editing manuscript text.

The disclosure should identify the tool, version where available, purpose, stage of use, and extent of human verification. Authors must independently verify all AI-assisted outputs, especially references, quotations, extracted data, classifications, and analytical results.

Confidential manuscripts, copyrighted full texts, restricted datasets, or personal information must not be uploaded to an AI system unless its use complies with applicable confidentiality, copyright, data-protection, and institutional requirements.

Ethical Approval and Human Participant Data

Reviews based exclusively on publicly available published literature ordinarily do not involve direct recruitment of human participants. Such reviews do not normally require new informed consent from participants represented in the original studies.

Ethical approval, data-use authorization, or other institutional permission may nevertheless be required when a review involves:

• individual participant data;
• confidential or identifiable records;
• restricted unpublished datasets;
• direct contact with study authors or participants for research data;
• data governed by specific consent conditions; or
• other material subject to institutional or legal ethical requirements.

When applicable, authors must report the name of the approving authority, approval number, informed-consent arrangements, and relevant confidentiality protections.

Correction of Errors and Cooperation with Investigations

Authors who discover a significant error or inaccuracy in a submitted or published manuscript must promptly notify the journal and cooperate in correcting, updating, or retracting the work when necessary.

Authors must cooperate with reasonable editorial requests for protocols, search records, extraction forms, analytical files, correspondence, or other documentation needed to assess the integrity of a manuscript.

Handling Allegations of Misconduct

The journal does not tolerate research or publication misconduct and will not knowingly permit misconduct to occur. Allegations will be handled fairly, confidentially, consistently, and in accordance with relevant COPE guidance.

When a concern is raised, the editor may:

• conduct an initial assessment of the available evidence;
• request an explanation and supporting documentation from the authors;
• consult co-editors, reviewers, Editorial Board members, or independent experts;
• contact an author's institution, funder, or another journal when justified;
• document and securely retain relevant correspondence and evidence; and
• take appropriate editorial or post-publication action.

Individuals or institutions named in an allegation should be given a reasonable opportunity to respond before a final determination is made, except where immediate action is necessary to protect participants, confidential information, or the integrity of the scholarly record.

Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions

The journal will take appropriate action when a published article contains an error, omission, misleading statement, unreliable finding, compromised review process, undisclosed conflict, or evidence of misconduct.

Depending on the nature and seriousness of the issue, the journal may:

• publish a correction or corrigendum;
• publish an addendum;
• issue an expression of concern;
• retract the article;
• replace the article with a corrected version while preserving the publication record;
• remove content only in exceptional circumstances involving legal or serious safety concerns; or
• take another action consistent with recognized publication-ethics guidance.

Retraction notices and other post-publication notices should clearly identify the affected article, explain the reason for the action, state who initiated it, and remain permanently linked to the publication record.

Complaints and Appeals

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other parties may submit complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, procedural irregularities, publication decisions, or post-publication actions.

An author may appeal an editorial decision by providing a clear, evidence-based explanation of the alleged error in the review or decision-making process. An appeal is not a new submission and should not merely repeat arguments already considered during peer review.

Complaints and appeals will be evaluated by an editor or other qualified person who was not directly responsible for the disputed decision whenever reasonably possible. The journal will maintain records of the complaint, evidence considered, response, and outcome.

Duties of the Publisher

LITPAM, as the publisher, supports the editorial independence of the journal and must not interfere with decisions concerning the acceptance or rejection of individual manuscripts for commercial, political, or institutional reasons.

The publisher is responsible for supporting:

• the integrity and continuity of the scholarly record;
• transparent journal policies;
• appropriate editorial and peer-review procedures;
• secure handling of manuscripts and editorial records;
• investigation of credible ethical concerns;
• publication of necessary corrections and retractions;
• digital preservation and long-term accessibility; and
• compliance with applicable legal, copyright, privacy, and data-protection requirements.

The publisher will work with editors, authors, reviewers, institutions, and other relevant parties to address allegations of misconduct and to protect the reliability of the journal's publication record.

Policy Review

This Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement may be reviewed and updated periodically to reflect developments in publication ethics, evidence-synthesis methodology, reporting standards, peer-review practices, artificial intelligence, and scholarly communication.