Journal of Tissue Repair and Regeneration · JTRR
Editorial policies
The rules this journal works to, stated so that authors, reviewers and editors can hold it to them. Operational detail for each role lives in the author, editor and reviewer guidance; this page is the policy itself.
- Editorial independence and peer review
- Authorship and contributorship
- Competing interests and recusal
- Research involving people and animals
- Data, materials and reporting
- Originality and research integrity
- Corrections and the published record
- Complaints and appeals
- Confidentiality
- Use of AI tools
- Fees and editorial independence
Editorial independence and peer review
Editorial decisions rest with the journal's editors and are made on the manuscript. They remain independent of fees, membership, editorial or reviewing roles, and of any commercial or institutional interest.
All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal's scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review.
Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.
Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
Scope is assessed against the aims and scope, and is settled separately from the assessment of quality. Decisions are communicated with the reasoning behind them, and revisions are checked for completeness before acceptance.
Authorship and contributorship
Authorship requires all four of the following, together:
- Substantial intellectual contribution
- To the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of its data.
- Drafting or critical revision
- Drafting the work, or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
- Final approval
- Approving the version submitted for publication.
- Accountability
- Agreeing to be accountable for all aspects of the work, including the accuracy and integrity of any part of it.
Contributors who meet some but not all four criteria should be given the opportunity to meet the remainder; where that is not possible, they are named in the acknowledgments with their contribution described. Changes to the author list after submission require the written agreement of every author, including anyone added or removed, and the editorial office records the change.
Competing interests and recusal
Authors declare financial and non-financial interests that a reader could reasonably consider relevant to the work, including employment, consultancies, honoraria, patents, advisory roles and close personal or professional relationships. A declaration is required whether or not an interest exists, and it is published with the article.
Reviewers decline an invitation, or disclose the interest before accepting, where they have a competing interest in the manuscript. Editors recuse themselves from decisions on their own submissions, and from any manuscript in which they hold a competing interest; those manuscripts are handled independently by another editor.
Funding sources are declared for every submission, together with the role the funder played in the design, conduct, analysis, reporting or decision to publish. A statement is required even where no specific funding was received.
Research involving people and animals
Studies involving human participants carry approval from the responsible research ethics committee or institutional review board, follow the Declaration of Helsinki, and report that informed consent was obtained. The approving body and the approval reference are named in the manuscript.
Where a person is identifiable in text, an image, a video or supplementary material, written consent to publish is obtained from that person, or from a parent or guardian, and the manuscript states that it was obtained.
Studies involving animals carry approval from the responsible animal care and use committee, state the guidelines followed, and report housing, welfare and humane endpoints in enough detail for the work to be assessed.
Clinical trial registration
Interventional clinical trials must be registered in an accepted public trial registry at or before the first participant provides consent for enrollment. The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported in the manuscript.
Trial registration and ethics approval are separate requirements; a registered trial still reports its ethics approval, and an approved study still registers where it is interventional.
Data, materials and reporting
Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement.
The statement says where the data underlying the findings can be found and on what conditions. Where data cannot be shared openly — because they are identifiable, legally restricted or held under a third-party agreement — the statement gives the access route and the reason for the restriction. Deposition in a public repository is encouraged, with the accession or DOI cited in the manuscript.
Reporting follows the guideline appropriate to the study design: ARRIVE for animal studies, CONSORT for clinical trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews, and MIQE for quantitative PCR. Protocols, analysis code and materials that another group would need in order to repeat the work are provided or their availability described.
Preprints on bioRxiv, medRxiv or arXiv are welcome, and a preprint remains eligible for consideration here. Authors cite the preprint and its relationship to the submitted work.
Originality and research integrity
Submissions are original, are under consideration at this journal alone, and use one submission route only. Fabrication, falsification and the manipulation of images or data are grounds for rejection, and for investigation where the work is already published.
- Image integrity
- Images are a faithful record of what was observed. Adjustments to brightness, contrast or color apply to the whole image and never obscure, remove, introduce or enhance a feature. Grouping from different gels, fields or exposures is disclosed and marked. Original unprocessed images are supplied on request.
- Similarity screening
- Submissions are screened for text overlap before review. Editors assess similarity reports in context, including attribution, quotations, methods, and the nature of overlapping text. Authors may be asked to clarify or revise specific concerns.
- Redundant publication
- Work that substantially overlaps an earlier publication by the same authors is disclosed at submission, with the earlier work cited, so that the editors can judge what is new.
- Sanctions
- Substantiated misconduct is addressed in proportion to what was found, which may include rejection, correction or retraction of the affected work, notification of the authors' institution, and declining further submissions.
Corrections and the published record
The published record is corrected in the open. A correction, retraction or expression of concern is published as a citable, linked notice that states what changed and why; the original article stays available and is marked, so the record of what was published is preserved.
- Correction
- Published where an error affects part of an article but not its conclusions or reliability.
- Retraction
- Published where the findings are unreliable, whether through honest error or misconduct, or where the work has a serious ethical or legal defect.
- Expression of concern
- Published where a substantiated concern exists and an investigation is unresolved, so that readers are informed while the matter is examined.
Complaints and appeals
Authors may appeal an editorial decision by writing to the editorial office with the specific points of disagreement and the evidence supporting them. An appeal is considered by an editor who was not responsible for the original decision, and the outcome is communicated with its reasoning.
Concerns about a published article, about the conduct of review, or about the journal's handling of a submission are addressed to the editorial office, which records the concern and its outcome. Where a concern involves an editor, it is handled by someone else.
Confidentiality
A submitted manuscript is confidential. Editors and reviewers treat it, and everything in it, as privileged: it stays inside the review, reaches a third party only with the editor's permission, and informs no one's own work before publication.
After submitting the review, reviewers should securely delete downloaded manuscript files and must not retain or use unpublished material.
Reviewer reports are written as evidence-based, professional assessments of the work. Editors may withhold or edit comments that fall short of that before passing them to authors. Reviewer identities are held in confidence by the journal.
Use of AI tools
Authors disclose any use of generative AI in the preparation of a manuscript, naming the tool and describing what it was used for. AI tools do not meet the authorship criteria above and are not listed as authors; the authors remain accountable for the whole of the work, including anything an AI tool contributed. The instructions for authors set out how to make the disclosure.
Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured.
Fees and editorial independence
The article processing charge is invoiced after acceptance. Editors do not see a manuscript's payment status, and payment, membership and any optional paid service are separated from the editorial decision by design rather than by assurance.
Read the complete withdrawal policy before submitting a manuscript.
Guidance for each role
Operational requirements live with the role they apply to: the instructions for authors, the editor guidelines and the reviewer guidelines.
Questions about any policy on this page, including whether a requirement applies to a particular study, go to [email protected]. Asking before submission is usually quicker than correcting afterward.
Digital preservation
This journal’s content is committed to Portico, a not-for-profit digital-preservation archive run by ITHAKA (the organization behind JSTOR). As articles are deposited they enter Portico’s permanent archive, so the scholarly record stays available for the long term — even if a title one day ceases to publish. Read our preservation policy.