As founding member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and active member of that organization (OASPA), as well as being a member in COPE and having most journals listed in DOAJ (which also uses the same criteria for evaluation), JMIR Publications not only has a track record of adhering to best practice guidelines in scholarly publishing, but also has a leadership role in defining and shaping them. (See also Why is JMIR Publications a "leading publisher"?)
Below we list the COPE/OASPA/WAME "Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing" criteria and provide the answers to these questions, or link to the respective journal sites or other Knowledge Base articles where they are answered. (A similar exercise is provided in the article Is JMIR a predatory publisher? which contains responses to the Beall checklist).
Together, these checklists demonstrate that JMIR Publications adheres to the highest professional and ethical standards in scholarly publishing.
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1. Peer review process: All of a journal’s content, apart from any editorial material that is clearly marked as such, is subjected to peer review. At all JMIR journals, the names of the peer-reviewers are clearly identified at the bottom of each published article. Peer review is defined as obtaining advice on individual manuscripts from reviewers expert in the field who are not part of the journal’s editorial staff. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, are clearly described on the journal’s Web site, see
- What is peer-review, and are all papers on JMIR peer-reviewed? and
- What does the peer-review process at JMIR journals look like?
for details.
Example for an article footer in an article from a JMIR journal:
We request and trust that authors refrain from communicating with reviewers before or during the peer-review, and refrain from nominating reviewers who have a potential conflict of interest, in particular from nominating inappropriate or "fake" reviewers (How does JMIR define a Conflict of Interest (COI)?). Cases of attempted peer-review fraud will be handled according to the COPE workflows, and we have had numerous cases where we took action such as informing the host institution of attempted peer-review fraud.
2. Governing Body: All JMIR journals have editorial boards or other governing bodies whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors are provided on the journal’s Web site, as shown in
Note that at JMIR Publications, all EB members are actually what other publishers would call "associate editors" or "section editors", i.e. they do not only take an advisory role, but can actually take on manuscripts for guiding them through the peer-review and make decisions. The editor who has handled the manuscript is also credited at the end of the manuscript, next to the reviewers.
There may be rare exceptions of new journals where the publisher is still building up the editorial board and where the EB pages are empty. In these cases the new journal is currently being incubated (handling editors are still disclosed at the end of each published article).
3. Editorial team/contact information All JMIR journals provide the full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors on the journal’s Web site as well as contact information for the editorial office.
- Where can I find the editorial board members for this journal?
- How can I contact staff or editors at JMIR Publications?
4. Author fees: Any fees or charges that are required for manuscript processing and/or publishing materials in the journal are clearly stated in a place that is easy for potential authors to find prior to submitting their manuscripts for review or explained to authors before they begin preparing their manuscript for submission.
In addition to our multiple article in the Knowledge Base, e.g.
- Are there costs involved in publishing in JMIR journals, what are your fees?
- What is your APF/APC
- How does the Article Processing Fee (APF/APC) at JMIR compare to other journals/publishers?
- I don't have any grant money - how can I publish in JMIR?
we also have a clear link to our Fee Schedule on every JMIR journal homepage.
In addition, there is a checkbox on submission where authors acknowledge that they are aware of the fees charged. Authors cannot submit unless they acknowledge having read this:
5. Copyright: Copyright and licensing information are clearly described on the journal’s Web site, and licensing terms shall be indicated on all published articles, both HTML and PDFs.
Example of the copyright footer of an article:
6. Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct: JMIR Publications and its editors are taking active steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. In no case do editors encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place. JMIR editors sign a terms-of-reference document which expressly forbids any citation manipulation or inflation, and specifies how to handle cases of scientific misconduct. In the event that a journal’s publisher or editors are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in their journal – the publisher or editor follow COPE’s guidelines in dealing with allegations.
JMIR Publications has explicit policies on disclosure of conflicts of interests (How does JMIR define a Conflict of Interest (COI)?), trial registration (Does my trial (RCT) have to be registered?), ethics (see e.g. Do I need ethics approval for social media research?), and publishes corrigenda (examples), expressions of editorial concern (examples), or retractions (none yet) if any corrections to the scientific record are required, and works with author institutions to alert them of potential scientific misconduct.
JMIR Publications has dealt with numerous cases where institutions were contacted e.g. due to attempted peer-review fraud, which were all detected at the pre-publication / peer-review stage. JMIR Publications has a strict policy on enforcing disclosure of conflicts of interest, trial registration and other policies.
One recent example of a case that was dealt with using COPE guidelines and leading to a discussion within the COPE forum was a case of undisclosed COI which was brought to the editors' attention after publication (COPE case 18-05). This case led to publications of two expressions of editorial concerns (EoEC), one in JMIR Protocols (EoEC 1) and another one in JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (EoEC 2) (COPE guidelines and COPE forum recommended not to retract the papers until the university investigation is complete). This demonstrates the exemplary handling of cases of alleged scientific misconduct, involving the COPE community.
7. Ownership and management: "Information about the ownership and/or management of a journal shall be clearly indicated on the journal’s Web site. Publishers shall not use organizational names that would mislead potential authors and editors about the nature of the journal’s owner. JMIR Publications is currently owned by Digital Health and Science Ventures.
8. Web site: "A journal’s Web site, including the text that it contains, shall demonstrate that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.". We believe this is the case for all JMIR journal homepages.
9. Name of journal: Each journal published by JMIR Publications has a unique name and contains the name of the publisher ("JMIR") to ensure that it is not easily confused with another journal from another publisher or that might mislead potential authors and readers about the Journal’s origin or association with other journals. "JMIR" is a registered trademark owned by JMIR Publications so we can make sure "JMIR" journals are unique and signify a brand that stands for quality. It should be stressed that the "JMIR" in each journal name refers to the publisher and brand, rather than the J Med Internet Res, see:
While there is a relationship between the flagship journal J Med Internet Res and its' sister journals, in that JMIR Publications uses (like most other publishers) a system of cascading peer-review (so papers which are not in scope for J Med Internet Res can be "cascaded" i.e. transferred to other JMIR journals), each journal has its' own editorial board, acceptance policies and identity. See
- Cascading peer-review and manuscript transfer
- What is the difference between JMIR and a JMIR specialty/sister journal?
10. Conflicts of interest: All JMIR journals have clear policies on handling potential conflicts of interests (in line with ICMJE) of editors, authors, and reviewers and the policies are clearly stated in the following KB article:
11. Access: "The way(s) in which the journal and individual articles are available to readers and whether there are associated subscription or pay per view fees shall be stated." - all JMIR journals are open access with no subscriptions, as stated in the KB article
12. Revenue sources: "Business models or revenue sources (eg, author fees, subscriptions, advertising, reprints, institutional support, and organizational support) shall be clearly stated or otherwise evident on the journal’s Web site.". While this is evident from the information above, for clarity we are making the following representations regarding revenue sources:
- author fees are the primary source of revenue (see Are there costs involved in publishing in JMIR journals, what are your fees?)
- subscriptions are not a source of revenue, however, we do offer institutional and individual memberships, which are the second largest source of revenue. Memberships allow faculty and students of member institutions to publish without an Article Processing Charge or for a significant discount (What is an institutional membership and how can I create one?)
- advertising is not significant source of revenue (What is your advertising policy?). We occasionally publish job offers of member institutions or conference announcements, although the latter are usually non-cash reciprocal media sponsorship agreements.
- we do not make any revenue from reprints because all articles are free of charge and electronic-only
- institutional and organizational support is limited to funding from our institutional member organizations (How can I find out if my organization is already a JMIR institutional member?)
13. Advertising: "Journals shall state their advertising policy if relevant, including what types of ads will be considered, who makes decisions regarding accepting ads and whether they are linked to content or reader behavior (online only) or are displayed at random." - this is not applicable as we do not accept any paid ads except job offers, see
14. Publishing schedule: The periodicity at which a journal publishes is clearly indicated as on every journal homepage there is a link to "Publication Frequency" which links to an URL with the pattern https://[journal-base-URL]/about/editorialPolicies#publicationFrequency.
In general, all JMIR journals publish articles "continuously," i.e. articles are published online as soon as they are available (peer-reviewed and copy-edited). The Journal collates them into archival "issues" (2-12 per year, depending on the journal), and "volumes" (one per year).
15. Archiving: "A journal’s plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content (for example, access to main articles via CLOCKSS or PubMedCentral) in the event a journal is no longer published shall be clearly indicated." - most JMIR journals are archived in PubMedCentral, and if they aren't then this is only because we have either not enough articles to apply (25) or the journal is under evaluation by PMC and we are awaiting the result from NCBI. See also:
Whether or not a journal is in PubMed Central already can also be seen by looking at the footer on the journal homepage - if there is a PubMed Central logo, readers can click on it and retrieve PMC-archived articles from PubMed Central - example footer:
16. Direct marketing: "Any direct marketing activities, including solicitation of manuscripts that are conducted on behalf of the journal, shall be appropriate, well targeted, and unobtrusive." - JMIR Publications rarely sends out unsolicited email, and if we do, we limit them to about 20 invitations per day, and they are personalized, thus they are not mass emails or spam. Users can subscribe and unsubscribe to newsletters (content alerts) using their profile page, see:
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