JMIR Publications is a founding member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and active member of OASPA. The Journal of Medical Internet Research is a member of COPE.
Most of the JMIR Publications journals are listed in DOAJ. JMIR Publications has a track record of adhering to best practice guidelines in scholarly publishing and 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.
Together, these checklists demonstrate that JMIR Publications adheres to the highest professional and ethical standards in scholarly publishing.
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COPE Core Practices
CCP-1. Allegations of misconduct
JMIR Publications undertake appropriate investigative and editorial actions, in accordance with COPE guidance, to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred. Research and publication misconduct includes but is not limited only to plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. See also: Ethical issues and post-publication review
In no case do editors encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place. JMIR Publications editors sign an editorial services agreement which expressly forbids any citation manipulation or inflation, specifies how to handle cases of scientific misconduct, and requires them to adhere to best practices for ethical editing according to COPE. 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 Research Integrity Manager follows COPE’s guidelines in dealing with allegations.
Procedurally, the JMIR Publications Research Integrity Manager is responsible for directs the handling of ethical or potential misconduct issues that may arise before or after manuscript publication. The Scientific Editorial Director can adjudicate or engage appropriate parties to address complaints about journal processes that cannot be resolved internally. Relevant scientific experts, editors, and/or staff may be consulted, informed, or otherwise engaged during investigations of possible cases of misconduct.
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 concern (examples), or retractions (What is the process for retractions?) 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 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 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.
CCP-2. Authorship and contributorship
Who should be listed as author, what are your authorship criteria?
What is the "Authors' Contributions" section? How should I write mine?
CCP-3. Complaint and appeals
(for authors) How do I request an appeal (re-review) of an editorial decision on my manuscript?
All JMIR Publications journals provide the full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors on the journal’s website, 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?
CCP-4. Conflicts of interest/Competing interests
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:
- How does JMIR Publications define a Conflict of Interest (COI)?
- How should the "Conflicts of Interest" section be formatted?
CCP-5: Data and reproducibility
What is the JMIR Publications data sharing policy?
CCP-6. Ethical oversight
(for authors) Institutional Research Board / Research Ethics Board and Informed Consent
JMIR's Publication Ethics and Malpractice statement (JMIR website)
JMIR policy: Ethical Issues and Considerations (JMIR website)
Ethical issues and post-publication review
CCP-7. Intellectual policy
I. Copyright and licensing information are clearly described on the journal’s website, and licensing terms shall be indicated on all published articles, both HTML and PDFs.
Example of the copyright footer of an article:
II. Costs associated with publishing: 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.
Each journal page also has a link to the Fee Schedule.
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:
Related articles are in the JMIR Publications Knowledge Base:
- 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?
- JMIR Publications Article Processing Fee (APF) Support Policy: Can you waive or discount the fees for me?
III. Plagiarism and redundant/overlapping publication
How does JMIR Publications define plagiarism?
(for authors) Policy on submissions already published on another platform, including Proceedings
CCP-8. Journal management process
All JMIR Publications 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 website, 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 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.
Each journal is managed by a Managing Editor. Their name is listed also on the EB page. Some journals have staff Scientific Editors who support a journal. Journal EB roles and staff editor roles are described here. For more information about editorial oversight:
There may be rare exceptions of new journals where the publisher is still building up the editorial board and where the EB pages are brief or empty. In these cases the new journal is currently being incubated (handling editors are still disclosed at the end of each published article).
CCP-9. 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 Publications 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 website, 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:
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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.
CCP-10. Post-publication discussions and corrections
JMIR Publications may also opt to publish an Expression of Concern while a scientific misconduct investigation is in progress. JMIR Publications recognizes that post-publication debate or discussion may take place in the form of a submitted Letter to the Editor, or even on independent sites, such as PubPeer. While such sites are periodically monitored, readers may contact JMIR Publications staff also through ed-support@jmir.org with attention to the journal Managing Editor or Research Integrity Manager.
Any Expression of Concern published in JMIR Publications journals should be seen and interpreted as drawing attention to an ongoing investigation, and must be understood on a without prejudice basis. In other words, it is not meant to and should not be used to affect the rights, or prejudice the position, of any involved parties to the dispute in any subsequent proceedings of any kind.
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Principles of Transparency
PoT 1. 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?
PoT 2. Website
JMIR Publications journal homepages contain information about each journal's:
- eISSN (all JMIR Publications journals are electronic)
- Focus and Scope
- Article Types considered for each journal
- Author Instructions (including authorship criteria)
- Ethics Policies
PoT 3. Publishing schedule
All JMIR Publications 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).
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. For example: https://www.jmir.org/about-journal/publication-frequency
PoT 4. 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:
PoT 5. Copyright
Copyright and licensing information are clearly described on the journal’s website, and licensing terms shall be indicated on all published articles, both HTML and PDFs. See the first part of CCP-7. Intellectual policy above.
PoT 6. Licensing
Copyright and licensing information are clearly described on the journal’s website, and licensing terms shall be indicated on all published articles, both HTML and PDFs. See the first part of CCP-7. Intellectual policy above.
PoT 7. Publication ethics and related editorial policies
See above:
CCP-1. Allegations of misconduct
CCP-2. Authorship and contributorship
CCP-4. Conflicts of interest/Competing interests
CCP-5: Data and reproducibility
CCP-10. Post-publication discussions and corrections
PoT 8. Peer review
See above: CCP-9. Peer review process
PoT 9. 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 Publications journals are open access with no subscriptions, as stated in the Knowledge Base article here:
PoT 10. Ownership and management
"Information about the ownership and/or management of a journal shall be clearly indicated on the journal’s website. 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.
PoT 11. Advisory Body
Advisors are listed clearly and separately from other Editorial Board members on each journal's Editorial Board page. See: CCP-8. Journal management process and Where can I find the editorial board members for a journal?
PoT 12. Editorial team/contact information
All JMIR Publications journals provide the full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors on the journal’s website, 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?
Each journal is managed by a Managing Editor. Their name is listed also on the EB page. Some journals have staff Scientific Editors who support a journal. Journal EB roles and staff editor roles are described here.
PoT 13. Author Fees
See part II of CCP-7. Intellectual policy above that addresses where authors can locate information about JMIR Publications journal article processing fees/charges.
PoT 14. Other revenue
"Business models or revenue sources should be clearly stated on the journal’s website. Examples include author fees (see section 13), subscriptions, sponsorships and subsidies, advertising (see section 15), reprints, supplements, or special issues." While this is evident from the information above on APF information, for clarity, we clarify here 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 preprints 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?)
PoT 15. Advertising
"Journals should state whether they accept advertising." - this is not applicable as we do not accept any paid ads except job offers, see:
PoT 16. Direct marketing
"Any direct marketing activities, including solicitation of manuscripts, that are conducted on behalf of the journal should 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:
Additional links: