Psychoneuroimmunology Journal adheres to the highest possible ethical standards, as described, for example, by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE:http://www.icmje.org/). If an ethical problem related to a submitted or published article is referred to the editor, then the editor will evaluate the problem as outlined by appropriate bodies such as the ICMJE and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE: http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts), and take appropriate steps. The following are problems in the ethics of publication that every author should be familiar with. Violations of any of the following ethical principles may incur sanctions described below.

Duplicate Submission

Articles submitted must be original, not submitted or under review elsewhere, and not published elsewhere.

Plagiarism and Fabrication

Plagiarism is when an author puts his name on another's work. Fabrication is when an author fabricates or falsifies the data or experimental results; this includes the manipulation of images of the article.

Plagiarism Detection

The peer-review process is at the heart of scientific publishing. As part of Bendola's commitment to protecting the integrity of the scholarly record, Bendola feels a strong obligation to support the scientific community in all aspects of research and publishing ethics. Therefore we invest in many resources to help avoid ethical issues, one of those resources is Crossref Similarity Check service, which is a service that helps editors to verify the originality of papers, and it is powered by the Ithenticate software https://www.ithenticate.com from iParadigms, known in the academic community as providers of Turnitin.

Another Work Discussion

When an author discusses another work in his article, he/she must properly describe the contribution of the earlier work. The intellectual contributions should be admitted and appropriately cited.

Citation Manipulation

Citation manipulation is when an author submits an article that includes references that are not used or not related to or not important for the submitted work. Citations included solely to increase the citation of a given journal or author are not appropriate.

Image Integrity and Standards

Images that are submitted within an article should be related to the main content of the article. Also, the images should not violate anyone's privacy. In addition, consent forms should be submitted with the articles that include images for persons who may be identified by those images.

Conflict of Interest

Authors should reveal any conflict of interest with anyone or entity (commercial or non-commercial). A CoI statement similar to the one proposed by the ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/) should be included in the paper.

Authors Contributions

All authors of any article submitted to the journal should have made intellectual contributions to the article, and they must have read and approved the paper.

Possible Sanctions

• Immediate retraction or rejection of the problem article.
• Other articles submitted by the authors who violated any of the above polices are likely to be scrutinized as well.
• The authors will be prohibited from submitting any new article to any of Bendola’s journals unless the issue has been satisfactorily addressed.
• The authors will not be able to join the Editorial Board or the Guest Editors’ Board of any of Bendola’s journals unless the problem has been satisfactorily addressed.