Close Menu
    What's Hot
    Subscribe

    Scope and Submission Criteria

    The journal welcomes original research submissions across the natural sciences, medical research, engineering, social sciences, and humanities, including interdisciplinary studies, replication studies, negative or null results, registered reports, and protocols. Submissions must present original research not published elsewhere, conducted to the highest ethical standards, and adhere to community standards for data deposition. Manuscripts are evaluated based on scientific validity, methodological rigor, and moral standards, not perceived novelty or significance.

    • Eligible Submissions: Primary research, systematic reviews, methods, software, databases, qualitative research, lab protocols, and registered reports. Unsolicited formal comments, collection reviews, or collection overviews are not accepted unless commissioned by editors.
    • Ethical Standards: Research involving humans, animals, or non-commercially available cell lines must include approval from relevant ethics bodies. Failure to meet ethical standards may result in rejection. Authors must declare competing interests and funding sources at submission.
    • Preprint Support: Manuscripts deposited in preprint servers (e.g., bioRxiv, arXiv) are eligible for submission, provided they have a citable DOI or arXiv URL. Authors must confirm that the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere.

     

    Editorial Oversight

    The journal employs a professional editorial team and an international board of editors who oversee the peer review process, ensure compliance with policies, and make final publication decisions. Editors are expected to adhere to the journal’s code of conduct and declare any competing interests before handling manuscripts.

    • Quality Control: Each manuscript undergoes initial screening by managing editors for compliance with submission guidelines, ethical standards, and journal scope. Manuscripts passing this stage are assigned to an editor for peer review.
    • Publication Ethics: The journal follows COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines for handling ethical concerns, including plagiarism, data falsification, and authorship disputes. Concerns can be raised to the editorial office, and post-publication actions (e.g., corrections, retractions) are taken as needed to uphold research integrity.
    • Authorship and Contributions: Authors must follow ICMJE authorship guidelines and use the CRediT taxonomy to report contributions accurately. Funding sources must be disclosed in the financial disclosure section, not in the manuscript or acknowledgments.

     

    Transparency and Reproducibility

    To enhance trust and the reuse of research, the journal promotes transparency through:

    • Data Availability: Authors must deposit data in publicly accessible repositories (e.g., for gene sequences, microarray expression) and provide access to supporting datasets.
    • Supporting Information: Essential supporting files (e.g., multimedia, datasets) are subject to peer review and must be smaller than 20 MB.
    • CRediT and ORCID: Authors are encouraged to use CRediT for authorship attribution and ORCID ID for identification.
    • Published Peer Review History: Authors can opt in to publish peer review correspondence (decision letters, reviews, and author responses) under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Reviewers may choose to sign their reviews or remain anonymous.

     

    Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

    We are committed to inclusive publishing practices and encourage submissions from underrepresented groups and institutions globally. Authors conducting international or community-based research must describe:

    • How they engaged local researchers or stakeholders.
    • The equitable distribution of authorship, resources, and credit.

    We actively work to build a diverse editorial board and reviewer pool in terms of discipline, geography, gender, and career stage.

    Post-Publication Updates and Corrections

    ProData maintains the integrity of the scholarly record through:

    • Corrections for honest errors.
    • Retractions for major ethical or factual issues.
    • Expressions of Concern when investigations are pending.

    We welcome post-publication commentary and engage in transparent responses to concerns raised by the community.

    Licensing and Access

    All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, allowing unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

    Our journal is fully open access. Article Processing Charges (APCs), are transparently listed on our website. Waivers are available for authors with limited funding, especially from low- and middle-income countries.

    Handling Disputes

    For manuscripts disputing previously published work, the journal invites a signed review from the disputed author during peer review to ensure transparency and fairness. Authors submitting such manuscripts must explain the relationship to prior work in their cover letter and confirm acceptance of this policy.