Journal of Cortexplore (JCE)

e-ISSN 3108-3021; Published by Managers Without Borders (MWB) Community Confederation (Section 8 Company), Hyderabad, India

https://cortexplore.org/index.php/jce/about

Constitution and Operating Procedures of the

Publication Ethics & Research Integrity Framework (PERIC)

Document Control

Element	Position
Document	Publication Ethics and Research Integrity Framework, Version 2.0
Status	Draft for adoption by the Editorial Board of the Journal of Cortexplore
Supersedes	Version 1.0 (COPE Implementation Framework), which was anchored to the COPE Core Practices
Governing standard	COPE Code of Conduct (published 21 July 2026); COPE Core Principles (2026); Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing; COPE guidance and flowcharts
Governance body	Publication Ethics and Research Integrity Committee (PERIC), appointed by and reporting to the Editorial Board
Operational lead	Research Integrity Editor, supported by the Editorial Office
Review cycle	Annually, and promptly whenever material guidance, law, or publishing practice changes
Companion document	Annex A: COPE Journal Membership Readiness Matrix

1. Purpose, Scope, and Governing Standard

1.1 This framework establishes the system through which the Journal of Cortexplore (JCE) implements publication ethics and research integrity consistently, transparently, and proportionately.

1.2 It applies to authors, reviewers, handling editors, the Editor-in-Chief, Editorial Board members, guest editors, editorial office staff, and, where relevant, the publisher and journal owner.

1.3 It covers concerns arising before submission, during peer review, after acceptance and after publication, with no time limit on the age of a published article about which a concern may be raised.

1.4 Governing standard. The framework is modelled on, and operated by reference to, the COPE Code of Conduct (published 21 July 2026), the COPE Core Principles (2026), the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, and COPE’s published guidance and flow charts. The COPE Core Practices, on which many journal frameworks are still based, were retired in 2024 and are not the operative standard.

1.5 Policy map. JCE maintains documented policy across twelve domains: allegations of misconduct; authorship and contributorship; complaints and appeals; conflicts of interest; data, images, and reproducibility; research ethics, consent, and anonymization; funding and author fees; intellectual property, copyright, and licensing; journal management and editorial independence; peer review integrity; artificial intelligence and automated tools; and post-publication discussion and correction.

1.6 Original drafting. All JCE policy text shall be drafted in the journal’s own words. External guidance is referenced and linked, never reproduced, and presented as JCE’s own policy. Each published policy shall have its own discrete URL; a single page shall not be cited as the source for multiple distinct policies.

2. Relationship to COPE: Status, Claims, and Membership Pathway

2.1 JCE is not currently a member of COPE. This framework is a voluntary alignment with COPE standards and an instrument of preparation for a future membership application.

2.2 Prohibition on premature claims. Until an application has been formally accepted, JCE shall not state or imply COPE membership and shall not display the COPE logo on the journal website, in calls for papers, in correspondence with authors, on published articles, or in any promotional material. A journal found to be promoting membership before acceptance has its application returned and rejected on that ground alone. The Editorial Office shall audit the website and all author-facing templates for compliance before any application is submitted.

2.3 Correction of a common assumption. Constituting an ethics committee is not, in itself, a COPE eligibility or minimum criterion. COPE assesses (a) the journal’s publishing history and (b) whether clear, detailed, and discrete policy statements appear on the journal website and are demonstrably implemented in everyday practice. PERIC is therefore not the qualification; it is the mechanism by which JCE produces, owns, operates, and evidences those policies. The framework should be adopted on that basis.

2.4 Eligibility gates. Before applying, JCE must satisfy all of the following:

2.4.1 Be an editor-reviewed or peer-reviewed journal publishing scholarly research.

2.4.2 Have been publishing for at least one year. JCE was established on 14 November 2025, so the earliest date on which this gate can be met is 14 November 2026.

2.4.3 Have published a minimum of twenty original research articles or scholarly review articles, in accordance with the journal’s stated publication schedule. For a bi-monthly journal, this implies an average of three to four qualifying articles per issue across the first six issues; the Editorial Board should assess this against the actual pipeline rather than assume it.

2.4.4 Publish at least five scholarly articles per year, with any gap or deviation from the stated bi-monthly schedule explained.

2.4.5 Agree to abide by the COPE Code of Conduct and the membership terms and conditions.

2.4.6 Provide the Editor-in-Chief’s CV covering the last five years of employment history, together with an ORCID iD or equivalent public scholarly profile.

2.4.7 Ensure every editor, editorial staff member, and Editorial Board member is aware that the application is being made; COPE contacts board members during assessment.

2.5 Assessment reality. Applications are assessed in three stages and examine both the published policies and their consistent implementation. Inaccurate information or broken links cause an application to be returned. The Editorial Office shall run a full link and accuracy check within seven days before submission.

2.6 Application window. COPE paused journal membership applications while migrating to the new criteria and assessment process. The Research Integrity Editor shall confirm the current application status directly with COPE before the Editorial Board commits to a submission date.

2.7 Readiness is tracked in Annex A, which the Research Integrity Editor shall update quarterly and report to the Editorial Board.

3. Governance Architecture

Role	Primary responsibility	Independence safeguard
Editorial Board	Appoints and may remove PERIC members and the Research Integrity Editor; designates the standing independent reviewer; receives the annual integrity report.	Appointment power sits with the Board, not with the Editor-in-Chief.
Editor-in-Chief	Overall editorial accountability; ensures ethics infrastructure, budget, and staffing; final editorial decisions outside conflicted cases.	Recusal from any case involving a personal, professional, institutional, financial, or adversarial conflict. Does not appoint the body that may adjudicate complaints against the Editor-in-Chief.
Research Integrity Editor	Triage, case coordination, evidence preservation, case file preparation, register custody, and identification of the applicable COPE pathway.	Presents case files to PERIC; neither chairs nor votes on material cases. Should not have handled the manuscript where practicable.
PERIC (5 members, or 3 plus 2 named alternates)	Reviews material or complex cases; recommends proportionate action; reviews policy and anonymized case trends annually.	At least one member must be external to both JCE and the publisher. At least one reviewer of a material case must be independent of the original editorial decision.
Standing Independent Reviewer	Handles complaints and appeals in which the Editor-in-Chief is implicated, or in which PERIC cannot form a conflict-free quorum.	Named in advance by the Editorial Board, not selected case by case. No co-authorship or institutional relationship with the Editor-in-Chief.
Managing Editor / Editorial Office	Records, correspondence, deadlines, confidentiality, fee administration, link, and policy currency.	No substantive adjudication without delegated authority. Administers fees behind the editorial firewall in Section 10.
Publisher / Journal Owner	Due process support, legal and risk advice, sign-off on the wording of public notices, and implementation of post-publication action.	Must preserve editorial independence; has no role in accepting or rejecting decisions.

4. Constitution of PERIC

4.1 Membership. PERIC comprises five members appointed by the Editorial Board, or, where five cannot initially be recruited, three members together with two named alternates who may be seconded when a member recuses. Terms are two years, renewable once.

4.2 Independence. At least one member shall be external to JCE and to the publisher and shall have had no co-authorship or supervisory or institutional relationship with the Editor-in-Chief within the preceding three years. The Editorial Board appoints and may remove members; the Editor-in-Chief does not.

4.3 Chair. PERIC elects its chair from among its non-conflicted members. The Research Integrity Editor prepares and presents the case file and answers questions but does not chair and does not vote on material cases so that the functions of investigation and adjudication remain separate.

4.4 Expertise. Membership should collectively provide editorial, research-methodology, and research-integrity expertise. Statistical, image-forensic, data, legal, or subject-matter expertise may be commissioned ad hoc; commissioned experts advise and do not vote.

4.5 Naming. The body is the journal’s Publication Ethics and Research Integrity Committee. It shall not be described as a "COPE Committee," because it is not constituted by, appointed by, or accountable to COPE.

4.6 Quorum. Three non-recused members constitute a quorum. Where recusals prevent a quorum, alternates are seconded; if a quorum still cannot be formed, the Editorial Board appoints ad hoc members or refers the matter to the Standing Independent Reviewer.

4.7 Decisions. Decisions are ordinarily by consensus. Where consensus cannot be reached, differing views are recorded, and the matter is decided by a conflict-free route determined by the chair. Every material decision records the allegation, the evidence, the responses received, the applicable policy and COPE guidance, conflicts and recusals, the decision, and the reasons for it.

4.8 Reporting. PERIC reports to the Editorial Board and submits an anonymized annual integrity report.

5. Terms of Reference

5.1 Advise on suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, image or data manipulation, duplicate or redundant publication, and unethical research.

5.2 Review authorship and contributorship disputes requiring editorial action.

5.3 Review suspected peer-review manipulation, reviewer misconduct, citation manipulation, paper-mill activity, and undisclosed competing interests.

5.4 Oversee complaints, appeals, and allegations involving editors, guest editors, or Editorial Board members.

5.5 Review the integrity governance of special issues, including guest editor vetting and the handling of submissions by guest editors.

5.6 Recommend corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, and other post-publication notices.

5.7 Recommend sanctions within the published ladder at Section 9.15 and referral to institutions where formal misconduct investigations exceed the journal’s remit.

5.8 Provide annual assurance to the Editorial Board that the editorial–commercial firewall in Section 10 has been maintained.

5.9 Review ethics policies, published-page currency, and anonymized case trends annually.

6. Core Operating Principles

6.1 Assess allegations on the evidence, not on the status, seniority, reputation, nationality, institutional prestige, or fee-paying position of the parties.

6.2 Maintain confidentiality on a need-to-know basis, subject to necessary institutional or legal referral.

6.3 Provide procedural fairness. Affected parties are normally informed of the substance of material concerns and given a reasonable opportunity to respond. The substance of an allegation is shared; the identity of a complainant and raw whistleblower correspondence are shared only if disclosure is necessary and lawful.

6.4 Require conflict disclosure and recusal under Section 13.

6.5 Apply action proportionate to the seriousness, reliability, and impact of the concern.

6.6 The journal protects and corrects the scholarly record. Institutions ordinarily investigate employee or student research misconduct and impose disciplinary sanctions.

6.7 Assess anonymous allegations where they are sufficiently specific and verifiable. The motive of a complainant does not affect the assessment of the evidence. Good-faith complainants shall not face retaliation and shall be protected from it.

6.8 A manuscript under investigation is placed on hold. It shall not be quietly rejected to avoid dealing with the concern, and rejection does not extinguish the journal’s duty to pursue a credible allegation or to notify the relevant institution.

6.9 There is no time limit on raising a concern about a published article.

6.10 Apply policies consistently regardless of author seniority, affiliation, nationality, commercial relationship, fee status, or waiver status.

7. Standard Ethics Case Workflow - Timelines are internal service standards, measured in working days from intake. Complex integrity investigations may exceed them; where they do, the parties receive a progress update at least every 30 days.

Sl.	Action	Indicative timeline	Owner
1	Intake: record the allegation, date, source, manuscript or article identifier, and the evidence supplied.	Within 3 days of receipt	Editorial Office
2	Acknowledge receipt to the person raising the concern.	Within 5 days	Editorial Office
3	Triage: distinguish appeal, complaint, honest error, and potential misconduct; confirm the journal has jurisdiction.	Within 10 days	Research Integrity Editor
4	Conflict check: identify recusals and appoint a conflict-free case lead.	Within 10 days	Research Integrity Editor
5	Evidence preservation: secure manuscript versions, review reports, correspondence, similarity reports, data, images, and system logs.	Immediately on triage	Research Integrity Editor
6	Identify the applicable COPE guidance or flowchart and the governing JCE policy.	Within 10 days	Research Integrity Editor
7	Initial assessment: determine whether the concern is sufficiently specific and credible to proceed. No finding is made at this stage.	Within 15 days	Research Integrity Editor
8	Seek a factual response from the author, reviewer, or editor concerned.	14 calendar days to respond, extendable once by 14 days on request	Research Integrity Editor
9	PERIC review of material cases: evaluate evidence and responses; commission specialist advice if needed.	Convene within 20 days of the response deadline.	PERIC
10	Institutional referral where investigation requires authority or evidence beyond the journal.	Within 10 days of the PERIC recommendation	Editor-in-Chief or Standing Independent Reviewer
11	Editorial action: no action, clarification, rejection, reviewer or account action, correction, expression of concern, retraction, or other proportionate measure.	Within 15 days of the PERIC recommendation	Editor-in-Chief (or conflict-free decision-maker)
12	Communication: a reasoned outcome to the relevant parties, subject to confidentiality and legal constraints.	Within 10 days of decision	Editorial Office
13	Closure and learning: close the register entry securely; record preventive improvements.	Within 15 days of communication	Research Integrity Editor

8. Escalation Matrix

Issue	Initial owner	Escalate when	Potential action
Authorship or contributorship dispute	Handling editor / Research Integrity Editor	Disputed, coercive, or arising post-publication	Correction: institutional referral if unresolved
Plagiarism or text recycling	Research Integrity Editor	Substantial, disputed, repeated, or post-publication	Rejection, correction, or retraction as warranted
Data or image concern	Research Integrity Editor	Credible manipulation or fabrication concern	Specialist review; institutional referral; notice, correction, or retraction
Duplicate or simultaneous submission	Handling editor	Confirmed concurrent submission or materially redundant publication	Rejection; notification of the other journal; author sanction
Missing or defective ethics approval or consent	Research Integrity Editor	Approval or consent cannot be evidenced on request.	Hold; correction; retraction where participants are identifiable
Peer review manipulation	Editor-in-Chief / Research Integrity Editor	Fabricated reviewer identity, review ring, or coordinated manipulation suspected	Rejection; reviewer and account action; publisher and institutional referral
Special issue or guest editor concern	PERIC	Any concern about guest editor vetting, decision independence, or issue composition	Independent re-review of the issue; suspension of the issue; notice
Complaint or conflict involving an editor	Standing Independent Reviewer	Any credible allegation involving an editor or the Editor-in-Chief	Independent review; publisher and owner involvement
Complaint or appeal	Independent editor where possible	Unresolved, or the integrity of the process is questioned	Independent reconsideration; reasoned final response
Fee, waiver, or fast-track concern	Managing Editor escalated to PERIC.	Any suggestion that fee status influenced an editorial decision	Independent re-review of the decision; corrective action; disclosure
AI-related concern	Research Integrity Editor	Use affects accountability, originality, integrity, or the confidentiality of peer review.	Clarification, correction or rejection; escalation if misconduct is suspected

9. Mandatory Journal Policies - Each policy below shall be published on the JCE website under its own discrete URL, in the journal’s own words, with a named contact where required.

9.1 Authorship and contributorship - Define who qualifies as an author; require all authors to approve the submitted and final versions; state the specific responsibilities of the corresponding author; adopt CRediT contributor statements, which are supported natively in the journal’s OJS installation; prohibit gift, guest, and ghost authorship; and set out the procedure for authorship changes both before and after publication, including the requirement for written agreement from all authors. Acknowledgement of non-author contributors shall be explained. ORCID iDs shall be required for corresponding authors and encouraged for all authors.

9.2 Originality, plagiarism and redundant publication - Explain similarity screening, naming the tool used and the stage at which it is applied; distinguish legitimate overlap, such as methods description and prior conference presentation, from plagiarism; prohibit duplicate submission and materially redundant publication; and state that context, not a similarity percentage alone, governs the assessment.

9.3 Conflicts of interest - Define what constitutes a conflict of interest and apply the definition separately to authors, reviewers, editors, guest editors, editorial staff, and the publisher and journal owner. State how conflicts are disclosed, how disclosed conflicts are managed, and how conflicts arising after submission or publication are investigated and acted upon. Set out the procedure for manuscripts submitted by any member of the editorial team, including the Editor-in-Chief: such manuscripts are handled end-to-end by a conflict-free editor, with no access by the submitting editor to reviewer identities or the decision record. A conflict of interest statement, or a statement that no conflicts exist, shall appear on every full-text version of every published article.

9.4 Funding - Require disclosure of all research funding, including funder names, grant numbers, and the role of each funder. State how funding interacts with open-access publication and with the article publication fee, including any funder mandates. A funding statement shall appear on every full-text version of every published article.

9.5 Research ethics, consent, and anonymisation - Require ethics committee or institutional review board approval, or a documented exemption with reasons, for research involving human participants or animals, reported with the approving body’s name and approval number. Given JCE’s scope, this applies with particular force to EEG, fMRI, fNIRS, eye-tracking, GSR, biometric, neurofeedback, and brain–computer interface studies, and to clinical and counselling populations. Require informed consent for participation and separate consent for publication wherever identification is possible, with specific protection for vulnerable participants. Publish the journal’s requirements for anonymization and confidentiality, and require a consent-for-publication statement in every article containing potentially identifiable material, including neural images, video, audio, and small-sample case material.

9.6 Data, images, and reproducibility - Require accurate reporting; prohibit fabrication, falsification, and inappropriate image manipulation; state what constitutes acceptable image adjustment; and publish a data sharing policy stating whether data availability statements are required or encouraged, what repositories are acceptable, and how restricted neural or clinical data should be described where it cannot be shared.

9.7 Peer review integrity - Publish the review model in use, expected turnaround times, what authors should expect, who assigns reviewers, how many reviewers are used, how author-suggested reviewers are handled, and the confidentiality of review materials. Require reviewer confidentiality, objectivity, timeliness, and conflict disclosure. Prohibit misuse of unpublished material and any manipulation of reviewer identity.

9.8 Editorial decision-making - Publish a statement explaining how decisions are made: by a single handling editor, by group consensus, or by delegation, who is responsible, and how the Editor-in-Chief remains accountable for delegated decisions. Publish average submission-to-first-decision and submission-to-publication times.

9.9 Special issues and guest editors - Special issues carry the highest paper-mill and conflict risk in contemporary publishing. Guest editors shall be vetted and approved by the Editorial Board, with verified identity, affiliation, and publication record. The Editor-in-Chief retains oversight of every acceptance decision in a guest-edited issue. A guest editor’s own submission to their issue shall be handled independently, and guest editors shall not be permitted to select reviewers for their own submissions. Guest editor conflicts of interest are disclosed on the issue landing page.

9.10 Preprints - State the journal’s position on preprint posting before, during, and after review; the required form of citation and linking on acceptance; and whether posting a preprint affects consideration.

9.11 Artificial intelligence and automated tools - Require transparent disclosure of material AI-assisted use in the manuscript and at submission, specifying the tool, version, and purpose. AI tools are not authors and cannot be cited as a source of fact. Human authors remain accountable for accuracy, originality, citation integrity, and research integrity. Prohibit AI-generated or AI-altered data, results, and images presented as empirical findings. Reviewers and editors shall not upload confidential manuscripts, review reports, or correspondence to external AI systems unless journal policy, security arrangements, and permissions expressly allow it; a reviewer who has used any AI assistance shall disclose it to the handling editor. Where JCE itself uses automated screening tools, that use shall be disclosed. The policy shall be reviewed against emerging AI disclosure standards, including the multi-organisation work towards a global reporting standard for AI disclosure in research.

9.12 Intellectual property, copyright, and licensing - Publish the copyright terms and the licensing terms as distinct, prominent statements, and reproduce the terms applicable to each article on every full-text version, in both HTML and PDF. Set out the requirements for third-party permissions, figure and instrument reuse, and the handling of alleged infringement. JCE shall be alert to intellectual property issues and shall act on credible breaches of intellectual property law and conventions.

9.13 Journal management, ownership, and transparency - Publish the aims and scope, the publication schedule with any deviations explained, both ISSNs where applicable, a persistent identifier for every article, the full editorial team and Editorial Board with affiliations, editorial office contact details including a full postal address and a named contact, the identity of the journal owner and publisher, all revenue sources, any sponsorship received in the past five years, and an advertising policy. The website shall be served over HTTPS throughout.

9.14 Long-term digital preservation - Publish a description of the arrangements for long-term digital preservation with an external archiving provider. Articles held only on the JCE website do not satisfy this requirement, and the absence of a named external provider is a frequent cause of rejection. The Editorial Office shall enrol JCE in an appropriate service, such as the PKP Preservation Network available within OJS, and shall publish the provider’s name and the coverage achieved.

9.15 Complaints, appeals, and sanctions - Publish the complaint route, the appeal route, a named responsible contact and email address for each, the process, expected timing, and the independent escalation route where the original decision-maker is implicated. Publish the sanctions available to the journal and who authorises each: informal advice; formal warning; rejection of the manuscript under consideration; removal from the reviewer pool; a submission embargo of defined length; notification of the author’s institution; and notification of the publisher. Sanctions are applied proportionately and are recorded in the case register.

9.16 Post-publication discussion, corrections, and whistleblowing - Publish the criteria and procedure for corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions, together with the available routes for post-publication discussion, such as correspondence or commentary. Provide a confidential channel for raising integrity concerns, assess anonymous reports where they are sufficiently specific, and prohibit retaliatory handling of good-faith reports.

10. Author Fees, Fast-Track, and the Editorial–Commercial Firewall

10.1 Current position. JCE levies no submission fee and no review fee. An article publication fee of INR 3,000 for national authors, or USD 60, becomes payable only if an article is accepted. The fee covers journal IT infrastructure, DOI registration, and certification services.

10.2 Complete and accurate publication. The fee page shall state the amount payable by every category of author, when and how it is charged, precisely what it covers, and the waiver position. The Editorial Office shall immediately correct the placeholder ISSN currently displayed on the fee page, which shows a dummy value while the journal’s registered e-ISSN is 3108-3021; inaccurate information of this kind causes a membership application to be returned.

10.3 Waivers. JCE shall publish a waiver policy stating the criteria for a full or partial waiver, how to request one, who decides, and the expected turnaround. Waiver decisions are made by the Editorial Office or publisher and are not disclosed to handling editors or reviewers.

10.4 The firewall. Fee status, waiver status, and payment status shall not be visible to the handling editor or to reviewers at any point in the review process. No editorial decision shall be contingent on payment, on the expectation of payment, or on a waiver request. The accept or reject decision shall be communicated to the author before any invoice is raised. Business and commercial interests shall have no influence on editorial decisions.

10.5 Fast-track review. The fast-track option affects sequencing only. Fast-tracked manuscripts are subject to identical standards, the same number of reviewers, and the same decision criteria as regular submissions. Fast-track status shall be recorded and labelled on the published article. Fast-track is currently offered at no charge; if a charge is ever introduced, that fact shall be published prominently, together with an express statement that payment affects speed alone and never the outcome. The Editorial Board shall satisfy itself annually that fast-track acceptance rates do not diverge materially from regular acceptance rates, and PERIC shall review any divergence.

10.6 Revenue transparency. The journal will publish and keep current all revenue sources, any sponsorship received in the past five years, and the advertising policy.

10.7 Assurance. PERIC shall provide the Editorial Board with annual written assurance that the firewall has been maintained and that no decision in the period was influenced by fee, waiver, or sponsorship considerations.

11. Complaints and Appeals Standard Operating Procedure

11.1 Definitions. A complaint concerns the journal process, conduct, or service. An appeal challenges an editorial decision on a specific manuscript.

11.2 Published contacts. The website shall display a named contact and email address for complaints and a named contact and email address for appeals. These shall be distinct from the general submission address.

11.3 Process. The journal acknowledges receipt, identifies a conflict-free reviewer, examines the record, and provides a reasoned response. An appeal shall not simply be returned to the same decision-maker without independent consideration.

11.4 Limit. One appeal is permitted per editorial decision. The response to that appeal is final within the journal and says so expressly.

11.5 Editor-in-Chief cases. Complaints implicating the Editor-in-Chief are directed to the standing independent reviewer designated by the Editorial Board, and, where appropriate, to the publisher or journal owner.

11.6 Service standard. Acknowledge it within 5 working days. Provide a substantive response, or a progress update, within 20 working days where practicable. Complex integrity investigations may take longer and receive updates at least every 30 days.

12. Post-Publication Action Framework

Instrument	Use when	Implementation
Correction	The article remains reliable overall but contains a material error or omission.	Publish a transparent notice, bidirectionally linked to the article, identifying precisely what changed and why. The original version remains identifiable.
Expression of Concern	Serious questions exist, but the investigation is incomplete, inconclusive, or materially delayed.	State the concern without prejudging unresolved misconduct. Link bidirectionally. Resolve into a correction, retraction, or withdrawal of the expression once the investigation concludes.
Retraction	The work is unreliable, whether through honest error or misconduct, or another serious integrity ground applies.	Retain the article, clearly labelled as retracted in the title and on every page of the PDF. Publish a linked, freely accessible notice stating who is retracting, on what grounds, and whether all authors agree. The article is never silently removed.
Post-publication discussion	A reader wishes to contest or extend a published finding without alleging misconduct.	Provide a published route for correspondence or commentary, with the author given an opportunity to reply.

All notices shall be indexed, assigned a persistent identifier, and made freely accessible irrespective of the access status of the underlying article. The publisher shall sign off on the wording of any notice that alleges or implies misconduct before publication.

13. Recusal and Independence Protocol

13.1 Editors declare conflicts before handling any manuscript or ethics case.

13.2 Operational definitions. A conflict requiring recusal is presumed where, in relation to any party to the matter, the individual has co-authored a publication within the preceding three years; shared an institutional affiliation within the preceding three years; held or holds a supervisory, doctoral, or line-management relationship at any time; holds a financial or commercial interest in the outcome; has a close personal relationship; or has a documented adversarial relationship. Other circumstances in which impartiality could reasonably be questioned also require recusal.

13.3 No editor adjudicates a complaint about their own conduct where impartiality could reasonably be questioned.

13.4 Cases involving the Editor-in-Chief go to the standing independent reviewer and, where appropriate, to the publisher or owner.

13.5 PERIC members recuse on the same grounds; alternates are seconded under Section 4.6.

13.6 All recusals, the reason in summary form, and the substitute decision-maker are documented in the case register.

14. Confidential Case Register, Data Protection, and Retention

14.1 Contents. Each entry records the case number and dates; the manuscript or article identifier; the concern category; the complainant or source, with identity access-restricted where appropriate; the evidence and correspondence; the conflict and recusal declarations; the applicable JCE policy and COPE guidance; the responses received and any specialist or institutional input; the PERIC recommendation; the final decision and its rationale; any post-publication action; the completion date; and the lessons identified.

14.2 Custody and access. The Research Integrity Editor is the named custodian. The register is held in encrypted storage under access control, with access limited to the custodian, the Editorial Office member designated in writing, and PERIC members handling the specific case. Access events are logged.

14.3 Data protection. The register contains personal data and is processed in accordance with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and the journal’s privacy statement, on a stated lawful basis, limited to the purpose of protecting the integrity of the scholarly record, and limited to the minimum data necessary. The privacy statement shall be updated to disclose this processing.

14.4 Retention. Cases resulting in a published notice are retained for ten years from the date of the notice. Cases closed with no action are retained for three years from the date of closure. On expiry, records are securely deleted, and the deletion is logged. Retention may be extended where litigation, institutional investigation, or regulatory process is reasonably anticipated.

14.5 Legal risk. Public notices alleging or implying misconduct carry defamation exposure. The wording of every such notice shall be reviewed and signed off by the publisher before publication and shall describe findings in evidenced, measured terms.

15. Proportionality and Operating Tempo

15.1 JCE is a bi-monthly journal in its first years of operation. The machinery in this framework is designed to scale, but it must not become unusable at present volumes; a framework that is quietly ignored is worse than a lighter one that is followed.

15.2 The Research Integrity Editor may dispose of matters that are manifestly unfounded, withdrawn, outside jurisdiction, or minor and undisputed, without convening PERIC, provided the disposal is recorded in the case register with reasons.

15.3 A log of all such disposals is reported to PERIC quarterly. PERIC may call any disposed matter back for full review.

15.4 Any matter involving alleged fabrication, falsification, image manipulation, peer-review manipulation, paper-mill activity, an editor or Editorial Board member, or a published article is a material case and must go to PERIC. It cannot be disposed of under Section 15.2.

16. Annual Integrity Audit - PERIC conducts and documents an annual audit against the following and reports the result to the Editorial Board:

16.1 Every policy required by Section 9 is published, current, internally consistent, in the journal’s own words, and on its own discrete URL.

16.2 All policy links resolve; no broken links, no placeholder text, and no dummy identifiers.

16.3 Editorial governance, board membership, ownership, publisher identity, and affiliations are published and accurate.

16.4 Complaints and appeals contacts and escalation routes are published with named individuals.

16.5 Editors and reviewers have received publication ethics guidance or training in the period.

16.6 Conflict and recusal records are complete for the period.

16.7 Integrity screening has been applied consistently across all accepted manuscripts.

16.8 Corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions are linked, labelled, freely accessible, and correctly indexed.

16.9 Case trends are reviewed for systemic risk, including paper mills, reviewer rings, citation manipulation, and special-issue abuse.

16.10 The AI policy has been reviewed against current guidance and publishing practice.

16.11 The editorial–commercial firewall has been maintained; fast-track and regular acceptance rates have been compared.

16.12 Archiving with an external preservation provider, DOI registration, and version control are functioning and evidenced.

16.13 The journal makes no claim of COPE membership; it does not hold and displays no COPE logo without entitlement.

16.14 Annex A readiness status is updated, and the remaining gaps are costed and owned.

16.15 PERIC submits an anonymized annual integrity report to the Editorial Board.

17. Proposed Website Statement - The following text is approved for publication on the JCE Publication Ethics page. It is deliberately worded to avoid implying COPE membership.

“The Journal of Cortexplore is committed to maintaining the integrity, transparency, and reliability of the scholarly record. The journal’s publication ethics policies and procedures are modelled on the standards published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), including the COPE Code of Conduct and Core Principles, as well as the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. The Journal of Cortexplore is not currently a member of COPE. Concerns relating to authorship, plagiarism, research integrity, peer review, competing interests, research ethics and consent, data, complaints, appeals, or post-publication issues are assessed by the journal’s Publication Ethics and Research Integrity Committee through documented procedures that include conflict-of-interest management, procedural fairness, and independent review where an editor is implicated. Where suspected research misconduct requires powers of investigation beyond those available to a journal, the matter may be referred to the relevant institution or a competent authority. The journal will issue corrections, expressions of concern, or retractions where these are necessary to maintain the reliability of the scholarly record. Concerns may be raised in confidence with the Research Integrity Editor at the address published on this page."

18. Draft Editorial Board Resolution

RESOLVED THAT the Editorial Board of the Journal of Cortexplore adopts the Publication Ethics and Research Integrity Framework, Version 2.0, as the governing basis for handling ethical concerns, complaints, appeals, and post-publication corrections;

AND THAT the Editorial Board establishes a Publication Ethics and Research Integrity Committee (PERIC), the Board itself appointing its members, including at least one member external to the journal and to the publisher, and the Board retaining the power to remove members;

AND THAT the Editorial Board designates a Research Integrity Editor and a Standing Independent Reviewer, the latter to handle complaints and appeals in which the Editor-in-Chief is implicated;

AND THAT the Editor-in-Chief is authorized to publish the approved policies on the journal website under discrete URLs, to institute the annual integrity audit, and to commit the resources required for implementation;

AND THAT the journal shall make no representation of membership of the Committee on Publication Ethics and shall display no COPE logo or mark, unless and until an application for membership has been formally accepted;

AND THAT the Research Integrity Editor shall report quarterly to the Board on progress against the Annex A readiness matrix and shall confirm the eligibility position before any membership application is submitted;

PROVIDED THAT every case involving a conflict of interest shall be transferred to an independent, conflict-free decision-maker.

19. Implementation Plan

Period	Action	Owner	Output
Days 1–15	Board adoption of Version 2.0; appointment of PERIC, Research Integrity Editor, and Standing Independent Reviewer; collection of declarations of interest; immediate correction of the placeholder ISSN on the fee page.	Editorial Board	Resolution, committee constitution, corrected fee page
Days 16–40	Draft and publish the Section 9 policies under discrete URLs, in the journal’s own words, with named contacts for complaints and appeals; publish the Section 17 statement; publish the waiver policy and fast-track terms.	PERIC and Editorial Office	Publication ethics pages live
Days 41–60	Configure OJS submission declarations (COI, funding, ethics approval, consent, AI, data availability, CRediT, ORCID); configure the confidential case register and its access controls; enrol in an external digital preservation service.	Managing Editor	Operational controls and preservation evidence
Days 61–75	Train editors, board members, and the reviewer pool; run at least three simulated cases using COPE flowcharts, including one involving an editor and one fee-related scenario.	Research Integrity Editor	Training and simulation record
Days 76–90	First internal audit against Section 16; full link-and-accuracy check; update Annex A; publish contact and escalation details; report to the Board.	PERIC and Editor-in-Chief	Implementation audit and first Annex A status report
From Day 90 to eligibility	Track article volume against the twenty-article threshold and the bi-monthly schedule; confirm the COPE application window; assemble the Editor-in-Chief CV and ORCID; and brief every board member that an application will be made.	Editor-in-Chief and Research Integrity Editor	Application-ready dossier
On or after 14 Nov 2026	Submit the membership application once every eligibility gate and every minimum criterion in Annex A is satisfied and evidenced.	Editor-in-Chief	Submitted application