Journal and Publisher Policy Review

Generic guidance never overrides the target journal's current instructions.

Capture a dated policy record

Before drafting and again before submission, record:

• journal, article type, and policy URL;
• date accessed;
• word, abstract, reference, table, figure, and supplement limits;
• required structure and reporting guideline;
• registration, protocol, and analysis-plan requirements;
• ethics, consent, participant privacy, and image requirements;
• authorship, contributor, acknowledgment, and change-of-authorship rules;
• funding, conflicts, and sponsor-role disclosures;
• data, code, materials, and repository policies;
• preprint, prior dissemination, duplicate submission, and copyright policies;
• AI use by authors and any restrictions on external tools;
• peer-review model and confidentiality;
• file, accessibility, and submission-system requirements.

Do not guess an absent policy. Ask the journal or leave the decision unresolved.

Official examples

• JAMA's current Instructions for Authors illustrate article-type-specific requirements and should be consulted directly for a JAMA submission [SW-S25].
• JAMA's AI guidance illustrates author disclosure, human responsibility, and confidentiality limits for peer review [SW-S24].
• Nature Portfolio's reporting and availability policy illustrates venue requirements for data, materials, code, protocols, restrictions, and access [SW-S22].
• Nature Portfolio's authorship policy illustrates publisher-specific accountability and contribution statements [SW-S23].
• PLOS Biology's data policy illustrates how sharing expectations interact with consent, privacy, legal, ethical, and sensitive-data restrictions [SW-S26].

These are examples, not defaults for other journals. Publisher-level policy and journal-level instructions may both apply.

Submission review

Perform a manual comparison against the live instructions:

1. Select the exact article type.
2. Confirm the latest reporting guideline and extensions.
3. Verify every required statement from source records.
4. Confirm whether checklists or flow diagrams must be uploaded.
5. Confirm data, code, and materials deposits actually exist and are accessible as stated.
6. Confirm author order, corresponding author, CRediT roles, and approvals.
7. Confirm AI-use disclosure wording and location with the human authors.
8. Verify files, anonymization, accessibility, permissions, and metadata.
9. Save the access date and policy URLs in the submission record.

Passing local tools does not establish venue compliance.