Editorial Adherence to ethical standards in publishing scientific articles: A statement from the International Journal of Cardiology Louise G. Shewan a, b , Andrew J.S. Coats a, b, ⁎ a Monash University, Australia b University of Warwick, United Kingdom abstract article info Article history: Received 13 October 2012 Accepted 13 October 2012 Available online 27 October 2012 Keywords: Medical journals Cardiology Ethics Plagiarism Scientific misconduct Fraud Authorship Retraction All authors of manuscripts in the International Journal of Cardiology are required to make a binding state- ment that they as authors adhere to the following principles: 1. That the corresponding author has the approval of all other listed authors for the submission and publica- tion of all versions of the manuscript. 2. That all people who have the right to be recognised as authors have been included on the list of authors and everyone listed as an author has made an independent material contribution to the manuscript. 3. That the work submitted in the manuscript is original and has not been published elsewhere and is not presently under consideration of publication by any other journal other than in oral, poster or abstract format. 4. That the material in the manuscript has been acquired according to modern ethical standards and has been approved by the legally appropriate ethical committee. 5. That the article does not contain material copied from anyone else without their written permission and that all material which derives from prior work, including from the same authors, is properly attributed to the prior publication by proper citation. 6. That all material conflicts of interest have been declared including the use of paid medical writers and their funding source. 7. That the manuscript will be maintained on the servers of the journal and held to be a valid publication by the journal only as long as all statements in these principles remain true. 8. That if any of the statements above ceases to be true the authors have a duty to notify the journal as soon as possible so that the manuscript can be withdrawn. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. The International Journal of Cardiology (IJC) is one of the oldest and most respected original research journals in the field of car- diovascular medicine. It ranks 7th of 117 journals by impact factor in that category in the 2012 Thomson ISI journal rankings [1]. The number of articles submitted to the journal has risen to over 5000 per year. Commensurate with the steady rise in submitted manu- scripts comes increasing demands on both reviewers and editorial staff. Adding to this is the increasing attention paid to global Univer- sity rankings which frequently count publications in highly ranked journals. This results in pressure on researchers to publish more fre- quently. An unfortunate consequence of this is a dramatic burden placed on the scientific community to provide comprehensive review and oversight. Over the past 5 years, our need for reviewers has risen more than fourfold. To obtain even 2 reviews for each new manuscript and reassessment of any revision would necessitate in excess of 20,000 expert reviews per annum for The International Journal of Cardiology alone. With another 116 other cardiovascular journals assessing man- uscripts, the risk is that fraud, duplication and misconduct may go undetected. While all journals acknowledge that scientific fraud and miscon- duct is an increasing problem workable and affordable solutions are less easy to implement. A number of organisations have been formed to address this issue [2–4] and tools to assist the reviewer and editors (such as plagiarism detection software) have become more widely available (Table 1). Processes for dealing with cases of suspected misconduct remain problematic however for a journal as they frequently do not have the resources to investigate nor the authority to punish any individual International Journal of Cardiology 161 (2012) 124–125 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Monash University, Australia. Tel.: +61 413132324. E-mail address: ajscoats@aol.com (A.J.S. Coats). 0167-5273/$ – see front matter © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcard.2012.10.021 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect International Journal of Cardiology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijcard