Statements and Policies

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Authors should disclose whether AI-assisted technologies were used in the production of the work submitted. A description of the use of AI should be included in both the cover letter and in the relevant section of the manuscript or acknowledgements, e.g.:

The use of AI for writing assistance should be reported in the acknowledgements
The use of AI for data collection, analysis or figure generation should be included in the methods.

Authors should not list AI and AI-assisted technologies as authors or co-authors as they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity and originality of the work, and therefore do not meet the criteria for authorship. Any text and images produced by AI or AI-assisted technologies must be verified by the authors, including ensuring that there is no plagiarism, and that all quoted material is appropriately attributed.

Complaints

As owner and publisher of Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice, Haemnet encourages feedback on issues related to the journal, its staff, the editorial board or the publisher, and will address any concerns or complaints raised. All complaints will be promptly dealt with in a sensitive manner and in the strictest confidence.

Complaints should be submitted in writing to Haemnet Ltd’s Chief Executive Officer, Mike Holland, who will respond within 7 days: mike@haemnet.com.

Conflict of interest

All authors of articles submitted to Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice should disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest.

Any interest or relationship, whether financial or otherwise, that might be perceived as having influenced an author’s objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or directly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript.

Potential sources of conflict of interest include, but are not limited to, patent or stock ownership, membership of a company board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee for a company, and consultancy for or receipt of speaker’s fees from a company.

It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to discuss this policy with all co-authors and collectively to disclose with the submission all pertinent commercial and other relationships.

The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication.

Authors who have no conflict of interest to declare should also state this at submission.

Similarly, all funding sources relating to the published work should be declared.

Copyright and licensing

Authors grant Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice the right of first publication.

All articles in Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice Practice are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial, and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Authors may enter into other contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice’s published version of their work, providing its initial publication in the journal is acknowledged.

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g. in an institutional repository or on their own website) prior to or during the submission process, as this can lead to productive exchanges as well as positively impacting earlier and greater citation of published work.

Data sharing and data accessibility

Sharing data not only supports openness, transparency and reproducibility in research, but enables more efficient research through the reuse of results and the creation of new work based on previous findings. We believe it is important for researchers to archive their data appropriately so that it is discoverable, accessible and can be used and/or cited in future research. We therefore encourage the authors who publish in our journal to share their research data, including but not limited to raw and processed data, software, algorithms, protocols and methodologies.

All submissions to Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice must include a data accessibility statement, even if it is not possible to share the data.

Ethical oversight

Institutional research board approval is required for all studies involving human or animal investigations and this must be detailed within the manuscript submitted. All research published in Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice must have been conducted according to international and local guidelines on ethical research. Authors may be required to provide further information to the journal’s editorial office to support this.

Fees and funding

Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice has no author submission charges. However, costs are involved in all stages of the publication process, from administrating submissions and peer review, to making published articles publicly available online. To sustain our preference for open access publishing, article processing charges (APCs) of GBP 2,500 (plus VAT, where applicable) are applied to manuscripts accepted for publication.

APC waivers are available in some circumstances:

APC waivers will be granted routinely to authors from low and lower-middle income countries as defined by the World Bank.
For authors from other countries, APC waivers are granted on a case-by-case basis, based on financial need and including (but not limited to) if the author is a registered student or registered nurse without funding to cover APCs
Certain article types are exempt from APCs, including critiques or commentaries on articles already published in the journal, and invited papers.

Authors whose circumstances are not listed above but who wish to request an APC waiver should provide a text justification during the submission process.

In all cases, authors who wish to request a fee waiver should do so during the submission process. Authors not from low or lower-middle income countries who request an APC waiver on the basis of financial need/inability to support APC costs may be contacted by the journal’s editorial team and asked to provide evidence to support their request (e.g. valid student ID, proof of nurse registration, letter from the author’s institution, funding documentation). Requests for APC waivers cannot be considered after a manuscript is accepted for publication.

Corresponding authors will be notified that APC payment is due on acceptance of their manuscript for publication. Authors can request that APC invoices are sent to their institution or funder if they have agreed to cover these costs. Payment is due on receipt of an invoice. Manuscripts accepted for publication will not be published until APC payment is settled (unless an APC waiver has been agreed).

All queries regarding APC waivers should be sent to: publishing@haemnet.com.

Human and animal rights

All manuscripts submitted to Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice that report on studies involving human participants or animals are required to comply with the ethical standards set out in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals of the ICJME. All studies must have been carried out within an ethical framework appropriate to the setting in which the study was conducted. If the editors have concerns about the ethics of a study, the manuscript may be rejected, and the editors may contact the relevant ethics committee.

For manuscripts reporting on studies involving human participants, the authors must confirm that the study was performed in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration as revised in 2013 and was approved by an appropriate ethics committee. The relevant ethics committee approval should be indicated in the manuscript.

We acknowledge that studies classed as market research, surveys, guidelines, or research conducted among healthcare professionals may not require formal ethical approval in all territories.

If doubt exists as to whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the relevant review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

For manuscripts reporting on studies involving animals, the authors must confirm that institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

Informed consent

For all studies involving human participants, authors should confirm that informed consent was obtained from those involved and described how this was obtained.

People who are reported in studies have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Identifying information, including names, initials, dates of birth or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the person (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication.

Informed consent for this purpose requires that an identifiable person be shown the manuscript to be submitted for publication. Authors should disclose to these participants whether any potential identifiable material might be available via the internet or in print after publication.

Each implicated individual’s consent should be written and archived with the authors. If the patient is a minor or lacks capacity to consent, the written informed consent of a parent or guardian must be given. If the person in the case study is deceased, written consent must be sought from a relative. Without consent, a case report may be considered for publication if the patient is sufficiently anonymised according to ICJME guidelines. Nonessential identifying details should always be omitted. Informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt that anonymity can be maintained. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity.

Consent must be mentioned in the manuscript. We reserve the right to request copies of consent documentation.

Peer review

Except where otherwise stated, manuscripts submitted to Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice are subject to peer review. All peer reviews are conducted on a ‘double blind’ basis, meaning that the identities of authors are not disclosed to reviewers and the identities of reviewers are not disclosed to authors.

Peer reviewers are invited to assess individual manuscripts based on their expertise – subject experts are matched with the subject matter presented in the manuscripts received. Reviewers are asked to assess manuscript critically and constructively, and to provide their expert opinion on a) whether or not a manuscript is suitable for publication, and b) where they think revisions or further work is required. Reviewers are encouraged to provide detailed feedback that enables authors to pinpoint how and where manuscripts require or would benefit from improvement.

The review process will result in one of four decisions: Accept, Major Revision, Minor Revision, or Reject. This decision, along with feedback from the peer reviewers, will be communicated to the authors at the earliest opportunity. We generally aim to complete the peer review process within four weeks, but delays are sometimes unavoidable.

In practice, manuscripts are very rarely accepted in their original form. Where the review decision requires the submission of a revised manuscript (with either major or minor revisions), this should be returned with a response to points raised in the reviewer feedback.

Avoidance of bias

Reviews are conducted on a ‘double blind’ basis to ensure, as far as possible, that there is no bias. Copies of manuscripts that are sent out to peer reviewers do not include any personal identifying information on the authors, and vice versa when reviewer feedback is sent to the authors. The names of manuscript authors and peer reviewers are never disclosed to each other.

We understand that bias can be positive or negative. Among the authors of papers published in Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice are members of the editorial board and authors employed by the journal owner, Haemnet Ltd. The same rules around peer review are applied to authors who are directly associated with the journal as those who are not.

Appeals

If you believe an error has been made in reaching a decision about your manuscript, please contact the journal by email, quoting your manuscript ID number. Your appeal should include a detailed statement justifying why you think a mistake has been made and/or how you intend to address specific criticisms raised by peer reviewers or members of the editorial team during the review process. Appeal decisions will be made by the Editor-in-Chief in liaison with members of the editorial team and/or the journal’s Editorial Board as appropriate. After receipt of an appeal, we will aim to advise on whether your manuscript will be reconsidered within two weeks.

Post-publication discussion, corrections and retractions

Post-publication discussion

Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice welcomes post-publication comment and debate through letters to the editor, which may be published on the journal’s website.

Letters should be addressed to the journal’s Editor-in-Chief and sent to publishing@haemnet.com.

Corrections

Corresponding authors receive a proof of their article prior to publication in order to confirm the accuracy of the text and data, or to suggest modifications. Once articles are published, they should remain unaltered to the maximum extent possible. We accept, however, that honest errors are a part of science and publishing, and that there may be a need to publish corrections when errors are detected.

Authors and readers are encouraged to notify the editors of errors in published articles at the earliest opportunity, especially in the case of errors that could affected the interpretation of data or information presented. Notification of errors should be reported to the Editor: publishing@haemnet.com.

When errors are reported, action will be taken immediately or as soon as possible after notification.

Where corrections are required, action will be taken as follows:

The journal will publish a correction note detailing the changes. This will consist of an electronic numbered page, which will be included in the journal table of contents and will include a citation and link to the article concerned.
The journal will publish an amended version of the article, including details of the changes from the original version and the date on which the changes were made.
The journal will archive the previous version of the article, along with a note that an amended version of the article has been published. The archived version will not be directly accessible but can be made available on request.

Retractions

Where errors are serious enough to invalidate results and conclusions, articles may require retraction.

Where an article is retracted, a retraction note will be published on an electronic numbered page included in the journal table of contents. This will cite the original article and include an explanation as to why the article has been retracted.

Retraction with republication (i.e. a replacement article) may be considered in cases where errors lead to a major change in the direction or significance of the results, interpretations or conclusions presented, but are judged to be unintentional and the underlying science appears valid. In this case, the changed version of the article will be submitted for further review. If, after review, publication is recommended, the article will be republished with an explanation and with reference to the extent of the changes.

Publication schedule

Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice is published on a continuous basis throughout the year. Volumes usually run from January to December. There is no fixed schedule for the publication of individual papers.

Research misconduct

Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice is committed to ensuring, as far as possible, the integrity of all the papers it publishes.

All submissions are subject to screening for plagiarism with iThenticate CrossCheck software, and editors, peer reviewers and third parties are encouraged to raise concerns related to research misconduct.

Concerns may include but are not limited to:

Data fabrication – The intentional misrepresentation of research data through made-up findings, recording or reporting, including image manipulation
Data falsification – The manipulation of research materials, equipment or processes, including omitting and/or changing data
Plagiarised research
Inappropriately attributed authorship
Peer review manipulation – Preventing or inappropriately influencing the assessment of a manuscript by an independent peer.

Concerns should be addressed in the first instance to the Editor: publishing@haemnet.com.

Where there is evidence to support concerns raised or claims of alleged misconduct at any stage in the publication process, these will be investigated in an appropriate and timely manner. Investigations will be conducted in line with established processes such as those outlined by COPE.

Where it is not possible for the journal’s publishing team to conduct an investigation (e.g. in relation to data fabrication, authorship issues, unethical research), we will request the assistance of relevant research institutions, employers, funders and/or statutory bodies.

Where the integrity of a paper published in Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice is later called into question, it will be withdrawn until such time as integrity has been confirmed. Any published paper found to include questionable or falsified research will be withdrawn.

While respecting author confidentiality, we support the sharing of information among editors-in-chief (EICs) where this is a necessary part of our obligation to prevent and respond to allegations of research misconduct. The journal’s EIC will collaborate and share effort in the investigation of any cases of suspected misconduct where appropriate. Disclosure will only be made to EICs who may have information pertinent to the case.

Writing support

Bleeding Disorders: Care & Practice has a policy of supporting authors who are non-native English speakers, those who are not skilled writers, and those who are new to academic writing. This includes:

Support for authors to revise manuscripts identified by the Editor-in-Chief as being of merit but in need of immediate revision prior to peer review
Support for authors to revise manuscripts identified in peer review as not yet suitable for publication but where the reviewers or the editor-in-chief believe the subject matter to be of merit.