Sustainable Biomaterials & Bioengineering (SBME) is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics, editorial integrity, scientific transparency, and responsible scholarly communication. The journal adheres to internationally recognised ethical frameworks and best practices established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).
All parties involved in the publication process — including authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher — are expected to maintain the principles of honesty, accountability, transparency, confidentiality, fairness, and scientific integrity throughout the submission, peer review, and publication process.
Editorial Independence and Integrity
Editorial decisions are made independently on the basis of scientific merit, originality, methodological quality, ethical compliance, and relevance to the journal’s scope. Commercial interests, institutional affiliations, political considerations, or personal relationships shall not influence editorial evaluation or publication decisions.
Editors are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and ensuring that all submissions are evaluated fairly, objectively, and without discrimination.
Authorship and Contributorship
Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the work, including:
- Study conception or design
- Data acquisition, analysis, or interpretation
- Drafting or critically revising the manuscript
- Final approval of the submitted version
- Accountability for the integrity of the work
All authors must meet recognised authorship criteria in accordance with ICMJE recommendations.
Contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately but should not be listed as authors.
The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that:
- All eligible contributors are included as authors
- No inappropriate authors are listed
- All co-authors approve the final manuscript and submission
Originality and Scientific Integrity
Submitted manuscripts must represent original work and must not be previously published or simultaneously submitted to another journal.
The journal maintains a strict policy against:
- Plagiarism
- Duplicate publication
- Redundant publication
- Data fabrication
- Data falsification
- Image manipulation
- Citation manipulation
- Misrepresentation of results
- Undisclosed conflicts of interest
All submissions undergo plagiarism and similarity screening prior to peer review.
Where research misconduct is suspected, the journal reserves the right to:
- Request clarification or supporting documentation
- Reject the manuscript
- Suspend editorial consideration
- Notify affiliated institutions where appropriate
- Retract published articles in accordance with COPE guidelines
Ethical Approval and Human or Animal Research
Research involving human participants, animals, biological materials, or sensitive datasets must comply with institutional, national, and internationally accepted ethical standards.
Where applicable, manuscripts must include:
- Institutional ethics committee approval information
- Informed consent statements
- Clinical trial registration identifiers
- Animal welfare compliance statements
Human studies should comply with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and relevant institutional or national regulatory requirements.
Authors must protect participant confidentiality and privacy at all stages of research and publication.
Peer Review Policy
SBME operates a rigorous double-blind peer review process in which the identities of both authors and reviewers are concealed throughout review.
Reviewers are expected to:
- Evaluate manuscripts objectively and constructively
- Maintain confidentiality
- Declare conflicts of interest
- Refrain from using unpublished material for personal advantage
- Complete reviews within the requested timeframe
Editorial decisions are based on reviewer evaluations, scientific merit, originality, methodological quality, and ethical compliance.
Conflicts of Interest
All authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose any financial, institutional, professional, or personal relationships that could influence or appear to influence the research or editorial process.
Sources of funding and the role of funding bodies in study design, analysis, manuscript preparation, or publication decisions must be clearly declared within the manuscript.
Where conflicts of interest are identified, the journal may implement additional editorial oversight or reviewer reassignment where appropriate.
Data Availability and Transparency
Authors are encouraged to make underlying datasets, analytical methods, protocols, and source code publicly available where appropriate and ethically permissible.
A Data Availability Statement must be included in all submissions indicating:
- Where supporting data may be accessed
- Any restrictions on data availability
- Repository or accession information where applicable
Authors are expected to retain original data and provide it upon reasonable editorial request.
Artificial Intelligence and Generative Tools
The use of artificial intelligence or generative language tools in manuscript preparation must be transparently disclosed within the manuscript.
Artificial intelligence tools may not be listed as authors, as authorship requires accountability, intellectual contribution, and responsibility for the integrity of the work.
Authors remain fully responsible for the originality, scientific accuracy, and integrity of all submitted content, including material assisted by AI technologies.
Corrections, Retractions, and Post-Publication Updates
The journal is committed to preserving the integrity of the scholarly record.
Where errors, ethical concerns, or research misconduct are identified following publication, the journal may issue:
- Corrections
- Errata
- Expressions of concern
- Retractions
Retractions will be conducted in accordance with COPE retraction guidelines and will remain clearly linked to the original article.
Open Access and Copyright
Sustainable Biomaterials & Bioengineering is a fully open-access journal.
All published articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), permitting unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction provided the original work is properly cited.
Authors retain copyright of their work while granting the journal the right to publish, archive, and disseminate the material globally.
Publication Responsibility
By submitting a manuscript to SBME, authors confirm that:
- The work is original
- All authors approve the submission
- Ethical standards have been followed
- Necessary approvals and consents have been obtained
- All disclosures have been made accurately
The journal remains committed to maintaining a transparent, ethical, and scientifically rigorous publishing environment that supports the integrity and advancement of global scholarly communication.