Editverse · Controlled document EC–03

Publication Ethics Code

What we will do for a research team, what we refuse to do at any price, and how to raise an ethics concern about our work.

Issued by: Neucite LLC (US) and Neuciteresearch Pvt Ltd (IN)
Version: 3.0
Effective: 8 August 2026
Aligned with: COPE, ICMJE, WAME, CSE, EQUATOR

Our commitment

Editverse exists to help researchers communicate work they have actually done. Everything below follows from that one sentence.

Editverse is operated by Neucite LLC (Wyoming, United States) and Neuciteresearch Pvt Ltd (India). Both companies follow the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, together with the World Association of Medical Editors, the Council of Science Editors, and the reporting guidelines curated by the EQUATOR Network. Where a target journal’s own policy is stricter than ours, the journal’s policy governs, and we tell you so before work begins.

This code binds both operating companies, and every editor, statistician, writer, subject specialist and staff member who touches an Editverse project, whichever entity engages them. Accepting it is a condition of engagement.

What we do, and what we refuse to do

Work we take on

Edit language, structure, clarity and flow so your findings read the way you intended.
Write and develop sections from material, data and direction you supply.
Run and document statistical analysis on data you own and lawfully collected.
Check reporting-guideline compliance: CONSORT, PRISMA, STROBE, CARE, ARRIVE and others.
Verify references against the primary source and flag any that do not support the claim made.
Advise on journal fit, scope and desk-rejection risk on the evidence rather than on optimism.
Prepare cover letters and point-by-point reviewer responses.
Tell you when a claim exceeds what your data can support, including when that is unwelcome.

Work we decline

Accepting, offering, selling or brokering authorship or author position.
Fabricating, falsifying, extrapolating or improving data, images, results or statistics.
Inventing or auto-generating citations, or citing sources we have not verified.
Writing a paper for a study we have no evidence was conducted.
Guaranteeing acceptance, indexing, an impact factor or a publication date.
Assisting submission to a journal we assess as predatory without a written warning first.
Contacting editors, reviewers or publishers on your behalf to influence a decision.
Working on thesis or examined coursework in any way that breaches your institution’s rules.

Not negotiable

Requests to fabricate results, manipulate images, produce fake peer review, arrange citation exchange or purchase authorship are declined without exception, and the engagement ends. Where a serious concern arises about research already published, we may be obliged to notify the journal or the institution.

Authorship

Authorship follows the ICMJE criteria, all four of which must be met: substantial contribution to conception, design, acquisition, analysis or interpretation; drafting or critical revision for important intellectual content; approval of the final version; and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Editverse personnel are never authors. No member of our team may be listed as author or co-author on a client manuscript, and none will accept such an offer.
Authorship is not a service. We do not sell, transfer, add, remove or reorder authorship, and we do not work with any party that does.
Gift, guest and ghost authorship are unacceptable. If an author list appears to include someone who did not meet the criteria, we raise it with you.
Author order is yours to settle. We do not arbitrate disputes between co-authors, and we pause work where an unresolved authorship dispute is disclosed.
The corresponding author is responsible for confirming that every listed author has seen and approved the final version we return.

Editing support, not ghostwriting

There is a real line between professional editing and ghostwriting, and journals police it. Two rules keep us on the correct side.

The research must be yours. Study design, conduct, data and intellectual conclusions originate with you and your co-authors. We shape how that work is communicated; we do not manufacture the work.
Our involvement is disclosable. Nothing we do is meant to be hidden. Every deliverable can be declared in an acknowledgements section without embarrassment, and section 10 gives the wording.

Services that supply a complete manuscript for research the client did not perform are ghostwriting, run contrary to COPE guidance, and sit outside our scope regardless of fee.

Data and results integrity

We analyse only data you supply, and we report what the analysis shows.
Statistical methods, software, versions and assumptions are documented so a reviewer can follow them.
Where an assumption fails or a result is null, negative or inconvenient, it is reported as found.
Selective reporting, outcome switching, undisclosed subgroup fishing and p-hacking are refused.
Image handling follows journal norms. Nothing is added, removed, obscured or enhanced; adjustments to brightness or contrast apply to the whole image and are disclosed.
We ask for the ethics approval reference and consent statement for any study involving humans or animals, and for the registration number of any prospective clinical trial.
We encourage data and code availability statements, and can help draft them.

Use of artificial intelligence

Our position follows COPE and ICMJE guidance. AI tools cannot be authors, cannot be accountable, and cannot substitute for human scholarly judgement.

AI tools are never listed as an author or credited as a contributor.
No AI-generated claim, statistic or reference enters a deliverable without human verification against the primary source.
Your unpublished manuscript and data are not used to train external AI models.
Where AI assistance is used in preparing a deliverable, we tell you, so you can disclose it in line with the target journal’s policy.

The full policy, including the verification workflow, is published separately as the AI Use Policy and the AI Fabrication Shield.

Confidentiality and client anonymity

Every manuscript, dataset and message is confidential from the moment it reaches us.
We never disclose the identity of a client, institution or manuscript to any third party.
We never disclose to a journal, editor or publisher that a manuscript received our support.
Access is restricted to the assigned specialists, each bound by a written confidentiality undertaking.
We do not use client work as a sample, portfolio piece or case study without written permission.

The contractual detail sits in the Non-Disclosure Agreement, and the data-handling detail in the Privacy Policy.

Conflicts of interest and independence

Editverse holds no ownership, affiliation, partnership or referral arrangement with any journal or publisher, and receives no commission for directing manuscripts anywhere.
We do not advertise in journals and do not enter agreements to promote a publisher’s interests.
Journal recommendations rest on scope, readership, indexing and realistic acceptance prospects alone.
Specialists must declare any competing interest with a client, institution or subject matter, and are reassigned where a conflict exists.
Where a specialist has peer-reviewed or is likely to peer-review a manuscript for a journal, they are excluded from working on that manuscript for us.

Plagiarism, duplication and text recycling

All content we prepare is original. On request, and as standard on writing projects, we run a similarity check and return the report with the deliverable.

Passages reproduced from other sources are quoted and cited, or rewritten with attribution.
Self-plagiarism and text recycling are flagged, and we advise on disclosure to the journal.
Duplicate and simultaneous submission to more than one journal runs contrary to ICMJE guidance and is not supported.
Salami slicing of a single study into minimally distinct papers is discouraged and will be raised with you.
Where third-party figures or tables are reused, we ask for evidence of permission or a compatible licence before including them.

Acknowledging our support

Many journals require professional editorial assistance to be declared. A short acknowledgement of this form works:

Suggested wording

The authors thank Editverse (editverse.com) for language editing and manuscript preparation support. Editverse had no role in study design, data collection, analysis, the decision to publish, or the intellectual content of the manuscript.

Adjust it to match the service you received and your journal’s requirements. If a journal asks, we will confirm the accurate scope of our involvement in writing.

Raising an ethics concern

If you believe an Editverse deliverable, member of staff or specialist has fallen short of this code, tell us. Concerns may come from clients, co-authors, journals, institutions or members of the public, and may be raised anonymously.

Stage	What happens	Timing
Acknowledgement	Written confirmation that the concern has been received and logged	3 working days
Assessment	Review by a senior member of staff independent of the project	10 working days
Response	Written findings, with corrective action and any remedy offered	On conclusion
Escalation	Review by the director if the outcome does not satisfy you	15 working days from request
Cooperation	Where a journal or institution is investigating, we cooperate fully and supply records within the limits of client confidentiality and applicable law	As required

Retaliation against anyone raising a good-faith concern is prohibited.

Corrections, expressions of concern and retractions

If an error is found in work we delivered, we correct it promptly and at no charge, and we help you prepare a correction notice where publication has already occurred. Where a journal issues an expression of concern or a retraction on a manuscript we supported, we cooperate with the journal’s process and follow COPE’s retraction guidelines. We will not assist any attempt to conceal a known error from the scholarly record.

Standards we follow

Committee on Publication Ethics, Core Practices and guidance. publicationethics.org
ICMJE, Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. icmje.org
World Association of Medical Editors, policy statements. wame.org
Council of Science Editors, White Paper on Publication Ethics. councilscienceeditors.org
EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines, including CONSORT, PRISMA, STROBE, CARE and ARRIVE. equator-network.org

Report a concern

Ethics concerns are reviewed by a senior member of staff independent of the project. Anonymous reports are accepted and investigated.

Email the ethics desk

Neucite LLC (Wyoming, United States) and Neuciteresearch Pvt Ltd (India), joint operators of editverse.com. Reviewed annually and whenever COPE or ICMJE guidance is materially revised.