Horizon of Public Health Sciences (HoPHS) is committed to safeguarding the integrity, reliability, transparency, and credibility of the scholarly record. Authors, reviewers, editors, and journal staff are expected to uphold recognized standards of responsible research and publication practice throughout submission, peer review, editorial decision-making, publication, and post-publication review.

HoPHS evaluates research integrity as a substantive matter rather than a checklist exercise. Editorial action is based on the nature, seriousness, context, evidence, and potential effect of a concern on the validity, interpretation, attribution, or trustworthiness of the scholarly record.

All manuscripts are subject to originality and similarity assessment. Authors may upload a similarity report at submission; when no report is supplied, HoPHS will conduct similarity screening as part of technical evaluation. The journal applies an overall similarity benchmark of maximum 20%.

Manuscripts identified as containing inappropriate unattributed copying, excessive text recycling, or misleading overlap may be returned for correction, rejected, or handled under the journal's misconduct procedures depending on severity and stage of publication.

Manuscripts submitted to HoPHS must not be simultaneously submitted to another journal. Authors must transparently disclose related manuscripts, prior publications, preprints, conference outputs, reports, theses, datasets, or other materials when relevant to assessing overlap or originality.

HoPHS follows the ICMJE approach to authorship. Every listed author should have made a substantial contribution to the work, participated in drafting or critically revising it, approved the version to be published, and accepted accountability for the integrity of the work.

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission require a clear explanation and agreement from the affected authors. HoPHS may seek additional documentation or institutional clarification when an authorship dispute cannot be resolved by the authors.

Authors are responsible for the accuracy and integrity of the data and analyses supporting their manuscript. Data should not be selectively altered, omitted, invented, duplicated, or presented in a manner that creates a misleading scientific impression.

Digital adjustment must not obscure, eliminate, introduce, move, duplicate, or selectively emphasize features in a way that changes the scientific meaning of an image. Adjustments to brightness, contrast, or color balance should be applied appropriately and must not misrepresent the original data.

Editors, reviewers, and journal staff must protect the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts, supplementary files, reviewer reports, author responses, editorial correspondence, unpublished data, and other non-public information obtained through the publication process.

Editors and journal staff involved in editorial decisions must disclose relationships or activities that could compromise, or reasonably appear to compromise, independent judgment. A conflicted editor must not participate in reviewer selection, access to confidential reviewer identities, evaluation of reports, or the final editorial decision.

AI and AI-assisted technologies cannot qualify as authors. Authors must disclose material use of generative AI or comparable tools in accordance with the HoPHS Author Guidelines and remain responsible for accuracy, originality, attribution, confidentiality, copyright compliance, and the integrity of all submitted content.

An allegation does not itself establish misconduct. HoPHS distinguishes between honest error, methodological disagreement, poor reporting, questionable practice, and deliberate or serious misconduct according to the available evidence and the effect on the scholarly record.

Credible concerns raised after publication will be assessed using the same principles of fairness, evidence, proportionality, and preservation of the scholarly record. Where necessary, HoPHS may issue a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other transparent update linked to the published article.

HoPHS will act on credible integrity concerns before or after publication and will seek proportionate, transparent, and evidence-based resolution while respecting confidentiality, due process, editorial independence, and the responsibilities of authors, reviewers, editors, institutions, and other parties involved in scholarly communication.