POCUS Journal Editorial Policies -Updates

POCUS Journal is published biannually in April and November. The POCUS Journal may publish special issues outside of the publishing schedule for regular issues. Affected authors will be made aware in advance of changes in publication schedule.

Content and Audience

POCUS Journal is an English language online publication directed at a worldwide audience of health care professionals and students of the health sciences. POCUS Journal publishes content on the use of ultrasound in healthcare with a focus on point-of-care ultrasound.

Authorship

Authorship of scholarly work has significant professional, commercial, and cultural value. The POCUS Journal adheres to the ICMJE definition of authorship (ICMJE | Recommendations | Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors) which describes authorship as:

“Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.”

(from ICMJE: https://bit.ly/1ruKdnU, emphasis added)

All authors listed in the manuscript must meet the criteria listed above and all individuals participating in the project who meet these criteria should be listed as authors.

Individuals or groups who assisted with the project who do not meet authorship criteria should be recognized in the Acknowledgement section of the manuscript.

Author Contributions to the Manuscript and CRediT Taxonomy

The cover sheet associated with the submitted work should include a brief description of author contributions to the work. Contributions should follow CRediT taxonomy for author roles (see https://credit.niso.org) (eg JD – writing – review & editing, CG – investigation, writing – original draft, etc).

Author contributions will be published with the manuscript.

Author Warranties and Obligations

In submitting a work to POCUS Journal the authors warrant that:

The Authors are the sole authors of the submitted work and have the legal right (based on applicable local and international laws) to submit the work for publication under our copyright agreement [link]. If funding source or other prior agreements mandate an alternative copyright arrangement the authors will make this requirement known at the time of submission.
The article has not been previously published in another journal and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
The authors warrant that data and information contained in the article is true and correct.

Authors and Competing Interests

All authors must submit a ICMJE conflict of interest form at the time of submission of the work for consideration. Authors should not attempt to determine if a relationship with other entities constitutes a conflict of interest – all relationships should be disclosed. Disclosure forms are reviewed by the Editor in Chief, Associate Editor, or Section Editor as appropriate. Peer Reviewers do not have access to disclosure forms. Listed Relationships will be published with the work at the time of publication.

Corresponding Author

The corresponding author is the primary contact between the Journal and the authors of the work. The corresponding author agrees to be responsive to requests for editorial changes and to obtain necessary permissions from other authors as needed. The Journal will only respond to communication from the corresponding author.

Author Fees

POCUS Journal does not presently impose any author fees for any stage of the editorial process. However, the journal reserves the right to introduce reasonable fees for publication-related services in the future. Please note that any fee adjustments will not be applied retrospectively to articles already under consideration.

Effective March 1st, 2025, POCUS Journal will implement an Article Acceptance Fee of $500 for the following article categories:

Original Article
POCUS Protocol
Innovations in POCUS Curriculum
Review
Study Protocol

All other article categories will remain free of charge.

The editorial board of the Journal understands that there may be situations where 2 or more individuals have made substantially equal contributions to a work and request recognition as co- primary authors. In these cases a letter describing the request and author contributions the work should be submitted with all primary authors as signatories.

Disputes over Authorship

If the Journal is made aware of a dispute over authorship of the work all editorial processes will be paused until authorship claims can be resolved. The Journal reserves the right to reject an unpublished work, including an unpublished but accepted work, if authorship concerns cannot be resolved in a satisfactory manner. Authorship corrections to published works must be accompanied by a corrigendum and explanation for the error.

ORCID

The Journal encourages authors to include their ORCiD when submitting a manuscript. The ORCiD ensures correct attribution of authorship when many individuals share the same name or initials among journal publications.

Competing Interests

The Journal endeavors to uphold the highest levels of publication ethics. Ethical publication practices require that conflicts of interest be disclosed to audiences and available to authors and, for editors, to the publisher and the editorial board.

Editorial board members complete the ICMJE disclosure form annually or when a new relationship occurs. Disclosures are reviewed by the Editor in Chief for competing interests material to the performance of duties as an Editor. Where a competing interest exists the Editor will recuse themselves and the submission will be handled by an editor without a competing interest.

Authors complete an ICMJE form at the time the work is submitted for consideration. Competing interests will be listed in the published version of the manuscript.

Peer Reviewers must disclose any relationships at the time of agreeing to review a work. Peer Reviewers may not review a manuscript where they have competing interests material to the performance of the article review. Reviewer competing interests will be reviewed by the Section Editor handling the submission.

The Journal reserves the right to involve outside peers or experts to resolve competing interests if members of the editorial board are unable to do so.

Funding

Funding sources should be disclosed at the time of manuscript submission. When available sufficient information to identifying the funding agency and grant must be provided.

General Principles

Dissemination of scholarly work in the health sciences has been crucial to advances in our understanding of the human body. Regrettably many advances have come at the expense of the privacy and dignity of people who were unable to provide their informed consent to participate. All human subjects research must be performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (revision 2013) [https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki/]. Research involving human subjects must be reviewed and approved by an independent local or institutional review board (or ethics board). If authors are unsure that their research is human subjects research a determination should be obtained from the local review board. Authors should not determine for themselves whether or not their work would be characterized as human subjects research if the question is unclear. A useful tool is the NIH online tool “Am I Doing Human Subjects Research” available at https://grants.nih.gov/policy-and-compliance/policy-topics/human-subjects/hs-decision. The use of this tool is not a substitute for review board oversight .

The authors should be able to provide details of the review board determination on request from the editors. The editorial staff reserve the right to make their own determination regarding appropriateness of review board decisions.

Individuals must provide informed consent prior to participating in medical research. Study design and the consent process should be approved prospectively by the review board or ethics committee. Where the review board approves a consent process that does not follow established standards the authors must explain the reasons for deviating from standards and the efforts made to ensure informed consent to the degree possible. Authors must include a statement about the consent process in the study methods.

Authors must make the Journal aware of any review board or ethics committee concerns or corrective actions at the time of submission.

Special Populations

Some populations are more susceptible to influence in the informed consent process which may be secondary to a power dynamic or limited understanding of the treatment goals and risks. Authors must describe efforts made to ensure fair treatment of special populations (eg prisoners, children)

Some people groups are more vulnerable to adverse effects or risks of medical research. When research involving such groups is performed researchers must ensure that the benefits of participation are greater than the risks, and must make every effort to mitigate those risks.

Registration of Clinical Trials

Prospective registration of clinical trials (research where subjects are randomized to an intervention) is important to ensure that studies with negative results are reported, that investigators and reviewers are aware of similar projects such that repetitive research can be avoided, and for public accountability.

POCUS Journal requires that clinical trials or other prospective interventional research be registered with a public Clinical Trials registry prior to patient enrollment. Registration information must be provided with the manuscript submission.

Peer Review

Which Content is Peer Reviewed?

The editorial board and Journal publisher are committed to meaningful peer review for works of an investigational nature.

The following submission types are externally peer reviewed by at least 2 external reviewers:

Case Series
Observational studies (prospective, retrospective)
Guidelines
Clinical Trials (randomized, other)
Curricula
Methods and Protocols
Unsolicited Position Statements

The following submission types are peer reviewed by at least one external peer reviewer:

Case Files
Case Reports
Brief Research Reports

The following submission types are editorially reviewed and are not externally peer reviewed:

Letters
Solicited Editorials
Solicited Position Statements

Peer Review Details

Peer Reviewers are not blinded to author identities. Authors are blinded to Peer Reviewer identities.
Peer Reviews are not published.
Peer Reviews are intended to aid the editor in evaluating the quality of the work and the degree to which it contributes to the health sciences.
Peer reviewers are not asked to perform copy editing and should refrain from commenting on style outside of significant concerns regarding readability or language that may mislead the reader.
Peer Reviewers may recommend revisions, publication, or rejection but the Editor is the decision authority for editorial steps following peer review.

Peer Review After Revisions

The editor handling the work will determine if additional peer review is required after revisions are submitted. Revisions that are well documented and address the reviewers initial concerns do not typically require additional peer review.

Submissions to the Journal by Members of the Editorial Staff

A work submitted to the journal including a member of the editorial staff as author represents a potential significant conflict of interest and are subject to additional processes:

An uninvolved Section Editor or the Associate Editor will handle the submission
An author other than the Staff Member will handle all communication regarding the submission
A minimum of three external reviewers are required
The article will be declined if any two external reviewers recommend rejection

Peer Reviewer Conflict of Interest

Peer Reviewers must disclose any conflicts of interest prior to beginning review of a work. Peer Reviewers may not participate in review of a work where they have a conflict of interest. Conflict of interest includes but is not limited to:

Close association with an author
Competing research or publication activity
Financial or other material relationship with a relevant entity \
Personal animus or other unprofessional motives

Authors who believe a violation of the conflict of interest policy has occurred may notify the Editor in Chief or the Managing Editor in writing describing the nature of the violation or other concerns.

Allegations of Misconduct

Editorial Misconduct

Concerns about editorial misconduct should be directed to the managing editor or directly to the journal publisher. The journal publisher will follow internal policies to investigate editorial misconduct. Editorial misconduct can include but is not limited to improper processing of a submission, fabrication of peer reviews or peer review components, or misrepresenting the content of peer reviews.

Author Misconduct

Concerns about author misconduct may be directed to the Editor in Chief or the Managing Editor. Concerns should be timely and substantiated and be material to the author’s involvement with the journal. Example areas of concern that are appropriate are:

Plagiarism
Fabrication of or misrepresenting data
Prior publication

The Editor in Chief may direct another member of the editorial staff to pursue the investigation. All information regarding investigations of misconduct will be handled confidentially. The editorial staff will contact the author to investigate concerns. The editorial staff reserves the right to contact outside entities including those listed as affiliations for authors or other journal editors if such contact is necessary to resolve the concerns. Authors will be made aware of which other entities, if any, are contacted and what information will be shared.

Articles may be published with a correction or retraction notice as appropriate. The decisions of the editorial board subsequent to a completed investigation are final and not subject to appeal.

The research community is well served by studies who make data available for subsequent analysis and replication. If a work makes use of data from a third party source that data should be cited in the work in a manner that would allow readers to identify it.

Works involving data analysis submitted for publication consideration must include a statement on the availability of data to outside parties.

The editors reserve the right to request de-identified data to resolve concerns over data analysis in select cases.

Standards of Reporting

There are well accepted guidelines for reporting the various forms of medical research and scholarship published in the Journal. When possible authors are encouraged to make use of guidelines for structuring their work. When authors do make use of reporting guidelines:

The guideline used should be stated clearly in the manuscript
A copy of the guideline with appropriate references to the manuscript, to be published as an appendix

Citations

At the time of submission of the work the authors warrant that all in text citations are accurate and appropriately cited. Citations should follow the format specified in the Author Instructions.

Any material that is not the original work of the authors such as figures, illustrations, or quoted text must have appropriate copyright permissions from the copyright holder for reproduction in the Journal under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License.

Misconduct

-TBD

Images and Figures

Images and figures included in the work must be accurate and not mislead the reader.

Figures should use appropriate scales and labels. The Journal reserves the right to request the data required to reproduce figures for the purposes of publication and type setting.

Images should be unmodified except for changes required to remove identifiers for anonymization. Images may have general corrections to brightness and contrast. Regional corrections of any kind including modifications with AI tools are prohibited. Where close up images are required there should be a more representative image included to provide context for the reader. Any images of experimental results should include unaltered representations of any controls.

Images of Persons

By their very nature images of persons can only be de-identified in a limited fashion. Subjects must provide explicit consent for publication of their likeness even when attempts at de-identification are performed.

Cultural Appropriateness

Cultures vary in which types of images are acceptable for publication and which images may be taboo regardless of the scientific value of such images (eg images of dead bodies, images of unclothed persons). The authors should consider cultural context when choosing to submit images with their work.

Corrections, Expression of Concern and Retractions

Name Change

An author may request a name change for a variety of reasons. Simple name changes can be initiated by contacting the managing editor. The Managing editor will confirm with the corresponding author that the request matches the appropriate author. Simple name changes will be republished without corrigendum and updated copies will be provided to indexing agencies.

Expressions of Concern

Readers who have an academic concern or opinion regarding a published work are welcome to submit a letter to the Editor. Letters which contribute to the academic discourse around a topic will be published at the discretion of the Editor in Chief.

Readers who are concerned about ethical performance or academic misconduct should submit an ethics complaint as noted in Allegations of Misconduct.

Corrections

Published authors requesting minor corrections to a published work such as a name misspelling or typographical error may contact the managing editor. The request will be reviewed by the section editor who will determine 1) if the change can be made and 2) if a corrigendum will be published alongside the correction.

Corrections will be published to the website, a new PDF will be generated, and the corrected work will be forwarded to indexing agencies Any correction may generate a new DOI. Outside indexers (eg PubMed) follow their own policies regarding reindexing and correction notices.

Retractions

Articles may be retracted if serious flaws are identified after publication that call the integrity of the work into question. Examples of such concerns could include but are not limited to author misconduct, plagiarism, mishandling of data, or serious errors in data analysis.

Authors may notify the Editor in Chief of issues requiring retraction via written request. Authors in turn will be notified when the editorial board has resolved action on the decision to issue a retraction. Retractions will be published in a timely manner on the journal website and the associated PDF and electronic indexes will be updated in turn.

Appeals and Complaints

Editorial decisions to accept or reject a work are final. If there are concerns that the decision is the result of editorial misconduct the Authors should notify the Editor in Chief in writing with a request to appeal their rejection and refer to the appropriate submission number.

Desk rejections are final and not subject to appeal. Desk rejections do not require explanation. If the author has evidence that a desk rejection was the result of malice or ethical misconduct on the part of the editor they may notify the Editor in Chief or the Managing Editor. This is not considered an appeal of the editorial decision but rather an ethics complaint.

Complaints related to the editorial process including editorial decisions, conduct in the process of peer review, or related to the process of investigating author complaints, may be directed to the Managing Editor or the Publisher. In either case the Publisher will follow internal procedures to investigate and resolve the complaint.

The Journal takes responsibility for the content of the Journal. Corrections to the content of the Journal including retractions will be made in a timely manner. Concerns over author, staff, or editor misconduct may be referred to their employers, funding agencies, or institutions as appropriate.

Copyright, Licenses, and Preprints

Website Copyright

Website design, text, and graphical elements not covered under the copyright terms of the Public Knowledge Project and Open Journal Systems are copyright Cinquill Medical Publishers. All rights are reserved.

General Copyright and License for Published Works

Works published in the POCUS Journal are published under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License (Deed – Attribution 4.0 International – Creative Commons).

Commercial use of work published in POCUS Journal requires additional permissions from the publisher. Commercial use includes publication in print or online for the purposes of product support or advertising. Authors who are employees of commercial entities may not post their Work to employer websites without additional permissions for commercial use.

Authors Ownership of Copyright

Authors retain copyright for their submitted work. At the time of publication acceptance authors complete a copyright agreement granting the Journal an exclusive and irrevocable right to publish the accepted manuscript under the Creative Commons license in effect at the time of publication. The copyright agreement contains additional permissions that may affect the authors’ ability to exercise their copyright.

Published Version as Authoritative Version of the Work

Authors agree to make only the published version of the work available in university archives or via other modes of dissemination/distribution. When possible electronic references to the work should link to the published version on the Journal website.

Preprints

Authors may publish pre-print versions of their manuscript but any such versions should clearly be marked as a pre-print copy. Authors should make the editors aware of a preprint and provide a working link to the preprint at the time of submission. At the time of publication the preprint must be updated with a link to the published version of the work.

AI Policy

The Editors of POCUS Journal recognize that generative AI has provided many individuals with access to language resources that may flatten social and economic inequalities. The Editors distinguish between computer pattern matching for specific data tasks (here defined as “machine learning”) and content generation (“Generative AI”).

If Generative AI was used in conceptualization, data analysis, or other more substantive portions of the work these uses should be described in the methods of the work. Documentation must be provided on the prompts used and responses obtained and submitted to the Journal as an appendix.

The use of machine learning in the work should be described in the methods section of the work.

AI Use and Disclosure in Manuscript Preparation

The authors must disclose any use of Generative AI in manuscript preparation including which sections of the manuscript are involved (eg. Chat GPT 3.0 (OpenAI) was used for rephrasing and language editing after manuscript preparation in the abstract, introduction, and discussion sections of the manuscript).

The editors understand that these definitions only partially resolve the ambiguity around the terms used to describe computer learning. When necessary authors should contact the editors for clarifications on how to document AI use.

Text and Data Mining

Contents of the Journal are available under a CC-BY-NC-ND license. Content may be aggregated only for purposes consistent with those license terms and any other use is prohibited. For the purposes of this license the use of data for LLM training is considered commercial use.

Commercial Use and Reprints

Articles or other works published in POCUS Journal are published under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution-Non-Commercial-Non-Derivitive License. Any reuse of the Journal’s published content for commercial purposes is not permitted.

The corresponding author is the point of contact for reprints.

Harassment

-TBD

Designation of Territories

The Journal respects the conventions of authors on the use of territory names and takes no political position on territory names or designations.

Permanency of Articles

The POCUS Journal participates in the Public Knowledge Project Preservation Network https://pkp.sfu.ca/pkp-pn/. POCUS Journal is also indexed in PubMed. Should the journal cease operations all content will be available online through the PKP online archive or PubMed.

Business model

Cinquill Medical Publishing is a division of the Cinquill Research Laboratory. The publisher accepts advertising and is in control of advertising placement in the Journal and on the Journal website. Editorial staff have no role in soliciting, accepting, or placing advertisements in the Journal or on the Journal website. The journal charges no fees to authors or readers and Editors perform their duties on a volunteer basis.

Effective March 1st, the Journal will implement a non-refundable Article Publishing Charge (APC) of $500 for authors (does not apply for letters, case reports, and case files), which will help support the journal’s operational costs and ensure the continued publication of high-quality research. This fee is payable upon acceptance of an article for publication and is part of the Journal’s commitment to transparency and fairness in its editorial process.

We believe that the introduction of this acceptance fee will help sustain the quality and integrity of the Journal while maintaining equitable access for both authors and readers.

Terms of Publication (Cinquill Medical Publishing)

At the time of acceptance for publication the corresponding author will complete a publication agreement on behalf of all the authors. The publication agreement is available here [link] and is summarized below:

The author(s) are the owner of copyright for the work
The author(s) grant the Journal an irrevocable right to publish online the accepted version of the work under the license in effect at the time of publication.
As the owners of copyright the author(s) may use the work for purpose they wish provided that:
- The published version of the work is the only version distributed online
- Other use of the work appropriately references the published version of the work
The publisher reserves the right to license or otherwise authorise any commercial use of the work. Licensing the work for commercial use does not convey any obligation by the Journal to reimburse or reward the author(s) either financially or otherwise.
The Journal is currently an online-only publication. The Journal reserves the right to publish the work in print.
Any pre-print will be updated with a reference to the online published work.

Publishing Schedule