Publication Ethics

Fight Medicine and its publisher, Sears Publishing Company, follow the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. Where this statement does not address a situation, COPE guidance, flowcharts and the COPE Retraction Guidelines apply. The sections below follow the ten COPE Core Practices.

1. Allegations of misconduct

Concerns about fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, image manipulation, duplicate publication, undisclosed conflicts or manipulation of peer review may be raised by anyone, before or after publication, and may be raised confidentially, by writing to [email protected]. Each concern is acknowledged, assessed against the manuscript and its records, and handled under the applicable COPE flowchart. The authors are asked to respond. Where necessary the journal contacts the authors' institutions or other responsible bodies and cooperates with their investigations. Manuscripts are screened for text similarity. Outcomes may include rejection, correction, expression of concern or retraction, recorded in the article's metadata.

2. Authorship and contributorship

Authorship follows the four ICMJE criteria: substantial contribution to conception, design, acquisition, analysis or interpretation; drafting or critical revision; approval of the final version; and accountability for the work. Contributors who do not meet all four criteria are acknowledged. Contributor roles are reported using CRediT and ORCID identifiers are recorded in the metadata. Changes to authorship after submission require the written agreement of every author. Artificial intelligence tools cannot be authors; any use of such tools in preparing a manuscript is disclosed in the Methods or Acknowledgements, and the authors remain responsible for the content.

3. Complaints and appeals

Complaints about the journal, its editors or its processes are addressed to the Editor-in-Chief at [email protected]. Each complaint is acknowledged, reviewed where possible by a person not involved in the matter, and answered in writing with reasons. Complaints that cannot be resolved by the journal are referred to the publisher. Authors may appeal an editorial decision in writing within thirty days; appeals are considered by an editor not involved in the original decision.

4. Conflicts of interest

Every author completes the ICMJE disclosure form. All financial and non-financial interests are published with the article, including athletic commission appointments, protocol authorship, equipment or product interests, and relationships with promoters, management or sanctioning bodies. Funding sources and the funder's role are stated. Reviewers and editors disclose interests relevant to a manuscript, and a reviewer or editor with a conflict takes no part in its handling. When the publisher, an officer of the publisher or a member of the editorial board is an author, that relationship is disclosed with the article and the manuscript is handled by an editor with no connection to the author.

5. Data and reproducibility

Authors describe methods, data sources and analyses in enough detail for readers to evaluate and reproduce the work, follow the reporting guideline appropriate to the study design, and include a data availability statement. Underlying data are made available in a public repository or on reasonable request, subject to privacy and legal limits, including the confidentiality of commission and medical records.

6. Ethical oversight

Research involving human participants or identifiable health information must report approval by an institutional review board or research ethics committee, with the approval number, and must state that participants gave informed consent. Case reports and any identifiable image, video, case note or bout record require written informed consent from the fighter or legal guardian, retained by the authors and attested in the manuscript. Public-record cases are cited to their public source. Studies conducted under an athletic commission's authority state the legal basis for data access. Clinical and regulatory content is published for education and reference and does not authorise practice outside an individual's training, scope, medical direction, governing law or operational policy.

7. Intellectual property

Sources are cited and quotations identified. Copyrighted material is used only with permission, under licence or within applicable legal exceptions. Submissions are checked for originality before review. Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence, with copyright retained by the authors, and the licence is stated in each article's Crossref metadata.

8. Journal management

The journal is published by Sears, LLC, an Alabama limited liability company trading as Sears Publishing Company. The publisher's ownership, legal identity and responsibilities are stated on the Sears Publishing Company page of this site. Editorial decisions rest on the merit of the work and the outcome of review and are kept separate from any commercial consideration.

9. Peer review

Review is double-anonymous by at least two independent reviewers. Reviewer selection, conflicts, confidentiality, decisions and appeals are described in the Peer Review Policy. The review designation of each article is stated on its record and in its metadata.

10. Post-publication discussion and corrections

Readers may comment on or question a published article by writing to [email protected]. Errata, corrigenda, addenda, expressions of concern and retractions follow COPE guidance, are linked to the original article through its DOI and are shown in Crossmark, as described in the Corrections and Crossmark policy.

Policy adopted October 2026.