Editorial Policies

02 · Peer review

How manuscripts are reviewed

Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts.

Choosing reviewers

Reviewers are selected for subject expertise and assessed for competing interests before they are invited. An editor may consult additional specialists where a manuscript spans more than one field.

Double-blind preparation

For double-blind review, remove author names, affiliations, acknowledgments, funding details, institution names, and other identifying information from the reviewer manuscript. Provide identifying information separately in the title-page file or submission form.

Editor handling

When double-blind review is requested, editors must ensure that author-identifying information is not shared with reviewers.

Reviewer conduct

For double-blind manuscripts, reviewers must not attempt to identify the authors. After submitting the review, reviewers should securely delete downloaded manuscript files and must not retain or use unpublished material.

Confidentiality

A submitted manuscript is confidential. Editors and reviewers treat its content, and the fact of its submission, as unpublished material belonging to the authors until the journal publishes it.

Full guidance for each role is on the editors guidelines and reviewer guidelines pages.

03 · Decisions

How a decision is reached

Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.

The handling editor weighs the reviewers’ assessments against those criteria and reaches one of the usual outcomes: accept, revise, or decline. Reviewer reports are shared with the authors when a decision is issued.

04 · Authorship

Authorship and contributorship

Authorship records who did the work and who answers for it.

• Each listed author has contributed substantially to the conception, conduct, analysis or reporting of the work, has approved the submitted version, and agrees to be accountable for it.
• Contributions that fall short of authorship — technical assistance, data collection under direction, funding acquisition alone — are recorded in the acknowledgments with the contributor’s permission.
• The corresponding author confirms that every listed author has seen and approved the submission, and is the journal’s point of contact through review, production and afterwards.
• Any change to the author list after submission is requested in writing by the corresponding author, with the agreement of every author being added or removed, and is decided by the handling editor.
• Authorship is held by people. Generative AI tools are recorded under the declarations in section 07 instead.

05 · Conflicts

Competing interests and recusal

A competing interest is anything a reader would reasonably want to know about when weighing the work. Declaring one is routine; it rarely prevents publication, and it is what allows the reader to judge.

Authors

Authors declare financial and non-financial competing interests at submission, including employment, consultancy, patents, honoraria, and commercial relationships relevant to the work. The declaration is published with the article.

Funding

Every funding source is named with its award or grant number, together with the role the funder had in the design, conduct, analysis or reporting of the study.

Reviewers

Reviewers decline an invitation where a competing interest would affect their judgment, or where they have worked closely with the authors recently enough that an independent assessment would be difficult.

Editors

An editor with a competing interest in a manuscript stands aside from it. An editor who is an author on a submission takes no part in its assessment, which is handled by an independent editor with no access to the decision as it is being made.

Device and product studies

Studies evaluating a commercial device, application or service name every relationship between the authors and the supplier, including ownership, invention, consultancy and the provision of equipment.

06 · Ethics

Research ethics, consent and registration

Sleep research records people while they sleep, often at home and often over several nights. The requirements below follow from that.

Human research

Studies involving people carry the name of the approving research ethics committee or institutional review board and the approval reference, together with a statement that the work followed the Declaration of Helsinki.

Informed consent

Participants give informed consent to take part and to have their data published. Where a participant could be identified — a video still, a distinctive polysomnogram, a case description, an image of the face or the mouth — explicit consent to publish that material is obtained and reported.

Children and dependent participants

Studies involving children or adults unable to consent for themselves report consent from a parent, guardian or legal representative, and assent from the participant where they are able to give it.

Animal research

Studies in animals report the approving authority, the applicable national regulations and the steps taken to reduce the number of animals used and the distress caused.

Clinical trials

Interventional clinical trials must be registered in an accepted public trial registry at or before the first participant provides consent for enrollment. The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported in the manuscript.

Reporting guidelines

Manuscripts follow the reporting guideline that matches the study design — CONSORT for randomized trials, STROBE for observational studies, PRISMA for systematic reviews, CARE for case reports, STARD for diagnostic accuracy, ARRIVE for animal research — and the completed checklist is supplied with the submission.

07 · Data and AI

Data, code and declared AI use

Every empirical research manuscript must include a data-availability statement.

What the statement says

The statement says where the data are, how they may be obtained, and on what terms. A deposited dataset is cited with its repository and accession or DOI. Where data cannot be shared openly — participant confidentiality is the usual reason in sleep research — the statement says so and describes the access route.

Code and analysis

Analysis code, scoring rules and processing pipelines are shared or documented in enough detail for the analysis to be repeated, including software versions and the parameters used.

AI use by authors

Authors disclose the use of generative AI in producing the manuscript, naming the tool and describing what it was used for. The authors remain responsible for everything the submission contains.

AI use in review

Reviewers must obtain journal permission before using AI to assist with a review. Any permitted use must be disclosed, and confidential manuscript content must not be uploaded where confidentiality cannot be assured.

08 · The record

Corrections, retractions and the published record

A published article stays where it was published. When something in it needs to change, the change is published alongside it and linked to it, so the record shows both what was said and what was corrected.

Corrections

An error that affects the interpretation or the record of a published article is corrected in a citable notice linked to the original, which stays available.

Expressions of concern

Where a substantiated concern about a published article is under investigation, the journal may publish an expression of concern while the matter is resolved.

Retraction

An article is retracted where its findings are shown to be unreliable, or where a serious breach of research or publication ethics is established. The retraction notice states who is retracting the article and why, and the original remains accessible and marked.

Withdrawal before publication

Authors who need to withdraw a manuscript before publication should write to the editorial office and wait for written confirmation. The complete terms that apply are published on the article processing charges page, in its withdrawal section.

Preservation

Long-term preservation and the discovery services the journal participates in are described on the indexing page.

09 · Appeals

Appeals, complaints and misconduct

An author who believes a decision rested on a misreading of the work may ask for it to be looked at again.

Appealing a decision

Write to the editorial office, naming the manuscript and setting out the specific points you believe were misread, with the evidence. An editor who took no part in the original decision considers the appeal and replies with the outcome.

Complaints

Complaints about the handling of a manuscript, about an editor or about the conduct of a review go to the editorial office, which records them and replies with the outcome and the reasons for it.

Allegations of misconduct

Concerns about plagiarism, data integrity, image manipulation, duplicate submission, undisclosed competing interests or authorship are investigated with the authors and, where appropriate, their institution. The article record is corrected or retracted according to what the investigation finds.

Similarity checking

Submissions are screened with Crossref Similarity Check, powered by iThenticate. A similarity report is read by an editor in context; the report supports a judgment rather than replacing one.