Institute for Advanced Materials Research Press requires all research submitted to its journals to be conducted and reported responsibly and in accordance with applicable institutional, ethical, legal, safety, environmental, and regulatory requirements.
This publisher-wide policy applies to all journals published by the Press. Authors are responsible for obtaining all approvals, permits, authorizations, and permissions required for their research before the work begins. Manuscripts must identify the relevant approving body and provide an approval, permit, authorization, or reference number where applicable.
Where formal approval is not required, authors may be asked to explain the institutional, legal, or regulatory basis for that determination.
Research involving materials synthesis, characterization, modeling, processing, manufacturing, testing, application, transport, storage, or disposal must comply with applicable laboratory, occupational, industrial, and environmental-safety requirements.
Authors must identify and manage relevant risks associated with potentially hazardous materials, processes, or equipment, including:
Toxic, corrosive, reactive, explosive, or flammable substances
Nanomaterials and materials with uncertain toxicological properties
Radioactive materials or ionizing radiation
High-pressure and high-temperature systems
Lasers, electrical systems, and high-energy equipment
Biological or biologically derived materials
Environmentally hazardous or persistent substances
Pilot-scale or industrial processing equipment
Methods must provide sufficient information for qualified researchers to understand relevant hazards and reproduce the work responsibly. Necessary safety precautions, containment procedures, protective measures, and disposal requirements must not be omitted where they are required for the safe interpretation or replication of the research.
Research involving chemical substances, nanomaterials, manufacturing processes, energy systems, waste, emissions, or environmental release must comply with applicable environmental requirements.
Claims concerning sustainability, recyclability, biodegradability, energy efficiency, lifecycle performance, circularity, resource efficiency, or reduced environmental impact must be supported by appropriate evidence. Authors must clearly report the methods, system boundaries, assumptions, datasets, comparison criteria, and limitations underlying such claims.
Where relevant, manuscripts should describe procedures for:
Waste treatment and disposal
Material recovery, reuse, and recycling
Emissions monitoring and control
Prevention of environmental release
Environmental-risk management
Lifecycle and sustainability assessment
Safe handling of environmentally persistent substances
Claims must not overstate the environmental performance or sustainability of a material, process, model, or technology.
Research involving human participants may be considered only where it has a clear and substantial connection to the aims and scope of the selected journal. Relevant research may include materials-related usability studies, human–technology interaction, sensory evaluation, or testing of wearable, responsive, or human-interfacing materials.
Where required, authors must obtain approval from an appropriate institutional ethics committee before participant recruitment or data collection begins. The manuscript must identify the approving body and provide the approval or reference number where available.
Informed consent must be obtained where required. Identifiable personal information, photographs, video or audio recordings, or other material from which an individual may reasonably be recognized must not be published without appropriate consent for publication and legal authorization.
Manuscripts focused primarily on patient case reports, clinical trials, diagnosis, treatment, clinical care, or other medical or healthcare subjects are outside the current publishing scope of Institute for Advanced Materials Research Press, unless a journal expressly states otherwise in its official aims and scope.
Research involving animals must comply with applicable institutional, national, and international animal-welfare requirements and must receive approval from an appropriate authorized body before the work begins.
The manuscript must state:
The name of the approving body
The approval or reference number, where available
The applicable animal-welfare standards or regulations
The measures taken to minimize unnecessary harm or distress
The scientific justification for the use of animals
Research involving biological agents, genetically modified organisms, microorganisms, human-derived materials, animal-derived materials, or other regulated biological materials must comply with applicable biosafety, biosecurity, collection, transport, storage, transfer, import, export, and disposal requirements.
Such research must demonstrate a clear and substantial contribution to the aims and scope of the selected journal.
Research involving artificial intelligence, machine learning, materials datasets, computational models, simulation, software, automated experimentation, or digital engineering must comply with applicable requirements concerning data access, confidentiality, licensing, privacy, security, and intellectual property.
Authors must report, where relevant:
Data provenance and collection procedures
Dataset inclusion and exclusion criteria
Data cleaning and preprocessing
Training, validation, and test-data separation
Measures used to prevent data leakage
Model architecture and training procedures
Evaluation metrics and baseline comparisons
Uncertainty and sensitivity analysis
Potential sources of bias
Model and dataset limitations
Software, code, and model availability
Use of generative AI or other AI-assisted tools
Computational and AI-based studies must provide sufficient methodological information to support scientific assessment and, where reasonably possible, reproducibility.
Data fabrication, falsification, selective reporting, unauthorized data use, misleading image processing, inappropriate manipulation of characterization results, and misrepresentation of computational performance constitute research misconduct.
Microscopy, spectroscopy, diffraction, tomography, thermal analysis, mechanical testing, imaging, signal-processing results, and other characterization data must be presented accurately.
Adjustments to images, spectra, signals, or other research data must not obscure, remove, introduce, or misrepresent relevant information. Any processing that materially affects interpretation must be described in the Methods section, figure caption, or supplementary material.
Authors must retain original, unprocessed data for an appropriate period and provide it to the relevant journal or the Publisher where reasonably required for editorial assessment or investigation.
Image enhancement, contrast adjustment, noise reduction, background correction, data smoothing, or removal of experimental artifacts must be applied consistently and reported transparently where such processing could affect interpretation.
Research conducted with industrial partners or involving proprietary materials, commercial software, confidential datasets, restricted facilities, patented technologies, or intellectual-property agreements must be reported transparently.
Authors must disclose relevant:
Funding and sponsorship
Commercial relationships
Access restrictions
Competing interests
Intellectual-property interests
Patent applications
Confidentiality agreements
Restrictions affecting data or code availability
Confidentiality, intellectual-property, or commercial restrictions must not prevent editors and reviewers from adequately evaluating the methods, evidence, validity, and conclusions of the research.
Authors must not submit information that they are not legally or contractually authorized to disclose.
Research conducted in industrial facilities, manufacturing environments, mines, energy facilities, private laboratories, public infrastructure, or other controlled locations must be performed with the permission of the responsible institution, organization, owner, or authority.
Where applicable, authors must disclose relevant access arrangements, safety authorizations, industrial permissions, contractual restrictions, and organizational involvement in the design, conduct, analysis, or reporting of the research.
Commercial or industrial involvement does not automatically prevent publication, but it must be disclosed and must not compromise the independence, transparency, or reliability of the research.
Authors must comply with applicable requirements relating to controlled materials, restricted technologies, export controls, sanctions, national security, and research with potential dual-use implications.
Where research could create substantial safety, security, environmental, or societal risks, authors must clearly describe the relevant safeguards and risk-management measures.
The Publisher may seek additional technical, ethical, institutional, or regulatory assessment before continuing the review or publication process.
Depending on the nature of the study and the requirements of the selected journal, manuscripts may be required to include:
Ethics Approval Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Consent for Publication Statement
Animal-Welfare Statement
Laboratory-Safety Statement
Environmental Compliance Statement
Biosafety or Biosecurity Statement
Data Availability Statement
Code or Software Availability Statement
Funding Statement
Competing Interests Statement
Author Contributions Statement
Generative AI Disclosure
Regulatory or Institutional Authorization Statement
Industrial or Commercial Involvement Statement
Where a particular declaration does not apply, authors should state this when requested by the journal.
Institute for Advanced Materials Research Press and its journals may request supporting documentation where clarification or verification is necessary. Such documentation may include:
Ethics approvals
Regulatory permits
Laboratory-safety authorizations
Animal-welfare approvals
Consent records
Data-use permissions
Material-transfer agreements
Industrial access permissions
Biosafety approvals
Environmental authorizations
Institutional confirmations
Failure to provide adequate evidence of compliance may result in:
Return of the manuscript for clarification or correction
Suspension of peer review
Rejection of the manuscript
Withdrawal of acceptance
Publication of a correction
Publication of an expression of concern
Retraction of a published article
Notification of the relevant institution, funder, ethics committee, or regulatory authority where appropriate
Any action will be based on the nature and seriousness of the concern, the available evidence, the policies of the Publisher and relevant journal, and recognized principles of publication ethics.
Authors remain responsible for the accuracy and completeness of all statements concerning ethics approval, informed consent, safety, environmental compliance, regulatory authorization, data permissions, and institutional approval.
This policy establishes the minimum research-ethics and regulatory requirements applicable across Institute for Advanced Materials Research Press.
Individual journals may adopt additional or more specific requirements based on their aims, scope, subject area, research methods, or regulatory context. Where both publisher-level and journal-specific requirements apply, authors must comply with the requirement that is more specific to the submitted research.
Authors should review this policy together with the aims and scope, Author Guidelines, publication-ethics policies, and submission requirements of their selected journal.
Contact: [email protected]
Institute for Advanced Materials Research Press