Excerpt from the General P.I.E. Guidelines – Privacy and copyright protection

1.    Privacy of individuals and their right to seek anonymity must be respected; this applies whether or not they are connected with the publishing sector.

2.    Copyright and intellectual property must be respected and protected and action sought immediately against breaches of plagiarism rules or other similar issues. Support and advice must be accorded to colleagues whose copyright has been breached or who have been the victims of plagiarism, whether their cases were analysed internally or by the PIE’s Sub-Committee.

3.    An ethicalworking environment should be maintained by defining and protecting the policy of the journal.

4.    Confidentiality, consent for publication, authorship, integrity, transparency and the peer-review process should be respected in the same way, following strict guidelines.

5.    Individual data must be protected. All members of the editorial staff and publishers should protect the confidentiality of individual information and the right to privacy of every human being.