Policies

Scientific decisions remain separate from financial support.

Peak Health Center publishes and financially supports JHST. All costs associated with submission processing, peer-review administration, publication, and journal operation are borne by Peak Health Center, a California 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.

Funding and publishing support do not determine whether a manuscript is accepted, rejected, corrected, or retracted. Editorial decisions are based solely on journal fit, methodological integrity, evidentiary strength, ethical compliance, and relevance to readers.

Editors and reviewers must recuse themselves whenever a personal, professional, academic, ideological, or financial relationship could reasonably affect—or appear to affect—their judgment.

Review must test the claim, not merely polish the manuscript.

Original Research, Methods & Validation, and systematic Review manuscripts normally receive assessment by at least two independent subject-matter reviewers. Perspectives and Analyses receive editorial review and may receive external review when a factual, technical, or clinical claim requires specialist evaluation. Editorials are reviewed internally unless the editors determine otherwise.

JHST ordinarily uses single-anonymized review: reviewer identities remain confidential unless a reviewer elects to sign the report. Author identities may be known to reviewers. The journal may use an alternative model when justified and will disclose the review status on the published article.

Reviewers advise; editors decide. Acceptance is never guaranteed by favorable reviews, payment, status, institutional affiliation, or prior relationship.

Credit requires contribution and responsibility.

Every listed author must have made a substantial intellectual contribution; participated in drafting or critical revision; approved the version submitted and published; and accepted responsibility for the integrity of the work.

The corresponding author confirms that all authors meet these requirements, that no qualifying author has been omitted, and that all authors approve the submission. Contributors who do not meet authorship requirements should be acknowledged with their permission.

Original Research and Methods & Validation submissions should include a contributor statement using the CRediT taxonomy where applicable. Changes to authorship after submission require an explanation and written agreement from all affected authors. JHST does not adjudicate unresolved authorship disputes; the relevant institution should investigate them.

The submitted record must be original and honestly represented.

Authors must disclose related manuscripts, preprints, conference abstracts, datasets, and prior reports that overlap materially with the submission. Simultaneous submission to another journal is not permitted.

Legitimate reuse must be quoted or paraphrased transparently and cited. Plagiarism, fabricated citations, undisclosed duplicate publication, inappropriate image manipulation, and presentation of another person’s ideas or language as original work are unacceptable.

Posting a genuine preprint does not automatically disqualify a manuscript, but it must be declared. If accepted, authors should link the preprint record to the final published version when possible.

Scientific value never overrides participant rights.

Research involving human participants, identifiable human material, or identifiable data must comply with applicable law and ethical standards, including the principles of the current Declaration of Helsinki. Authors must identify the reviewing ethics committee, approval or exemption number, and informed-consent process.

• Clinical trials should be registered prospectively in a recognized public registry, with the registration number reported.
• Privacy, confidentiality, autonomy, risk, burden, compensation, and inclusion must be addressed explicitly.
• Case reports require appropriate consent for publication when an individual could be identified.
• Research involving vulnerable people requires specific justification and protection.
• Animal research must receive appropriate institutional approval and minimize pain, distress, and unnecessary use.

Editorial review does not replace ethics approval. JHST may request protocols, consent forms, registrations, approvals, or additional documentation before or after publication.

Readers must be able to see interests that could shape interpretation.

Authors must disclose financial and non-financial relationships relevant to the work, including employment, consulting, equity, grants, gifts, patents, royalties, advisory positions, litigation, advocacy roles, close collaborations, and institutional relationships.

All funding and material support must be identified. Authors must explain the funder’s role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and the decision to submit. If the funder had no such role, state that directly.

A disclosed interest does not automatically prevent publication. Failure to disclose a relevant interest may lead to correction, editorial notice, investigation, or retraction.

The evidence must be inspectable.

Authors must describe methods with enough detail for qualified readers to evaluate and, where feasible, reproduce the work. Reports should distinguish prespecified analyses from exploratory analyses and identify deviations from the original protocol.

• Include a data-availability statement for all research articles.
• Share de-identified data, code, protocols, instruments, and analysis plans when ethically and legally possible.
• Explain access restrictions, confidentiality limits, proprietary constraints, or participant-consent limitations.
• Preserve original data and analysis records and provide them to the journal when integrity questions require examination.
• Report negative findings, missing data, exclusions, outliers, and failed analyses honestly.

For devices, sensors, and AI systems, authors must identify the reference standard, operating conditions, subgroup performance, uncertainty, known interference, and failure modes. A global accuracy percentage cannot substitute for complete validation.

AI may assist work; it cannot accept responsibility for it.

An AI system cannot be listed as an author, reviewer, editor, or accountable contributor. Human authors remain responsible for the accuracy, originality, citations, analysis, images, code, and conclusions of all submitted material.

Authors must disclose material use of generative AI or automated tools. Writing assistance should be described in the acknowledgments; use in data collection, analysis, coding, or figure generation should be described in the Methods. Routine spelling and grammar correction need not be disclosed.

Fabricated references, synthetic data presented as observed data, undisclosed generated images, or AI-produced language that infringes copyright or conceals plagiarism remain the responsibility of the submitting authors.

Concerns are examined fairly and documented.

Potential fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, unethical research, manipulated images, citation manipulation, peer-review interference, undisclosed conflicts, or other serious breaches may be investigated before or after publication.

JHST will seek a response from the relevant authors and may request original data or supporting records. When appropriate, the journal may contact an author’s institution, ethics committee, funder, regulator, or another journal. Editors will avoid public accusations while facts remain unresolved.

Possible outcomes include rejection, suspension of review, correction, expression of concern, retraction, notice to relevant institutions, or no action when the concern is not substantiated. Retraction protects the literature; it is not used as punishment.

The published record is permanent, but it is not frozen.

Authors and readers should report material errors promptly. Minor changes that do not affect interpretation may be corrected directly with a dated record. Errors affecting data, analysis, attribution, or conclusions require a linked correction notice.

An expression of concern may be published when a serious question remains unresolved and readers need warning while an investigation continues. Retraction may be necessary when findings are unreliable, research was unethical, publication was redundant without disclosure, or serious misconduct undermines the work.

Retracted articles ordinarily remain accessible as part of the scholarly record, clearly marked and linked to the retraction notice. DOI and article URLs are maintained, and corrected metadata will be deposited when registration services are available.

Disagreement is heard; pressure is not.

Authors may appeal a decision by identifying a specific error in the review or editorial process and supplying evidence. An appeal is not a second submission of the same arguments. When feasible, an editor who did not make the original decision will assess it.

Complaints about ethics, confidentiality, conflicts, discrimination, reviewer conduct, or editorial procedure will be handled separately from the scientific merits of the manuscript. No editor may decide a complaint concerning their own conduct.

Dedicated submission, appeal, and ethics-contact instructions will be published before editorial intake opens.

Editorial access is limited to editorial need.

Submitted manuscripts, correspondence, reviews, personal details, and unpublished data are confidential. Access is limited to editors, reviewers, advisers, and service providers who require it for legitimate journal operations and who are bound to protect it.

Reviewers may not use unpublished information for research, commercial advantage, litigation, investment, competition, or personal benefit. The journal will not sell author, reviewer, reader, or manuscript data.

Personal information may be retained when necessary to document decisions, preserve the scholarly record, prevent misconduct, or meet legal obligations.

Publication is free to authors and readers.

JHST charges no submission or publication fees, and all published articles are freely available without a reader paywall. The costs of submission processing, peer-review administration, publication, and journal operation are borne by Peak Health Center. Financial support does not influence editorial decisions.

Copyright and reuse terms will be displayed clearly on each accepted article. Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for third-party material. Submission does not authorize undisclosed commercial reuse of another person’s work.

JHST does not accept advertising within scholarly articles or sell favorable editorial coverage.

Standards used to build this framework.

These policies are informed by widely recognized primary guidance. Referencing these organizations does not imply membership, certification, or endorsement.