Journal policies

Authorship

A manuscript should list as authors only those people who made a significant contribution to the work presented in the manuscript. Significant contributions include, but are not limited to, the original conception of the study, the design of experimental and numerical protocoles, the analysis and interpretation of results, and the drafting and editing of the manuscript. Those who made indirect contributions to the study, or whose contributions were not significant, should not be listed as authors and should instead be noted in the acknowledgements section of the manuscript. All authors must have an ORCID iD (or another persistent identifier that is supported by the journal).

All authors should be able to identify their contribution to the manuscript and should be familiar with the contributions of the other authors. Each author is responsible for the integrity of their own work and should have confidence in the integrity of the manuscript as a whole. All authors must agree to submit the manuscript for peer review with the journal before doing so, and they must all agree to the submission of any subsequent revisions.

The ordering of the author list should be decided upon before submitting the manuscript to the journal. The first author should be that person who made the most significant intellectual contribution to the work. When the contributions of two or more leading authors are equal, it is possible to choose shared first authorship. If an authorship dispute arises at any point, the peer review process will be stopped and will resume only when the dispute is resolved. If the dispute can not be resolved, the editor will withdraw the manuscript from consideration. Changes to the author list during peer review must be agreed upon by all authors. Editors are not in a position to determine authorship nor to resolve authorship disputes.

Each manuscript must designate a corresponding author who has additional responsibilities. This author is responsible for all correspondence with the journal and for any future correspondence resulting from reader inquiries. The corresponding author assures that the manuscript satisfies all of the journal’s policies and attests to the contribution of each author by use of the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT). The corresponding author is responsible for issuing a correction or retraction if significant errors are discovered after the manuscript is published.

Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT)

Each submitted manuscript must include an “Author contribution statement” that details each of the author’s contributions to the work. The Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) is used for identifying and specifying author contributions, and these roles are summarized in the following table.

Code of conduct

This Code of Conduct for the Planetary Research Cooperative (hereinafter referred to as “the association” or the PRC) outlines the minimum expected commitment and conduct of its members, editors, authors, and reviewers as they work together to advance the goals of the association, which are to foster interactions among planetary scientists and aid researchers in sharing their work with the public. This Code should be adhered to in all forums associated with the PRC, physical and electronic, including in-person and online meetings, discussion boards, and email communications.

The Planetary Research Cooperative is committed to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone regardless of gender, disability, physical appearance, body size, age, race, religion, or other protected status. We do not tolerate harassment of members or participants in any form. The association expects that all members, editors, authors, and reviewers will abide by this Code of Conduct, creating an environment free from harassment, discrimination, disruption, incivility, or violence of any kind. We expect participants to exercise consideration and respect in their speech and actions and refrain from demeaning, discriminatory, or harassing behavior.

A Planetary Research Cooperative member should:

• Act respectfully and professionally.

• Treat others with respect and consideration.

• Participate in discussions, deliberations, and decisions in a courteous, considerate, and collegial manner.

• Communicate openly and thoughtfully with other members while also being considerate and respectful of differing views and opinions.

• Comply with any applicable employer policies, and federal, state and local laws.

A Planetary Research Cooperative member should never:

• Intimidate, harass, abuse, discriminate, or practice derogatory or demeaning writing, speech, or actions against other members.

• Engage in harmful or discriminatory verbal or written comments or visual images related to a person’s gender, disability, physical appearance, body size, age, or other personal characteristics.

• Use nudity, sexual images, or stereotyped images in association-run spaces, including but not limited to presentation slides, video backgrounds, or digital communications.

• Create a sexualized environment.

• Practice unprofessional, unwelcome, uninvited, or unwanted attention or contact, including in online spaces.

• Perform acts of physical assault, including unwelcome touching or groping.

• Make any real or implied threat of physical harm.

• Make any real or implied threat of professional or financial damage or harm.

• Retaliate for reporting unacceptable behavior.

• Falsely report unacceptable behavior.

• Perform theft of intellectual property, including but not limited to disseminating the contents of an author’s work on social media or other platforms without attribution.

Editors, authors, and reviewers of association-run publications have additional responsibilities. In addition to following the above guidelines for association members, they must:

• Comply with all journal policies, including Authorship, Plagiarism, Prior Publication, Use of Artificial Intelligence, and Open Science Data and Code Availability.

• Respect the confidentiality of the peer-review process.

• Abide by the following guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, and Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers.

Reporting: How and to whom to make an incident report

We encourage reporting of issues that cannot be handled by direct feedback. If a Planetary Research Cooperative member, editor, author, or reviewer experiences or witnesses any behavior that violates these policies, they should report the incident to any member of the association’s Board of Directors. If any member of the association, editor, author, or reviewer is being made uncomfortable by another member, editor, author, or reviewer, or notices that someone else is being made uncomfortable, or have any other concerns, they should contact a member of the Board of Directors. If the person responsible is part of the Board of Directors, they will recuse themselves from any involvement with the handling of the incident. The Board of Directors will respond as promptly as they can.

The Planetary Research Cooperative Board of Directors will take all good-faith reports of concern seriously, especially those of harassment. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that took place at any point in time. The Board of Directors reserves the right to exclude people from the association based on their past behavior, including behavior outside spaces run by the association and behavior towards people who are not association members.

All Board members will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. Should other methods fail to improve the situation, the Board may publicly name a person about whom harassment complaints were received, or privately warn third parties about them, if doing so is believed to be necessary to increase the safety of association members or the general public. Harassment victims will not be publicly named by the Board of Directors without their affirmative consent.

Consequences: How this Code of Conduct will be enforced

Planetary Research Cooperative members asked to stop any harmful behavior are expected to comply immediately. If a participant engages in harmful behavior that is not remedied when requested, including but not limited to harassment, the Board of Directors may take any action they deem appropriate to prevent further harm and to mitigate existing harm. For significant or repeated harmful behaviors, consequences may include but are not limited to:

• Revocation of Planetary Research Cooperative membership.

• Expulsion from all Planetary Research Cooperative spaces.

• After the conclusion of a harassment investigation, the person(s) in violation may be named to other association members or the general public.

• Banning from future interactions with association, including publishing in any association-run journals.

Communication of this Code of Conduct

This policy must be agreed to by new members, and membership is contingent upon agreement.

Name changes

Planetary Research recognizes that an author may change their name for a variety of reasons. The journal does not ask for any justification or proof of the name change, and the journal asks only that the name change be consistent with the name on the author’s ORCID profile. Name change requests require the explicit consent of the author whose name is being changed.

When asked to change an author’s name, the journal will update the name used in all of the author’s previous publications with the journal. The name associated with the online HTML version of the article will be updated, and when technically possible, the journal will regenerate a new PDF version of the article with the new name. The DOIs of the affected articles will not be changed, but the article metadata will be updated to reflect the name change both on the journal’s website and in any databases where the journal uploads article metadata.

Recognizing that a name change is a personal matter, the author will be given the choice to update the publication record silently, or to publish a formal erratum that notes the change to the manuscript. When the author chooses to update their name silently with no erratum, the journal recommends the author to inform all co-authors of the affected manuscripts of the change. When publishing an erratum, the author may choose to keep the prior name on the manuscript and to simply note the author’s new name.

The journal will not change any citations in articles published by the journal following a name change request. The journal is also not in a position to ask third parties to update the author’s name, nor to replace any archived versions of the affected manuscript with the corrected version.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the use of someone’s intellectual or creative work without proper attribution. Plagiarism can take many forms, with the most common types being the direct copying of text or images, the paraphrasing of text, the modification of imagery, and the use of novel ideas, all without attributing the original source. Plagiarism includes the case of “self-plagiarism”, where one’s own previous work was used without attributing the original source. Plagiarism also includes the presentation of results from a numerical code when the code is not attributed. Plagiarism can sometimes be inadvertent, such as when relying on material generated by artificial intelligence models that were trained on other people’s work.

The journal considers all cases of plagiarism to be a serious ethical breach, regardless of the quantity and significance of the material that was plagiarized. If plagiarism is detected in a submitted manuscript, the peer review process will be halted and will continue only when the plagiarized material is removed. When plagiarism is detected in an article after it is published, the corresponding author of the work will be asked to either correct or retract the article. When the plagiarism is limited, it may be possible to modify the originally published work and to publish a correction that describes the changes that were made to the article. When the plagiarism is extensive, or when it is not feasible to correct the article without making extensive typesetting changes, the article will instead be retracted. When it is not possible to contact the corresponding author of an article, or if the corresponding author is known to be deceased, the journal may opt to instead publish an editorial expression of concern.

The editorial board is solely responsible for judging whether plagiarism has occurred. The policies and procedures for correcting an article that contains plagiarism are described in the Errata, corrections, and retractions section.

Prior publication and self archiving

Planetary Research will only consider for publication manuscripts that have not been previously published and that are not being concurrently considered for publication in another peer-reviewed journal. Peer-reviewed journals include those journals that have an editorial board and that solicit reviews of submitted manuscripts. Prior publication includes manuscripts that were published in a book, manuscripts that were published in another language, and manuscripts that are not significantly different from previously published work. Preprints, theses, dissertations, abstracts, oral presentations, and other formats that represent an unfinished state of the work are not considered as representing prior publication.

Authors may at any time during the peer-review process upload an author formatted manuscript to a preprint server, an online institutional archive, or a personal website. Following publication, the author may also upload the final journal formatted manuscript. After the manuscript has been accepted for publication, the author is encouraged to link any self-archived manuscripts to the final version of record on the journal’s website.

Errata, corrections, and retractions

When errors are found in an article after it is published, it may be necessary to publish a notice that describes and corrects the error. If the integrity of the entire article is called into doubt, or if the article is found to have violated the journal’s policies, it may even be necessary to retract the article. In both cases, the journal will publish a notice that is citable and that is bidirectionally linked to the original online version of the article. In the case where the error involves simple formatting issues or typos, it may be possible to update both the online and PDF versions of the article.

It is important to know if an article has been updated since it was first published. The official version of record of an article is considered to be the online version on the journal’s website. Any updates that might exist for an article, along with links to the corresponding notices, will be displayed prominently in the online version before the article text. To determine if updates exist from the PDF version of an article, the PDF will include a Crossmark button, which is a service provided by the non-profit organization Crossref. By clicking on this button, the reader will be directed to a separate webpage that will note if the document is current, or if any post-publication updates are available.

Errata

When an error in a previously published article is discovered, it may be possible to correct both the online and PDF versions when the error is minor. Examples of minor errors include replacing an incorrect image with the correct version, replacing a low resolution version of a figure with a higher resolution version, fixing typos in a mathematical equation, fixing incorrect numerical data in a table, and fixing the numbering of equations, figures and tables. For these cases, the journal will publish a separate Erratum that describes and corrects the error, and that will mention whether the article’s online and PDF versions were updated or not. Depending on the nature of the error, the author of the Erratum will be either the authors of the original article or the publisher. For technical reasons, when the online version of record is modified, it may not always be possible to generate an updated PDF version of the article.

Corrections

When a significant error is discovered that affects certain aspects of an article, the author may publish a correction. Corrections address flaws in the methodology, flaws in the data analysis procedures, or any other errors that were found to have a significant impact on the material presented in the original publication. There is no limit on the length of a correction, but corrections should in general be short and succinct. Depending on the extent of the correction, the correction may be peer reviewed.

Retractions

When irreparable flaws are discovered in an article that call into question the integrity of the work as a whole, when the article was found to have violated any of the journal’s policies, or when there is evidence for scientific misconduct, the article may be retracted. As a general rule, the authors should opt to write a correction instead of a retraction whenever it is possible. If the retraction request is initiated by the authors, all authors must agree to the retraction. If the retraction request is not unanimous among the authors, the editor-in-chief will decide if the retraction request is warranted. If the editorial board is made aware that a previously published article might violate journal policies, the authors of the article will be contacted and asked to respond. Failure to respond could result in the article being retracted.

When an article is retracted, a separate notice will be published either by the authors or the publisher that states the reason for the retraction. Both the online and PDF versions of the article will be replaced with a copy of the statement in the retraction notice. Though the content of the article will be removed from the journal’s website, the journal will retain a copy of the original article in their internal records. If the authors can not be contacted, or if they are known to be deceased, the editors may decide to instead publish an editorial expression of concern.

Artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence (which includes, but is not limited to, large language models) can be used responsibly and ethically throughout the course of a scientific study. Possible use cases include the development of data processing tools, the scientific analysis of data, and improvement of the presentation of the final written manuscript. When not properly supervised, however, the use of AI tools can lead to the use of erroneous and flawed material that the authors might later present in an authoritative manner. The use of AI tools can also be the source of serious ethical breaches, with the greatest risks being plagiarism, the violation of confidentiality agreements, and copyright infringement.

The journal’s guiding principle for the use of AI is that the authors of a manuscript are entirely responsible for the integrity of their work, regardless of whether AI was used or not. An AI tool can not be listed as an author as it can not take personal responsibility for its contribution to the work. The journal will not attempt to detect if AI was used in any part of a manuscript, but will instead rely on the responsible disclosure by the authors wherever AI use made a significant contribution to the manuscript.

The following sections provide guidelines for common AI uses, which include language improvement, generative imagery, scientific analysis, and peer review.

Language improvement

Artificial intelligence tools can be useful for helping improve the presentation of author-written text in a manuscript. Such tools are ubiquitous in word processing platforms and softwares, and range from simple spelling and grammar checkers, to the translation of text between languages, to more advanced tools that make significant changes to the tone and form of the original text. It is not necessary for the authors to disclose the use of AI language improvement tools, and the authors are ultimately responsible for every word that appears in a manuscript. Given the ethical risks, however, the journal strongly advises against using AI for any writing activities besides language improvement.

Generative imagery

Artificial intelligence models that generate images based on a user prompt are by necessity trained on large quantities of data. The images used for training these models may be copyrighted, and care must be taken to ensure that the intellectual property rights of the training materials are not violated. For example, when images with a CC-BY copyright are adapted or transformed, one is required to give credit for the image and to provide a link to the original license. Most of the popular commercial AI models fall short of this legal responsibility. For this reason, as a general rule, the journal does not allow the use of generative AI imagery in its publications. Exceptions to this rule are possible when the AI model is documented to be trained exclusively on images that either are in the public domain, or that have a license that does not require attribution (such as the CC0 license). For these exceptions, the authors must acknowledge the software that was used to generate the image.

Scientific analysis tools

Artificial intelligence tools may be used as part of a scientific analysis. Examples include the use of AI-generated computer code, AI-assisted debugging of codes, pattern recognition, and other data analysis techniques that are suitable to an AI approach. The use of AI tools for these purposes should be acknowledged in the manuscript just as one would acknowledge the use of any other non-AI scientific analysis tool. In particular, whenever the author uses AI for a non-trivial task, its use must be acknowledged.

When acknowledging the use of AI as part of a scientific task, the authors should provide sufficient detail such that the AI-generated results can be reproduced. The amount of detail provided should be commensurate with the importance and novelty of the result. Whereas trivial results may require little or no explanation, major results should include the full scripts and prompts along with detailed information about the version of the AI model and its dependencies.

Peer review

As part of the peer review process, the reviewer is asked to assess several aspects of a submitted manuscript. These include the originality of the work, the soundness of the methodology and analysis approach, and the appropriateness of the interpretations. In addition, the reviewer is also asked to provide constructive criticism for how the manuscript could be improved. The reviewer assessments are the primary source that an editor relies upon to make a decision on whether a manuscript should be accepted for publication or not. Artificial intelligence tools, and in particular large language models, often have difficulties in distinguishing fact from fiction and are thus entirely incapable of replacing the role of a reviewer. The journal does not allow AI to be used as a tool to assess a submitted manuscript during peer review.

If a reviewer uses AI to improve the language of their review, they must take care that they do not violate the confidentiality of the review process. Both the manuscript and reviews are considered to be confidential up until the point where the manuscript is published online. Under no circumstance should the reviewer ever provide a submitted manuscript that is under review to an AI. Furthermore, the reviewer should only use AI for language improvement when they have a clear legal assurance that all content will remain confidential and will not be used for further AI training. Most commercial AIs can not provide this assurance.

Special issues

Planetary Research will occasionally publish a collection of articles with a common theme as a special issue. Special issue topics can be proposed by anyone and are subject to approval by the editor-in-chief. The journal does not make use of guest special issue editors, and all manuscripts submitted to a special issue are reviewed using the same procedures and standards as those submitted to a standard issue. When manuscripts submitted to a special issue are accepted following peer review, they will be published online immediately. When the last manuscript of the special issue is published online, an issue will be created with all of the accepted special issue articles.

To propose a special issue, one should write a letter to the editor-in-chief describing why the special issue is timely and of interest to the scientific community. The proposer should provide a list of tentative article titles and corresponding first author names, along with a proposed deadline for manuscript submission. Though there is no minimum required number of articles for a special issue, if the expected number is less than 10, the proposer should justify why the small number of articles should not instead be published in a standard issue. The editor-in-chief will decide whether to proceed with the special issue or not after consultation with the editorial board.

Special issue topics will be advertised on the journal website. Special issues are open to submissions from the entire scientific community, and not just the authors previously identified by the proposer. Following acceptance of each manuscript, the editor-in-chief, in consultation with the proposer, will decide whether the article is appropriate for the special issue, or whether it should instead be published in a standard issue. If the number of manuscripts submitted to a special issue is significantly different than expected, the editor-in-chief may decide to cancel the special issue and instead publish the articles in a standard issue. After the final manuscript of the special issue has been accepted, the proposer of the issue will be given the opportunity to write an introduction to the special issue.

The proposer of the special issue is responsible for inciting authors to submit their manuscripts in a timely manner. The final publication date will be coordinated with the proposer, but will typically occur one year after the special issue was proposed. Beyond one year, extensions must be approved by the editor-in-chief. Once the special issue is created, it is no longer possible to add additional articles to the issue.