Guiding principles
GCP expects every volume it publishes to meet ordinary standards of research and publication integrity: that authorship is accurately represented, that work is original or properly attributed, that conflicts of interest are disclosed, and that concerns raised about a paper are taken seriously and addressed transparently. Because GCP relies on each conference's own review process for technical evaluation, day-to-day responsibility for these standards sits first with the conference's programme committee, with the GCP editorial office acting as a second layer of oversight and the final decision-maker on any correction or retraction.
Authorship disputes
Authorship disputes — disagreement over who should be listed as an author, in what order, or with what affiliation — should be resolved among the authors themselves wherever possible, with the volume editor available to mediate if needed. If a dispute cannot be resolved before the production deadline, the volume editor may hold the paper out of that printing and revisit it for a later stage, rather than publish disputed authorship information.
Plagiarism and originality
Plagiarism — presenting another person's words, ideas, data, or results as one's own without attribution — and self-plagiarism — presenting one's own previously published work as new without disclosure — are both treated as breaches of the originality requirements set out in the Author Guidelines. All camera-ready submissions are screened for text similarity before publication. Where screening or a reader raises a credible concern, the editorial office contacts the corresponding author and the volume editor for an explanation before any action is taken; unresolved cases can result in a paper being withheld from publication or, after publication, retracted.
Conflicts of interest
Authors should disclose any financial, professional, or personal relationship that could be seen to influence the work presented — funding sources, consulting relationships, or a close relationship with a reviewer, for example — in an Acknowledgements or Conflicts of Interest statement. Reviewers assigned to a paper on which they have a competing interest should recuse themselves from that review; this is a responsibility of the conference's own review process, which the minimum review standard in the Organizer Guidelines expects committees to manage.
Data and reproducibility
Where a paper reports empirical results, authors are encouraged to describe their methods in enough detail that another researcher could, in principle, reproduce the work, and to make underlying data or code available where practical — whether in an appendix, a supplementary file, or a link to an external repository. This is a strong recommendation rather than a strict requirement, since practices vary substantially by field and by what a conference's own review process already expects.
Handling misconduct concerns
Anyone — a reader, a reviewer, another author — who has a good-faith concern about a published or in-production paper (for example, suspected plagiarism, data fabrication, or undisclosed conflicts of interest) can raise it with the volume editor or directly with the GCP editorial office via the Contact page. Concerns are reviewed confidentially in the first instance; the author is given the opportunity to respond before any public action, such as a correction or retraction notice, is taken.
Corrections and retractions
Once a volume is published, GCP distinguishes between two kinds of post-publication change:
- Correction. Used for errors that do not undermine the paper's validity — a typo in an author's name, a mislabeled figure axis, a missing acknowledgement. A correction notice is published alongside the original paper; the original DOI and text remain intact except for the specific fix.
- Retraction. Used where a paper's findings or integrity are substantially compromised — for example, confirmed plagiarism, fabricated data, or duplicate publication. The original paper remains accessible, clearly watermarked as retracted, alongside a notice explaining the reason. Retraction does not remove a paper from the record; it flags it.
Complaints
A complaint about how a specific ethics concern was handled, or about the conduct of a volume editor or the GCP editorial office itself, can be sent through the Contact page marked "Editorial complaint." Complaints are acknowledged and handled by a member of the editorial office who was not involved in the original decision being complained about.