Advertising and Direct Marketing Policy

The Herald of the National Children's Medical Center maintains a clear separation between advertising, promotional activities, direct marketing, and the journal’s scientific and editorial functions.

The journal may consider advertising and promotional materials only where they are lawful, professionally appropriate, clearly identifiable, and consistent with the journal’s scientific character and ethical responsibilities.

Advertising revenue, sponsorship, promotional relationships, or direct marketing activities must not influence peer review, manuscript selection, editorial decisions, publication priority, interpretation of scientific findings, or post-publication editorial actions.

This policy is based on the principles of transparency and editorial independence reflected in the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing developed jointly by COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, and WAME.

Separation of Advertising and Editorial Content

Advertisements and promotional materials must be clearly distinguishable from:

research articles;
reviews;
editorials;
clinical reports;
news or announcements produced by the journal;
peer-reviewed and other scholarly content.

Advertising must not be designed or positioned in a manner that could reasonably lead readers to believe that it forms part of the journal’s scientific content or has been scientifically endorsed by the journal.

Where necessary, advertising should be clearly identified using an appropriate designation such as “Advertisement”, “Sponsored”, or an equivalent notice.

The Principles of Transparency require advertisements to remain separate from published content and unrelated to editorial decision-making.

Acceptance of Advertising

The journal may consider advertising that is compatible with applicable law, professional standards, ethical publishing practices, and the scientific and medical character of the journal.

Acceptance of advertising does not constitute endorsement by the journal, its owner, publisher, Editor-in-Chief, Editorial Board, or affiliated institutions of the advertised organization, product, service, or claim.

The journal reserves the right to decline, withdraw, or discontinue advertising that is:

unlawful;
misleading or deceptive;
scientifically unsupported in a material way;
inconsistent with professional or ethical standards;
discriminatory or offensive;
likely to compromise the reputation or independence of the journal;
presented in a manner that could be confused with editorial content.

Decision-Making on Advertising

Decisions concerning the commercial or technical acceptance and placement of advertisements are kept separate from decisions concerning manuscripts.

Advertising arrangements may be administered by the journal owner, publisher, or appropriately authorized administrative or technical personnel.

Editors responsible for scientific evaluation are not required to consider the commercial interests of advertisers when making editorial decisions.

The Editor-in-Chief retains authority to object to advertising where its presence could compromise editorial integrity, scientific credibility, participant protection, or the reputation of the journal.

Editorial Independence

Advertisers, sponsors, commercial partners, service providers, and other external organizations have no authority to:

select or reject manuscripts;
select reviewers;
influence reviewer reports;
determine editorial decisions;
require publication of favorable findings;
suppress unfavorable findings;
influence the timing of publication for commercial reasons;
require citation of particular products, services, organizations, or publications;
interfere with corrections, retractions, Expressions of Concern, or other integrity actions.

Advertising and other revenue sources must remain independent of editorial decision-making, consistent with the Transparency Principles.

Advertising and Scientific Claims

The presence of an advertisement must not be interpreted as evidence that the journal has independently verified or endorsed all scientific, clinical, commercial, or comparative claims made by an advertiser.

Advertisers remain responsible for the accuracy and legality of their advertising claims.

Where advertising concerns health-related products or services, it must comply with applicable legal and regulatory requirements.

Advertising must not be presented as a substitute for independent scientific evidence, clinical judgment, or professional guidance.

Placement of Advertisements

Advertising should be presented in a manner that preserves a clear distinction between promotional and scholarly content.

Advertisement placement must not intentionally create a misleading association between an advertised product or service and:

the conclusions of a particular research article;
an editorial recommendation;
a clinical recommendation;
a reviewer’s assessment;
the journal’s endorsement.

Where online advertising technologies are used, their operation should be consistent with this policy and the journal’s applicable privacy requirements.

Special Issues and Supplements

Sponsorship or external financial support for a special issue, supplement, conference-related publication, or other collection must be transparently disclosed where applicable.

Financial support must not give a sponsor authority over:

manuscript acceptance;
reviewer selection;
peer review;
final editorial decisions;
interpretation of research results;
correction or retraction decisions.

Scientific content remains subject to the journal’s applicable editorial, peer-review, conflict-of-interest, and publication-ethics requirements.

Conflicts of Interest

Any relationship between advertising, sponsorship, and published scholarly content that could reasonably be perceived as a conflict of interest must be managed transparently.

Editors and other individuals involved in decisions concerning scholarly manuscripts must disclose relevant conflicts and recuse themselves where appropriate under the journal’s Conflicts of Interest and Funding Policy.

Direct Marketing

Direct marketing conducted by or on behalf of the journal may include appropriate communications concerning:

calls for papers;
new issues or published content;
journal services;
relevant editorial announcements;
invitations to submit manuscripts;
legitimate scholarly activities related to the journal.

Such communications must be appropriate, reasonably targeted, truthful, and unobtrusive.

The current Transparency Principles specifically state that direct marketing, including manuscript solicitation, should be appropriately targeted and unobtrusive and that information about the journal or publisher must be truthful and not misleading.

Manuscript Solicitation

Invitations to submit manuscripts must accurately represent the journal.

Marketing communications must not:

guarantee manuscript acceptance;
guarantee publication;
imply that payment ensures acceptance;
promise peer review outcomes;
misrepresent the journal’s peer-review model;
give false or exaggerated publication timelines;
misrepresent the journal’s ownership, publisher, scope, ISSN, DOI services, or publication frequency;
falsely claim or imply indexing, evaluation, membership, certification, or endorsement by Scopus, Web of Science, DOAJ, COPE, or another organization;
use fabricated metrics, misleading impact indicators, or unverifiable claims of scientific prestige.

Statements concerning indexing, abstracting, metrics, affiliations, or recognition must reflect the journal’s actual and verifiable status.

Targeting of Marketing Communications

Direct marketing should be directed primarily to persons or organizations for whom the communication has a reasonable scholarly or professional relevance.

The journal should avoid indiscriminate, excessive, repetitive, or clearly irrelevant solicitation.

Contact lists should not be created or used in a manner inconsistent with applicable privacy and data-protection requirements.

Communication Preferences

Recipients of recurring promotional communications should, where applicable, have a reasonable way to indicate that they no longer wish to receive such communications.

Requests to discontinue non-essential marketing communications should be respected within the journal’s applicable technical and legal framework.

Essential editorial communications concerning an active manuscript, review, correction, integrity investigation, or other ongoing journal process are not considered ordinary promotional marketing.

Personal Data and Marketing

Personal information collected for manuscript submission, peer review, editorial processing, or other scholarly purposes should not be improperly repurposed for unrelated commercial advertising.

The handling of names, email addresses, account information, and other personal data used for journal communications must be consistent with the journal’s Privacy Statement and applicable requirements.

No Preferential Treatment

Advertisers, sponsors, institutional partners, commercial partners, or organizations purchasing promotional services receive no preferential scientific treatment.

The existence of an advertising or commercial relationship does not:

guarantee consideration of a manuscript;
accelerate acceptance;
alter peer-review requirements;
affect publication priority;
exempt authors from journal policies.

Complaints About Advertising or Marketing

Readers, authors, reviewers, editors, and other stakeholders may raise concerns about advertising or direct marketing that they believe is misleading, inappropriate, intrusive, or inconsistent with this policy.

Substantive concerns should be reviewed by personnel who are sufficiently independent from the advertising or marketing decision in question.

Where appropriate, the journal may correct, withdraw, discontinue, or clarify problematic promotional material.

Transparency

The journal publicly maintains this policy so that readers, authors, reviewers, advertisers, sponsors, and other stakeholders can understand the separation between commercial activity and scientific editorial decision-making.

Where the journal’s advertising or marketing arrangements materially change, this policy should be updated to reflect actual practice.

Policy Application

This policy applies to advertising, sponsorship-related promotional material, direct marketing, manuscript solicitation, and comparable promotional activities conducted by or on behalf of the journal.

It should be read together with the journal’s:

Editorial Governance and Editorial Independence Policy;
Conflicts of Interest and Funding Policy;
Publication Ethics Policy;
Privacy Statement;
other applicable journal policies.

The fundamental principle is that advertising and marketing may support communication or legitimate publishing activities, but they must remain clearly separated from scientific content and must never determine editorial judgment.

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