Journal Policies

The TIPS Journal (InfectionControl.tips, ISSN 2369-7342) is published by The Infection Prevention Strategy (TIPS). This page sets out how the journal works: what we publish, who owns what, how we use and don’t use artificial intelligence, how articles are kept, and how we fix mistakes.

Aims and scope

The TIPS Journal publishes science and practical experience in infection prevention and global health. Our readers are infection preventionists, clinicians, environmental services and facility managers, laboratory professionals, researchers, students, policy makers and members of the public. Everything we publish is free to read.

We welcome work on:

environmental cleaning and disinfection
hand hygiene
antimicrobial resistance and stewardship
healthcare-associated infections and patient safety
emerging diseases and outbreaks
vaccines
personal protective equipment and occupational safety
water, air and the built environment
laboratory science and diagnostics
food safety and One Health
public health and policy
other areas of global health where science can make a difference

We publish two kinds of article. Peer-Reviewed articles are original research, evaluations of products or practices, and reviews. They go through single-blind review by 2 to 5 experts before publication (see our Peer Review Process). Perspective articles share practical experience and informed points of view. They are checked by an editor but are not peer-reviewed, and they are always labelled Perspective. We also publish editorials and TIPS news.

Articles are published as soon as they are ready (continuous publication), in English.

Copyright and licence

Every article is open access from the day it is published: free for anyone to read, download, print and share, with no subscription and no log-in.

Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). Anyone may share an article as long as they credit the authors and the TIPS Journal, do not use it commercially, and do not change it. See Open Access and Licence for what this means in practice.

Funded research. Some funders (for example those following Plan S, the Wellcome Trust or the Gates Foundation) require their researchers to publish under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (CC BY 4.0). If your funder requires it, tell us when you submit and your article will be published under CC BY 4.0. Each article shows its licence.

Authors keep their copyright. When an article is accepted, the authors give The Infection Prevention Strategy (TIPS) an exclusive, permanent licence to publish it, and the TIPS Journal is recognized as the original place of publication. The full terms are in our Submission Policy. Authors may deposit their original version or the published version in institutional or subject repositories straight away, and are always credited as the authors of their work.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI)

Authors. If you used an AI tool (for example ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or Gemini) to write, edit, translate or analyse any part of your article, tell us in your submission: which tool, and what you used it for. Using AI only to check spelling and grammar does not need to be declared. AI tools cannot be listed as authors, because they cannot take responsibility for the work. The authors are responsible for everything in the article, including checking any text, figures, references or data that an AI tool produced. AI-generated images are not accepted unless the article is about them and they are clearly labelled.

References and facts. Every reference must be real, must say what the article says it says, and must have been checked by the authors themselves. Before publication, our editors open every reference (DOI or link) to confirm it exists and supports the statement it is attached to. A reference that cannot be found, or does not support the claim, is returned to the authors to correct. Text left over from an AI tool (for example “As an AI language model…” or unfinished placeholders) must be removed. Knowingly submitting fabricated references, data or quotations is misconduct: the submission is rejected or the article retracted, and the authors may be barred from submitting to the TIPS Journal for 12 months.

Reviewers. Manuscripts sent for review are confidential. Reviewers must not upload a manuscript, or any part of it, to an AI tool, and must write their own reports.

Editors. Our editors may use software to check formatting, spelling, references and similarity to published work. Decisions on what we publish are always made by people, never by an AI tool.

We may update this section as practice develops.

Article images

The images at the top of our articles are illustrations, not scientific figures or data. Some are licensed from stock libraries such as Bigstock, some are supplied by authors with permission, and some are made by TIPS, including with AI tools. These images are not covered by the article’s Creative Commons licence unless we say so. To raise a concern about an image, please use our contact form.

Publication ethics

We follow the standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and the Council of Science Editors (CSE).

Original work. Submissions must be original, not published in another peer-reviewed journal, and not under consideration elsewhere. Submissions are checked for plagiarism.
Funding and competing interests. Authors must declare who funded the work and any financial or personal interest that could be seen to influence it, including links to a product or company discussed in the article. Reviewers declare any conflict of interest before reviewing.
Research involving people or animals. Authors must follow the law and their institution’s rules, and confirm ethics approval where it is required.

Corrections, retractions and removals

If you find an error in a published article, please tell us through our contact form. Errors and omissions are corrected in the article itself, with a note saying what changed and when. An article may be retracted or removed if it duplicates another article, or in cases of plagiarism, fraud, or legal issues; a notice stays in its place explaining why. Authors may also ask for their article to be removed; how and when we handle such requests is set out in our Submission Policy.

Archiving

Every article has its own permanent web address and stays online and free to read. The journal is backed up regularly by our hosting provider, and copies of our articles are preserved by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. Peer-reviewed articles also have a downloadable scientific PDF, and authors may deposit their articles in their own institutional or subject repositories.

Fees

There is no charge to read the journal and no charge to submit. Perspective articles are free to publish. For Peer-Reviewed articles the fee is $1,500 USD, charged only if the article is accepted, and we often waive it. The fee protects the time our reviewers and editors give to every manuscript. To ask about a waiver, mention it in your submission.

Publisher

The Infection Prevention Strategy (TIPS)
A not-for-profit with the mandate to communicate successes in science and global health.
10131 – 27 Legend Court, Ancaster, Ontario L9K 1P3, Canada
Contact: Michael Diamond, Executive Director, through our contact form
Website: www.IC.tips

Last updated October 2026.