Submission Policy

Original, unpublished articles are considered for publication in the TIPS Journal (InfectionControl.tips, ISSN 2369-7342), published by The Infection Prevention Strategy (TIPS). See also our Journal Policies and Peer Review Process.

Articles submitted in a language other than English will be translated and edited, with a link to the original document in the original language. Abstracts are published in English.

Articles of a highly speculative nature, which are not adequately supported by the literature or by usual methods of research, may not be accepted for publication.

Articles submitted to the TIPS Journal for peer review are reviewed by members of an international editorial board. Referees with special qualifications in the subject matter presented are consulted, and decisions on editing and publication are made by the Section Editor with due consideration of the evaluations of the editors.

Statements and opinions expressed directly or implied in articles, links or abstracts are those of the authors and not of THE INFECTION PREVENTION STRATEGY or the TIPS Journal. Publication does not mean that THE INFECTION PREVENTION STRATEGY, the TIPS Journal or its editors endorse such statements or opinions.

Any error or omission will be corrected within the original article by notice to the Section Editor, on terms and conditions determined by the TIPS Journal.

All articles published in the TIPS Journal are freely accessible online immediately upon publication, without subscription charges. Articles may be promoted through social media, including but not limited to Facebook, X (Twitter) and LinkedIn.

The Editor will undertake an initial relevancy review to ensure the submission is consistent with the mandate of the TIPS Journal and its formatting requirements.

Articles submitted for peer review are entered in the blinded peer review process, where 2 to 5 experts in the respective field review the submission for scientific merit. Perspective articles are submitted to a content editor. Recommendations and suggested changes are reported to the author or authors, who will then have the opportunity to revise the submission accordingly.

Ethical standards

Authors, peer reviewers, editors and the publisher are constituent elements in an ethical publication process. The TIPS Journal is committed to ensuring an ethical publication process by:

endorsing the industry standards and guidelines established by 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), and
holding authors, editors, peer reviewers and the publisher to these expected ethical standards.

Editors are to follow a fair and rigorous peer review process, and accept articles for peer review solely on their academic and scientific merit.

Reviewers are to review papers objectively, free from bias, declare potential conflicts of interest and maintain confidentiality.

Authors are to comply with all laws respecting human and animal experimentation, comply with all relevant academic institutional policies respecting research and publication, declare their funding and any competing interests, check that every reference is real and supports the statement it is attached to, disclose any use of artificial intelligence tools as set out in our Journal Policies, and report all significant errors in their published works.

THE INFECTION PREVENTION STRATEGY undertakes to ensure the editors adhere to industry publication standards, and supports editorial independence.

Licence agreement

In submitting an article to the TIPS Journal, I certify that:

I am authorized by my co-authors to enter into these arrangements;
I warrant, on behalf of myself and my co-authors, that:
- the article is original, has not been formally published in any other peer-reviewed journal, is not under consideration by any other journal and does not infringe any existing copyright or any other third-party rights;
- the article contains nothing that is unlawful, libellous, or which would, if published, constitute a breach of contract or of confidence or of commitment given to secrecy;
- I/we have taken due care to ensure the integrity of the article. To my/our knowledge, and to currently accepted scientific knowledge, all statements contained in it purporting to be facts are true, and any formula or instruction contained in the article will not, if followed accurately, cause any injury, illness or damage to the user.

Authors keep their copyright. If the article is editorially accepted for publication, I, and all co-authors:

grant THE INFECTION PREVENTION STRATEGY (TIPS) an exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free and irrevocable licence to publish the article first, and to keep publishing, archiving and distributing it, in any format, as part of the TIPS Journal for as long as TIPS chooses;
agree that the article will be published open access under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), or, where our funder requires it and we say so when we submit, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0); and
agree that the TIPS Journal is the original place of publication. We will not publish the article, or a substantially similar version of it, in another journal or publication, other than by depositing it in a repository as described below or with the written permission of TIPS. Any later version published elsewhere with permission must say that it was first published in the TIPS Journal and link to it.

The authors will always be credited as the authors of the article.

Sharing and reproduction

Authors may deposit their original version or the version of record of their article in institutional and/or centrally organized repositories, and may make it publicly available immediately upon publication.

Each article shows its licence. Under the standard CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence, anyone may read, download, print, link to and share articles from the TIPS Journal for non-commercial purposes, without asking permission, provided the article is not changed and full credit is given to the authors and the TIPS Journal, with a link to the original article. Search engines and text-mining tools may index the journal.

Articles published under CC BY 4.0 (for authors whose funder requires it) may also be reused commercially and adapted, as that licence allows, with full credit to the authors and the TIPS Journal and a link to the original article. The exclusive licence to TIPS, and the TIPS Journal being the original place of publication, apply to every article, whichever licence it carries.

Written permission from THE INFECTION PREVENTION STRATEGY is required for any other use, including commercial use, republishing an article in full on another website or in another publication, and translations, adaptations or other changes. (Because TIPS holds the exclusive licence to publish, this applies to the authors as well.) Please send your request through our contact form. Where permission is given to republish an article, full credit must appear at the beginning of the article (before the first sentence), as follows:

Example: As previously published in the TIPS Journal (InfectionControl.tips), Jan 1, 2018.

Full credit is also required for all references, as follows:

Example: Duong, A. (2015). 6 Factors That Have Caused Antibiotic Resistance. TIPS Journal (InfectionControl.tips), ISSN 2369-7342. Accessed Dec 1, 2015. https://infectioncontrol.tips/2015/11/18/6-factors-that-have-caused-antibiotic-resistance/

Removal of an article

An article may be removed by the TIPS Journal after initial publication if it is found to be a duplication of another article, or for instances involving plagiarism, fraud or legal issues.

Anyone who feels an article, image or any other publication in the TIPS Journal infringes on their copyright can contact us through our contact form. We will investigate the claim expeditiously and remove any item found to be in violation of a copyrighted work.

The author of an article published in the TIPS Journal may request that the article be removed from the site for any reason. The TIPS Journal will endeavour to honour the request for removal within 36 months of receipt of the request. Unless specifically stipulated in a separate agreement, removal from the TIPS Journal at the request of the author has no impact on the licence granted to THE INFECTION PREVENTION STRATEGY at the time the article was submitted, or on the TIPS Journal being the original place of publication.

Articles submitted before October 2026

Articles submitted before October 2026 were published under our earlier terms, in which authors assigned copyright to THE INFECTION PREVENTION STRATEGY. On request, TIPS will return copyright in an earlier article to its authors, on the same terms as above: TIPS keeps its licence to publish, and the TIPS Journal remains the original place of publication.

Last updated October 2026 (first published June 1, 2017).