Last reviewed: September 2026

Introduction

The Proceedings of the Hamlyn Symposium on Medical Robotics (HSMR) follow the Core Practices and guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This statement sets out the standards expected of authors, reviewers and editors, and how the Proceedings handle plagiarism, conflicts of interest, corrections and retractions.

The Proceedings are published by the Hamlyn Centre for Robotic Surgery, Imperial College London. They contain only papers accepted after peer review by at least three members of the Programme Committee, with oversight from Local Area Chairs and the Chair of the Programme Committee.

Duties of authors

By submitting a paper, authors confirm that it meets the following standards.

• Originality. The work is the authors’ own and has not been published or accepted elsewhere in substantially the same form. Earlier or concurrent related work, including the authors’ own, is cited.
• Accurate reporting. Methods, data and results are reported honestly and in enough detail to be assessed. Fabricated, falsified or selectively reported data are misconduct.
• Authorship. Everyone listed made a significant contribution to the work and approved the submitted version. Everyone who meets these criteria is listed. Changes to the author list after submission need the agreement of all authors and the Programme Chair.
• Acknowledgement of sources and funding. All sources, funders and material support are acknowledged.
• Disclosure. Authors declare any financial or personal interests that could be seen to influence the work (see Conflicts of interest).
• Ethical approval. Studies involving human participants, patient data or animals state the ethics approval obtained and, where relevant, how informed consent was given.
• Reporting errors. Authors who find a significant error in their published paper tell the Programme Chair promptly and cooperate in correcting it.

Duties of reviewers

Reviewers help the Programme Committee decide which papers to accept, and help authors improve their work.

• Confidentiality. Submissions are confidential. Reviewers do not share, discuss or use unpublished material from a submission, and do not upload it to external tools, including generative AI services.
• Objectivity. Reviews are constructive and based on the work’s scientific merit. Personal criticism of authors is not acceptable.
• Competence and timeliness. Reviewers who feel unqualified to assess a paper, or cannot finish on time, tell the Area Chair promptly.
• Conflicts of interest. Reviewers declare any conflict and decline papers where one exists (see Conflicts of interest).
• Raising concerns. Reviewers tell the Area Chair about suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, data manipulation or other ethical problems, and about relevant work the authors have not cited.

Duties of editors and the Programme Committee

The Programme Chair, Local Area Chairs and Programme Committee are responsible for accept and reject decisions.

• Fair decisions. Papers are judged only on originality, quality, clarity and relevance to medical robotics. Decisions do not depend on authors’ nationality, ethnicity, gender, religion, institution or seniority.
• Peer review. Every paper is reviewed by at least three Programme Committee members, with oversight from a Local Area Chair.
• Confidentiality. Editors disclose information about a submission only to its authors, reviewers and those involved in the decision.
• Independence. Sponsors and exhibitors have no influence on paper decisions.
• Organisers’ own papers. Papers by the Programme Chair, Area Chairs or symposium organisers are handled by another member of the committee with no conflict, and the author has no access to their own paper’s reviews or discussion.
• Investigating concerns. Editors respond to all credible allegations of misconduct, whenever they arise, following the COPE flowcharts.

Conflicts of interest

A conflict of interest exists when a financial, professional or personal relationship could affect, or appear to affect, someone’s judgement about a paper.

Authors declare, at submission, any funding, employment, consultancy, shareholding, patents or other interests related to the work. Interests connected to a company whose product is studied must always be declared. Declarations appear with the published paper.

Reviewers and editors must not handle a paper when they:

• work, or recently worked, in the same research group as an author;
• co-authored with an author, or supervised or were supervised by one, recently;
• have a close personal relationship with an author;
• have a financial interest in the work’s outcome, or compete directly with it;
• have any other reason they cannot judge the paper fairly.

Conflicts are declared in the submission system, and conflicted people are excluded from that paper’s review and discussion. An undeclared conflict found later is investigated as set out under Plagiarism and research misconduct.

Plagiarism and research misconduct

The Proceedings do not accept plagiarised work. Plagiarism includes copying text, figures, data or ideas without citation, and reusing the authors’ own published work without saying so.

Screening. Submissions may be checked with similarity-detection software. A high similarity score is a prompt for editorial review, not an automatic rejection.

Other misconduct includes fabricating or falsifying data, manipulating images, duplicate or redundant publication, citation manipulation, and inappropriate authorship.

How concerns are handled

1. Anyone may raise a concern with the Programme Chair, confidentially if they wish.
2. The Chair makes an initial assessment, following the relevant COPE flowchart.
3. If the concern has substance, the authors are told and given a chance to respond.
4. Where needed, the matter is referred to the authors’ institution or research integrity office.
5. The Chair decides the outcome, which may be: no action; a correction; an expression of concern; rejection before publication; or retraction after publication.

Serious or repeated misconduct may lead to authors being barred from submitting to future symposia.

Corrections, retractions and expressions of concern

Published papers are part of the permanent record and are not silently changed or removed. Changes follow the COPE retraction guidelines.

Each notice has its own DOI, names who requested it, and is linked from the original paper’s landing page and DOI record. Papers are removed entirely only for legal reasons or a serious risk to health, and a notice explains the removal.

Authors request corrections from the Programme Chair. Changes that only fix typing or formatting do not need a notice.

Other policies

Generative AI. AI tools cannot be listed as authors. Authors who use AI tools to write or analyse data say so in the paper and remain responsible for its content.

Preservation. Every paper has a permanent DOI. All proceedings since 2010 are archived and freely available on the symposium website.

Contact. Concerns about ethics or misconduct go to the Programme Chair via the contact form, marked “Publication ethics”.

This statement is reviewed every year before the call for papers opens.