Current Thoracic Surgery (CTS) is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scientific record through independently defined and strictly enforced ethical policies. The Editor-in-Chief holds final responsibility for all editorial and publication decisions. The Editorial Board and Editors may provide recommendations within their respective responsibilities. The publisher has no influence on manuscript evaluation, peer review processes, or acceptance decisions.
The journal follows internationally recognized ethical principles, including those of COPE, ICMJE, WAME, and CSE. These frameworks are used as guiding standards. However, CTS policies are defined, implemented, and owned by the journal’s editorial structure.
All submitted manuscripts must be original, scientifically accurate, and ethically compliant. CTS does not accept any form of research or publication misconduct, including plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, duplicate publication, improper authorship practices, or undeclared conflicts of interest. Each submission is screened for similarity and ethical compliance before and during peer review.
Editorial Responsibilities
The Editor-in-Chief holds final responsibility for all publication decisions. Manuscripts are evaluated based on scientific merit, originality, methodological rigor, relevance to the journal scope, and adherence to ethical standards. Editors and external reviewers may provide recommendations within their respective responsibilities; however, the final editorial decision rests exclusively with the Editor-in-Chief.
All editorial evaluations are conducted confidentially and fairly and without discrimination based on nationality, institutional affiliation, gender, religion, or political beliefs.
Editorial Conflicts of Interest and Recusal
Editors must disclose and appropriately manage any actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest that could affect the impartiality or independence of an editorial decision.
The Editor-in-Chief cannot personally handle manuscripts in which Editor-in-Chief has a conflict of interest, including manuscripts authored or co-authored by the Editor-in-Chief or manuscripts involving a significant personal, professional, financial, or institutional conflict. In such cases, the manuscript will be assigned to an independent Editor who has no relevant conflict of interest. The recused Editor-in-Chief will not participate in reviewer selection, evaluation of reviewer reports, editorial discussions, or the final editorial decision. Editors and other Editorial Team Members are subject to the same recusal principle and must withdraw from the editorial process whenever their involvement could reasonably compromise the independence or impartiality of the decision.
Peer Review Integrity
CTS operates a double-blind peer review system. Reviewers are required to provide objective, constructive, and timely evaluations, maintain confidentiality, and disclose any conflicts of interest. Reviewers must also alert the editorial office to any ethical concerns, including plagiarism, redundant publication, or suspected misconduct. Detailed procedures governing reviewer selection, reviewer expertise, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, reviewer recommendations, and peer-review records are provided in the CTS Peer Review Policy.
Reviewer Selection and Expertise
Reviewers are selected by the Editor-in-Chief or Editors according to the subject matter, methodology, and scientific requirements of the manuscript. Reviewer selection takes into consideration relevant scientific or clinical expertise, methodological experience, research and publication experience, independence from the authors, absence of relevant conflicts of interest, and availability to complete the review within the requested timeframe. For multidisciplinary manuscripts, reviewers with complementary areas of expertise may be selected. Where appropriate, manuscripts involving complex statistical, epidemiological, or methodological analyses may also be evaluated by a reviewer with specific methodological or statistical expertise. Authors may suggest potential reviewers. However, reviewer selection remains solely at the discretion of the editorial team.
Reviewer Conflicts of Interest
Reviewers must decline an invitation if they have a personal, professional, financial, institutional, or other relationship with the authors or manuscript that could reasonably affect, or be perceived to affect, the impartiality of their assessment. Reviewers must disclose any relevant conflict of interest to the responsible editor before accepting or completing a review. When a relevant conflict is identified, the reviewer will not participate in the peer-review process.
Reviewer Confidentiality
Reviewers must treat all manuscripts, supplementary materials, figures, tables, and review-related correspondence as strictly confidential. Reviewers must not share manuscript content or review materials with unauthorized individuals, use unpublished information obtained during peer review for personal or professional benefit, or reproduce or distribute any part of the manuscript. Reviewers must not delegate a review to another individual without prior permission from the responsible editor. Reviewers must not upload manuscripts, figures, tables, supplementary files, or confidential review materials to generative artificial intelligence systems or other external tools when doing so could compromise manuscript confidentiality.
Reviewer Recommendations
Reviewers provide an objective and evidence-based assessment of the manuscript and may recommend one of the following outcomes as Accept, Minor Revision, Major Revision, Reject. Reviewer recommendations are advisory and do not independently determine the final editorial decision. The Editor-in-Chief, with input from the Editors where appropriate, considers the reviewer reports together with the scientific quality, methodological rigor, originality, ethical compliance, and relevance to the journal’s scope when reaching an editorial decision.
Peer-Review Records
CTS maintains peer-review reports and relevant editorial correspondence securely in accordance with the journal’s editorial record-retention procedures and applicable requirements. Such records may be used for editorial quality assurance, resolution of appeals or complaints, and investigation of suspected ethical or research-integrity concerns. Reviewer identities remain confidential in accordance with the journal’s double-blind peer-review policy.
Author Responsibilities
Authors are responsible for the accuracy, originality, and ethical integrity of their work. All listed authors must meet ICMJE authorship criteria and approve the final manuscript before submission. Any contributions not meeting authorship criteria must be acknowledged separately.
Authors must disclose all financial relationships, funding sources, and potential conflicts of interest. Research involving humans or animals must comply with applicable ethical standards, and approval from an appropriate ethics committee must be clearly stated in the Methods section. Informed consent must be obtained where required.
Prospective registration is mandatory for clinical trials, and trial registration details must be included in the manuscript. All clinical trials must be prospectively registered in a publicly accessible registry (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov or WHO ICTRP), and the registration number must be provided at the time of submission. Studies must follow relevant reporting guidelines such as CONSORT where applicable.
Appeals and Complaints
Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a significant factual error, misunderstanding, procedural irregularity, or inappropriate consideration materially affected the decision. Appeals should provide a clear and evidence-based explanation of the grounds for reconsideration. Where appropriate, an appeal may be reviewed by an independent editor who was not involved in the original decision.
Complaints concerning the editorial or peer-review process are handled confidentially and investigated in accordance with the journal’s publication ethics policies and relevant international publication-ethics standards.
Post-Publication Integrity
CTS applies COPE guidelines when handling post-publication issues. Corrections are issued for minor errors that do not affect scientific conclusions. Retractions are published in cases of serious ethical violations or invalidated findings. Expressions of concern may be issued while investigations are ongoing. All actions are taken to preserve transparency and the integrity of the scholarly record.
