Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

Publishing for Global Health: Ethical Principles and Publication Policies

The Writing Lions’ Honour Code

  1. Purpose

This document outlines the ethical principles and publication policies that govern submissions to The Lion’s Write Journal, particularly those engaging with global health, healing, illness, wellness, care systems, and structural determinants. This policy is a living document. We welcome feedback from our communities of practice and lived experience contributors to refine and deepen our commitments.

  1. Core Ethical Principles

2.1 Do No Harm

  • All submissions must reflect a clear commitment to non-extractive, non-exploitative knowledge practices.
  • Work that reproduces stereotypes, upholds ableism, racism, coloniality, or justifies health-harming systems will be rejected.
  • Harm is understood broadly, including epistemic, cultural, environmental, and relational harm.

2.2 Anti-Alignment with Health-Harming Industries

  • Submissions funded by or aligned with industries known to harm public health e.g., tobacco, fossil fuels, alcohol must be transparently disclosed. We adopt and defer to WHO’s guideline on engaging private sector and commercial actors to inform publication decisions.
  • We will not publish content that directly or indirectly furthers the agenda of such industries or normalises their influence.
  • Authors must reflect critically on power, funding, and interests shaping their work.

2.4 Honouring Epistemic Plurality, Feminist Decolonial Narratives and Ancestral Wisdom

  • We welcome submissions that honour non-Western, Indigenous, spiritual, and embodied ways of knowing alongside critical academic analysis.
  • Research and stories must acknowledge and avoid reproducing extractive research practices or saviour narratives.
  • Shared authorship, co-creation with communities, and meaningful citation of knowledge from the margins are strongly encouraged.
  • Established traditional medicine modalities, cultural and ancestral knowledge should be treated with reverence and cited with consent, respect, and contextual integrity.
  • We strongly align with evidence-based medicine philosophy when it comes to discussions on effectiveness and harms of therapeutic modalities. At the same time, we reject the hierarchy that positions Western biomedical knowledge as superior and instead centre a plurality of epistemologies in health and healing, that integrate and align with evidence-based practices.

2.5 Accountability and Transparency

  • Authors are expected to disclose:
    • Funding sources and potential conflicts of interest.
    • The role of institutions, funders, or political bodies in shaping content.
    • Ethical considerations taken in the generation of the work.
  • We encourage authors to include reflexive statements on their positionality and relationship to the themes they explore.
  1. Authorship and Collaboration Principles
  • Co-authorship with affected communities, lived experience leaders, and non-academic collaborators is encouraged and should be meaningfully reflected in authorship, credit, and voice.
  • Ghostwriting, token authorship, and hierarchical imposition of voice are discouraged.
  • Translational work (e.g., art, poetry, storytelling) that arises from collective experiences must acknowledge its roots and relational process.
  1. Citation Politics
  • We encourage citation of marginalised scholars, cultural practitioners, community-based knowledge, and thinkers outside of traditional academic institutions.
  • Avoid “citation imperialism”—overreliance on dominant voices that reproduce hegemonic knowledge.
  • Where oral or collective knowledge is cited, use respectful citation conventions that honour the knowledge holder and context.
  1. Publication and Peer Review Practice
  • TLWJ uses values-based peer review, centring constructive dialogue, mutual respect, and contextual literacy.
  • We actively recruit reviewers with lived experience and interdisciplinary, decolonial, feminist, or community-based expertise.
  • Reviewers are guided to assess not only technical quality but also relational and ethical integrity.
  • We offer non-anonymous options for community-peer review where appropriate and desired by authors.
  1. Language and Representation
  • Use inclusive, affirming, and person-centred language, recognising the political and cultural meanings of labels and categories.
  • When referencing communities or identities, defer to self-identification and local terminology where possible.
  1. Editorial Independence and Integrity
  • Our editorial board retains full independence from funders and institutional affiliations.
  • We reserve the right to reject work that conflicts with these principles regardless of academic merit.
  • We will not accept sponsorship or advertising from health-harming industries or institutions whose missions contradict our values.
  1. Complaints, Retractions, and Accountability
  • TLWJ maintains an open mechanism for concerns about ethical breaches, representation, or harm arising from published content.
  • We are committed to a restorative approach to accountability.
  • Retractions, corrections, or community-led responses may be issued where appropriate.