Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics

This journal follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. Therefore, we genuinely recommend and appreciate it if authors read these recommendations before their manuscript submission.

If research misconduct, fraud, or plagiarism is suspected, editors will follow the COPE guidelines and reserve the right to inform authors or their institution.

Conflict-of-Interest Statement

According to ICMJE, the potential for conflict of interest and bias exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain)

At first, any conflict of interest in a given manuscript should be reported when submitting the contributor’s agreement form. If not, we utilize COPE workflow to handle it.

Authorship

We stick to the ICMJE definition of authors and contributors based on its four criteria as follows:  

  1. “Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND“
  2. “Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND”
  3. “Final approval of the version to be published; AND”
  4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.”

We need the authors to understand and accept the ethical policy, especially:  

        Declaration of interests — it is essential to declare the funding that made the research possible.
        Registering clinical trials — clinical trials should be registered in publicly accessible registries.
        Respecting confidentiality protects patients from being recognized if used in research and publication.
        Protecting research subjects, patients, and experimental animals.

Regulation for Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Section A: Publication and Authorship 

        All submitted papers are subject to a strict peer-review process by at least two reviewers who are experts in the area of the particular paper. Executive Manager and Editor-in-Chief are selecting reviewers.
        The factors that are taken into account in the review are relevance, originality, readability, statistical validity, and language.
        The possible decisions include acceptance, minor revisions, major revisions, or rejection.
        If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.
        Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.
        The acceptance of the paper is constrained in the presence of libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism within the content.
        No research can be included in more than one publication, whether within the same journal or in another journal.

Section B: Authors' responsibilities 

        Authors must certify that their manuscript is their original work.
        Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere, or even submitted and been reviewed in another journal.
        Authors must participate in the peer review process and follow the comments.
        Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
        Authors must state that all data in the paper are authentic.
        Authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest.
        Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript.
        Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.
        Authors must state that informed consent was obtained from all human adult participants and the parents or legal guardians of minors. Include the name of the appropriate institutional review board that approved the project.
        Authors are recommended to conform to the Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines for reporting animal studies.

  

   Section C: Peer review/responsibility for the reviewers 

        Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
        Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author. No self-knowledge of the author(s) must affect the comments and decisions of the reviewers.
        Reviewers should express their views clearly in 500 to 1000 words with supporting arguments.
        Reviewers may identify relevant published work that the authors have not cited.
        Reviewers should also call to the Editor-in-Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper they have personal knowledge.
        Reviewers should not review manuscripts with conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.  

Section D: Editorial responsibilities 

        Editors (Executive Manager or Editor-in-Chief) have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
        Editors are responsible for the overall quality of the publication.
        Editors should always consider the needs of the authors and the readers when attempting to improve the publication.
        Editors should guarantee the papers' quality and the academic record's integrity.
        Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
        Editors should have a clear picture of a research's funding sources.
        Editors should base their decisions solely on the paper's importance, originality, clarity, and relevance to the publication's scope.
        Editors should only reverse their decisions and overturn the ones of previous editors with serious reason.
        Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers
        Editors should ensure that all published research material conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines.
        Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably sure.
        Editors should act if they suspect misconduct, whether a paper is published or unpublished, and make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem.
        Editors should accept papers based on suspicions and have proof of misconduct.
        Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers, and board members.
        Editors must not change their decision after submitting a decision (especially after reject or accept) unless they have a serious reason.

          Section E: Ethics Issues in Publishing

        All editorial members, reviewers, and authors must confirm and obey the rules defined by ICMJE.
        The corresponding author is the main owner of the article, so she/he can withdraw the article when it is incomplete (before entering the review process or when a revision is requested).
        Authors cannot make major changes in the article after acceptance without a serious reason.
        All editorial members and authors must publish any corrections honestly and completely.

More details are available at Journal Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement.