Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement requirements
When reporting studies on humans indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000.
Evidence for approval by a local Ethics Committee (for both human as well as animal studies) must be supplied by the authors on demand. Animal experimental procedures should be as humane as possible and the details of anesthetics and analgesics used should be clearly stated. The journal will not consider any paper which is ethically unacceptable. A statement on ethics committee permission and ethical practices must be included in all research articles under the ‘Materials and Methods’ section.
Ethics in publishing
- Ethics of human and animal experimentation: Manuscripts describing any experimental work with humans should include a statement that the Ethical Committee of the institution in which the work was done has approved it, and that the subjects gave informed consent to the work.
- Experiments with animals should be done in accordance with the legal requirements of the relevant local or national authority.
Ethical responsibilities of authors
- 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 in 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.
- All Authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research. Level of their contribution also must be defined in the “Authors’ Contributions” section of the article.
- Authors must state that all data in the paper are real and 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 not use irrelevant sources that may help other researches/journals.
Authors cannot withdraw their articles within the review process or after submission, or they must pay the penalty defined by the publisher. Ethical responsibilities of editor
- Editors (Associate Editors or Editor in Chief) have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
- Editors are responsible for the contents and 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 quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.
- 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 one the papers' importance, originality, clarity and relevance to publication's scope.
- Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.
- Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
- Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to international accepted ethical guidelines.
- Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
- 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 not reject papers based on suspicions; they should 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.
Ethical responsibilities of 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 their comments and decision.
- Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in 500 to 1000 words.
- Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
- 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 of which they have personal knowledge.
- Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
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