Our publication ethicsand publication malpractice statement ismainly based on theCode of Conduct andBest-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors(Committeeon Publication Ethics, 2011).
The journal’s requirements for manuscript submissions are based on the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
At least two international reviewers, who are expert in the given area of research, conduct strict peer review and screen the scientific quality of submissions. Associate Editors and Editor in Chief are in charge of selecting these reviewers. It is also possible for the authors to recommend reviewers for some journals and article types.
· The journal takes a number of criteria into consideration, including relevance, originality, readability, statistical validity, and language.
· The reviews will result in one of the following decisions, i.e. acceptance, minor revisions, major revision, or rejection.
· The authors must know that the revisions and resubmitted submissions may not necessarily guarantee the acceptance of the revised version.
· There will be no further re-review for rejected papers.
· The acceptance of submissions is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism.
· Each research can be published only once, whether within the same journal or in another journal.
- Any fees or charges that are required for manuscript processing and/or publishing materials in the journal are clearly stated in a place before authors begin preparing their manuscript for submission
Authorship
The list of authors should include anyone who has significantly contributed to the writing of the article. Relative scientific or professional influences of contributors should be considered while specifying principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits. In multiple-authored articles which are derived from a student’s dissertation or thesis, normally the name of the student is listed as the principal author. GSP allows the authors to correct authorship/correspondence within a submitted/ accepted manuscript before publication, based on valid reason. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed change. Contact the Editorial office of the Journal to request a change to the author list. A fully completed and signed form is needed to change the authorship.
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Recommendations for Conducting, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (ICMJE Recommendations 2013) recommends that authorship should be based on the following four criteria:
1. The authors must have substantial involvement in the conception or design of the work; or they should be fundamentally involved in the process of acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
2. The authors must have substantial contribution to drafting the work or to its required critical revision as a result of important intellectual content.
3. The authors must be involved in approval of the final version that is going to be published.
4. The authors must have consensus about being responsible for all the aspects of the work. Hence, they would be able to justify the questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work.
Authors’ Responsibilities
· The authors are required to ensure that the submitted work is their original research.
· The authors are required to ensure that their submitted work has not been published elsewhere. Moreover, they must certify that their submitted work is not under review in another journal.
· The authors are required to follow the comments provided in the peer review process.
· The authors are required to make retractions or correction as necessary.
· All authors of the submitted work must be fundamentally involved in the research. The range of their involvement must be specified under the “Authors’ Contributions” section.
· The authors are required to be able to claim that all the presented data are real and authentic.
· Any conflict of interest must be informed to the Editors of the journal.
· The authors must be able to determine all the sources cited in the body of the paper.
· In case the authors notice any error in the published article, they must inform the Editors.
· In case the authors notice any error in the published article, they must inform the Editors.
· Authors must not use irrelevant sources.
· The authors must know that if they decide to withdraw their paper within the review process, they are subject to any penalty stipulated by the publisher.
Peer Review/Responsibility for the Reviewers
· The reviewers are required to preserve the confidentiality of all the information, regarding the content of the papers and consider them as privileged information.
· The reviewers are required to guarantee full objectivity, with no bias or privilege given to the author, i.e. the reviewers’ personal knowledge of the author(s) must not be effective in providing comments and making decisions.
· The reviewers’ point of view must be stated clearly along with constructive arguments in 500-1000 words.
· The reviewers may find relevant published works, which are not specified by the authors.
· If the reviewers have any knowledge with regard to any similarity or overlap between the paper under review and other papers, they are required to notify the Editor in Chief.
· When potential conflict of interests arises between the reviewers and any of the authors, companies, agencies, or institutions connected to the papers, the reviewers should not review the paper.
Editorial Responsibilities
· The Editors (Associate Editors or Editor in Chief) reserve the right to accept/reject a submitted manuscript.
· The contents and overall quality of the publication is under constant surveillance of the editors.
· In enhancing the publication’s quality, the Editors prioritize the needs of authors and readers.
· The Editors are in charge of ensuring the quality, validity, and reliability of academic productions.
· The Editors must consider that, when necessary, an erratum should be published containing the revisions.
· The Editors should be provided with a clear image of the funding sources of the research.
· The main concentration of Editors must solely circle around the papers’ importance, originality, clarity, and relevance to the publication’s scope.
· The editors cannot reverse their decision without reasonable explanations, nor can they overturn the decisions made by previous editors unless they have legitimate reasons.
· The Editors should be concerned with maintaining the anonymity of reviewers (in half blind peer review journals).
· The editors must guarantee that all of their published manuscripts are in line with the international accepted ethical guidelines.
· The Editors’ acceptance of a paper should be finalized when they are reasonably certain.
· When the Editors suspect any misconduct, they should take action, regardless of the paper’s having been published or unpublished. Consequently, they must make all efforts in resolving the problem.
· The editors must consider that suspicions do not justify rejection of papers; hence, they should have proof of misconduct.
· The editors must not permit any conflict of interests between staff, authors, reviewers, and board members.
· After submitting a decision, the editors must not withdraw their decision (especially after rejection or acceptance) unless they have reasonable causes.
1. Journal policies on authorship and contributorship;
According to the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, released by the ICMJE, an “Author” is generally considered to be someone who simultaneously meets the following conditions 1, 2, 3, and 4.
1.1-Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
1.2-Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
1.3-Final approval of the version to be published; AND
1.4-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.
Find out more: publicationethics.org/authorship
The contributions of all authors must be described. CBMR have adopted the CRediT Taxonomy to describe each author’s individual contributions to the work. The submitting author is responsible for providing the contributions of all authors at submission. We expect that all authors will have
Contributor Role
Role Definition
Conceptualization
Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
Data Curation
Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse.
Formal Analysis
Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
Funding Acquisition
Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
Investigation
Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
Methodology
Development or design of methodology; creation of models
Project Administration
Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
Resources
Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
Software
Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
Supervision
Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
Validation
Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
Visualization
Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
Writing – Original Draft Preparation
Creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
Writing – Review & Editing
Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages.
2. How the journal will handle complaints and appeals;
If the author(s) wish to appeal a journal editor’s decision, please submit an appeal letter to the journal’s online editorial office. Please address this to the editor and explain clearly the basis for an appeal. You should:
- Detail why you disagree with the decision. Please provide specific responses to any of the editor’s and/or reviewers’ comments that contributed to the reject decision.
- Provide any new information or data that you would like the journal to take into consideration.
- Provide evidence if you believe a reviewer has made technical errors in their assessment of your manuscript.
- Include evidence if you believe a reviewer may have a conflict of interest.
3. Journal policies on conflicts of interest / competing interests;
We request all authors and reviewers to inform us about any kinds of “Conflict of Interest” (such as financial, personal, political, or academic) that would potentially affect their judgment. Authors are preferably asked to fill the uniform disclosure form available through:
(http://www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf)
Find out more: publicationethics.org/competinginterests
4. Journal policies on data sharing and reproducibility;
This journal havepolicies on data availability and encourage the use of reporting guidelines and registration of clinical trials and other study designs according to standard practice in their discipline.
Find out more: publicationethics.org/data
5. Journal’s policy on ethical oversight;
GSP journal’s flowcharts and guidelines are approached in confronting any ethical misbehavior. The Journal also follows the guidelines mentioned in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Find out more: publicationethics.org/oversight
6. Journal’s policy on intellectual property; and
All policies on intellectual property, including copyright and publishing licenses, should be clearly described. In addition, any costs associated with publishing should be obvious to authors and readers. Policies should be clear on what counts as prepublication that will preclude consideration. What constitutes plagiarism and redundant/overlapping publication should be specified.
Find out more: publicationethics.org/intellectualproperty
7. Journal’s options for post-publication discussions and corrections.
The Journal will publish an erratum when a factual error in a published item has been documented.
Scientific Reports‘ Editors and Editorial Board members assess all such cases on their individual merits. When plagiarism becomes evident post-publication, we may correct or retract the original publication depending on the degree of plagiarism, context within the published article and its impact on the overall integrity of the published study.
Scientific Reports is part of Similarity Check, a service that uses software tools to screen submitted manuscripts for text overlap.
Reviewers’ responsibilities
Contribution to editorial decisions
The peer-reviewing process assists the editorand the editorial board in making editorial decisions and may also serve the author in improving the paper.
Promptness
Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and withdraw from the review process.
Confidentiality
Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be disclosed toor discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
Standardsof objectivity
Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
Acknowledgement of sources
Reviewers should identify cases in which relevant published work referred to in the paper has not been cited in the reference section. They shouldpoint out whether observations or argumentsderived from other publications areaccompanied by the respectivesource. Reviewerswillnotify the editor of any substantialsimilarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
Disclosure and conflict of interest
Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider 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 associated withthe papers.
Publishing Ethics Issues
· COPE rules must be followed and approved by all editorial members, reviewers, and authors.
· Corresponding author, as the point of contact for queries, can withdraw the article when it is incomplete (before entering the review process or upon revision requirements).
· No fundamental changes can be made by authors after acceptance without a serious reason.
· The editorial members and authors must publish corrections honestly and completely.
· Any notes of plagiarism, fraudulent data or any other kinds of fraud must be reported completely to COPE.
Ethical Guidelines:
· Under the materials and methods’ section, ethical considerations must be discussed.
· Please make sure that all human adult subjects and the parents or legal guardians of minors provided informed consent prior to participation.
· The name of the appropriate institutional review board, that approved the project, should be included.
· It should be confirmed that maintenance and care of experimental animals complies with national Institutes of health guidelines for the humane use of laboratory animals, or those of your Institute or agency.
Conflicts of Interest:
· Any sources of funding and potential conflicting interest must be acknowledged and declared. The authors must clarify issues such as receiving funds or fees by, or holding stocks and shares in, an organization that may profit or lose through publication of your paper.
· Declaration of competing interests will not lead to immediate rejection of the paper, but the Editors must be informed in advance.