Ethics and Malpractice Statement
Journal of Medical and Dental Investigations (JOMDI) is committed to meeting and upholding standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process. We follow closely the industry associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), www.publicationethics.org and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) that set standards and provide guidelines for best practices in order to meet these requirements.
In addition, JOMDI follows the guidance on editorial independence produced by the World Association of Medical Editors (www.wame.org), and subscribes to the tenets of reporting guidelines established by the EQUATOR network (www.equator-network.org/). JOMDI supports the policies of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the following author instructions follow the ICMJE Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, available at www.icmje.org/. Manuscript preparation should follow these ICMJE guidelines.
This section is designed to help everyone engaged in the journal publication process; namely, editors, authors, and manuscript reviewers and referees.
We are confident that unambiguous and consistent guidelines will enhance the quality of published research, and ensure a process is in place to respond to a situation where ethics may have been transgressed.
For Editors
We ask editors to make every reasonable effort to ensure the following criteria are taken into account for those submitted manuscripts they deem worthy of consideration by peer review.
- Unbiased consideration should be given to each manuscript, judging each on its merits without regard to the race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author.
- Manuscripts should be dealt with and processed with reasonable speed and efficiency.
- Editors have sole responsibility for the acceptance or rejection of a manuscript. While an editor may seek guidance via peer review, she or he may reject a manuscript without review if considered inappropriate for the journal.
- The peer-review process must be confidential and rendered anonymous.
- Conflicts of interest must be declared.
- If an editor receives a challenge to the authenticity of a published article, she or he will consult with Incessant Nature Science Publisher Journals, and where appropriate members of the editorial board, in confidence. Where the editor and Incessant Nature Science Publisher Journals subsequently secure evidence that authenticity has been compromised, in any of the following ways – the main substance of a published article is erroneous; the article contains material which has not been properly acknowledged or cited; the article's authorship is incorrect or incomplete; or the article contains a libel – the editor and INS Journals will facilitate publication of an appropriate correction, a Statement of Retraction, or, in extremis, the withdrawal and removal of the article.
Editors' Responsibilities
Publication Decisions
The editor is responsible for deciding which of the papers submitted to the journal will be published.
The editor will evaluate manuscripts without regard to the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy. The decision will be based on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance to the journal's scope. Current legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism should also be considered.
Confidentiality
The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.
For Authors
Open Access has become an important way to make research findings freely available for anyone to access and view:
- Authors must present an accurate account of the research performed, and offer an objective discussion of its significance.
- The article must contain sufficient detail and reference to public sources of information to permit the author's peers to repeat the work.
- Authors must cite all relevant references.
- Authors must identify any hazards inherent in conducting the research.
- Authors must declare conflicts of interest.
- Authors must avoid fragmenting research to maximize the number of articles submitted.
- Authors must not submit the same or similar articles to any other journal or publication medium.
- While an experimental or theoretical study may sometimes justify criticism of the work of another scientist, in no circumstances is personal criticism appropriate.
- "Co-authors" are defined as any person who has made a significant scientific contribution to the work reported, and who shares responsibility and accountability for the results.
Authors' Responsibilities
Authorship of the Paper
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors.
The corresponding author ensures that all contributing co-authors and no uninvolved persons are included in the author list. The corresponding author will also verify that all co-authors have approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.
Authorship Criteria
Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below:
- Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
- Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
- Final approval of the version to be published.
Acquisition of funding, the collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, by themselves, do not justify authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. The author list of any submission should be decided upon and fixed BEFORE submission. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the contributors. Please also note that electronic signatures or copied and pasted signatures are not acceptable.
For Peer Reviewers
We ask referees and peer reviewers to make every reasonable effort to ensure the following criteria are taken into account for those submitted manuscripts they have agreed to peer review:
- Unbiased consideration should be given to each manuscript, judging each on its merits without regard to the race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author.
- Manuscripts should be dealt with and processed with reasonable speed and efficiency.
- The quality of the manuscript, and its experimental and theoretical work, its interpretations, and its exposition, will be judged objectively.
- The peer-review process will be kept confidential.
- Conflicts of interest must be declared.
- Referees' judgments must be explained and supported. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported must be accompanied by the relevant citation, and unsupported assertions must be avoided.
- While the review of a manuscript may justify criticism, even severe criticism, under no circumstances is personal or malicious criticism of the author appropriate or acceptable.
Peer Reviewers' Responsibilities
Contribution to Editorial Decisions
The peer-reviewing process assists the editor and 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 to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
Standards of 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 should point out whether observations or arguments derived from other publications are accompanied by the respective source. Reviewers will notify the editor of any substantial similarity 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 with the papers.
Checking for plagiarism, duplicate publication and text recycling
The Editorial Office will be running all revised manuscripts through an online plagiarism-prevention program. Following the lead of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), whose policies are in turn supported by the ICMJE, if plagiarism is discovered, the author will be notified before any further action is taken.
Post-publication correction policy
The moment an article is published (even if only online) it enters the scientific literature as the "version of scholarly record" and becomes a fixed-state document available for citation by other journal articles. In consequence, Incessant Nature Science Publisher Journals does not allow amendments to articles after publication, other than by means of publishing an erratum or corrigendum.
If journal articles were to become subject to continued revision after initial publication they would no longer play the role of "the minutes of science", which capture the authors’ conclusions at a specific point of time.
There are some exceptions to this rule; particularly cases where we may consider it permissible to correct errors in an Early Online/Online First (ahead of print) article prior to its publication in a print issue. Examples include:
- Spelling errors in the article metadata may be corrected, for example author names, article title or keywords.
- Updates to the corresponding author's contact information if it has changed since submission (although the affiliation line should still reflect the author’s institution at the point of submission).
- Poor resolution or black & white figures may be replaced by high resolution or colour versions of the same graphic.
- "In press" references can be updated with the final citation information.
Significant changes to Early Online articles will normally be accompanied by a Notice of Correction at the end of the reference section detailing post-publication amendments.
Once an article appears in an issue, the option for further amendments is closed off entirely and details such as the corresponding author’s contact information or "in press" reference citations are locked down permanently.
Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement
Our publication ethics and publication malpractice statement is mainly based on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011).
Reporting Standards
Authors of original research reports should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
Data Access and Retention
Authors could be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the paper for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least ten years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.
Originality, Plagiarism and Acknowledgement of Sources
Authors will submit only entirely original works, and will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should also be cited.
Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication
In general, papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
Manuscripts which have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted. In addition, manuscripts under review by the journal should not be resubmitted to copyrighted publications. However, by submitting a manuscript, the author(s) retain the rights to the published material. In case of publication they permit the use of their work under a CC-BY license [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/], which allows others to copy, distribute and transmit the work as well as to adapt the work and to make commercial use of it.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
All authors should include a statement disclosing any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that may be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
Fundamental Errors in Published Works
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and to cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper in form of an erratum.
References
Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (2011, March 7). Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.
Retrieved from http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf
Ethics
When reporting studies on human beings, 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 (available at http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/). For prospective studies involving human participants, authors are expected to mention about approval of (regional/ national/ institutional or independent Ethics Committee or Review Board, obtaining informed consent from adult research participants and obtaining assent for children aged over 7 years participating in the trial. The age beyond which assent would be required could vary as per regional and/ or national guidelines. Ensure confidentiality of subjects by desisting from mentioning participants’ names, initials or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material. When reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether the institutions or a national research council’s guide for, or any national law on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
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 ethical standards of experiments must be in accordance with the guidelines provided by World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving experimental animals, respectively or International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare available at http://www.veteditors.org/consensus-author-guidelines-on-animal-ethics-and-welfare-for-editors/
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.
Misconduct
We will energetically pursue accusations of misconduct directed at authors, Editors or referees and have a number of sanctions at our disposal including the option to inform employers about accusations and ask them to mount their own internal investigations. Accusations should not be made lightly or in the absence of the likelihood of supporting evidence being obtainable. The Journal may take the view that accusations are malicious if supporting evidence cannot be found and may direct sanctions against accusers in such cases. Any accusation of misconduct should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief (unless it involves the Editor-in-Chief, in which case it should be directed to the Chairman of the Advisory Board).
Archiving
The journal’s plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content is currently at OCLC/World Cat Digital