Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The ethical policy of  Journal of Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences  (JSUMS) is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with International Committee of journal Editorial Board codes of conduct.

General Considerations 

• Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with journal.
• The publishing decision is based on the suggestion of the journal's reviewers and editorial board members.
• The reviewers are necessary to evaluate the research papers based on the submitted content in confidential manner.
• The reviewers also suggest the authors to improve the quality of research paper by their reviewing comments.
• Authors should ensure that their submitted research work is original and has not been published elsewhere in any language.
• Applicable copyright laws and conventions should be followed by the authors. 
• Any kind of plagiarism constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. 

For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit http://publicationethics.org.

Publisher responsibilities

• publisher should ensure that editorial decisions on manuscript submissions are final and are only made based on professional judgment and will not be affected by any commercial interests.
• publisher should monitor the ethics of Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
• publisher is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.

Editorial responsibilities

(https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_1.pdf)

• The editorial team (editor, managing director and editorial board) has full authority to reject or accept any article.
• The editorial team must maintain the confidentiality of the content of the submitted articles until their publication.
• Due to the journal's review policy (Double-Blind), the anonymity of the judges and authors should be maintained.
• The editorial team should report any conflict of interest and prevent it from occurring.
• The editorial team should always monitor the issues of ethics in publishing, plagiarism and scientific violations and provide the necessary explanations if necessary.
• The editorial team should be willing to investigate plagiarism and fraudulent data issues and willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

reviewers’ responsibilities  

(https://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Peer%20review%20guidelines.pdf)

• Confidentiality of article information must be observed in all areas. The article review process is to be done anonymously.
• Reviewers should judge articles at the appropriate time and assist the editorial team in deciding whether or not to accept the article.
• The referees' suggestions regarding the published articles should be submitted in the form of judging forms and in the comment section for the author and editor.
• Reviewers should refrain from judging articles with conflict of interest and report any conflict of interest as soon as possible.
• Reviewers' judgments about the quality and content of articles should be based on professional and objective opinions.

Authorship Criteria and Author’s Responsibility

(https://publicationethics.org/files/u7141/1999pdf13.pdf)

 To ensure authorship for the submitted manuscripts, the contributors should meet the following three conditions:

1. Conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data has been done by the author.
2. Either drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content has been done by the author.
3. The final approval of the version to be published has been given by the author. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to be allowed to take public responsibility for suitable portions of the content.

Author’s Responsibilities are:

• During the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, the corresponding author is typically responsible for communicating with the journal and ensuring that all of the journal's administrative requirements, such as authorship details, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and conflict of interest statements, are properly completed. Throughout the submission and peer review process, the corresponding author should promptly respond to editorial queries and cooperate with any requests from the journal after publication.
• After an article has been accepted for publication in the JSUMS, no additional authors or changes to the first or corresponding authors are allowed. If an author wishes to be removed from the byline, he or she must submit a letter signed by the author and all other authors indicating their wish to be removed from the list of authors. Any change in the authors' order in the byline requires a letter signed by all authors indicating their agreement.
• It is necessary to observe the basic principles of writing and research in writing articles, and articles should be written and arranged according to the format of the journal.
• Before submitting an article, all authors should read the authors' guide and the terms and conditions of submitting an article in this journal.
• The corresponding author must confirm and submit the consent and knowledge of other co-authors of the article in this publication through the authors' commitment form.
• All authors whose names are mentioned in the article and in the letter of commitment form must participate in writing and compiling the article.
• Appreciation and organizational affiliation of authors should be mentioned in the article and any conflicts of interest between authors or organizations should be mentioned.
• For the sustainability and development of the specialized review process, qualified authors are invited to participate in the review process of other articles in this journal.
• Authors should clearly report the sponsor of the research (if any).
• Authors have a duty to notify the editor as soon as possible if they find a mistake or incorrection in their published article to correct or revoke the article.
• All authors should be aware that articles submitted to this journal are reviewed by a similarity check software to prevent scientific misconduct.
• Authors should cite correctly and appropriately all the sources they have used, both directly and indirectly.

 Human and animal studies

All manuscripts reporting the results of experimental investigations involving human subjects should include a statement confirming the informed consent was obtained from each subject or subject’s guardian. All animal or human studies should be used after approval of the experimental protocol by a local ethics committee.

Dealing with possible misconduct

Editors have a duty to act if they suspect misconduct or if an allegation of misconduct is brought to them. This duty extends to both published and unpublished papers. Editors should not simply reject papers that raise concerns about possible misconduct. They are ethically obliged to pursue alleged cases. Editors should follow the COPE flowcharts where applicable.

• Data Fabrication and Falsification

Data fabrication and falsification means the researcher did not really carry out the study, but made-up data or results and had recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.

• Duplicate Publication

Duplicate publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions. 

• Citation Manipulation

Excessive citations in a submitted manuscript that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and were included solely to increase citations to a given author's work or articles published in a particular journal are referred to as citation manipulation. This is a form of scientific misconduct since it misrepresents the importance of the specific work and publication in which it appears.

• Simultaneous Submission:

Simultaneous submission occurs when a manuscript (or substantial sections from a manuscript) is submitted to a journal when it is already under consideration by another journal.

• Redundant Publications:

Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, most often consequent to the desire to plump academic vitae.

• Improper Author Contribution or Attribution: 

All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. Don’t forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.

• Plagiarism

• Plagiarism is intentionally using someone else’s ideas or other original material as if they are one's own. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation is considered by JSUMS Journal as plagiarism.
• All authors are strongly recommended to check their manuscripts content before its submission to the journal for publication. The Authors may use trustable valid "Plagiarism Checking software’s" to make sure that their manuscripts are Plagiarism free.
• Anyway,
• All manuscripts under review or published with JSUMS are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software (Hamyab) & other Plagiarism Detection Software’s.
• If the Reviewers, Editor-in-Chiefs, Readers or Editorial Staffs suspect or notice any types of plagiarism at any stage of publication process, the manuscript will be rejected and all authors including the corresponding author will be notified then.
• Self-plagiarism is also considered & managed accordingly.

The Principles of Transparency

• Study design and ethical approval

Good research should be well justified, well planned, appropriately designed, and ethically approved. To conduct research to a lower standard may constitute misconduct. The authors are responsible for the whole scientific content as well as the accuracy of the bibliographic information.

• Data analysis

Data should be appropriately analyzed, but inappropriate analysis does not necessarily amount to misconduct. Fabrication and falsification of data do constitute misconduct.

• Data Availability

The data used to support the findings should be available from the corresponding author upon request. 

• Conflicts of interest

Conflicts of interest comprise those which may not be fully apparent and which may influence the judgment of author, reviewers, and editors. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived. They may be personal, commercial, political, academic or financial. “Financial” interests may include employment, research funding, stock or share ownership, payment for lectures or travel, consultancies and company support for staff.

• Peer-review

This journal uses Double-blind peer review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not give their identity. Authors have the right to communicate to the editor if they do not wish their manuscript to be reviewed by a particular reviewer because of potential conflicts of interest. No article is rejected unless negative comments are received from at least two reviewers. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, is clearly described on the journal’s Web site (http://jsums.medsab.ac.ir/journal/process?lang=en).

• Archiving

• • The plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to journal's content (http://jsums.medsab.ac.ir) is clearly indicated. This policy sets out the ways in which the authors of JSUMS can archive copies of their work on their own web pages, corporate web pages, and various other subject repositories. 
  • JSUMS is an open access license, articles can be made available immediately according to the terms of their specific Creative Common license. 
  • Authors may also reuse the Abstract and Citation information (e.g. Title, Author name, Publication dates) of their article, for Non-Comercial purposes, anywhere at any time including social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs and Twitter, providing that where possible a link is included back to the article on the JSUMS site. Preferably the link should be, or include, the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) which can be found in the Citation information about the article online. 
  • Self-archiving of the submitted version is not subject to an embargo period.
  • The journal is now archiving electronically at the local & international repositories as follows:
    • ISC
    • SID
    • Magiran

• Publishing schedule

JSUMS  is published 6 issues per year (Bimonthly). All the content from the beginning to the end will be available for ever on JSUMS exclusive website (http://jsums.medsab.ac.ir/?lang=en). 

• Privacy and Confidentiality

  • All manuscripts must be reviewed with the utmost regard for the authors' confidentiality.
  • Disclosure of confidential details during the review of an author's manuscript may be a violation of their rights.
  • Reviewers have the right to confidentiality, which the editor must respect. If there is a suspicion of dishonesty or fraud, confidentiality may have to be breached, but it must be honored otherwise.
  • Besides the authors and reviewers, editors are prohibited from disclosing information about manuscripts (including their receipt, content, status in the reviewing process, reviewer criticism, or ultimate fate). 
  • Reviewers and editorial staff must respect the authors' rights by refraining from publicly discussing or appropriating the authors' work before the manuscript is published.
  • Reviewers should not be allowed to make copies of the manuscript for their files, and they should not be allowed to share it with others except if the editor permits them.
  • Editors should not keep copies of manuscripts that have been rejected.
  • Without the permission of the reviewer, author, and editor, reviewer comments should not be published or otherwise made public.

• Ownership and management

Journal of Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences is the journal of Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences. The journal owned & supported fully by Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences & published by the Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences Journals Publishing House.

As Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences is supporting most of the publishing costs of Journal of Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences, Article Processing Charge (APC) and any other publication fees in the journal are free for authors. There is NO APC charges for this journal.

• Copyright and Licensing

On the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge, this journal provides immediate open access to its content.

All journal papers are released under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC 4.0), which permits Non-Comercial use, sharing, adaption, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as the original author(s) and source are properly credited. In this journal, the copyright holder is Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences (the Publisher)

• Advertising

The policy of the journal is not to have advertising.

• Corrections and retractions

To maintain the integrity of academic record, journal may have to publish correction or retraction of paper published in journal. According to agreed academic community norms, corrections or corrections of published articles are made by publishing an Erratum or Retraction article, without altering the original article in any other way than by adding a prominent connection to the Erratum / Retraction article. The original article remains in the public domain and should be commonly indexed to the subsequent Erratum or Retraction. We may have to delete the material from our website and archive sites in the exceptional event the material is considered to infringe those rights or is defamatory. It may be necessary for the original author(s) to make minor corrections to published articles by making a comment on the published Article. It will only be acceptable if the modifications do not affect the article's results or conclusions.

• • Corrections: Changes to published articles that affect the article's meaning and conclusion but do not invalidate the article in its entirety may be corrected, at the discretion of the editor(s), by publishing an Erratum indexed and linked to the original article. Changes in authorship of published articles are corrected through an Erratum.

• •  Retractions: If the scientific information in an article is significantly compromised on rare occasions it may be appropriate to retract published articles. In these cases, Journal must comply with the COPE guidelines. Retracted papers are indexed and the original article is referred to.

Process for identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct

Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.

• The first action of the journal Editor is to inform the Editorial Office of JSUMS by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner.
• If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and it seems that serious unethical conduct has taken place, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via Editorial Office.  After deliberation, the Committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions. 
• If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Publication Committee, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the author of JSUMS publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the Editor may request the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.
• Notification will be sent to corresponding author and any work by the author responsible for the violation or any work these persons coauthored that is under review by JSUMS journal will be rejected immediately.
• The authors are prohibited from serving on JSUMS editorial board and serving as a reviewer for JSUMS Journal. JSUMS reserves the right to take more actions.
• In serious cases of fraud that result in retraction of the article, a retraction notice will be published in the journal and will be linked to the article in the online version. The online version will also be marked “retracted” with the retraction date.

Complaints and Appeals Proccess 

We welcome genuine appeals to editor decisions. However, you will need to provide strong evidence or new data/information in response to the editor’s and reviewers’ comments. Editors don’t expect frequent appeals and they rarely reverse their original decisions. Therefore, if you receive a decision to reject your manuscript, you are strongly advised to submit to another journal. The final decisions of the Editorial Board are based on the opinions of the reviewers and their unbiased judgment and are therefore usually irrevocable. However, if you have a complaint about the final decision of the publication and think that there is a case for appeal, follow the following process:

• • Provide your reasonable and acceptable reasons and explain why you do not agree with this decision.
  • Provide any information or new data that you want to be considered in the review process to the editors of the publication.
  • If you believe that the reviewers made a mistake in evaluating your paper, provide reasons and acceptable documentation.
  • If you think there was a conflict of interest in the arbitration process, provide your evidence.

The editors accept only one appeal per article. After receiving the appeal, the editors may involve the referees and editors who have evaluated the manuscript. The decisions of the editors and editorial board regarding appeals are final and may include rejection of the manuscript, request for further peer review, or request to submit a revised version of the manuscript.

COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts 

JSUMS is committed to follow and apply guidelines and flowcharts of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in its reviewing and publishing process and issues. For more information on COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts please see: 

(https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts-new/translations). 

COPE’s Code of Conduct and Best Practices for Editors

(https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf)

(https://publicationethics.org/files/2008%20Code%20of%20Conduct.pdf)

Everything published in the journal is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief. This means that the editors must:

• Strive to meet the needs of readers and authors;
• Strive to constantly improve their journal;
• Have processes in place to assure the quality of the material they publish;
• Champion freedom of expression;
• Maintain the integrity of the academic record;
• Preclude business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards;
• Always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
• Actively seeking the views of authors, readers, reviewers and editorial board members about ways of improving their journal’s processes.
• Encouraging and being aware of research into peer review and publishing and reassessing their journal’s processes in the light of new findings.
• Supporting initiatives designed to reduce research and publication misconduct.
• Supporting initiatives to educate researchers about publication ethics.
• Assessing the effects of their journal policies on author and reviewer behavior and revising policies, as required, to encourage responsible behavior and discourage misconduct.