Publication Ethics

  

 

Publication Ethics

 

 
 
 
  
  

  Ethics summary

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

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

 
  

  Conflict-of-Interest Statement

 

According to ICMJE, conflict of interest occurred when a financial or personal relationship exist between any participant in the peer review and publication process – authors, reviewers, editors, or editorial board members of journals – and might bias or be seen to bias fulfilling their role.

 At first any conflict of interest in a given manuscript should be reported by submitting ICMJE form for Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest on “Journal of Fundamentals of Mental Health” website. Then we utilize COPE workflow to handle it transparently.

 
 

  Authorship

 

We stick to ICMJE definition of author and contributor based on its four criteria as follow:  

    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.”

    5. Sending and publishing overlapping manuscripts in one journal or different journals is prohibited and is considered a research violation. 

      - It is incorrect to submit a manuscript that contains a significant amount of information from a published or under-reviewed manuscript as a new manuscript, even if it refers to a previous article or the previous article belonging to the same author(s).

      - Brief changes in the order of the authors' names, the title of the article, or the summary of the article are not authorized to reprint the article.

      - If the journal is reviewing a manuscript for publication, it is a violation to send the manuscript to another journal.

      - If the author(s) decide, for any reason, to send the manuscript that is under review for publication to another journal, they must first announce their refusal to publish it in writing to the journal. This is possible until the acceptance of the manuscript for publication.

      - If the summary of the manuscript has already been presented orally or as a poster in congresses or seminars, the full text of the manuscript can be published later. In cases where the said congress has published the summary of the manuscript in a scientific journal, the authorities of journal of fundamentals of mental health must be sufficiently informed about the publication of the summary, and the information should be transparently transmitted to the readers along with the main manuscript.

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

    1. Declaration of interests — it is important to declare the funding that made the research possible.

    2. Registering clinical trials — clinical trials should be registered in publicly accessible registries.

    3. Respecting confidentiality — protecting patients from being recognized if used in research and in publication.

    4. Protecting research subjects, patients and experimental animals.

  

   Regulation for Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

 

  Section A: Publication and authorship 

    1. All submitted papers are subject to strict peer-review process by at least two reviewers that are experts in the area of the particular paper. Deputy Editors and Editor-in-Chief are selecting reviewers.

    2. The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, originality, readability, statistical validity and language.

    3. The possible decisions include acceptance, minor revisions, major revision or rejection.

    4. If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.

    5. Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.

    6. The paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

    7. No research can be included in more than one publication, whether within the same journal or in another journal.

 

   Section B: Authors' responsibilities 

    1. Authors must certify that their manuscript is their original work.

    2. Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere, or even submitted and been in reviewed in another journal.

    3. Authors must participate in the peer review process and follow the comments.

    4. Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.

    5. 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.

    6. Authors must state that all data in the paper are real and authentic.

    7. Authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest.

    8. Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript.

    9. Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.

    10. Authors must state that informed consent was obtained from all human adult participants and from the parents or legal guardians of minors. Include the name of the appropriate institutional review board that approved the project.

    11. The authors should follow WMA Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects and clearly state this in their manuscripts.

    12. 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 

    1. Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.

    2. 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.

    3. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in 500 to 1000 words.

    4. Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.

    5. 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.

    6. 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.

  

   Section D: Editorial responsibilities 

    1. Editors (Deputy Editors or Editor-in-Chief) have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.

    2. Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.

    3. Editors should always consider the needs of the authors and the readers when attempting to improve the publication.

    4. Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.

    5. Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.

    6. Editors should have a clear picture of a research's funding sources.

    7. Editors should base their decisions solely one the papers' importance, originality, clarity and relevance to publication's scope.

    8. Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.

    9. Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers

    10. Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to international accepted ethical guidelines.

    11. The editor of Journal can directly or based on the reports, investigate the possible occurrence of research violations and fraud in the received manuscripts. If there is a possibility of research violations and fraud, he asks all authors to explain the issue. If the explanations are not received within a maximum period of two months, or if the explanations are not convincing, with maximum confidentiality as the case may be, the occurrence of a research violation shall be reported to the research ethics committee of the institution, the head or the person in charge of the author's place of work or education to inform so that its occurrence can be ascertained or resolved by conducting research and investigation. The investigation and review of the received report will be based on the ethical guidelines for handling research violations.
    12. If the occurrence of a research violation is confirmed for the editor independently or based on the opinion of the ethics committee, the editor can also examine other articles of the author(s) has been published in the journal or is under review. According to the violation, one or more of the measures include refraining from publishing the manuscript, removing the published article from the journal, stating the reason for removing the article in such a way that the history of the withdrawal of the article is available to the public, the publication of a correction or rebuttal in the next issue of the publication if the article has been published and avoiding the acceptance of future articles by the author(s) for a certain period.

    13. Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.

    14. 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.

    15. Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions; they should have proof of misconduct.

    16. The Chief Editor can return manuscripts in the following cases:

      -If the editor has clear and specific evidence that the results are unreliable due to a research violation, such as falsifying data or a mistake in conducting the research or related statistical calculations.

      -If the results of the study have already been published in another journal without proper permission or reference.

      -If the article contains significant and intentional plagiarism.

      -If the article contains a research report that does not comply with the general and specific ethics guidelines in approved research.

      - In cases where the author(s) object to the editor's decision regarding research misconduct or fraud, they can request him to refer the matter to the Research Ethics Committee for assignment. In any case, the editors must accept the final decisions of this committee.  

    17. Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers and board members.

    18. Editors must not change their decision after submitting a decision (especially after reject or accept) unless they have a serious reason.

   Section E: Publishing Ethics Issues

    1. All editorial members, reviewers and authors must confirm and obey rules defined by ICMJE.

    2. 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 asked for).
    3. Authors cannot make major changes in the article after acceptance without a serious reason.
    4. All editorial members and authors must will to publish any kind of corrections honestly and completely.