Ethics and Policies

Authorship and Contributorship
• Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below:
  1. Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
  2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
  3. Final approval of the version to be published.
  
  Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for 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. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the contributors. The journal prescribes a maximum number of authors for manuscripts depending upon the type of manuscript, its scope and number of institutions involved (vide infra). The authors should provide a justification, if the number of authors exceeds these limits.
  
  Ethical responsibilities of authors
  This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. The journal will follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on how to deal with potential acts of misconduct.
  
  Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, which includes:
  ● The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.
  ● The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work (please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling (“self-plagiarism”)).
  ● A single study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (e.g. “salami-publishing”).
  ● No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support your conclusions.
  ● No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the authors own (“plagiarism”). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions are secured for material that is copyrighted. Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.
  ● Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.
  
  Changes to authorship or contributorship:
  ● Changes of authorship or in the order of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.
  ● Requests to add or delete authors at revision stage or after publication is a serious matter, and may be considered only after receipt of written approval from all authors and detailed explanation about the role/deletion of the new/deleted author. The decision on accepting the change rests with the Editor-in-Chief of the journal.
  ● Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc.
  
  If there is a suspicion of misconduct, the journal will carry out an investigation following the COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, the allegation seems to raise valid concerns, the accused author will be contacted and given an opportunity to address the issue. If misconduct has been proven, this may result in the Editor-in-Chief's implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:
  ●  If the article is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
  ● If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction, either an erratum will be placed with the article or in severe cases complete retraction of the article will occur. The reason must be given in the published erratum or retraction note.
  ● The author's institution may be informed.
  
  Author contributions
  This section is only required for original articles, review articles, systematic reviews, and meta-analysis articles. It describes the contribution made by each author to the manuscript. Authorship credit should be based on:
  1) Substantial contributions to the conception and design of the study, the acquisition of the data, or the analysis and interpretation of the data;
  2) Drafting the article or critically revising it for important intellectual content; and
  3) The final approval of the final version to be published.
  Authors should meet all three of these conditions.
  
  Note: the acquisition of funding, collection of data, language editing, or general supervision of the research group alone do not constitute authorship.
  
  The “Author contributions” section should be presented as follows:
  (I) Conception and design:
  (II) Administrative support:
  (III) Provision of study materials or patients:
  (IV) Collection and assembly of data:
  (V) Data analysis and interpretation:
  (VI) Manuscript writing: All authors
  (VII) Final approval of manuscript: All authors
  Note: 1. With VI and VII, “All authors” is obligatory, while the other credits are case-based; 2. The “Author contributions” section is not required when there is only one author.
  
Pubdate： 2020-10-28    Viewed： 261