Studies in Medical Sciences
Editorial policies

Editorial policies

 | Post date: 2018/10/28 | 
Editorial policies of Studies in Medical Sciences

Editorial Independence:
Although the Journal of “Studies in Medical Sciences” is sponsored financially by Urmia University of Medical Sciences, it benefits from editorial freedom. The editors evaluate and accept articles based only on significance, originality, validity, and adherence to the aims and scope of the Journal.
 
Table of content
Research Ethics
Authorship
Competing interests
Peer Review
Plagiarism and Text recycling and duplicate publication
Data Fabrication and Data Falsification
Conference Proceedings
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Corrections and Retractions
Complaints and Appeals

Research Ethics

 
  • Ethics
  • Research involving animals or humans
  • Ethics committee approval
  • Confidentiality
  • Sanctions
  • Allegations of Misconduct
  • Citation

Ethics
The Studies in Medical Sciences follows the WAME Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research and applies guidelines of Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE) and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) to ensure "high-quality scientific publications and be a trustful place for the scientific findings as proof-of-concept and proof-of-transformative technology.
See Helsinki Declarations for detailed descriptions. A selection of key points is included below; however, we appreciate if authors follow and check all the COPE and ICMJE guidelines before submitting their manuscript.
If we suspect an ethical problem, misconduct, fraud or plagiarism, we will follow the COPE guidelines and reserve the rights to inform authors or their institution.
  •     Laboratory and clinical research should be driven by protocol; pilot studies should have a written rationale.
  •     Research protocols should seek to answer specific questions, rather than just collect data.
  •     Protocols must be carefully agreed by all contributors and collaborators, including, if appropriate, the participants.
  •     The final protocol should form part of the research record.
  •     Early agreement on the precise roles of the contributors and collaborators, and on matters of authorship and publication, is advised.
  •     Statistical issues should be considered early in study design, including power calculations, to ensure there are neither too few nor too many participants.
  •     Formal supervision, usually the responsibility of the principal investigator, should be provided for all research projects: this must include quality control, and the frequent review and long term retention (may be up to 15 years) of all records and primary outputs.

Data Sharing
This Journal encourages authors to share the data and any other materials associated with the methodology and results of their submitted articles. This can be done in an appropriate public repository, or as open access supplementary material to the article. As such, the results of clinical trials must include a data sharing statement. However, for other manuscripts, it is recommended that, in line with ICMJE recommendations, a data sharing statement be included. This statement should detail whether and how the data will be available. For more information, please consult the ICMJE recommendations http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html#two).
 
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Research involving animals or humans
Animal research
It is imperative to ensure the well-being of animals (vertebrate and higher invertebrate), that are utilized for purposes such as research, education, and testing. Authors should provide a comprehensive account of ethical treatment of their animals in their submission. Animal experiments require full compliance with local, national, ethical, and regulatory principles, and local licensing arrangements. International standards vary. In the manuscript, it is essential to provide a statement that clearly identifies the institutional and/or licensing committee responsible for approving the experiments. All relevant details about the approval should also be included. Authors conducting experimental studies involving client-owned animals must also provide evidence of obtaining informed consent from the client or owner, as well as adhering to exceptional standards of veterinary care.
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Human research
  • Authors must identify the ethics committee approving the research, including the name and reference number of the committee in submitted manuscripts.
  • Formal and documented ethical approval from an appropriately constituted research ethics committee is required for all studies involving people, medical records, and anonymised human tissues.
  • Use of human tissues in research should conform to the highest ethical standards, such as those recommended by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.
  •  Fully informed consent should always be sought. It may not always be possible, however, and in such circumstances, an appropriately constituted research ethics committee should decide if this is ethically acceptable.
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Ethics committee approval
If a study has not received prior approval from an ethics committee before commencing, it is generally not possible to obtain retrospective ethics approval. As a result, the submission may not be eligible for peer review consideration.
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Confidentiality
Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information about the submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
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Sanctions
 Studies in Medical Sciences keeps all the rights to apply the following sanctions to any article that has not met the journal’s Ethical Policy:
  • Immediate rejection of the article and sanctioning of the delinquent author/authors for at least of 24 months
  • Prohibiting all delinquent author/authors that are participated as reviewer and/or a member of editorial board of Studies in Medical Sciences for at least 36 months
  • In the case of repeated violations, the journal keeps all the rights to apply additional sanctions, based on the COPE. For detailed descriptions, see the COPE guidelines for retracting articles.
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Allegations of Misconduct
Publishing a manuscript in Studies in Medical Sciences reflects the trust between the author and the journal. We are expected that the authors be aware of the Research Misconduction rules and be very cautious about it, because in the case of any intentionally or unintentionally violation from these rules, the journal reserves the right to refer such cases to Ethical Committee of the Urmia University of Medical Sciences for investigation and making the final decision about the fate of the manuscript. The Committee will take appropriate measures to ensure justice. The authors will be given the right to submit explanation against the allegations raised and fix them. The final decision is the responsibility of the university's ethics committee.
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Citation

In support of the claims made Research and non-research articles (e.g., Opinion, Review, and Commentary articles) must cite appropriate and relevant literature. Inappropriate behaviors include excessive self-citation, authors intentionally collaborating to collectively self-cite, unnecessary citation of articles from the journal where the paper is submitted, and any other form of citation manipulation. The article with any type of citation manipulation to increase the number of citations to a given author/authors or article/articles will experience the "Citation Manipulation Sanctions", according to the COPE guidelines.
Authors should consider the following guidelines when preparing their manuscripts:
  • Citation is required when a statement in the manuscripts relies on external sources of information.
  • Citing derivations of original work should be avoided by authors. For example, they should cite the original work rather than a review article that cites an original work.
  • Accuracy of citation must be insured by authors.
  • Sources that they have not been read by the authors should not be cited.
  • Preferentially citing their own or their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications should be avoided by authors.
  • Citing work solely from one country should be avoided by authors.
  • Using an excessive number of citations to support one point should be avoided by authors.
  • Ideally, sources should be cited that have undergone peer review where possible.
  • Citing advertisements or advertorial material should be avoided. 
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Authorship

  • Author responsibilities
  • Author contributions
  • Author information
  • Author identification
  • Changes to authorship
  • Authorship issues or disputes
  • Honorary or Gift Authorship
  • Data transparency
  • Role of the Corresponding Author
  • Affiliation

Author responsibilities
ICMJE recommends authors and contributors to respect and adhere to the following four criteria:
  •    Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  •     Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  •     Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  •     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.
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Author contributions
We also recommend authors to submit a short description of all contributions to their manuscript. Each author’s contribution should be described in brief. Authors of research papers should state whether they had complete access to the study data that support the publication or not. Contributors who do not qualify as authors should also be listed and their particular contribution described. This information should appear as an acknowledgment.
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Author information
By publishing author information, the journal enables the scientific community to easily identify both authors and their affiliated institutions, while also ensuring that such records are easily retrievable from databases and bibliographic indexes. The mentioned information in the journal includes author names and affiliations submitted by the corresponding author.
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Author identification
Authors are encouraged to provide the journal with their Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID). ORCID is a global, not-for-profit organization. Its vision is:
  • A world where all who participate in research, scholarship, and innovation are uniquely identified and connected to their contributions across disciplines, borders, and time.
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Changes to authorship
Any changes in the authorship, including name, order, adding or removing of an author after initial submission must be approved by all authors. In addition, you must notify the publisher of any changes. Studies in Medical Sciences requires all authors to confirm in writing that they agree to the proposed changes.
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Authorship issues or disputes
If there is a disagreement regarding authorship either during the peer review process or after the article has been accepted and published, the Journal cannot intervene or make a decision on the matter. Authors are requested to resolve the dispute themselves. If they cannot, the journal reserves the right to remove the manuscript from the editorial process or, after the article is published, to raise the matter with the author(s) institution(s) and follow their instructions.
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Honorary or Gift Authorship
Honorary authorship and gift authorship are two types of authorship frauds in publication. Both honorary and gift authorship refers to assigning authorship to those who have not contributed significantly to study but are named authors for other reasons, such as enhanced funding and publication opportunities. Honorary and gift authors will experience "Gift Authorship Sanctions" according to the COPE guidelines.
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Data transparency
All authors are requested to ensure that all data and materials, as well as any software application or custom code, support their published claims and meet industry standards. Note that journals may have individual policies for (sharing) research data according to disciplinary standards and expectations.
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Role of the Corresponding Author
The corresponding author represents all co-authors and ensures that any questions asked regarding any part of the work are adequately answered. According to (ICMJE) the corresponding author is responsible for the following requirements:
  • He/she is the one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer-review, and publication process.
  • Ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and disclosures of relationships and activities are properly completed and reported, although these duties may be delegated to one or more co-authors.
  • Should be available throughout the submission and peer-review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way, and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication.
Although the corresponding author has primary responsibility for correspondence with the journal, the ICMJE recommends that editors send copies of all correspondence to all listed authors.
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Affiliation
The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. The author's current address if they have relocated since the original publication should be included. Addresses will not be changed after publication of the article.
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Competing interest

 
 
  • Definition
  • Financial competing interests
  • Non-financial competing interests
  • Application to authors


Definition
According to (COPE) " Competing interests (also known as conflicts of interests - COIs) may arise during research, writing, and publication processes, and can be briefly defined as being any influential factor which interfere with the objective integrity of research publication." Conflict of interest occurs when financial or non-financial relationship or interest exists between any participants in the peer review or publication process authors, reviewers, editors, or editorial board members of journals and might bias or be seen to bias fulfilling their role. In addition, authors should follow journal and institutional requirements for disclosing competing interests. Furthermore, authors should disclose the role of the research funder(s) or sponsor (if any) in the research design, execution, analysis, interpretation and reporting.
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Financial competing interests
Financial competing interests include (but are not limited to):
  • Having received fees for consulting.
  • Having received research funding.
  • Having been employed by a related company.
  • Holding stocks or shares in a company which might be affected by the publication of your paper.
  • Having received funds reimbursing you for attending a related symposia, or talk
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Non-financial competing interests
Non-financial interests that could potentially influence the impartiality of their submission, such as professional affiliations, personal relationships, or individual beliefs should be disclosed by the authors. This is a crucial requirement to ensure the credibility and objectivity of the publication. Non-financial competing interests include, but are not limited to: writing or consulting for educational purposes, serving on the editorial board or board of directors that involve management positions.
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Application to authors
During the submission process, authors are required to disclose and specify any competing interest by providing declarations in the manuscript submission system. In addition to the declarations mentioned in submission systems or forms, it is mandatory for all authors, regardless of the peer review model, to disclose any potential conflicts of interest at the conclusion of their published article.
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Peer review

 
  • General information
  • Peer-review publication policies
  • Peer reviewers
  • Reviewers' responsibilities
  • Publication and authorship
  • Editors
  • Editors' responsibilities


General information
An editor of Studies in Medical Sciences evaluates all submissions to determine if they meet the criteria for peer review. Submissions that are deemed appropriate for consideration will be forwarded to independent experts for peer review. The editorial decision on the manuscript is made by the editors, who take into account the reports of the reviewers. The authors receive these reports along with the decision made by the editors. Authors need to be aware that even if they receive a positive report, any concerns raised by another reviewer could significantly detract from the study and potentially lead to the rejection of the manuscript.
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Peer-review publication policies
For peer review, the editors of Studies in Medical Sciences carefully select a minimum of two impartial reviewers to assess all the submitted contributions. It is essential for editors, authors, and reviewers to maintain the confidentiality of all aspects related to the editorial and peer review process for submitted manuscripts. The journal gladly accepts paper submissions from members of the Editorial Board. Editorial consideration is not influenced by the status of being an Editorial Board Member, and these submissions are not given priority over other manuscripts.
The following procedures are implemented when handling papers authored by editorial board members:
  • The manuscript undergoes a rigorous double-blind peer review process, wherein independent reviewers evaluate the manuscript without knowing the author's identity. This critical step ensures that the assessment is impartial and based solely on the merits of the manuscript itself.
  • A committee of editors makes the final decision on manuscript acceptance or rejection, providing a collective and informed judgment.
  • Members of the editorial board must transparently declare their authorship of the article and disclose any potential conflicts of interest to the editorial committee. This transparency is vital to upholding the integrity of the publication process.
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Peer reviewers
The authors can suggest potential reviewers, but the final decision to consider them lies with the editor. Authors should not suggest recent collaborators or colleagues who work in the same institution as themselves. Authors who wish to suggest peer reviewers can do so in the cover letter and should provide institutional email addresses where possible or information which will help the Editor to verify and identity the potential introduced reviewer (e.g., an ORCID or Scopus ID).
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Reviewers' responsibilities
According to COPE, peer reviewers are external experts who are chosen by the journal editors to offer their written opinions regarding the manuscript for improving the quality of the study.
  •     Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
  •     Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author.
  •     Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
  •     Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
  •     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.
  •     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.

Publication and authorship
  •     All submitted papers are subject to strict double-blind peer review process by at least two reviewers that are experts in the area of the particular paper.
  •     The peer review process can take anywhere between two to four months.
  •     The aim of the review process is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article, in terms of relevance, originality, up-to-datedness, coherence, balanced argumentation, readability, statistical validity and language.
  •     The possible decisions include acceptance, acceptance with revisions, or rejection.
  •     If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.
  •     Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.
  •     The paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall   then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
  •     No research can be included in more than one publication.
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Editors
The Scholarly Journals Council of Studies in Medical Sciences carefully evaluates the applications and chooses the most outstanding candidate based on the COPE Guidelines, which address various factors such as competing interests. A regular auditing process is applied to ensure upon best practice, based on the COPE Guidelines. The editors evaluate the articles and solicit peer reviewers. The Editors evaluate the comments from the peer reviewers and make the final decision regarding the publication of content in the journal.
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Editors' responsibilities
  •     Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
  •     Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.
  •     Editors should always consider the needs of the authors and the readers when attempting to improve the publication.
  •     Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.
  •     Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
  •     Editors should have a clear picture of a research's funding sources.
  •     Editors should base their decisions solely on the papers' importance, originality, clarity and relevance to publication's scope.
  •     Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.
  •     Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
  •     Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to internationally accept ethical guidelines.
  •     Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
  •     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.
  •     Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions; they should have proof of misconduct.
  •     Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers and board members.
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Plagiarism and Text recycling and duplicate publication


UMSU PRESS Journals utilize iThenticate software, a plagiarism detection service that verifies the originality of submission content prior to publication. In cases of plagiarism, we adhere to COPE guidelines.
Plagiarism encompasses, but is not limited to:
  • Direct quotation of text from other sources without proper citation
  • Uncredited use of ideas, images, or data from other sources
  • Reusing text from one's own previous publications without proper citation
  • Presenting an idea from another source with slightly modified language as one's own
If plagiarism is detected during the peer-review process, the submission may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, we reserve the right to issue a correction or retract the paper, as appropriate. We also reserve the right to inform authors' institutions about plagiarism detected either before or after publication.
 
All manuscripts submitted to the journal must be original, and no other journal should be considering the manuscript or its significant parts. Whenever there is a possibility of overlap or duplication, it is essential for authors to be transparent.
Generally, the manuscript that is submitted should not have been previously published either in a journal or in any other citable form. There are exceptions to this rule, such as publishing as a poster or presenting at a conference, if it is justified and clarified upon submission.

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Data Fabrication and Data Falsification

Data fabrication refers to the act of manufacturing non-existent data or results, and subsequently recording or reporting them as part of the research record. Data misrepresentation, on the other hand, involves the deliberate manipulation of research data with the aim to deceive. This could entail image modification, suppression of conflicting data or undesirable results, alteration, addition, or elimination of data points, or biased reporting of research findings. The "Studies in Medical Sciences" journal firmly opposes both data fabrication and misrepresentation. These practices severely undermine scientific ethics, depreciating the integrity of academic literature. They pose a direct threat to the credibility of everyone and every process involved in a research endeavor, potentially leading others to draw misleading conclusions. This can have harmful implications for patients in clinical research and practice, and cause other researchers to squander their time, effort, and resources in attempts to reproduce or build upon the manipulated data.
In the case of image usage, "Studies in Medical Sciences" supports the enhancement of images for increased clarity, such as adjusting contrast, brightness, or color balance. However, these alterations are only acceptable when the image usage is rightfully acknowledged to the original author. Any technical manipulation, such as the removal or addition of elements to an image, is deemed as data fabrication, and the journal does not condone such practices.
In the event of discovering data fabrication or misrepresentation, the editor holds the right to reject the paper without review, publicly address the issue in an editorial, prohibit the author from future submissions to the journal, and/or notify the author's employers or academic institution.
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Conference proceedings


In some research communities publishing work in conference proceedings is common. Submissions containing material that has been published in a conference proceedings paper will be considered by Studies in Medical Sciences. Although, substantial extension of results, methodology, analysis, conclusions and/or implications over the conference proceedings paper should be provided in the submission. On what constitutes a substantial extension, is made by the editors at each individual journal. Details of the conference proceedings paper with their submission including relevant citation in the submitted manuscript must be provided by the authors.
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All articles published in this journal are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. This license allows others to share, adapt, and build upon the work, but only for non-commercial purposes.
To use the article on social media or websites, please use a direct link to the article and cite the author and source of the article.

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Acknowledgements


The acknowledgment section serves the purpose of expressing gratitude to individuals who have played a significant role in the publication of the work but do not meet the criteria for authorship. It is also used to disclose any pertinent funding details. Reporting all sources of funding and support for the project or study is a requirement. This encompasses grants, contributions from individuals and institutions, as well as support from commercial sources. Consultancies and funds paid directly to investigators must also be listed.
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Corrections and Retractions

  • Correction
  • Retraction

In order to uphold the academic integrity of its journals, UMSU PRESS occasionally finds it imperative to publish corrections or retractions of previously published articles. To adhere to the universally recognized standards of the academic community, any necessary amendments or withdrawals of published articles will be handled by publishing a distinct Erratum or Retraction article. The original article will remain unaltered, except for the inclusion of a prominent link directing readers to the Erratum or Retraction article. The subsequent Erratum or Retraction will be widely indexed and the original article will remain in the public domain. We may have to remove a material from our site and archive sites when in the exceptional event that material is considered to infringe certain rights or is defamatory.
According to COPE “RETRACTION GUIDELINES - Committee on Publication Ethics”, Studies in Medical Sciences will retract articles that:
  • Are not reliable and had scientific or ethical misconducts
  • Are published, reviewed, or are under review by other journals
  • Committed plagiarism
  • Are not ethical or not have taken an ethical code for the study


Corrections
At the editor(s)’ discretion, changes to published articles that affect the interpretation and conclusion of the article, but do not fully invalidate the article, will  be corrected via publication of an Erratum that is indexed and linked to the original article.
Retractions
Seldom, it may be necessary for published articles to be retracted, when the scientific information in an article is substantially undermined. In such cases UMSU PRESS will follow the COPE guidelines.
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Complaints and Appeals


If authors, peer reviewers or readers suspect any misconduct such as violation of the editorial policy, publication ethics or any or any applicable guidelines/policies specified by COPE, they are encouraged to submit a formal letter of complaint by email addressed to the editor in chief: isaabdiradyahoo.com. Suspected cases of misconduct will be investigated according to COPE guidelines.



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