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.

1- Allegations of Misconduct

The ethical policy of the Razavi International Journal of Medicine is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines.  Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with the Razavi International Journal of Medicine. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit http://publicationethics.org.

 All papers submitted to the journal are evaluated by a group of consulting editors to determine whether the topic is within the scope of the journal and to evaluate adherence to word limits and journal format. Papers also are assessed for originality, scientific quality, clarity of presentation, and conciseness. Before papers are sent for double blind peer review, they are screened for possible plagiarism, and authors must submit a Competing Financial Interests Declaration form on behalf of all authors.

Papers selected for review are assigned to an Associate Editor, who identifies reviewers and makes recommendations to the Editor-in-Chief. Members of the Editorial Review Board serve as a pool of potential reviewers of papers. Both the Board of Associate Editors and the Editorial Review Board are composed of leading scientists from all segments of valuable research from diverse areas of  Health and Medicine. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer.

Obligations of Editors
The primary responsibility of the journal editor and associate editors is to ensure an efficient and fair review process of manuscripts submitted for publication, and to establish and maintain high standards of technical and professional quality. Criteria of quality are: originality of approach, concept and/or application; profundity; and relevance to the valuable research from diverse areas of Health and Medicine issues.

An editor shall give unbiased consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication, and shall judge each on its merits without regard to any personal relationship or familiarity with the author(s), or to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, professional association, or political philosophy of the author(s).
The editor and editorial staff shall disclose no information about a manuscript under consideration to anyone other than those from whom professional advice regarding the publication of the manuscript is sought. The names of reviewers shall not be released by the editors or editorial staff.

An editor who authors or coauthors a manuscript submitted for consideration to the journal with which that editor is affiliated, shall not review that work. If after publication, the editor-author's work merits ongoing scientific debate within the journal, the editor-author shall accept no editorial responsibility in connection therewith.

An editor shall avoid conflicts of interest and/or the appearance thereof. An editor shall not send a manuscript to reviewers who are known to have personal bias in favor of or against the author or the subject matter of that manuscript. Unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a submitted manuscript are confidential and shall not be used in the research of an editor or associate editor or otherwise disseminated except with the consent of the author and with appropriate attribution.

If an editor is presented with convincing evidence that the substance, conclusions, references or other material included in a manuscript published in the journal are erroneous, the editor, after notifying the author(s) and allowing them to respond in writing, shall facilitate immediate publication of an errata.

If possible, an editor shall also facilitate publication of appropriate comments and/or papers identifying those errors. If an editor is presented with convincing evidence that a manuscript or published paper contains plagiarized material or falsified research data, the editor shall forward such evidence to the Research Deputy in Iran Ministry of Science, Research and Technology.

Obligations of Authors
An author's central obligation is to present a concise account of the research, work, or project completed, together with an objective discussion of its significance. A submitted manuscript shall contain detail and reference to public sources of information sufficient to permit the author's peers to repeat the work or otherwise verify its accuracy.

An author shall cite and give appropriate attribution to those publications influential in determining the nature of the reported work sufficient to guide the reader quickly to earlier work essential to an understanding of the present work. Information obtained by an author privately, from conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, shall not be used or reported in the author's work without explicit permission from the persons from whom the information was obtained. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, shall be treated in the same confidential manner. The submitted manuscript shall not contain plagiarized material or falsified research data.

Fragmentation of research papers shall be avoided. An engineer or scientist who has done extensive work on a system or group of related systems shall organize publication so that each paper gives a complete account of a particular aspect of the general study. It is inappropriate for an author to submit for review more than one paper describing essentially the same research or project to more than one journal of primary publication.

Scholarly criticism of a published paper may sometimes be justified; however, personal criticism is never appropriate. To protect the integrity of authorship, only persons who have significantly contributed to the research or project and paper preparation shall be listed as coauthors. The corresponding author attests to the fact that any others named as coauthors have seen the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. Deceased persons who meet the criterion for coauthor ship shall be included, with a footnote reporting date of death. No fictitious name shall be given as an author or coauthor. An author who submits a manuscript for publication accepts responsibility for having properly included all, and only, qualified coauthors.

It is inappropriate to submit manuscripts with an obvious commercial intent. It is inappropriate for an author to write or coauthor a Discussion of his or her own paper; except in the case of a rebuttal or Closure to criticism or Discussion offered by others.
 
Obligations of Reviewers
Because qualified manuscript review is essential to the publication process, all engineers and scientists have an obligation to do their fair share of reviews.
If a reviewer feels inadequately qualified or lacks the time to fairly judge the work reported, the reviewer shall return the manuscript promptly to the editor.
A reviewer shall objectively judge the quality of a manuscript on its own merit and shall respect the intellectual independence of the author(s). Personal criticism is never appropriate.
A reviewer shall avoid conflicts of interest and/or the appearance thereof. If a manuscript submitted for review presents a potential conflict of interest or the reviewer has a personal bias, the reviewer shall return the manuscript promptly without review, and so advice the editor.
Unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a submitted manuscript are confidential and shall not be used in the research of a reviewer or otherwise disseminated except with the consent of the author and with appropriate attribution.
If a reviewer receives for review a manuscript authored or coauthored by a person with whom the reviewer has a personal or professional relationship, the existence of this relationship shall be promptly brought to the attention of the editor.
A reviewer shall treat a manuscript received for review as a confidential document and shall either disclose or discuss it with others except, as necessary, to persons from whom specific advice may be sought; in that event, the identities of those consulted shall be disclosed to the editor.
Reviewers shall explain and support judgments adequately so that the editor and author(s) may understand the basis for their comments. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument has been previously reported shall be accompanied by the relevant citation.
A reviewer shall call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any published paper and any manuscript submitted concurrently to another journal.
A reviewer shall not use or disclose unpublished information, arguments or interpretations contained in a manuscript under consideration, except with the consent of the author and with appropriate attribution.
If a reviewer has convincing evidence that a manuscript contains plagiarized material or falsified research data, the reviewer shall notify the editor.

 

2- Authorship and Contributorship

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

  • “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.”

 

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

  • Declaration of interests — it is important to declare the funding that made the research possible.
  • Registering clinical trials — clinical trials should be registered in publicly accessible registries.
  • Respecting confidentiality — protecting patients from being recognized if used in research and in publication.
  • Protecting research subjects, patients and experimental animals.

Regulation for Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

 

Section A: Publication and authorship

  • 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.
  • The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, originality, readability, statistical validity and language.
  • The possible decisions include acceptance, minor revisions, major revision 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, whether within the same journal or in another journal.

 

Section B: Authors' responsibilities

  • Authors must certify that their manuscript is their original work.
  • Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere, or even submitted and been in reviewed in another journal.
  • Authors must participate in the peer review process and follow the comments.
  • Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
  • 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.
  • Authors must state that all data in the paper are real and authentic.
  • Authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest.
  • Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript.
  • Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.
  • Authors must state that informed consentwas 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.
  • 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

  • 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. No self-knowledge of the author(s) must affect their comments and decision.
  • Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in 500 to 1000 words.
  • Reviewers may 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.

 

Section D: Editorial responsibilities

  • Editors (Deputy Editors or Editor-in-Chief) 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 one 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 international accepted 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.
  • 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

  • All editorial members, reviewers and authors must confirm and obey rules defined by ICMJE.
  • 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).
  • Authors cannot make major changes in the article after acceptance without a serious reason.
  • All editorial members and authors must will to publish any kind of corrections honestly and completely.

 

3- Complaints Process

Before submitting an article, authors are requested to read all the guidelines and policies regarding processing and publication of the article.
How to complaint?
The authors have the right to complaint and ask explanation if they perceive any misconduct in any applicable policies and ethical guidelines. The authors can raise their complaints by submitting a letter to razavijournal@gmail.com

All the complaints regarding delinquencies in the work processes are investigated according to the prevailing publication ethics practices.
Complaints categorization
An author or any other scholar may submit their complaints about any issues related to:

  • Plagiarism,
  • Copyright violation,
  • Deceiving in research results or wrong research results,
  • Violations in set standard for research,
  • Unrevealed conflicts of interest,
  • Bias in review process,
  • Article processing time is unusually late,
  • The peer-review comments are unsatisfactorily,
  • Authorship issues

 
Policy for Dealing with Complaints
Once a complaint is received, at first an acknowledgement is sent to the complainant with assurance that appropriate action will be taken on complaint within three working days excluding the complaint receiving date.
The investigation process is initiated by the Journal handling team according to the directions of the Editor-In-Chief. After the investigation is over, a meeting is held with complete report on the complaint. The decision is taken in and the same is forwarded to the concerned scholar through his submitted email ID.
• In the case that this initial response is felt to be insufficient, the complainant can request that their complaint is escalated to a more senior member of the team.
• If the complainant remains unhappy, complaints may be escalated to an executive editor and ultimately the editor in chief, whose decision is final.
• If a complainant remains unhappy after what the editor in chief considers a definitive reply, the complainant may complain to an external body.
Complaints that are not under the control of Razavi International Journal of Medicine editorial staff will be sent to the relevant heads of department within Razavi Hospital Publication.
All the received complaints are dealt in polite and timely manner with a certainty.

 

4- 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 report by submitting ICMJE form for Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest on Razavi International Journal of Medicinewebsite. Then we utilize COPE workflow to transparently handle it.

  • Conflicts of interest refers to any case that interferes with, or reasonably interferes with, complete and purposeful presentation, thorough review, editing decisions, or publishing research or non-research papers submitted to the Razavi International Journal of Medicine published by Razavi Hospital Publication.
    - Conflicts of interest exist when professional judgment of primary interests (research credibility) is affected by secondary interests. There is nothing immoral about mutual benefit but it must be stated clearly. All authors must state all conflicts of interest in their accompanying letter and in the "Conflicts of Interest" section when submitting. When authors have no conflict of interest, they should state: "The author or authors declare that they have no conflict of interest with respect to the author or publication of this article." The editor may request more information in this regard.
    - Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any conflict of interest, and if there is a conflict of interest, they will be excluded from the review process.
    - Expressing all conflicts of interest is essential for a transparent reporting of research. Failure to declare a conflict of interest can lead to the immediate rejection of an article. If the conflict of interest is not disclosed after publication, the Razavi International Journal of Medicine will act in accordance with COPE guidelines.
    - Conflicts of interest can be financial, non-financial, professional, or personal. Conflicts of interest can arise in relation to an organization or an individual.

    Conflict of Financial Interests
    Conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to):
    - Receive a refund, expense, budget, or salary from an organization that may contribute to any kind of financial gain and loss from the publication of the article, equally now and in the future.
    - Ownership of stock or inventory in an organization that may contribute to any financial gain or loss from the publication of the article, whether present or future.
    - Ownership or action for patents related to the content of the article in question.
    - Receive reimbursement, expenses, budget, or salary from the organization that owns or patents the content of the article.

 

5- Copyright and License

Razavi International Journal of Medicine  allow the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions. Also the journal allow the author(s) to retain publishing rights without restrictions.

 

6- Data and reproducibility

The journal’s data sharing policy strongly encourage that data generated by your research that supports your article be made available as soon as possible, wherever possible.

We encourage you to make available as much of the underlying data from your article as possible (without compromising participant privacy), but at least the minimum data required to reproduce the results presented in the associated article.

While data sharing is mandatory in our journal, we reserve the right to request at any time confidential access to any primary data needed to reproduce the article so that the results reported can be verified.

The journal encourages authors to cite any publicly available research data in their reference list. References to datasets must include a persistent identifier. We encourage research data to be made available under open licenses that permit reuse freely.

 

7- Ethical Oversight

To ensure that the ethical standards of the journal are achieved, Razavi International Journal of Medicine editors provide ethical oversight for the publication process.

Vulnerable Populations

Per the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), ethical oversight should include, but is not limited to, policies on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, handling confidential data and ethical business/marketing practices.

For studies involving human or animal subjects, Razavi International Journal of Medicine requires that information about appropriate institutional review board approval be included with the submission or described within the article.

For research involving human subjects, authors should explain how informed consent was obtained from all participants.  Informed consent should be obtained if there is any reasonable possibility that complete anonymity cannot be maintained. The privacy of human subjects should never be violated without prior informed consent. Identifying information should be excluded from the study data unless the information is essential for the study purposes and the subject (or their legal representative has given prior written informed consent. However, subject information should never be falsified or modified. When informed consent has been given by the subjects, it should be included in the article.

Publication Misconduct

Razavi International Journal of Medicine is committed to detecting and preventing publication misconduct through its peer review and editing process. Peer reviews are instructed to perform routine checks for the following:

  • Plagiarism (i.e. using the ideas or work of others): Through routine use various online tools by peer reviewers and editors. Reviewers should check for proper and adequate citations.
  • Fabrication (i.e. making up data): Reviewers and editors should be cautious of “impressive” research results, and be aware of potential conflicts of interest. Raw data should be reviewed for signs of fabrication.
  • Falsification (i.e. manipulating research or modifying data): See recommendations for fabrication above. Reviewers should also check for unusual research methods or analysis methods.
  • Citation Manipulation (see COPE guideline): Reviewers and editors will check for excessive self-citation, excessive citation of a single journal, and citations that do not support the research topic.
  • Peer review manipulation (see COPE statement): Peer reviewers are qualified per a screening process, and reviewer performance is monitored by Razavi International Journal of Medicine editors.
  • Authorship misconduct: Razavi International Journal of Medicine editors will implement the Razavi International Journal of Medicine Authorship and Contributorship Policy

Software Tools

Razavi International Journal of Medicine maintains a membership in iThenticate and routinely screens submitted papers for plagiarism at the discretion of the editorial staff.

Reporting

Suspicion of violations of the ethical oversight policy should be made to the editor-in-chief via the Ethics Complaints and Appeals process.

 

8- Intellectual property

Editors should be alert to intellectual property issues and work with Publisher to handle potential breaches of intellectual property laws and conventions.

Best practice for editors would include:

  • Adopting systems for detecting plagiarism (e.g. software, searching for similar titles) in submitted items (either routinely or when suspicions are raised)
  • Supporting authors whose copyright has been breached or who have been the victims of plagiarism
  • Being prepared to work with Publisher to defend authors’ rights and pursue offenders (e.g.  by requesting retractions or removal of material from websites) irrespective of whether their journal holds the copyright

Intellectual Property Rights: Open Access Journal becomes aware of breaches of our publication ethics policies, whether or not the breach occurred in a journal published by Intellectual Property Rights: Open Access Journal, the following sanctions may be applied across the Intellectual Property Rights: Open Access Journal:
•        Rejection of the manuscript and any other manuscripts submitted by the author(s).
•        Not allowing submission for 1–3 years.
•        Prohibition from acting as an editor or reviewer.
Investigations
Suspected breaches of our publication ethics policies, either before or after publication, as well as concerns about research ethics, should be reported to our Research Integrity team.

Claimants will be kept anonymous. Intellectual Property Rights: Open Access Journal may ask the authors to provide the underlying data and images, consult editors, and contact institutions or employers to ask for an investigation or to raise concerns.

9- Journal Management

The necessity of a well-described and implemented infrastructure, including the business model, policies, processes and software for efficient running of an editorially independent journal, as well as the efficient management and training of editorial boards and editorial and publishing staff.

ensuring that people involved with the editorial process (including themselves) receive adequate training and keep abreast of the latest guidelines, recommendations and evidence about peer review and journal management.

- Attempts are made to follow ethical issues and adhere to transparency in the process of the Journal management and in all the activities done by the editorial board, authors, and reviewers.

- The management of the Journal will provide the financial needs of the Journal to guarantee its independence.

10- Review Process

All the articles sent to the Journal's office via the journal's website are initially evaluated by our management team. If detection of plagiarism or duplication of the title or incomplete information, the manuscript will be sent back. Otherwise, the editorial team assay the manuscript holistically for consideration about fast rejection or assigning for peer review. Then, if it is in line with the journal's objectives and authors' guiding principles, they are peer reviewed.  If an article is found to be unsuitable for publishing, authors will be notified within 4 days.
 

Peer reviewing process: Manuscripts enter the review process anonymously. The peer review process includes at least two component reviewers. The process is double blinded and names of authors and reviewers remain confidential. After getting the comments, the editorial board decides for acceptance, minor revision, major revision or rejection. Major revision requires peer review again after the revised manuscript was submitted. The review process may last between four to six weeks.

Acceptance of an article will be announced to the corresponding author after conducting all the changes required by the journal and final confirmation of the corresponding author. Evidently, the articles will be scheduled for publication. Once a manuscript is accepted, any changes in the authorship including addition, deletion or changes in the authorship will not be possible.  Throughout these steps, authors can be informed of their article's status through the journal's website. Invited manuscripts, letters and commentaries are directly reviewed by Editor-in-chief.
The submitted manuscripts that fit the scopes and the format of journal will be reviewed and enter the publication process after the editor-in-chiefs final approval.
Here is the flowchart:
 

Proof Reading: A final PDF is sent to the corresponding author for proof reading before publication in order to avoid any mistakes. Corrections should be marked clearly and sent immediately to the journal office.

Peer-review policy
Razavi International Journal of Medicine operates a double-blind peer-review system, where the reviewers are not aware of the names and affiliations of the authors and the reviewer reports provided to authors are also anonymous.
Submitted manuscripts will generally be reviewed by two or more experts who will be asked to evaluate whether the manuscript is scientifically sound and coherent, whether it duplicates already published work, and whether or not the manuscript is sufficiently clear for publication. The Editors will reach a decision based on these reports and, where necessary, they will consult with members of the Editorial Board.

 

11- Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections

Inquiry Process

Any complaints, concerns, or questions regarding the technical correctness, clarity, completeness, or quality of an article published in Razavi International Journal of Medicine should be directed to the editor-in-chief of the journal. For ethical concerns, please also see the Ethics Complaints and Appeals Process.

Queries should contain the following information:

  • The title, authors, and issue number of the article in question
  • The role of the reporter (i.e. author, reader, other)
  • A brief description of the technical concern
  • Links to any relevant supporting evidence (articles, data, etc.) 

For significant concerns that potentially impact the reliability of the research, the editor will initiate an investigation to determine how the concern will be addressed. Original authors and reviewers will be included in the investigation as needed. The editor will strive to complete investigations within 60 days of reporting. Outcomes of the investigation may include:

  1. No Change
  2. Correction:
    • Article is updated, including publication metadata
    • Correction notice is issued in the next issue of the journal
  3. Retraction:
    • Article galleys are removed
    • Article page is updated with retraction notice and reason for retraction
    • A retraction notice is issued in the next issue of the journal

All significant corrections will undergo the peer review process per Razavi International Journal of Medicine policy. Retraction decisions are based on COPE Retraction Guidelines.

Appeals

If an author or reporter disagrees with the decision of the editor-in-chief, they may appeal the decision. Upon receiving an appeal, the editor-in-chief shall convene an ad hoc Appeals Committee consisting of the editor-in-chief (as chair) and four editorial board members. The Appeals Committee shall review the appeal and render a decision based on a majority vote within 60 days.