Ethics of Journal

This journal is published with regard to the ethical rules mentioned in the journal under the supervision of Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) and all Sami publication journals are published with free access under the CC-BY permission (the current version is CC-BY, version 4.0). The readers, authors, reviewers, and editors of journal should follow the ethic politics. The ethic policy and strategy of the journal could determine the submitted articles to be reviewed, accepted, and published. It should be noted that all the submitted articles to the journal are monitored and examined using the reliable Plagiarism Checker Software (i.e., iThenticate) to ensure the manuscript originality. Then, the article is precisely reviewed by the expert reviewers and the expedient recommendations are proposed to promote the article.

NOTE: Journal is not a member of the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE) but follow COPE politics.

 

Responsibilities of Publisher

  1. This journal is undertaken that decisions made for the submitted articles are merely relied on expert and professional reviewer and are far from any biased and personal viewpoints.
  2. It is committed to preserve the authors’ individual, academic, and research experiences.
  3. The submitted articles are monitored and examined in terms of plagiarism in this publication.
  4. In this journal, following the ethical principles is strictly monitored and reviewed by the editing manager as well as scientific editors, the editorial board, and the reviewers.
  5. The necessary modifications, explanations, and withdrawals will be done in the journal if needed.
  6. Any proven misconduct will be disposed in the journal.
  7. The publisher commits to publish and provide any necessary modifications, clarifications, and reviews relevant to its publications if needed.

 

Ethical principles in editorial Management

  1. The editorial manger of the journal should have perfect authority to accept/reject the received manuscript.
  2. The editorial manger of the journal should maintain the confidentiality of the received manuscripts under review until their publication.
  3. The editorial manger of the journal should make a decision about the received manuscript and, if necessary, consult with other editors and reviewers to their publications.
  4. The editorial manager and editors of the journal should consider the reviewers’ confidentiality and are eager to free reviews based on the reviewers’ satisfaction.
  5. The editorial manager and editors of the journal must avoid any conflict of interest.
  6. The editorial manager and editors of the journal must preserve the scientific integrity and attempt to meet the readers and authors requirements.
  7. The editorial manager and editors of the journal must carry out a perfect review on plagiarism, scientific, and data falsification cases, as well as publish modifications, explanations, collection of content, articles withdraw, and apologies if needed.
  8. The editorial manager and editors of the journal must be restricted to the intellectual content.
  9. The editorial manager of the journal must not disclose any data about the received manuscript to others except the corresponding author, reviewers, potential editors, editorial consultants, and the publisher.
  10. Manuscripts and unpublished materials, without the evident written consent of the author, should not be utilized by the editorial manager or members of the editorial board for their own or others' research objectives.
  11. The scientific editors of this journal will determine possible plagiarism, falsification, and fraud, and will make modifications, explanations, and withdraws if needed.
  12. In addition to ensure the scientific quality of the submitted manuscripts achieved through different methods, especially peer review and get advice from the editorial board, the editorial manager of the journal should be sufficiently confident in the observance of ethical standards in the published materials.
  13. The editorial manager is obliged to perfect effort to ensure the ethical correctness of the published materials, including the authors’ adherence to the general and specific guidelines of journal’s ethics.
  14. Directly or based on the received reports, the editorial manager can check the possible occurrence of research discharges and fraud in the received manuscripts, and if there is a possibility of research discharges and fraud, the editorial manger is obliged to notify the responsible author(s) and all the manuscript authors to ask them to explain about the issue. In case of not receiving the explanations within a deadline of two months or if the explanations of the responsible author(s) are not convincing, with maximum confidentiality as the case may be, inform about the occurrence of a research discharge so that it can be ascertained or resolved by conducting research and investigation. The examination and review of the received report will be relied on the regulations and instructions for handling research discharges.
  15. The occurrence of a research discharge is recognized for the editorial manager independently or based on the viewpoints of the ethics committee in valid research, while examining other articles of the author(s) or possible responsible author(s) published in that journal or is under examination, according to the discharge severity, one or more of the measures include withdraw from publishing the manuscript if it is not published and is under examination, the editorial manager can withdraw the published article from the journal by proposing the reason for its withdraw in such a way that the history of article withdrawal is available to the public, the publication of a modification or withdraw in the next issue of the journal if the article has been published, and avoid the acceptance of future articles by the author(s) for a specified period.
  16. The editorial manager is responsible for reviewing, selecting, and prioritizing manuscripts submitted for publication in a fair and impartial manner and merely with regard to the scientific and technical features, including the topic’s significant, innovation, transparency, credibility, and the degree of conformity of the articles with the journal’s objectives and prospects and unrelated factors should not have any impact on this issue.
  17. The editorial manager must ask the corresponding author to mention the sort and range of participation and contribution of each author in the research implementation and the writing manuscript in a table that has been signed by all the authors.
  18. The editorial manager or the editorial board must select the one or ones to review each manuscript that are capable and expert as much as possible in the relevant scientific field. The selected reviewer(s) should have no known conflict of interest in the reviewed manuscript as much as possible.
  19. The editorial manager is obliged to provide them with sufficient data about the journal’s working process of and what is expected from the editorial board and reviewers, as well as to emphasize and remind them of the requirement for data confidentiality of the submitted manuscripts and make an arrangement so that their information is up to date about the journal’s policies.
  20. The relationship of editorial managers with journal’s publishers, owners, and owners should be perfectly based on the principle of "editorial independence", in the sense that they are perfectly independent in deciding to accept or reject articles and not be impacted or pressured by journal’s publishers or owners, and freedom and have sufficient authority to make decisions and independently perform their duties.
  21. The editorial manager is obliged to ensure data confidentiality related to the individuals and patients participated in the research as well as whose data may be disclosed as a result of the manuscript publication. Therefore, if needed, the editorial manager can ask the authors to reveal their identity in the informed consent forms signed by the study subjects, which may be while printing the article.
  22. The editorial manager must have specific policies to manage any conflict of interest related to themselves, employees, authors, reviewers, and the editorial board.

 

Review Process

  1. The reviewers of this journal should cooperate with the scientific editors to make decisions regarding the publication of the submitted manuscripts.
  2. This journal’s reviewers should preserve the data confidentiality.
  3. The reviewers should submit the viewpoints to the scientific managers in the specific time to make a decision regarding the manuscript publication or non-publication.
  4. The reviewers should keep the submitted articles confidential and not to use their data for personal purposes.
  5. The reviewers’ viewpoints regarding the submitted manuscripts should be scientific, technical, and professional.
  6. Reviewers should not review manuscripts with conflicts of interest with one of the authors, companies, or institutions. The one who is offered peer review of a manuscript can refrain accepting that manuscript for review if there is any conflict of interest. Otherwise, the reviewer should clearly inform the journal’s editor about oneself conflict of interest.
  7. Reviewers and author(s) of a manuscript must refuse from communicating with each other (regarding the review of that manuscript) during the review process. If the reviewer deems it necessary to consult with another person for review, and this consult involves disclosing the content of the manuscript, this can only be conducted with the permission of journal’s editorial manager.
  8. The reviewer who accepts a peer review of a manuscript reviewed by a journal should conduct own review impartially and merely based on the scientific and technical features of the manuscript and should not be impacted by own individual relationship with the author(s) of the manuscript or other irrelevant agents.
  9. Reviewers should accept manuscripts for review in which they are professional. Otherwise, the reviewer must inform this issue to the editorial manager of the journal.
  10. In peer review, the reviewer must consider the manuscript strengths and weaknesses and, if possible, recommend some strategies to the author(s) to solve the issues. This should be conducted with respect to the author(s) intellectual independence.
  11. In addition to the scientific and technical examinations in the review, the reviewer must inform the editorial manager of any non-compliance with the provisions of this guideline.

 

Responsibilities of Authors

  1. Prior to submit the manuscript, the authors should be informed about the journal’s rules.
  2. Articles must not be published elsewhere or under review by another journal.
  3. The responsible author must be sure of the consent of the other authors of the manuscript.
  4. Another responsibility of the authors is to ensure and obtain permission from the institution to which the article is relevant.
  5. The authors should give permission to edit articles and literary editing for better readability.
  6. The authors should briefly mention the financial support for the implementation and preparation of the research process.
  7. The copyright form must be completed and signed by all authors.
  8. The journal is open access and the authors have the right to own their article and permit the public to print, download, and distribute their article.
  9. The authors must agree that the responsible author or one of the authors of the manuscript will undertake the review process, and this issue will be clearly mentioned in the article.
  10. When the authors of the article observe a prominent and main error in their work, they should immediately inform the editorial manager of the journal for its modification.
  11. Given that plagiarism is one of the serious and unethical errors, all authors should know that the manuscript submitted to this journal are checked by Plagiarism Checker Software and systems.
  12. All authors are responsible for carefully reading all the steps and process of submitting an article in this journal.
  13. All authors should have approved the final version of the manuscript before publishing the manuscript and respond any underlying questions.
  14. The responsible author must accept responsibility for all facets of performing the research leading to the article, including the responsibility of complying with the general and specific guidelines as well as those for ethics in the approved research in designing, conducting, and publishing the manuscript, in a manner that can respond all the issues undertaken the content accuracy of the research and its writing process. The person must either have performed various working steps according to the scientific, technical, and ethical standards, or be confident in the integrity and scientific ability of those who have performed various working procedures. The corresponding author should be further available after publication to respond any issues or criticisms.
  15. The request to change the author list after submission must be submitted to the editorial office through the author alteration form.
  16. The ethical and legal responsibility of mentioning the names of those included among the article’s authors without having the authorship conditions, or whose names have been withdrawn from the list of authors despite having the authorship conditions, is with all the article’s authors.
  17. The names order in the article’s authors section is characterized based on the participation of each individual and through their collective agreement, and some factors such as the academic rank of individuals, scientific status, national and international affiliation of the authors will not play a role in the names arrangement.
  18. It is essential for the author to declare the affiliation in the institution where the author is active at the time of manuscript submission, even if the author’s institutional affiliation has altered during the period of conducting the research or submitting the manuscript. If the author has a commitment to the institution where the research is conducted to utilize the affiliation at the time of conducting the research, it is necessary to mention both author’s affiliations.
  19. It is essential for academic staff members as well as for the university researchers and higher education institutions to use official academic e-mail, as much as possible, when mentioning their institutional affiliation and address in articles.
  20. It is not possible to change the names of the authors of the articles after submitting the manuscript to the journals and initiating the review process.
  21. The author is obliged to get written Confirmation Letter from those mentioned in the "Acknowledgments" section.

 

Co-Author

  1. Cooperation in some affairs such as preparation and sponsoring the research, providing cross-sectional consultations including statistical and methodological consultations, creating or making affordable laboratory facilities, conducting the related tests, or referring and introducing researchers to participate in research process, do not provide sufficient conditions to include the name of responsible author in the list of authors in an article resulting from research process; even if individuals have not received a fee for providing the mentioned service.
  2. All those who have cooperated in the support, design, implementation, writing, or other research steps, but do not have the necessary conditions for writing, should be gratitude in the "Acknowledgements" section of the article.
  3. The one who is only a manuscript translator or editor does not have the authorship conditions. In the case that textual translation carried out by a translator other than the authors, it is necessary to mention this issue in the "Acknowledgments" section and thank the translator.
  4. Having administrative responsibility, such as the head of a department, faculty, university, research center, or having any expert and managerial status at any level will not automatically lead to the underlying data ownership in that collection and creation of authorship rights as well as the inclusion of names in the list of manuscript authors.
  5. If one or more authors with potential authorship conditions oppose writing and publishing the manuscript resulting from the research project, sending and publishing the article by other authors will be possible only if requested by those co-authors who wish to publish the results. The issue should be reviewed by the Ethics Committee in University Research Center and permission should be issued to publish the manuscript. If permission is obtained, it is prohibited to include the names of opposing authors in the article unless the mentioned ones agree to the publication and meet the authorship conditions.
  6. No one’s name should be included in the list of authors without one’s inform and approval of the final text of the manuscript.

 

Research Discharge in Reporting and Publishing Academic Works

 

Any discharge from the accepted ethical principles in writing academic manuscript, including creating (falsifying) data, including proposing results that are not based on a real research, data manipulation from research, including the prevention of mentioning some research findings, more particular in the case of adverse effects in clinical trials or figures manipulation and plagiarism is considered as infraction, and also is an instance of research discharge.

 

  1. To mention an unreal academic affiliation for any reason, including the apparent increase of publications in a particular research center, institute, or university, is ethically unacceptable and considered as a research discharge.
  2. (Scientific) Plagiarism: Plagiarism means deliberately utilizing the articles or other’s viewpoint in the author’s own name. Even applying another individual’s speech or the author’s previous speeches without mentioning references is considered as plagiarism. All manuscript submitted to this publication are reviewed by Plagiarism Checker Software.
  3. Data falsifying and deviation: Data falsifying is when the author has not carried out a study but provides data and findings. In addition, deviation happens when a study is conducted, but the data and results are altered.
  4. Simultaneous submission: Simultaneous submission is when a manuscript is submitted to two journals at the same time.
  5. Duplicate submission: It happens when two or more articles have the same hypotheses, data, and results.
  6. Iterated (additional) submission: Iterated submission means dividing a study into multiple articles and submitting them.
  7. Improper contribution of another author: All the authors of the article must contribute to its completion and edition.
  8. Improper removal of one of the authors: None of the authors contributing to the preparation of the article must be removed from the list of the authors of the manuscript.
  9. References Manipulation: It happens when various references are mentioned in the final part of an article. However, they are not mentioned in the manuscript content.
  10. The reference in writing the manuscript should be based on the academic standards and any unnecessary reference to oneself or others is incorrect to increase the number of references.
  11. All authors are obliged to report the cases to Research Ethics Committee of the university or institution sponsoring the research, the head, or one in charge of the workplace or inform your studies or the desired author(s).
  12. Figures manipulation, which means any sort of manipulation in all types of figures, spectra, microscopic images, etc. and leads to the readers deception through presenting unreal figures or inducing the existence of unreal findings in the figures, is regarded as an instance of deception and research discharge.
  13. Manipulation in the image background, elimination, or addition of a particular feature, or unusual and excessive manipulation of the colors, or transparency of the images to deceive the readers are instances of this unethical practice.
  14. It is improper to submit a manuscript containing a particular amount of data from a published or under-review article for examining to publish as a new research article, even if it references a previous article or the prior article refers to the author(s) of the same manuscript.
  15. In cases where publication is conducted simultaneously in printed and electronic form, both mentioned versions must have a single address for writing references.

 

Data and Information

  1. In case of using a figure, table, questionnaire, or a significant part of the target text or its translation, in the form of the same text, besides bringing its direct speech and mentioning its reference, the written permission should be obtained from the author of the original text.
  2. In case of using a partial part of the underlying text or its translation, in the form of bringing the same text, the text should be presented as a direct speech, and also its reference should be mentioned.
  3. In case of using the underlying text or its translation in the form of quotation, summary, conclusion, or viewpoint, its reference should be mentioned. The content’s quotation should not contradict the original author(s)' intention and the general spirit of their writing.

 

 

Conflict of Interest

Conflict of interest refers to any financial or non-financial interest that may impact the author(s) in presenting their trustworthy viewpoint. Although the conflict of interest is not concerned an ethical issue for an article, its author(s) must clearly declare any conflict of interest hidden from the audience, except for the evident cases, in the text, or at the end of the manuscript. One of these cases is the obvious introduction of funding sources for research and writing manuscript by the author(s).

  1. The contract between the authors and the research sponsors should not include any condition preventing the declaration of conflict of interest in the manuscript or an obligation to remove or not publish findings that are not desired from the research sponsor’s viewpoint. Authors must avoid accepting such conditions at the time of contract signature.
  2. Authors have discretion and freedom of action in selecting scientific journals to publish their manuscripts and any individuals’ obligations to publish articles in particular journals with the aims of enhancing the credibility of academic journals is prohibited.

 

Special Issue

Special issues are those ones in the journal dedicated to the publication of articles collection relevant to a particular topic or of a conference in a way that is related to the prominent subjects mentioned in the journal. The special issue is often sponsored by sources other than the journal publisher. The journal’s editorial manager is in charge of special issues’ contents as well as the regular issues of the journal.

  1. The journal’s editor should retain the authority to submit any manuscript to independent reviewers for publication in the special issue, as well as the right not to accept them, just like the journal’s regular issues.
  2. The sponsor of the special issue, if any, should be evidently determined.
  3. In special issues, like the regular issues, other materials of this guide should be followed.