Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics

All academic journals published by ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE must adhere to the guidelines outlined below

Summary

Article submission to a ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE journal constitutes author's acknowledgment and acceptance of journal's policies and of all material contained therein.

Content:

  • Standards of Reporting
  • Data Sharing
  • Trial Registration
  • Unique Identifiers
  • Citations
  • Ethics and Consent
  • Misconduct
  • Corrections and Retractions
  • Duplicate Publication
  • Text Recycling
  • Peer Review
  • Confidentiality
  • Competing Interests
  • Authorship

Ethical Considerations and Permission

When it comes to publishing journals, ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE follows the guidelines set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Submissions outlining research investigations must include the name of the ethics committee or institutional review board, the approved reference number/ID, and a statement that participants gave their informed consent before participating. Editorial inquiries into the study's ethical implications may be made even after research has been approved by an institutional review board or research ethics committee. Any research involving humans (either as participants or donors of tissue or data) must have followed the Declaration of Helsinki and been approved by a competent ethical review board. Journal editors retain the right to reject any study that they determine did not adhere to all applicable ethical standards. If the editors feel it is necessary, they can also seek advice from the institution's ethics board.

 

If additional investigation into allegations of publishing misconduct is deemed necessary, either before or after publication, we reserve the right to contact authors' institutions, funders, or regulatory organizations. It is possible that a retraction or correction will be published in the scientific literature if evidence of misconduct is found to warrant such action.

It is assumed that authors are familiar with publication ethics and the various issues that arise within them, such as authorship, plagiarism, falsified data, conflicts of interest, and so on. We will follow the standards and procedures established by COPE and look to the COPE forum for advice when dealing with allegations of wrongdoing.

Approval from an Ethical Perspective, Looking Backwards

Without obtaining ethical clearance before beginning a study, it is usually impossible to do so later on, and the submission may be rejected from peer review. Whether or not such submissions are sent out for peer review is at the editors' discretion.

Confidentiality and Patient Consent

Informed consent from a living patient is required before any information about them can be published in a journal published by ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE . Therefore, all participants must sign an informed consent form after reading the study's information page.

If consent cannot be obtained due to the patient's inaccessibility, then publication is only possible if the information can be adequately anonymized. That's because nobody had sufficient evidence to positively identify the person, including them.

The writers would be doing the right thing by reaching out to the patient's loved ones for approval, even if the patient is no longer alive. Journal editors will consider the submission's significance to the field, the likelihood of identification, and the potential for offense if the family members cannot be reached.

Without the patient's consent, x-ray, ultrasound, laparoscopy, or pathology images of inconspicuous anatomical regions may be used so long as they have been de-identified by having all identifying information removed and are not accompanied by text that could associate them to the patient.

Research on Animals

Any experiment involving vertebrates or captive invertebrates requires approval from an ethics committee and compliance with institutional, national, or international rules. The Basel Declaration and the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science are two examples of groups that have developed ethical guidelines for animal research (ICLAS).

Any experiments performed on animals belonging to clients must have received the client's or owner's informed consent and be conducted with the utmost veterinary care (best practice).

Trial Registration

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) defines a clinical trial as "any research project that prospectively assigns individuals or groups of individuals to an intervention, with or without concurrent comparison or control groups to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome."

According to the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  journals won't publish clinical trial reports unless they've been prospectively registered prior to participant recruitment.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors mandates that all research published in journals published by ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  be registered in a primary registry within the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

Just make sure to include the trial's registration number and start date at the end of the abstract.

Guidelines for Reporting

It is important for authors to remember the EQUATOR Network's research reporting criteria established for the study type as they write their articles. Authors of articles and reviewers of works must adhere to these criteria when crafting their works. By providing a thorough and accurate explanation of their work, the authors give editors, peer reviewers, and readers the information they need to make an informed decision about the study's findings.

Statistical Techniques

Each study needs to explain the statistical test it used and describe the instruments and methods it used to collect and analyze the data (for further information, see the SAMPL standards).

Stats will be sent to reviewers for their inspection, and if further grading is required, the entire document will be forwarded to those in charge of such matters.

The editors can always consult a methodology expert for extra help if they feel they need it.

Data Sharing

As part of the submission process, or as a separate open-access supplement, ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  requires authors to deposit all data and supplementary materials related to the methods and/or data into a suitable public repository.

Therefore, we ask that all manuscripts submitted to ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  include a data sharing statement.

Statements about whether and how data from published clinical trials will be shared are mandated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Visit http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html#two for more information on Recommendation 2 from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

Conflicting Interests

The authors of articles submitted to journals published by ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  are expected to disclose any conflicts of interest that might influence the peer review, presentation, editorial decision-making, or publication of their articles (MAP).

Conflicts of interest arise when a professional's impartiality is compromised by factors other than the primary interest at hand, such as financial gain, employment, consultancy, stock or option holdings, patents, honoraria, or paid expert testimony. Even though it's not necessarily unethical to have competing interests, doing so is still required. Authors must disclose any competing interests in both the cover letter and the "competing interests" section of the submission form. The author(s) of this work "affirm that they have no competing interests" in its creation and dissemination. If the editor suspects a conflict of interest, they can inquire further.

Anyone involved in the peer review process who has a conflict of interest is expected to disclose it. The editors of any journals published by the ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  are not allowed to have any conflicts of interest with the pharmaceutical or biotechnology industries.

Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest is crucial to the reliable reporting of research. When authors fail to disclose relevant financial relationships in their work, their papers are more likely to be rejected. When new information about a previously disclosed conflict of interest becomes available after publication, ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE will publish an alert in accordance with COPE standards. Financial conflicts of interest, such as a previous investment in a competing venture, are one type of conflict of interest; but personal conflicts are another. One person or organization may have conflicting objectives.

Financial Conflicts of Interest

A financial conflict of interest exists when an author receives reimbursements, service charges, funding, or revenue from a company that stands to gain or lose financially as a result of the publication of the work.

  • Owning or wanting to buy stock in a company that stands to gain or lose financially as a result of the content being published.
  • Having or actively seeking patents related to the work's subject matter.
  • receiving payment from, or working for, a company that has filed patents on, or otherwise has rights to use, the subject matter of the manuscript.

Discrepancies that aren't related to money

Personal, political, ideological, academic, and intellectual competing interests are examples of those that are not monetary in nature.

Commercial Organizations

The authors of clinical research that receives funding from pharmaceutical companies or other commercial entities are obligated to declare any potential conflicts of interest. To ensure that publications in the pharmaceutical industry are created in an honest and transparent manner, the Good Publication Practice (GPP2) program was developed. All articles written for trade publications by freelance writers, research firms, and media companies should adhere to these standards. Commercial content is not included in the Alsalam University College .

Authorship

In the world of academia, "Author" is a title given to the person(s) responsible for the most substantial intellectual contributions to a work. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) suggests four methods for identifying the first authors of a given piece of work:

Think critically about the work's intellectual significance as you write or revise, taking into account any input you received during the work's formative stages, such as ideation, design, data collection, analysis, and interpretation.

As a result, the completed work has universal approval.

Take full responsibility for the work, which includes looking into and fixing any issues with the work's veracity or integrity.

Each author is expected to own their contributions, but also recognize when another author was more instrumental in developing a particular aspect of the work. One more thing: authors should have faith in their coauthors. Only those who meet all four criteria should be included on a list of authors.

To avoid any confusion, participation in the study's funding, data collection, technical support, writing, or oversight does not automatically qualify one for authorship. Those who don't meet all four requirements should be recognized in the "Acknowledgements" section.

Acknowledgments

Each submission must include a "Acknowledgements" section that gives credit to anyone who had a hand in making the work but who does not meet the four criteria for authorship.

In the "Acknowledgements" section, the authors should confirm that everyone listed there has agreed to be acknowledged. Contributions of any kind, whether monetary or otherwise, should be gratefully received. Funding sources, including grants, institutional, and corporate sponsorship, must be disclosed. Consultant and investigation fees should also be documented.

Those who contributed to the development of the content of the manuscript, such as the scientific (medical) writers and the funding agencies that provided said funding, must be acknowledged in accordance with the guidelines established by the European Medical Writers Association (EMWA).

Details Concerning the Publisher

Journals publish author names and affiliations so proper recognition can be given to those who deserve it. Publications can also be retrieved from bibliographic databases and indexes by searching by author; however, many of these sources do not include or provide complete author information. We have observed that some writers who do not have a middle name instead use initials from their first or last name.

All MAP journals publish the full names and institutional affiliations of their authors, as supplied by the corresponding author at the time of submission.

The ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE requires authors to review and approve a machine-generated presentation of their author data before their work can be published in one of their journals.

This is done so that bibliographic indexes and databases contain the right author information, so that publications contain the right author information, and so that as few changes as possible need to be made during proofreading or after publication.

The issue of proper author and affiliation formatting in bibliographic databases like PubMed and Scopus is addressed. Therefore, authors must provide information that is in line with the citations they have provided in their previous works.

Authorship Changes

After the paper has been submitted, a change in authorship requires the approval of all original authors (including order, additions, and deletions). The order of authors should be decided and agreed upon by the authors themselves. The editor must also grasp the reasoning behind all changes. Any proposed changes to the authorship of submissions or published items must first receive the written approval of all authors, per the COPE criteria followed by ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE .

The authors must verify their participation via email. The corresponding author must ensure that the revised paper is accepted by all of the other authors. If the authors are unable to come to a consensus on who wrote what, they should seek assistance from their publishing houses. Academic journal editors should stay out of authorship disputes. Only through the publication of an Erratum will a change in authorship of a previously published article be accepted.

Unique Identifiers

ORCID stands for Open Researcher and Contributor ID and is an open-source, community-driven project that facilitates the management of researcher identities and creates a traceable connection between researchers' input and output. ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  recommends that authors make use of these symbols. The ORCIDs of the first and corresponding authors must be disclosed by anyone submitting a manuscript to a journal or serving as a peer reviewer for a journal's submissions. Editorial board members of all publications are required to include their ORCIDs in their online profiles.

Citations

Even though they are not research reports, opinion, review, and commentary articles are still expected to reference relevant and appropriate literature to support their claims. There should be no excessive or inappropriate self-citation, and any coordinated efforts by multiple authors to self-cite collectively are strongly discouraged. Authors should consider these guidelines as they work on their manuscript.

 

A reference should be provided for any claim made in the paper that is not based on the authors' own ideas, findings, or common knowledge.

Authors should avoid making references to other people's works. For instance, rather than referencing a review that cites the original work, they should do so directly.

  • Writers should double-check the references they use (i.e., they should ensure the citation supports the statement made in their manuscript and should not misrepresent another work by citing it if it does not support the point the authors wish to make).

Authors shouldn't cite materials they haven't read.

Writers shouldn't give inflated praise to their own works or those of their friends, colleagues, or academic superiors.

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Writers should avoid focusing on the literature of a single country.

One should not use too many references to prove a point.

Whenever possible, cite sources that have been subjected to peer review. Stay away from referencing promotional materials.

Publication Duplicate

All content submitted to a journal published by ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  must be the author's original work and not be under review for publication elsewhere at the time of submission. When there is a possibility of duplication, we ask that authors be forthright about it. If possible, the author should include copies of all relevant publications with their submission. It's crucial to keep track of duplicate articles.

If the article refers to any "in press" or unpublished manuscripts that the Editor and reviewers deem essential reading, the author is obligated to make those manuscripts available to them. If ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  thinks two publications are redundant, it will decide as such. The submitted manuscript may not have appeared in any other journal or reference source before now. At the time of submission, authors must make clear any and all exceptions to this policy, such as when a paper is being submitted to be presented as a poster or at a conference.

When it comes to allegations of unethical publication practices, journals published by ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  use the Turnitin plagiarism detection service. When dealing with suspected cases of covert duplicate submission, the editor will follow the procedures laid out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which may include contacting the authors' institutions (see Misconduct policy for more information). The overlapping publication guidelines established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) are supported by the publication of this statement by the ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE .

Text Recyclability

Reusing previously published work (also known as self-plagiarism) is strictly prohibited in certain fields, and authors should be aware of this. One definition of "text recycling" is the act of reusing previously published text. When possible, the original source of any copied text should be cited and properly credited so that the author's copyright can be protected. If the content of the submission has been borrowed from another source, the author should state as much in the cover letter to the journal editors.

Peer-Review

All research articles and the vast majority of other article genres published by ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  undergo a rigorous peer review process. Having two unbiased coworkers check it out is often necessary. Some periodicals may have a more relaxed peer review policy than others. To learn more about a journal's peer review process, you should visit the journal's online home.

The Policy on Peer Review

ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  editors select articles for their peer review process from submitted works. A peer review will not be conducted by an editor who is also an author on the submission or who has a competing interest in the work. All submissions that meet the criteria will be sent to relevant experts in the field for blind peer review. The editors will make a call based on the feedback they receive from reviewers, and they'll share that call, along with the reviewers' reports, with the authors. Despite the positive initial report, the paper may be rejected if additional reviewers raise significant concerns about the validity of the study. ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  only publishes works that have passed a thorough, double-blind peer review process. Both the authors' and reviewers' anonymity will be preserved here.

Editors

Scientists from all fields and institutions around the world are encouraged to apply to become Editors at ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  based on their scientific achievements and publication track record. The Scholarly Journals Council of the ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  chooses the winner based on the COPE Guidelines' mandates for reporting potential conflicts of interest. Regular audits are performed to check for compliance with the COPE Guidelines. All papers are checked by both the editors and anonymous reviewers. The Editors of a journal make their publishing decisions after reading and considering the feedback of the journal's peer reviewers on submitted articles.

Peer-Reviewers

Although authors are welcome to make suggestions for reviewers, it is the editor's call as to whether or not to use those recommendations. There shouldn't be any references to people the author has worked with recently or people who are employed by the same organization. Cover letters can include suggestions for peer reviewers and, if possible, the author's institutional email address or other way for the Editor to get in touch with the suggested reviewer (for example an ORCID or Scopus ID). When submitting a manuscript, authors have the option of requesting new reviewers, but they must explain why in a cover letter. Authors should be wary of excluding too many people, as doing so may slow down the peer review process.

Editors will sometimes reconsider rejected peer reviewers and accept them.

If you recommend reviewers using a false name or email address, you may be in violation of our policy on misconduct, which could lead to the submission being rejected and further investigation.

Confidentiality

The editors of this journal will treat all submissions in strict confidence. A reviewer's responsibility to maintain the confidentiality of the materials they read is equivalent to that of the author. Unless there is reasonable suspicion of misconduct, ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  journals will not share submitted papers with third parties. Please refer to our Code of Conduct if you require clarification.

Misconduct

Tabriz University of Medical Sciences takes allegations of wrongdoing very seriously. ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  uses the COPE guidelines when addressing allegations of misconduct in its journals. If the editor suspects the author has engaged in research or publication misconduct, they may need to contact the author's institution and/or an ethical commission (s). Even more, MAP can safely discuss cases with COPE and get advice from the COPE Forum without compromising privacy.

Academic Misconduct

Research involving human participants, human data, or human tissue must have been conducted in accordance with all relevant ethical guidelines (for more information, see our Ethics and consent policy). The editor may choose not to publish the manuscript and instead notify the authors' institution and ethics committee if he or she has concerns that the research was conducted in a manner inconsistent with accepted ethical standards (s).

If it can be proven that the authors engaged in research misconduct or that the study's scientific integrity was compromised in any significant way, the publication can be retracted. Please refer to our errata and retraction policy for more details.

Publication Misbehavior

The ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  commits to publishing journals that follow the COPE guidelines for publication ethics.

Image Manipulation

In order to determine whether or not submitted papers have been falsified, digital images will be scrutinized for signs of manipulation. It is at the discretion of the publication to either retract or reject a manuscript that has been found to have been altered in a way that is contrary to these policies. It is forbidden to change a person's appearance in any way, including to hide or remove parts of their body or to add anything to their existing features. Photos from different regions of the same gel or from different gels, fields, or exposures should be clearly grouped together, and the figure structure (i.e. dividing lines) and the figure legend should make this clear.

As long as they are applied uniformly to every pixel in the image, changes to the brightness, contrast, and color balance of the image are permitted so long as they do not obscure, eliminate, or mislead from the original. Adjustments to the non-linear settings (such as adjusting the gamma) should be mentioned in the figure's caption. In case of any doubts during or after peer review, the editor may request access to the raw data in order to check the final statistics.

The submission could be rejected or, in the case of a previously published article, retracted if primary source materials are missing. Any data that has been altered in a way that changes its meaning will be disregarded. If the writer's school has reason to suspect misconduct, it will be notified (s).

Plagiarism

Before publishing an article, the journals published by ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  run it through Turnitin, a plagiarism detection service. We will follow the guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) if plagiarism is found.

Plagiarism encompasses, without limitation:

Plagiarism can take many forms, including direct text copying, concept theft, image theft, data theft, idea theft, recycled text, and word-for-word paraphrase.

Any submissions found to contain plagiarized content during the peer review process risk being rejected. If we find plagiarism after a piece has been published, we reserve the right to make edits or even retract the entire piece. Before or after publication, we will notify the authors' home institutions if we find evidence of plagiarism.

Corrections and Withdrawals

Rare as they may be, ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE  occasionally issues retractions or corrections to previously published articles.

Separate articles will be published for errata and retractions, with a clear link from the original article to the erratum/retraction article, as is standard practice in the academic community. Both the original and updated versions of retracted or revised articles are still searchable in databases. We may be required to remove content from our website and archive sites if it is determined to violate any rights or be defamatory.

A published article can be updated by its author(s) with the help of a comment. However, this is acceptable practice only if the alterations do not affect the article's findings and conclusions.

Corrections

When a co-author drops out of a paper after it has been published, an Erratum is issued. For additional information, read our Authorship policy.

Retractions

When there has been a serious violation of confidence in the paper's underlying scientific findings, it may be necessary to retract the publication. In such a case, ALSALAM UNIVERSITY COLLEGE will adhere to the standards set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All articles that have been retracted are listed in an exhaustive index with live links to their pre-retraction versions.