Enhanced Integrity Screening for High-Risk Authors Policy

Enhanced Integrity Screening for High-Risk Authors
To safeguard the scholarly record and maintain the highest ethical standards, Journal of the Faculty of Medicine Baghdad is implementing an enhanced screening protocol. This policy addresses instances where a significant volume of submissions originates from individuals with a history of serious ethical breaches.
1. Scope and Criteria
While we believe in the potential for academic improvement, a pattern of "serious ethical issues" creates a heightened risk signal. For the purposes of this policy, serious ethical issues include:
•    Data fabrication or falsification.
•    Image manipulation with intent to deceive.
•    Participation in "paper mills" or unethical authorship trading.
•    Plagiarism that resulted in a formal retraction.
2. Mandatory Disclosure
All submitting authors must disclose any prior retractions involving themselves or their co-authors during the submission process. Failure to disclose a known retraction for ethical misconduct may result in immediate desk rejection and a temporary ban on future submissions.
3. Enhanced Review Process
Submissions involving authors with a history of ethical retractions will undergo an Integrity Audit prior to standard peer review:
•    Raw Data Verification: Authors may be required to provide original, unprocessed data and metadata for all figures and tables.
•    Institutional Verification: The editorial office may contact the authors' home institutions to confirm the validity of the research conducted.
•    Deep Forensic Screening: Manuscripts will be subjected to advanced AI-assisted image and text analysis to detect subtle patterns of manipulation.
4. Editorial Discretion
The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to decline any manuscript regardless of peer review outcome if the "risk signal" (based on past behaviour and current manuscript quality) suggests a threat to the journal’s reputation or the integrity of the scientific literature.