Editorial Policy

Misconduct Policy:

-Duplicate publication

Any manuscript submitted to the journal must be original, and the manuscript, or substantial parts of it, must not be under consideration by any other journal. In any case, where there is potential overlap or duplication, we require that authors be transparent. Authors should declare any potentially overlapping publications on submission. Any overlapping publications should be cited. Any ‘in press’ or unpublished manuscript cited or relevant to the Editor’s and reviewers' assessment of the manuscript should be made available if requested by the Editor. The Editor reserves the right to judge potentially overlapping or redundant publications on a case-by-case basis.

The manuscript should not have been formally published in any journal or any other citation form.

The journal is a member of CrossCheck’s plagiarism detection initiative and takes seriously all cases of publication misconduct. Any suspected cases of covert duplicate manuscript submission will be handled as outlined in the COPE guidelines, and the Editor may contact the authors’ institution. The journal endorses the policies of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) about overlapping publications.

- Dealing with allegations of misconduct

The journal takes all possible misconduct seriously. Suppose an editor has concerns that a submitted article describes something that might be considered to constitute misconduct in research, publication, or professional behavior. In that case, the editor may discuss the case in confidence with the Editorial Board Members.

If the case cannot be resolved by discussion with the author(s) and the Editor still has concerns, the case may be reported to the appropriate authorities. If during reviewing an article, an editor is alerted to possible problems (for example, fraudulent data) in another publication, the editor may contact the journal in which the previous publication appeared to raise concern.

Readers who suspect misconduct in a published article are encouraged to report this to the editor for that title.

- Plagiarism Detection

The journal is a member of Turnitin. Turnitin is a plagiarism screening service that verifies the originality of content submitted before publication. Turnitin checks submissions against millions of published research papers and billions of web content. Authors, researchers, and freelancers can also use Turnitin to screen their work before submission.

Correction and Retraction Policies:

- Corrections to published work

Honest errors are a part of science and publishing and require the publication of a correction when detected. We expect authors to inform the journal’s Editor (by the Contact Us section of the journal website) of any errors of fact they have noticed (or have been informed of) in their article once published. Corrections are made at the journal’s discretion. Changes to published articles that affect the interpretation and conclusion of the article, but do not entirely invalidate the article, will, at the Editor(s)’ discretion, be corrected via publication of a Correction that is indexed and bi-directionally linked to the original article.

As Publishers, we have to maintain the integrity of the scientific record. For this reason, minor corrections that do not affect the scientific understanding of the paper (for example, formatting or typographical errors or wording preference) may be rejected if submitted post-publication to prevent discrepancies downstream.

The correction procedure depends on the publication stage of the article, but in all circumstances, a correction notice is published as soon as possible.

Publication in an issue or a continuous publication journal

If the article has already appeared in an issue, a correction notice will be printed in the next available print issue. The online version of the article will link to the correction notice and vice versa. The PDF will be replaced with a version watermarked with “Retracted”, but the original text will remain accessible. In rare cases, the journal may have to remove the original content for legal reasons. In such cases, the journal will leave the metadata (title and authors) and replace the text with a note saying the article has been removed for legal reasons.

-Retractions

Journal editor considers retractions in cases of evidence of unreliable data or findings, plagiarism, duplicate publication, and unethical research. We may consider an expression of concern notice if an article is under investigation. All retraction notices explain why the article was retracted. The retraction procedure depends on the publication stage of the article:

Please visit the standard retraction form

Author names change requests

The journal wants to ensure a smooth process and experience to facilitate author name changes after publication. Authors may change their names for many reasons. To request an author name change, use (the Contact Us section of the journal website)

The following are to be considered in such a request:

The changes will be made directly on the article(s). The journal will not request the approval of any co-authors on the paper to update the name. Researchers may wish to inform their co-authors of the change, for example, so that they use an updated offline copy or change the way they cite the publication. Alternatively, the journal will notify the corresponding author alone as standard practice. As part of any author name change request, the journal will endeavor to make any necessary changes to all references to the author’s identity, for example, email address, pronouns, or any other occurrence within the body of their paper.
The journal recommends using an ORCID ID for authors who change their name and want to ensure that all of their prior publications are discoverable in one place.
The journal will update the PDF version of the paper on our website. The journal cannot control whether the author's name changes are made to other websites. Suppose an author wishes their work to be fully discoverable in all indexing and archiving sites under both prior and current names. In that case, authors may need to contact the indexes and databases directly.
Unfortunately, the journal cannot update citations in other publications for the author’s papers in which a name change has been made.
The journal will retain an original copy of the article to ensure that changes have been made accurately and to demonstrate what versions of the article have been published at any given point, should that be required (e.g., for legal purposes). The original version will not be made publicly available.