Publication Ethics

Ethics for publication exist to ensure trust in scientific findings, for publishing high quality scientific material, and accredit the innovative ideas. For maintaining this all parties (authors, editors, reviewers, publisher of the journals) should abide the ethics statement prepared based on Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) - Best practice Guidelines.

Duties of Editor and Editorial Board member:

Fair play: Manuscripts should be considered for their intellectual content, without any discrimination based on ethnicity, gender, origin, citizenship, religious belief, etc and it should be ensured that they fall within the scope of the journal.
Confidentiality: The editor and editorial board members are morally abided to maintain the confidentiality for the manuscripts they receive (i.e., they should not disclose any information from the manuscript to a third person/party).
Publication decisions: The editor and editorial board members are responsible for deciding the type and number of manuscripts that are to be published for the journal. In this process, they can also be assisted by other editors or reviewers in making this decision or can confer this responsibility to other editors.
Morality: The editor and editorial board members will work with the publisher to attract the best manuscripts and research that will be of interest to readers. They will maintain the journal’s integrity by suggesting corrections, handling any concerns raised, and making recommendations for improving the standards of the journals as well as adhering to the policies of the publisher

Duties of Reviewer:

Contribution: Reviewers assist the editor in making editorial decisions and may also assist the author in improving the manuscript.
Confidentiality: Reviewers must treat manuscript as highly confidential documents and they must not show any part of it or discuss it except if authorized by the editor.
Promptness: Reviewers should feel free to decline the offer to review if they are not an expert in the field of the submitted manuscript or if they lack sufficient time to review it. Reviewers are morally abided to complete the review process within the specified time.
Neutrality: Neutral reviews should be given. Personal criticisms of the authors are unacceptable. However, constructive criticism is welcome. Reviews should be clear and help in improving the manuscript and ensure the manuscript falls within the scope of that journal.
Conflict of interest: Reviewers should not accept manuscripts in which they have conflict of interest that might have arisen from collaborative, competitive, or other relationships and need to communicate this to the editor with the proper reason.

Duties of the Author:

Originality: The work done by the authors should be presented in original form. The manuscript’s message must be presented in the clearest possible way. For example - with clear description, images, tables, figures or graphs when applicable. Manuscript should contain sufficient details and references in a proper order so that it can be replicated in other’s work to increase the citation.
Plagiarism: Authors should ensure that their work is original. If any words are used for reference it must be properly cited.
Multiple and redundant publication: Authors should ensure that their work has been published only in one journal.
Acknowledgement of sources: Authors should acknowledge the work of others (including students and lab technicians) and should cite publications that influenced their work.
Conflict of interest: All authors should disclose any financial or other substantive conflict of interest. The funding details are to be mentioned.
Corrections in manuscript submitted: It is the obligation of the authors that if any significant error/inaccurate results have been spotted then they have to report it to the editor or publisher and should co-operate in either correcting the error or retracting the article.