Ethics Summary and Malpractice Statement
Conflict-of-Interest Statement
Authorship
Regulations for Publication Ethics
Ethics Summary and Malpractice
This journal follows International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)‘s Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. Therefor we genuinely recommend and appreciate it if authors read these recommendations prior to their manuscript submission.
- The Journal promptly attend to and resolve all complaints related to publication ethics and clearly identify contact information for the person responsible for handling allegations of misconduct based on the COPE guidelines.
- The Journal policies on data sharing and reproducibility is based on the ICMJE’s data sharing statement policy.
- All policies on intellectual property, including copyright and publishing licenses, is based on the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License accessible on the "About Journal".
- In case of receiving a critique, or commentary, of an article previously published in the journal, the Journal policies is based on the COPE guidelines.
- Journal’s policy on ethical oversight is based on the COPE guidelines.
- If research misconduct, fraud or plagiarism is suspected, editors will follow the COPE guidelines and reserve the rights to inform authors or their institution.
Conflict-of-Interest Statement
According to ICMJE, conflict of interest occurred when a financial or personal relationship exist between any participant in the peer review and publication process – authors, reviewers, editors, or editorial board members of journals – and might bias or be seen to bias fulfilling their role.
At first any conflict of interest in a given manuscript should be report by submitting ICMJE form for Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest on “Journal of Midwifery & Reproductive health” website. Then we utilize COPE workflow to transparently handle it.
Authorship
We stick to ICMJE definition of author and contributor based on its four criteria as follow:
- “Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND “
- “Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND”
- “Final approval of the version to be published; AND”
- “Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.”
We required the authors to understand and accept the ethical policy especially:
- Declaration of interests — it is important to declare the funding that made the research possible.
- Registering clinical trials — clinical trials should be registered in publicly accessible registries.
- Respecting confidentiality — protecting patients from being recognized if used in research and in publication.
- Protecting research subjects, patients and experimental animals.
Regulation for Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
Section A: Publication and authorship
- All submitted papers are subject to strict peer-review process by at least two reviewers that are experts in the area of the particular paper. Deputy Editors and Editor-in-Chief are selecting reviewers.
- The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, originality, readability, statistical validity and language.
- The possible decisions include acceptance, minor revisions, major revision or rejection.
- If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.
- Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.
- The paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
- No research can be included in more than one publication, whether within the same journal or in another journal.
Section B: Authors' responsibilities
- Authors must certify that their manuscript is their original work.
- Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere, or even submitted and been in reviewed in another journal.
- Authors must participate in the peer review process and follow the comments.
- Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
- All Authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research. Level of their contribution also must be defined in the “Authors’ Contributions” section of the article.
- Authors must state that all data in the paper are real and authentic.
- Authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest.
- Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript.
- Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.
- Authors must state that informed consent was obtained from all human adult participants and from the parents or legal guardians of minors. Include the name of the appropriate institutional review board that approved the project.
- The authors should follow WMA Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects and clearly state this in their manuscripts.
Section C: Peer reviewers' responsibilities
- Reviewers are commited to the COPE Ethical Guideline for Peer Reviewers https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers
- Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
- Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author. No self-knowledge of the author(s) must affect their comments and decision.
- Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in 500 to 1000 words.
- Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
- Reviewers should also call to the Editor-in-Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
- Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
Section D: Editors' responsibilities
- Editors of JMRH are committed to the COPE of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.
- Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.
- Editors should always consider the needs of the authors and the readers when attempting to improve the publication.
- Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.
- Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
- Editors should have a clear picture of a research's funding sources.
- Editors should base their decisions solely one the papers' importance, originality, clarity and relevance to publication's scope.
- Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.
- Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers
- Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to international accepted ethical guidelines.
- Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
- Editors should act if they suspect misconduct, whether a paper is published or unpublished, and make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem.
- Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions; they should have proof of misconduct.
- Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers and board members.
- Editors must not change their decision after submitting a decision (especially after reject or accept) unless they have a serious reason.
Section E: Publisher's responsibilities
- Publisher follows the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers, and encourages the editors to follow the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf
- Publisher ensures the editors and journal are aware of what their membership of COPE provides and entails https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf
- Publisher provide reasonable practical support to editors so that they can follow the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf
- Publisher defines the relationship between publisher, editor and other parties in a contract
- Publisher respects privacy (for example, for research participants, for authors, for peer reviewers)
- Publisher protects intellectual property and copyright
- Publisher fosters editorial independence
- Publisher ensures that good practice is maintained to the standards defined above
Section F: Publishing ethics issues
- Members of the Editorial Board ensure the monitoring and safeguarding of the publishing ethics
- Monitoring of the editorial board members comprises the strict policy on plagiarism and fraudulent data, the strong commitment to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed, and the strict preclusion of business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards
- If, after an appropriate investigation, an item proves to be fraudulent, it will be retracted. The retraction will be clearly identifiable to readers and indexing systems
- All editorial members, reviewers and authors must confirm and obey rules defined by ICMJE
- Corresponding author is the main owner of the article so she/he can withdraw the article when it is incomplete (before entering the review process or when a revision is asked for)
- Authors cannot make major changes in the article after acceptance without a serious reason
- All editorial members and authors must will to publish any kind of corrections honestly and completely
Section G: Dealing with possible misconducts
- Editor has a duty to act if suspect misconduct or if an allegation of misconduct is brought to the journal. This duty extends to both published and unpublished manuscripts
- Editor does not simply reject manuscripts that raise concerns about possible misconduct. They are ethically obliged to pursue alleged cases
- Editor first seeks a response from those suspected of misconduct. If they are not satisfied with the response, they should ask the relevant employers, or institution, or some appropriate body (perhaps a regulatory body or national research integrity organization) to investigate
- Editor makes all reasonable efforts to ensure that a proper investigation into alleged misconduct is conducted; if this does not happen, editor makes all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem. This is an onerous but important duty
Section H: Managing publishing malpractices
- Editors are committed to follow Full Set of COPE Flow Charts and apply in its reviewing and publishing process and issues where applicable.
- For handling different aspects of publication ethics issues including redundant (duplicate) publication, suspected plagiarism, suspected fabricated data, changes in authorship, suspected undisclosed conflict of interest in a submitted or published manuscript,; suspected ghost, guest or gift authorship;, suspected an ethical problem with a submitted manuscript, and suspected reviewer’s misconduct, the step by step process of COPE flowcharts will be followed
- Newly emerged issues with respect to allegations of misconduct, authorship and contributor ship, conflicts of interest/competing interests, data and reproducibility, intellectual property, journal management, peer review processes and post-publication discussions will be followed through https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts-new/translations
- Editors indicate if the manuscript requires its English grammar, punctuation or spelling to be corrected and the author(s) are obliged to provide corrections of mistakes
- If the editors or the publisher learn from the author(s) or a third party that a published work contains a significant error, the author must promptly retract or correct the paper or provide evidence to the editor of the correctness of the original paper
- Editors are always ready to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed
- Errors, inaccurate or misleading statements are corrected promptly and with due prominence
- Editors are committed to do corrections if competing interests are revealed after publication