Publication Ethics: Rules and Policies

 

Human Rights

 

The cover letter must include a statement declaring the study complies with the current ethical considerations. Authors reporting the experimental studies on human subjects must include a statement of assurance in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript that:

1. The informed consent was obtained from each participant included in the study,
2. The study protocol is consistent with the ethical guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki as reflected in a prior approval by the institution's human research committee.

Every experimental or clinical study may raise controversial ethical issues (e.g., Institutional Ethical Approval to study on animal or human subjects). Thus, the journal editorial board expects all authors, reviewers, and editors to consider the COPE, ICMJE and Equator Network’s reporting guidelines in medical ethics plus the scientific writing. If any, authors should state related declaration(s), otherwise, the following sentence should be given: “None be declared”.

 

Animal Rights

In the studies using animal experimentation, assurance must be provided that all animals received humane care according to the criteria outlined in the "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" prepared by the National Academy of Sciences and published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH publication 86-23 revised 1985). When conducting research on animals we commit to The Basel Declaration which shows outlines fundamental as well as ethical guidelines at the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS). Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the Guideline for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals in Iran. For reports of such studies, authors should refer to the ARRIVE guidelines checklist.

 

Ethical Approval Code

 

To publish an article in a research journal, author(s) are requested to get the ethical permission from their institute. In this permission, authors will agree upon standard ethical behavior.

• "Ethical Approval Code" is required for all studies on people, medical records, and human samples.
• This code must be linked to a webpage showing the details of approval.
• The code must be approved by the authors' local authorities. For example, the national center of ethics or ethics department of universities.

 

Which type of manuscripts are required to declare "Ethical Approval Code"?

The below table describes the requirement of approval code and informed consent in different types of manuscript.

Manuscript Type	Ethical Approval Code	Patient Informed Consent
Research Articles
Interventional (on Human participants)	required	required
Interventional (on Animal participants)	required *	-
In vitro studies	required/optional **	required/optional **
Real retrospective studies	optional	optional
Case Reports	required/optional ***	required ***

 

Table notes:

*: Veterinary clinical cases: For studies using client-owned animals, a high standard (best practice) of veterinary care and an informed client consent statement should be included in the Materials and Methods section.

*: Animal Studies: The ethical review committee approval, and the international, national, and/or institutional guidelines followed regarding the animal's welfare is strongly required in these types of studies.

**: In vitro studies on human or animal tissues are obliged to show "ethical approval code".

***:  Case reports are not obliged to show “Ethical Approval Code”. But it is strongly recommended to obtain written and signed informed consent from patient/ guardians for publishing the case report. 

 

Which type of manuscripts does not need ethical approval code?

 

• studies involving the collection or analysis of data
• studies involving information freely available in the public domain (e.g. published biographies, newspaper accounts)
• review articles
• letter or editorial

 

Authorship Rules and Regulations

Based on the ICMJE recommends that authorship criteria are as below:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data;
2. Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content;
3. Final approval of the version published;
4. 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.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their coauthors. All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding, the gathering of data, technical help, writing assistance, and general supervision of the research group does not warrant authorship. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged. Please guarantee that anyone stated in the Acknowledgements section has granted its clearance for permission to be listed.

Authorship Statement

 

An authorship statement is required for every manuscript submitted and should state who has contributed what to the planning, conduct, and reporting of the work described in the article

Acknowledgments

 

Recognize individuals who provided assistance to the project. Report all sources of grant and other support for the project or study, including funds received from contributors, institutions and commercial sources. Consultancies and funds paid directly to investigators must also be listed.

 

Authorship Changes

 

NEW: Based on our internal policy, we don´t accept any change in the authorship including addition and or deletion of the authors after initial submission except for those cases that are decided by the editorial board.

• Only Minor changes in the authors including any change in the order of authors will be reviewed by the editorial board. Authors should determine the order of authorship among themselves. In addition, any alterations must be clarified to the Editor/Editor-in-chief.

 

Competing Interests

A competing interest exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain - employment, Consultancy, stock ownership or options, honoraria, patents, and paid expert- testimony or personal relationship). There is nothing unethical about a competing interest but it should be acknowledged and clearly stated. All authors must declare all competing interests in their covering letter and in “Competing Interests” section at the end of the manuscript file (before the references). Authors with no competing interests to declare should obviously state that.

• The policy of publisher is that none of the editors should have any financial relationship with any Biomedical company.

 

 

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 not use irrelevant sources that may help other researches/journals.
• Authors cannot withdraw their articles within the review process or after submission, or they must pay the penalty defined by the publisher.

 

Peer Review/Responsibility for the 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.

 

Editorial Responsibilities

 

• Editors (Associate Editors or Editor in Chief) have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
• 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 (in half blind peer review journals).
• 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.

 

Publishing Ethics Issues

 

The journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are approached upon confronting any ethical misbehavior.

Retraction Policy: The Iranian Journal of Colorectal Research uses the COPE flowchart for retraction of a published article.

Informed Consent: All patients and participants of the research should be thoroughly informed about the aims of the study and any possible side effects of the drugs and intervention. Written informed consent from the participants or their legal guardians is necessary for any such studies. The Journal reserves the right to request the related documents.

The Iranian Journal of Colorectal Research precludes business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.

The Editors-in-Chief are always willing to publish corrections, clarifications.

Plagiarism: Use of verbatim texts from other sources without acknowledgement is prohibited. The content of all articles must be the original work of authors and must not be plagiarized from other articles. COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are approached in cases in which plagiarism is detected. The journal uses the iThenticate Plagiarism detector to screen submitted manuscripts for originality. Using this service, we can detect if a manuscript contains passages of text that appear in other publications or resources.

Data falsification/fabrication: Falsification is the practice of omitting or altering research materials, data, or processes so that the results of the research are no longer accurately reflected. Fabrication is the practice of inventing data or results and reporting them in the research. Both of these misconducts are fraudulent and seriously alter the integrity of research. Therefore, articles must be written based on original data and use of falsified or fabricated data is strongly prohibited. In confronting cases with fabricated or falsified data COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are followed.

Image manipulation: The Iranian Journal of Colorectal Research encourages authors to send their original images. All digital images in manuscripts accepted for publication will be checked for inappropriate manipulation. No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable as long as they are applied to the entire image and do not misrepresent any information present in the original, including the background. The editors will request the original data from the authors to compare the manipulated figures in cases suspected of inappropriate manipulation.

 Allegations of Misconduct

This journal follows COPE Core Practices Guideline for allegations of misconducts. 

Find out more: publicationethics.org/misconduct

Data and Reproducibility

This journal has policies on data availability and encourage the use of reporting guidelines and registration of clinical trials and other study designs according to standard practice in their discipline.

Find out more: https://publicationethics.org/data

Complaints and Appeals

The journal follows COPE Guidelines for handling complaints against the journal, its staff, editorial board or publisher.

Find out more: publicationethics.org/appeals