Ethics summary
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.
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 Health literacy” website. Then we utilize COPE workflow to transparently handle it. Copyright and License
Journal of Health Literacy allow the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions. Also the journal allow the author(s) to retain publishing rights without restrictions.
Data sharing
Journal of Health literacy encourages authors to share the data and any other material associated with methodology and the results of the submitted articles, in an appropriate public repository, or as open access supplementary to the article.Therefore, in results of clinical trials must be contain a data sharing statement.However, in other manuscripts, we recommend. in line with ICMJE recommendations, a data sharing statement is required for manuscripts reporting the results of clinical trials, on whether and how the data will be available. For more information, please consult ICMJE recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html#two).
Authorship
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 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.
Section D: Editorial responsibilities
Editors (Deputy 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
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.
Section E: Publishing Ethics Issues
All editorial members, reviewers and authors must confirm and obey rules defined by ICMJE.
Section F: Information For Readers
