Publication Ethics and Policies
The publication of an article in the peer-reviewed journal SJUOZ is to support the standard and respected knowledge transfer network. Our publication ethics and publication malpractice statement is mainly based on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011) that includes;
- General duties and responsibilities of editors.
- Relations with readers.
- Relations with authors.
- Relations with editors.
- Relations with editorial board members.
- Relations with journal owners and publishers.
- Editorial and peer review processes.
- Protecting individual data.
- Encouraging ethical research (e.g. research involving humans or animals).
- Dealing with possible misconduct.
- Ensuring the integrity of the academic record.
- Intellectual property.
- Encouraging debate.
- Complaints.
- Conflicts of interest.
Rigorous peer review is conducted by professional peer reviewers who are experts on the field. In addition, strict ethical standards and policies are enforced to ensure high quality scientific papers are added to the field of interest. Before processing the manuscript to the peer review, all manuscripts are checked for plagiarism, authership credit and data falsification. The similarity rate is checked with Turnitin software. Manuscripts with less than 20% similarity rate are passed to the peer review process.
Author's responsibilities;
- Author warrant that the research is their original work.
- The submission must be done online.
- The national authors must pay the article precessing fees after paper acceptance (Only for Iraqis).
- The manuscript must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.
- Parallel submision to another journal is not allowed.
- The manuscript must not contain any unlawful statement that violate a third party.
- The author should accuratly present the findings and include objective discussion for his/her findings.
- The authors must include all authors who have significant contribution to the research work. The authors are expected to follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
- Present the material and methods in enough details that if another researcher do the same experiment should obtain nearly the same results.
- The authors must obtain the permission from the copyright holder for any previously published image, figure etc.
- Any changes in the list of author must be during the editorial process before the acceptance of the paper for publication.
- The authors must follow the international guidlines for research involving humans, animals and plants such as Declaration of Helsinki 1975, Code of Practise for the Housing and Care of Animals Used in Scientific Procedures and Convention on Biological Diversity for plant.
- The authors must give citation for all image, figure etc. which are already published.
- The authors must provide an ethical statement as part of their methods section detailing full information as to their approval (including the name of the granting organization, and the approval reference numbers). If an approval reference number is not provided, written approval must be provided as a confidential supplemental information file.
- For research conducted on regulated animals (which includes all live vertebrates and/or higher invertebrates), appropriate approval must have been obtained according to either international or local laws and regulations. Before conducting the research, approval must have been obtained from the relevant body (in most cases an Institutional Review Board, or Ethics Committee). Research on non-human primates is subject to specific guidelines from the Weatherall (2006) report (The Use of Non-Human Primates in Research).
- Experimental animals should have been handled according to the highest standards dictated by the author’s institution.
- The revision must be done within two weeks.
- Any changes made for revision must be highlited in yellow colour.
- in the rise of artificial intellegint (AI), the journal only accept using AI tools for language checking and proofreading to enhance the readability of the manuscripts. Using AI for writing or data analysis instead of human writing is not acceptable and it will be checked with Turnitin software.
- The authors have the right to appeal to the editor-in-chief if they have any concern regarding the review process and they must give the detailed reasons for the appeal.
Reviewer' responsibilities
- The reviewers must alert the handling editor for any violation of ethical standards.
- Reviewers and editors must not have any conflict of interest with the research work.
- Personel criticism of the author by the reviewers is inappropriate. The reviewers should give their views based on evidence in the literature.
- The reviewers must consider all the documents as confidential.
- Evaluation of the research works must be free from any religion, gender, sexual, racial, political, ethnic biases.
- The reviewers must check the research work for ethical approval for research invloving human, animal and plant.
- Reviewers are expected to provide written competent feedback in a timely manner.
- The reviewers must disclose any conflict of interest to the editos that could affect their opinions on the manuscripts.
- It is not allowed for the reviewer to use any information, result or idea in the revewed paper for personal used.
Editor's responsibilities;
- The editors and reviewers must consider all the documents as confidential.
- The editors must check the research work for ethical approval for research invloving human, animal and plant.
- The editor must choose reviewers who are expert in the field.
- Editor should recommend to the editor-in-chief for accepting or rejecting manuscripts.
- If the editor want to publish a paper in the journal, another section editor will handle the paper. In addition, the editor will not be involved in the peer review process.
- It is not allowed for the editor to use any information, result or idea in the revewed paper for personal used.
Editor-in-Chief's responsibilities
- Editor-in-chief has the final decision for accepting or rejecting the manuscripts.
- He is the one who is responsible for selecting the editorial board
- It is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief and to pass the research which fits the scope of the journal.
- It is editor-in-chief's responsibilities to check the review process regularly.
- Editor-in-chief must mediate any conflict of interest between editor, reviwers and the readers.
Manuscripts retraction:
Editor-in-chief and section editor must consider retraction in the following cases;
- There is clear evidence that there is a major error or mistake.
- The paper or part of the results have been published elsewhere whithout clear referenceing by the authors.
- The manuscripts contain some materials that the author is not authorised to use them.
- The author did not disclos conflict of interest, in which the editor think that this would affect the decision of the reviewers and editors.
- SJUOZ follow the guidlines of COPE for dealing with paper retraction
