A. JOURNAL ETHICS
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Manuscripts submitted for publication must comply with the following ethical considerations:
Informed Consent:
Informed consent of the patients must be taken before they are considered for participation in the study. Patient identifying information, such as names, initials, hospitals numbers, or photographs should not be included in the written descriptions. Patient consent should be obtained in written and archived with the author.
Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research:
When conduction experiments on Human Subjects, appropriate approval must have been obtained by the relevant ethics committees. All the procedures must be performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible ethics committee both (Institutional and national) on human experimentation and the Helsinki Declaration of 1964 (as revised in 2008). When reporting experiments on animals, authors must follow the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use laboratory animals.
PROTECTION OF PATIENTS' RIGHTS
The right to give or withhold authorization of disclosures: The patient generally has the right to control who has access to confidential information except as otherwise provided by law. The patient needs to give specific authorization or permission to allow a third party to have access to confidential information.
The right to maintain privacy: Only those persons directly involved in the care of the patient's health problem should have access to private information. Health care workers should protect information revealed during provider-health care worker encounters, including all written or electronic records of these encounters.
The right to have autonomy: Autonomy is the right of a patient to determine what will be done with his or her body, personal belongings, and personal information; this concept applies to any adult person who is mentally competent. Sometimes the right to autonomy can be overridden in the interest of protecting others who may be harmed by the patient's decisions.
The right to be given information: The patient has a right to information about his or her medical diagnosis, treatment regimen, and progress. This allows the patient to make appropriate, informed decisions about his or her health care.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
For Authors:
All manuscripts for articles, original research article, review article, editorials, comments, book reviews and letters that are submitted to BPAS Publication’s journal(s) must be accompanied by a conflict of interest disclosure statement, or a declaration by the authors that they have no conflicts of interest to declare. All articles that are published in BPAS Publication’s journal(s) will be accompanied by a conflict-of-interest disclosure statement, or a statement that the authors have replied that they have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Authors should also disclose to editors any conflict of interest that may have influenced either the conduct or the presentation of research, including but not limited to close relationships with those who might be helped or hurt by the publication, academic interests and rivalries, and any personal, religious or political convictions relevant to the topic at hand.
In the paper, authors should include a draft statement that discloses all relevant conflicts of interest and affiliations. Relevance for financial conflicts of interest with private firms is defined as a relationship of any value with a firm with a stake in the subject of the manuscript, or its competitors. Relevance for patents is defined as any invention or pending invention connected in any way to the subject.
Report:
Any financial relationship of any size should be disclosed. These Potential conflicts of interest in relation to your submitted manuscript could include:
1. Direct employment, either full or part-time;
2. Grants and research funding Consultancies;
3. Travel grants, speaking fees, writing fees and other honoraria;
4. Advocacy group;
5. Patents granted, whether or not generating royalties;
6. Stock ownership, investment in related “sector” funds, or stock options;
7. Membership on private sector scientific or other advisory boards, whether paid or unpaid.
In addition, any current negotiations regarding future employment or current job offers, either full- or part-time, must be disclosed.
Non-Financial Conflicts of Interest:
These may be personal, political, or intellectual and may include any expression of strongly held views relevant to the subject of the submission. Disclosable non-financial conflicts of interest would also include membership or affiliation with non-governmental organizations that have an interest in the submission.
For Editors, Articles Editors, and Peer Reviewers:
As a general rule, BPAS Publication’s journal(s) should require that all senior editorial personnel (editors in chief, managing editors, full-time assistant editors) avoid all financial relationships that might constitute a conflict of interest. Editorial managers should also avoid personal, political, or intellectual entanglements, organizational or otherwise, that could be construed as establishing a particular bias that might influence one’s judgments. Editors who maintain financial ties with companies or institutions that have an interest in the content of a journal undermine the editorial independence that is crucial to a journal’s credibility. Requiring editors to remain conflict-of-interest free assures rejected authors that bias or potential bias did not enter into the editorial decision to reject their manuscript.
Peer reviewers have traditionally remained anonymous. Whatever the journal’s policy, peer reviewers and articles editors should follow the same rules as authors for disclosing conflicts of interest. This gives editors the tools they need to ensure that peer review panels for individual papers are fairly balanced.
Manuscript will be published only if Conflict of Interest information will be in a published statement.
You should also include a relevant disclosure statement with your article, in conjunction with any acknowledgements and details of funders.
B. PEER REVIEW PROCESS POLICY
Peer review is an essential component of scholarly research publishing. If peer review is not meant to detect fraud, what is its purpose? Unfortunately, there is no one text to which authors, reviewers or editors alike can refer. Peer review is an imprecise term and varies across disciplines. Authors wished to review papers relevant to their area of expertise. Despite various criticisms and a number of shortcomings, peer review is still the only widely accepted method for research validation. But the ways peer review is put into practice vary across journals and disciplines.
BPAS Publications employ post-publication double-blind peer review process, in which author(s) and reviewer(s) are unaware of the identity of each other, throughout the process for unbiased peer review process and reducing the amount of repeat research publication. Every article submitted to the journal is subjected to strict plagiarism check through software.
BPAS Publications aims at rapid publication of high quality research while maintaining rigorous but sympathetic peer review process. Manuscripts (other than those that are of insufficient quality or unlikely to be competitive enough for publication) will be peer-reviewed by two or more experts in the fields, and a decision is returned to the authors in about one month. If due to special circumstance, the review process takes more time, authors will be informed by email. Manuscripts with significant results will be reviewed and published at the highest priority and speed. Possible decisions on a manuscript are:
• accepted as it is
• accepted after minor revision
• accepted after major revision
• rejected
If minor revision is required, authors should return a revised version as soon as possible within 15 days. If major revision is required, authors should return a revised version within 25 days.
These impartial reviewers are charged with carefully evaluating the quality of the submitted manuscript. Peer reviewers check the number of issues in the manuscript including assessing the validity of the research methodology and procedures. If appropriate, they may recommend revisions and re submission of an article. In other cases, they may recommend rejection for various reasons. But the final decision to publish is made by the Editor-in-Chief.
C. EDITORIAL POLICY
Papers must be submitted with the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or thesis) and are not currently under consideration by another journal published by or any other publisher. The submitting (corresponding) author is responsible for ensuring that the article's publication has been approved by all the other co-authors. It is also the authors' responsibility to ensure that the articles emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution. Only an acknowledgment from the editorial office officially establishes and confirms the date of receipt. Further correspondence and proofs will be sent to the corresponding author(s) before publication unless otherwise indicated. It is a condition for submission of a paper that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability. All enquiries concerning the publication of accepted papers should be addressed to support@bpasjournals.com
About Authorship
Authorship is an explicit way of assigning responsibility and giving credit for intellectual work. These both are linked together. Authorship practices should be judged by how honestly they reflect actual contributions to the final product. Authorship has its importantance for the reputation, academic promotion, and grant support of the individuals involved as well as to the strength and reputation of their institution.
Disputes sometimes arise about who should be listed as authors of an intellectual product and the order in which they should be listed. When disagreements over authorship arise, they can take a substantial toll on the good will, effectiveness, and reputation of the individuals involved and their academic community. Many such disagreements result from misunderstanding and failed communication among colleagues and might have been prevented by a clear, early understanding of standards for authorship that are shared by the academic community as a whole.
Journals do not require all the authors of a research paper have to sign the letter of submission, nor do impose an order on the list of authors. Submission to journal means that all the listed authors have agreed all of the contents. The corresponding (submitting) author is responsible for having ensured that this agreement has been attained and for managing all communication between the journal and all co-authors, before and after publication. Any change to the authors list after submission, such as a change in the order of the authors or the deletion or addition of authors needs to be approved by a signed letter from every author.
Minimum Requirements for Authorship
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article.
Authorship credit should be based only on:
a) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data and
b) final approval of the version to be published.
Conditions a and b must meet the criteria. Acquisition of funding, the collection of data, or general supervision of the research group, by themselves, do not justify authorship.
Authors should provide a description of what each contributed, and editors should publish that information. All others who contributed to the work who are not authors should be named in the Acknowledgments, and what they did should be described.
Minimum Requirements for Acknowledgments
List all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship, such as a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged.
Groups of persons who have contributed materially to the paper but whose contributions do not justify authorship may be listed under a heading such as "clinical investigators" or "participating investigators," and their function or contribution should be described, e.g., "served as scientific advisors," "critically reviewed the study proposal," "collected data," or "provided and cared for study". Because readers may infer their endorsement of the data and conclusions, all persons must have given written permission to be acknowledged.
Co-author contributions
Authors are strongly encouraged to include a statement in the end noted to specify the actual contribution of each co-author to the completed work. Journal allows two co-authors to be specified as having contributed equally to the work being described.
About Plagiarism
Plagiarism is the use or close imitation of the language and ideas of another author and representation of them as one's own original work. Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing the appropriate references. This can range from getting an identical paper published in multiple journals, where authors add small amounts of new data to a previous paper.
Plagiarism can be said to have clearly occurred when large chunks of text have been copied and pasted. Such manuscripts would not be considered for publication in the Journals. But minor plagiarism without dishonest intent is relatively frequent, for example when an author reuses parts of an introduction from an earlier paper. The editors will judge any case of which they become aware (either by their own knowledge of and reading about the literature, or when alerted by referees) on its own merits.
If a case of plagiarism comes to light after a paper is published in BPAS Journals, the journal will conduct a preliminary investigation. If plagiarism is found, the journal will contact the author's institute and funding agencies. A determination of misconduct will lead the Journal to run a statement, bidirectionally linked online to and from the original paper, to note the plagiarism and to provide a reference to the plagiarized material. The paper containing the plagiarism will also be obviously marked on each page of the PDF. Depending on the extent of the plagiarism, the paper may also be formally retracted.
Duplicate Publication
The Journal will not accept duplicate publication of scientific data. Manuscripts submitted to International Journal of current trends should not have been published/ accepted for publication or simultaneously submitted. The "possible" duplicate manuscript should be submitted with the original publication (s) and the authors should provide documentation/ statement to justify the originality of the newly submitted manuscript.
Prior Publication
The Journal will accept original manuscripts that contain material that has not been reported elsewhere, except in the form of an abstract of not more than 250 words, or an alternative short communication. If any preliminary report other than an abstract has been published or submitted, copies must be submitted with the manuscript and this must be noted in the cover letter to the editor. Prior abstract presentations must be described in a footnote to the title. Initial submissions must be accompanied by the copyright assignment form, with original signatures of all authors.
Article Withdrawal
Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Articles in Press (articles that have been accepted for publication but which have not been formally published and will not yet have the complete volume/issue/page information) that include errors, or are discovered to be accidental duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our journal publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors (such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like), may be "Withdrawn" from us. Withdrawn means that the article content (HTML and PDF) is removed and replaced with a HTML page and PDF simply stating that the article has been withdrawn according to the BPAS Publication Policy on Article in Press Withdrawal with a link to the current policy document.
Article Retraction
Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Occasionally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication. The retraction of an article by its authors or the editor under the advice of members of the scholarly community has long been an occasional feature of the learned world. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this best practice is adopted for article retraction by Elsevier:
- A retraction note titled "Retraction: [article title]" signed by the authors and/or the editor is published in the paginated part of a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list.
- In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article.
- The online article is preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.
- The original article is retained unchanged save for a watermark on the .pdf indicating on each page that it is "retracted."
- The HTML version of the document is removed.
Article Removal: Legal limitations
In an extremely limited number of cases, it may be necessary to remove an article from the online database. This will only occur where the article is clearly defamatory, or infringes others legal rights, or where the article is, or we have good reason to expect it will be, the subject of a court order, or where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk. In these circumstances, while the metadata (Title and Authors) will be retained, the text will be replaced with a screen indicating the article has been removed for legal reasons.
Article Replacement
In cases where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk, the authors of the original article may wish to retract the flawed original and replace it with a corrected version. In these circumstances the procedures for retraction will be followed with the difference that the database retraction notice will publish a link to the corrected re-published article and a history of the document.
Sending a revised manuscript
The authors revise the manuscript as advised by reviewers and submit the revised version. Typically, at this stage, authors are advised to prepare the manuscript by closely following the journal’s instructions about style and format and to submit the manuscript in electronic form.
Proofs and Reprints
Usual practice will involve corresponding authors receiving email notification with a password and web address from which to download a PDF. Hard copies of proofs will not be mailed. To avoid delays in publication, corrections to proofs must be returned within 48 hours, by electronic transmittal, fax or mail. Authors will be charged for excessive correction at this stage of production. If authors do not return page proofs promptly, the Publisher reserves the choice to either delay publication to a subsequent issue or to proceed to press without author corrections. The Publisher reserves the right to proceed to press without submitting page proofs to the author.
Reprints
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Author Agreement form for contributors
The form below is for contributors to the journal to complete and submit once it is confirmed that their submission will be published in a forthcoming issue. It is also intended for contributors to prior issues who have not yet filled out an author agreement form. Please take care to fill out this form correctly, as there are no warnings on incomplete fields; and if done incorrectly it will need to be recompleted.
