Publishing Ethics and Policies

Participants’ consent:

Authors who study on human subjects need to state that in the materials and methods section: a) patients’ consent and b) authors specify whether the procedures followed have been gauged by a responsible review committee. Where no formal committee is available the research must be in accordance with Helsinki Declaration as revised in 2013. Where animals are included in the research all animals should have received human care according to the criteria outlined in the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals prepared by the National Academy of Science and published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH publication 23-86, revised 1985).

Plagiarism and artificial intelligence (AI):

Plagiarism or other breaches in publication are taken extremely seriously. The rights of authors are protected and claims of plagiarism or misuse of articles published in the journal are investigated. Manuscripts submitted are checked using duplication-checking software (specifically, Checker-X, Turnitin). If a manuscript is found to have plagiarized other work or contained third-party copyright material without authorization or adequate acknowledgement, or where authorship of the article is contested, the Board reserves the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum; removing the article from the journal; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author’s institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; proscription of the author from publication in the journal or proper legal action. All manuscripts accepted for publication should be free from plagiarism (maximum of 10% similarity content) and possess a maximum of 15% Artificial Intelligence (AI) content. The journal is dedicated to upholding publication ethics, adhering to scholarly societies' guidelines to maintain quality and update its system. Authors submitting to this journal must follow our guidelines.

Repository and archiving policies

Authors are permitted to post their work online in institutional/disciplinary repositories or on their own websites. Pre-print versions posted online should include a citation and link to the final published version in this Journal as soon as the issue is available; post-print versions (including the final publisher's PDF) should include a citation and link to the journal's website.