Editorial Policies

Where a journal is owned by and published on behalf of a learned society or association, you should refer to any additional requirements set out by that journal.

Please read these policies in full before submitting your article, to ensure you’ve correctly followed all the requirements.

Affiliations

All authors are required to list their relevant affiliations based on the institution where their research or scholarly work has been approved and/or supported and/or carried out.

For non-research articles, your current institutional affiliation should be listed.

In case of changing your institution before publication of your article, the institution where the study has been conducted should be listed in affiliation and it is necessary to add a complementary note for mentioning your current affiliation.

In case of not having an institutional affiliation, an independent status should be declared.

Authorship

Any claim in research or non-research articles should be supported by citing relevant, up-to-date and proved literature.

Excessive use of self-citation or forming author groups for citing each other’s works is subject to citation manipulation and considered as a kind of misconduct (refer to COPE guidance on citation manipulation).

For non-research articles, use of relevant references with an un-biased and balanced examination of the related scholarly articles, not an unfair bias towards a selected research group, organization or journal should be guaranteed. 

In case of any doubt of citing a source, you can contact the journal editorial office for their advice.

If you are interested to deposit the data associated to your work and to adhere to a journal data sharing policy, you should find an appropriate repository (storage space) for your data.

For this, our guide to choosing a data repository can provide you generalist repositories

In case of being required to submit your dataset to public repositories, as an author, you should submit your data to the suitable repository and if available, mention the accession number in the text.

Repository is a digital platform for hosting and preserving the results of scholarly works and as an author depended to a research institution, you might be asked to place your article in the institution repository.

For articles published open access in a Kerman University of Medical Sciences journal, a PDF of VOR should be deposited in the repository immediately after the publication; otherwise, a copy of either AOM or the AM should be archived.

Citations

Research and non-research articles must cite relevant, timely, and verified literature (peer-reviewed, where appropriate) to support any claims made in the article.

You must avoid excessive and inappropriate self-citation or prearrangements among author groups to inappropriately cite each other’s work, as this can be considered a form of misconduct called citation manipulation. Read the COPE guidance on citation manipulation.

If you’re the author of a non-research article (e.g. a Review or Opinion) you should ensure the references you cite are relevant and provide a fair and balanced overview of the current state of research or scholarly work on the topic. Your references should not be unfairly biased towards a particular research group, organization or journal.

If you are unsure about whether to cite a source you should contact the journal editorial office for advice.

  • Please read our full citation guidance, including instructions on the sources which should be added to your references list and those which should only be cited in the main text of your article.

Competing interests

You and all of your co-authors must declare any competing interests relevant to, or which can be perceived to be relevant to the article.

  • A competing interest can occur where you (or your employer, sponsor or family/friends) have a financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organizations, or with the people working with them which could influence the research or interpretation of the results.

  • Competing interests can be financial or non-financial in nature. To ensure transparency, you must also declare any associations which can be perceived by others as a competing interest.

Please read our guide to competing interests. This includes examples of financial and non-financial competing interests as well as information about the sponsorship of clinical trials.

Corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions

Corrections

A correction notice will be issued when it is necessary to correct an error or omission which can impact the interpretation of the article, but where the scholarly integrity of the article remains intact. Examples include mislabeling of a figure, missing key information on funding or competing interests of the authors.
KMU distinguishes between major and minor errors. For correction notices, major errors or omissions are considered to be any changes which impacts the interpretation of the article, but where the scholarly integrity of the article remains intact.

Expressions

In some cases, an Expression of Concern notice may be considered where concerns of a major nature have been raised (e.g. serious research or publication misconduct), but where the outcome of the investigation is inconclusive or where due to various complexities the investigation will not be complete for a considerable time.

When the investigation has been completed a Retraction or Correction notice may follow the Expression of Concern, and alongside the original article, all will remain part of the permanent published record.

Publication of an expression of concern notice will be considered if:

  • There is inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors, but the nature of the concerns warrant notifying the readers.

  • There are well-founded concerns that the findings are unreliable or that misconduct may have occurred, but there is limited cooperation from the authors’ institution(s) in investigating the concerns raised.

  • There is an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication that has not been, or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive.

  • An investigation is underway, but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time and the nature of the concerns warrant notifying the readers.

The expression of concern will be linked back to the published article it relates to.

Retractions

A retraction notice will be issued where a major error (e.g. in the analysis or methods) invalidates the conclusions in the article, or where research misconduct or publication misconduct has taken place (e.g. research without required ethical approvals, fabricated data, manipulated images, plagiarism, duplicate publication etc.). The decision to issue a retraction for an article will be made in accordance with COPE guidelines, and will involve an investigation by KMU editorial staff in collaboration with the editor. Authors and institutions may request a retraction of their articles if their reasons meet the criteria for retraction.

The COPE retraction guidelines can be found on the COPE website.

Designations of territories

AHJ respects its authors’ decisions regarding the designations of territories in its published material.

AHJ’ policy is to take a neutral stance in relation to territorial disputes or jurisdictional claims in its published content, including in maps and institutional affiliations.

Where a journal is owned by and published on behalf of a society or other third party, AHJ will take into account that Society’s policy on this issue to the extent it differs from AHJ’ own.

Editor Code of Conduct

AHJ Group’s journal program provides a home for validated, trusted research from the world’s brightest and best minds.

The editor of a journal plays a vital role in advancing knowledge within fields of research. They do this by:

  1. Maintaining and improving the quality of work the journal publishes and the integrity of its peer review process

  2. Supporting the journal’s authors and reviewers

  3. Maintaining and improving the journal’s reputation in collaboration with the journal’s wider editorial team and AHJ.

To support this role, our Editor Code of Conduct sets out the minimum standards for all AHJ editors who have responsibility for decisions on journal content to help ensure our journals publish quality, trustworthy content.

Harassment

AHJ will not tolerate any kind of harassment of our authors, editors, reviewers, staff, or vendors.

We expect to work in an environment of mutual respect and will work with the AHJ ethics team and legal team to deal with any cases of harassment.

Advice for researchers experiencing harassment: As a researcher, you should expect your work to be scrutinized by the public, policy makers, and campaigners. However, some researchers working on high-profile subjects that attract controversy have also found themselves targeted with online harassment.

To help researchers dealing with these issues, AHJ has supported the Science Media Centre in producing an updated guide, including tips on how to deal with social media harassment.

Images and figures

You should only use images and figures in your article if they are relevant and valuable to the work reported.

Please refrain from adding content of this type which is purely illustrative and does not add value to the scholarly work.

 

Using third party material

As a warranty in the Journal Author Publishing Agreement you make with us, you must obtain the necessary written permission to include material in your article that is owned and held in copyright by a third party, including – but not limited to – any proprietary text, illustration, table, or other material, including data, audio, video, film stills, screenshots, musical notation, and any supplemental material.

Misconduct

AHJ takes all forms of misconduct seriously and will take all necessary action, in accordance with COPE guidelines, to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.

Examples of misconduct include (but are not limited to):

  • Affiliation misrepresentation

  • Breaches in copyright/use of third-party material without appropriate permissions

  • Citation manipulation

  • Duplicate submission/publication

  • “Ethics dumping”

  • Image or data manipulation/fabrication

  • Peer review manipulation

  • Plagiarism

  • Text-recycling/self-plagiarism

  • Undisclosed competing interests

  • Unethical research

Read the full policy to find out more about the areas of misconduct listed above.

Peer review

Articles published in AHJ (including its imprints) undergo thorough peer review and AHJ endorse COPE guidelines for reviewers.

Journals may operate different peer review processes. Our guide to understanding peer review outlines several different peer review models, including:

  • Single-anonymous peer review (also called ‘single-blind peer review’)

  • Double-anonymous peer review (also called ‘double-blind peer review’)

  • Open peer review

  • Registered Reports

Every AHJ journal publishes a statement describing the model of peer review used by the journal within the journal homepage. A minimum of two independent reviewers is normally required for every research article. The aims and scope of each journal will outline their peer review policy in detail.

The details of the comments as well as the overall recommendations by peer reviewers will be considered by the Editor when making a decision, but ultimate responsibility for acceptance or rejection lies with the Editor.

In accordance with COPE recommendations on ethical editing for new Editors, Editors will assign any submissions they cannot handle (e.g. if they are the author of an article submitted to their own journal) to a member of the Editorial Board or a guest editor.

Please note that AHJ do not permit you to recommend peer reviewers.

Confidentiality of peer review

It is a requirement to maintain confidentiality and integrity of the peer review and editorial decision-making process at all stages, complying with data protection regulations (including GDPR). The invited reviewer should declare any competing interest before submitting their report to the journal. If they wish to involve a colleague as a co-reviewer for an article, they should ask the journal editorial office before sharing the manuscript and include their names, affiliation and any relevant competing interests in the comments for Editors when they return their report.

In the process of investigating an ethical query, the submitted manuscript, author, reviewer, and any other person (including whistleblowers) involved will be treated in confidence. During an investigation it may be necessary for the Editor to share information with third parties, such as the ethics committee and/or the authors’ institution.

Plagiarism

Trust and integrity are among what readers value the most in scholarly peer-reviewed journal content. That’s why AHJ takes the issue of plagiarism very seriously.

“When somebody presents the work of others (data, words or theories) as if they were his/her own and without proper acknowledgment.”

For AHJ, this applies to data, images, words or ideas taken from any materials in electronic or print formats without sufficient attribution. The use of any such material either directly or indirectly should be properly acknowledged in all instances. You should always cite your source.

 
 

Sharing your published article

If you’ve published in a AHJ journal, there are many ways you can share different versions of your article with colleagues and peers.