Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement (PEMS)

‘Proceedings’ of Shaikh Zayed Medical Complex is a peer-reviewed, scientific journal that follows the ICMJE’s Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. It is expected of authors, reviewers and editors to follow these best-practice guidelines. Key points of these guidelines are included below, but you should always refer to ICMJE guidelines for full details. Publication ethics and malpractice are divided into;

• Editor’s responsibilities
• Author’s responsibilities
• Reviewer’s responsibilities
• Publisher’s responsibilities

Editor’s Responsibilities

• Editorial independence and fairness:

- Submitted manuscripts are evaluated by editors on academic merit, considering their rationale, originality, validity of findings, focused, concise writing, clarity and relevance to the scope of the journal without any discrimination.
- The Editor-in-Chief is completely and fully responsible and authorized for the publication timing and editorial content of the journal.

• Confidentiality

Editors and editorial staff are bound not to disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, advisers, and the publisher, when required or demanded.

• Conflicts of interest and disclosure
  - Authors’ written consent is necessary in case Editors and editorial board members are interested to use information from an unpublished manuscript for their own research.
  - Editors having any kind of conflicts of interest (competitive, collaborative, or other connections) with any of the authors, companies or institutions of any submitted manuscript will rescue themselves from the editorial process by disclosing this to chief editor in writing for his final decision.
• Publication decisions
  - The editors will ensure peer-review by at least two reviewers (field experts) of submitted manuscripts for publication.
  - The Editor-in-Chief is to decide the publication of a manuscript considering the validation of the submitted work, its significance to researchers as well as readers, the reviewers’ comments and suggestions, and current legal requirements.
  - The Editor-in-Chief may involve other editors or reviewers in editorial decision making.
• Involvement and cooperation in investigations
  - Editors involving publisher and society will respond and take measures whenever ethical concerns are raised on a published paper or submitted manuscript.
  - Unethical publishing behavior, whenever reported will be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication.
  - COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) flowcharts will be followed when dealing with issues of suspected misconduct.
  - If ethical concern is proved the a correction, retraction, expression of concern or other note as may be relevant, will be timely published in the journal.

Duties of Reviewers

• Assisting editorial decisions
  - Peer reviewers contribute not only in editorial decisions but also assist authors in improving their manuscripts.
  - Peer review is an essential part of scholarly communication.
• Promptness

- An invited reviewer, if feels unqualified for the requested review or knows that its prompt review will not be possible must immediately inform editors and decline.
- This prompt action will support editors to invite alternative reviewers.

• Confidentiality
  All manuscripts received for review by reviewers must be treated as confidential documents.
• Standards of objectivity
  All reviews should be conducted objectively and comments, observations and suggestions for author and editor must be formulated clearly with supporting arguments.
• Acknowledgement of sources
  - Reviewers should point out relevant published work missing in citation by the authors. Any statement that is an observation, argument or derivation, reported in previous publications should be properly cited.
  - Any substantial similarity between the manuscript under review and any other published or unpublished manuscript based on reviewer’s personal knowledge must be notified to editors.
• Conflicts of interest and Disclosure
  - Any invited referee who has conflicts of interest (competitive, collaborative, or other connections) with any of the authors, companies or institutions mentioned in or connected to the submitted manuscript should be notified and declared to the editors and decline the invitation to review immediately.
  - Unpublished material from a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without explicit written consent of the authors.
  - Information or ideas obtained from peer review are to be kept confidential and not to be used for the reviewer’s personal work and advantage. This is applicable also on the invited reviewers who decline the review request.

Duties of Authors

• Reporting standards
  - Authors of original research must give an accurate detail of the research work done with genuine results and an objective discussion of the importance of the work.
  - The manuscript should incorporate sufficient detail with references so others can replicate the research work.
  - Review articles must be objective, accurate and comprehensive
  - Editorial ‘opinion’ or perspective papers should be clearly identified and mentioned.
  - Fraudulent or intentional inaccurate statements are part of unethical behavior so are
  unacceptable.
• Data access and retention
  - Authors may be required to submit the raw data of the submitted study manuscript because at times the data needs to be publicly available.
  - Authors should ensure accessibility of data for at least 10 years after publication to professionals via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other centers, keeping in view the confidentiality of the participants.
• Plagiarism and Originality
  - Authors need to ensure originality of submitted work.
  - Use of someone else’s work and/or words need to be appropriately cited and acknowledged.
  - Plagiarism includes “passing off” another person’s paper as the author’s own, paraphrasing or copying parts of another person’s paper without acknowledgement and attribution), or claiming results of other papers or researches. Plagiarism in all its forms is
  strictly unacceptable.
• Multiple, duplicate, redundant or concurrent submission/publication
  - Papers describing the same research must not be published in more than one journal. Authors should not submit a published manuscript to another journal for consideration.
  - Concurrent submission of a manuscript to more than one journal is highly unethical publishing behavior and unacceptable by the editors.
  - In case of clinical guidelines, translations etc, the authors and editors of the concerned journals concerned must agree to this secondary publication, fulfilling the necessary criteria. The primary reference must be cited in the secondary publication.
• Authorship
  - Persons who meet ICMJE authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript because they should be able to take content’s public responsibility: o Have made significant contributions to the conception, designing, execution, data acquisition, or data analysis and interpretation of the research study; o Have participated in the drafting of the manuscript or provided a critical revision for the intellectual content; o Have read and approved the final version of the research paper and agreed to its submission for publication in a specific journal. All other persons who made substantial contributions to the manuscript, such as technical assistance, writing and editing assistance etc, and do not meet the authorship criteria must be acknowledged in the “Acknowledgements” section with their written permission.
  - The corresponding author should ensure that all eligible coauthors (as per above mentioned criteria) are included in the author list and he need to verify that all coauthors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript and they agree to its submission for publication.
• Disclosure and conflicts of interest
  - Authors should disclose any conflicts of interest that might be influencing the results or their interpretation. Potential conflicts of interest needing disclosure are financial such as honoraria, grants or funding, membership, employment, paid expert testimony, consultancies, stock/ material ownership, or patent-licensing. Non-financial onesincludes such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations or beliefs in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. All financial supportsources for research should be properly disclosed including the grant number or other reference.
• Acknowledgement of sources
  - Authors must ensure that they have properly and adequately acknowledged the work of others, and should not miss any relevant influential work which determines the nature of the submitted work.
  - Information obtained privately should only be used after taking explicit, written permission from the person or source, this may include conversation, discussion or correspondence with any third parties.
• Human or animal subjects hazards
  - In use of chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, then these hazards must be clearly identified in the manuscript.
  - In case of work on animals or human participants, the authors must ensure that all processes and procedures were performed in compliance with relevant institutional, national and international laws and guidelines. This could be disclosed by sharing the approval of institutional review committee/ board and add statement to this effect in the manuscript.
  - A statement on informed consent for experimentation with human participants must be written clearly in the manuscript.
  - The privacy rights of human participants should be observed always.
• Peer review
  - Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, and proof of ethics approval, patient consents and copyright permissions. In the case of a first decision of “revisions necessary”, authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal by the deadline given.
• Fundamental errors in published works
  - Whenever authors discover errors or inaccuracies of significance in their own published work, it is their obligation to notify this to the journal’s editors or publisher promptly and cooperate to issue erratum (correct the paper) or to retract the paper.
  - If the editors or publisher come to know from a third party about a significant error in the published work, then it is the authors’ obligation to respond promptly and correct or retract the paper or share evidence to the journal editors of the correctness of the paper.
  - For guidelines on retracting or correcting articles, please click here: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/correctionsand-version-control.html

Duties of the Publisher

• Handling of unethical publishing behavior
  - In cases of proven scientific misconduct, plagiarism or fraudulent publication, the publisher will work in close collaboration with the editors and will take all necessary and appropriate measures to clarify the issue and to amend the article.
  - This involves the prompt publication of an erratum, a clarification or retraction of the work in question.
  • Access to journal content
  - The publisher must be responsible and committed to the preservation of scholarly research and ensuring permanent availability and accessibility through digital archive.