Journal policies

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

Download PUBLICATION ETHICS AND PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT (PDF)

The Editorial staff members are committed to preserving the integrity of all published articles and ethically disseminating social media comments via moderated journal accounts. The Editor-in-Chief actively cooperates with the sponsoring and endorsing professional societies to solicit and publish useful and potentially influential contents of interest to Ukrainian and Eastern European medical and healthcare professionals. All efforts are taken to upgrade the Journal peer review standards and publish ethical articles which may influence medical research by Ukrainians in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world. The Editorial staff and editorial board members are offered regular educational courses/webinars to advance their editorial credentials and better serve professional interests of the Journal readers.

The appointment to the Editorial Board is for a three-year term, which can be extended further based on the evaluation of contributions to the quality and scientific prestige of this Journal.

The Editor-in-Chief responsibilities

The Editor-in-Chief is an elected member of the Editorial Board who is responsible for actively soliciting and managing flow of manuscripts of interest to the readership of the Journal. The Editor-in-Chief regularly submits his/her own manuscripts for publication, which are processed by independent editorial board members. Regularly discussing publication priorities and quality of published content with sponsoring and endorsing professional societies is the main responsibility of the Editor, who is, however, fully independent in his/her editorial decisions.

The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for actively inviting regional and global experts with outstanding academic, writing, and reviewing achievements to join the Editorial Board and serve professional interests of Ukrainian and Easter European medicine and healthcare.

Processing the Journal submissions is managed by the Editor-in-Chief, who is the main authority to reject, return the manuscripts to the authors for revision, or accept them after thorough evaluation of reviewer comments and recommendations of responsible editors, including Research Integrity and Statistical Editors.

Handling (associate) editors’ responsibilities

  • The Editor-in-Chief and other handling editors of this Journal are expected to provide unbiased and highly professional decisions to publish original evidence-based research and reviews with implications for medicine and healthcare in Ukraine and Easter European region.
  • The Editors regularly advance their editorial skills by attending scientific writing seminars and webinars, including those arranged by the publishers.
  • The Editors are responsible for resolving all conflicts with reviewers and authors if and when these arise.
  • The editors are requested to follow the global and regional editorial associations’ recommendations. It is mandatory for them to adhere to the statements of the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices).

Reviewer responsibilities

Reviewers are experts in their professional field who are chosen by the Editor-in-Chief to evaluate the quality of the Journal submissions and suggest amendments which may improve readability and outreach of individual articles. They should ensure confidentiality of all communications throughout the peer review and publication and avoid taking advantage by using ideas and materials under review for their own interests. While reviewing, reviewers have to consult relevant standards of the EQUATOR Network (http://www.equator-network.org/) and adhere to the statements of the global editorial associations, including those by the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME): http://www.wame.org/recommendations-on-publication-ethics-policies-for-medical-journals#Peer%20Review .

To increase transparency of the peer review and get deserved academic credits, reviewers will be acknowledged by publicizing their names annually. They may also choose to list their reviewer contributions on their ORCID iDs (https://orcid.org/) and forward the Journal official acknowledgements to Publons (http://publons.com/). The reviewers are responsible for:

  • Providing timely, evidence-based, and author-friendly evaluations of the assigned submissions;
  • Declaring financial and nonfinancial conflicts of interests that may question their objectivity during the peer review;
  • Reporting to the Editor-in-Chief and handling editors any suspicion of duplication, plagiarism, and other transgressions of research and publication ethics in the submissions under evaluation;
  • Avoiding any unethical act such as breaking confidentiality, copying, and re-using the submissions under evaluation for their own interests;
  • Comprehensively evaluating the assigned submissions and suggesting amendments that may improve the quality and ethical soundness of the articles;
  • Suggesting highly relevant references missed by authors, but avoiding references that may be judged as unethical and irrelevant self-citations.


Author responsibilities

Authors are requested to submit manuscripts free of any copying and of interest to the Journal readership. They are fully and ultimately responsible for the quality and integrity of their articles. The authors are also responsible for:  

  • Submitting manuscripts with well checked and properly referenced scientific facts and ideas;
  • Adhering to relevant research reporting standards of the EQUATOR Network (http://www.equator-network.org/);
  • Fully disclosing Author Contributions in line with the 4 authorship criteria of the International Committee of Medical Editors (2013) (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html#two) and any acknowledging external editing support, if any;
  • Ensuring that the current submission is not simultaneously under consideration for publication elsewhere;
  • Providing full information about approval of their original research by local ethics committee(s);
  • Declaring adherence to established ethical norms of experimental and clinical research, including mandatory statements on written informed contents of all the participants of their research (WMA Declaration of Helsinki https://www.wma.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DoH-Oct2013-JAMA.pdf and NIH Policy on Use of Laboratory Animals (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/air/index.htm). The approval of the study by an ethics committee is required along with statements about human subjects’ consent and their privacy.
  • Providing full information on funding and sponsorship by pharmaceutical agencies and other organizations;
  • Disclosing potential financial or nonfinancial conflicts of interest;
  • Actively promoting their published articles by sharing on social media platforms and archiving on individual and institutional repositories and scholarly networking platforms such as ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/);
  • Corresponding authors are responsible for listing as co-authors only those contributors with substantial contribution to the work and accountability for all its aspects. They are also responsible for properly coordinating revisions, responding to editors’ and reviewers’ comments, listing all co-authors’ ORCID IDs (https://orcid.org/) and getting final approvals from all co-authors.
  • Authors should notify the editors if any mistake or major error is identified in their articles post-publication, warranting corrections or retractions.

 

Publishers’ responsibilities

The Journal publishers is responsible for advancing its editors credentials by arranging regular science editing webinars, seminars, and editorial board meetings. Preventing any unethical publishing practice is a top priority for the publishers. If any violations of publication ethics norms are revealed, the publishers, the Editor-in-Chief, and the handling editors should take appropriate actions by publishing corrections or initiating retractions.

The publishers are also responsible for crediting the Editor-in-Chief, editorial board members, best reviewers, and authors of influential works. The publishers, in close cooperation with Social Media Editor, take all necessary steps to select potentially influential articles and promote these on its social media accounts. Social Media Editor promotes selected articles free of any conflicts in line with all ethical norms and specific recommendations on social media (https://rdcu.be/b4pNg).

 

Plagiarism, redundancy and retractions

It is expected that all contributing authors submit manuscripts free of unethical and copied ideas, graphics, and texts. Referring to scientific facts published elsewhere requires skilful writing free of verbatim copying. Discussing others’ ideas and published scientific facts requires relevant citation(s). The Journal Research Integrity Editor who is responsible for timely detecting and preventing unethical textual and graphical similarity in the Journal submissions and published articles may process suspicious reviews and other materials through anti-plagiarism software.

If unethical copying or violations of other ethical norms of publishing are revealed post-publication, the Editor-in-Chief will act in line with retraction guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines). Retractions will be also initiated if and when duplication, major methodological and statistical errors, data falsification, copyright infringement, and absence of institutional ethics approval are revealed (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3944419/)     

 

Conflict of interest disclosures and funding

All authors are requested to fill in and submit the ICMJE Conflict of Interest form (http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/) at the manuscript submission and disclose any financial and nonfinancial conflicts of interest in the manuscript notes. All types of financial and nonfinancial support from research funding organizations, pharmaceutical agencies and other sponsoring bodies should be disclosed and reported, with grant funding protocol numbers and related e-links, if available. The role of pharmaceutical agencies at all stages of research and writing should be explicitly disclosed and reported in the manuscript notes.

All reviewers and handling editors will be also requested to disclose their potential conflicts of interest during the peer review.

 

Editorial recommendations

The Proceedings of Shevchenko Scientific Society Med Sci Journal editors endorse the following editorial documents to ensure relevance, quality, and wide visibility of the published content and prevent violations of publication ethics of all contributors:

 

Updated editorial recommendations of the following editorial associations are regularly consulted by the Journal editors for revising and enforcing publication ethics statements:

Council of Science Editors (CSE; https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/).