Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics

1-      Authorship & Acknowledgment

  • Authors should accurately reflect who did the work. All published work should be attributed to one or more authors.
  • According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (2001), manuscripts that met authorship credit should base only on: (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be published. Conditions (1), (2), and (3) must all be met
  • The role of all authors contributing to the research and publication, in either designing the research, recruiting investigators, collecting the data, analyzing the data, preparing the manuscript or controlling publication decisions should be stated in the publication, unless this is obvious from the list of authors / contributors.
  • Funding for any type of publication, for example, by a commercial company, charity or government department, should be disclosed within the publication. This applies to all types of papers (including, for example. research papers, review papers, letters, editorials, commentaries).
  • Anyone who contributed towards the article however does not meet the criteria for authorship including anyone who provided professional writing services or materials; should be acknowledged by authors.

A declaration for Contributors in Research statement has to be submitted, as part of the initial submission package, a statement that all individuals listed as authors meet the appropriate authorship criteria, that nobody who qualifies for authorship has been omitted from the list, and that contributors and their funding sources have been properly acknowledged, and that authors and contributors have approved the acknowledgment of their contribution.

2-      Research Integrity & Accuracy:

a)      Accuracy

  • MJFMCT editors are ensuring the accuracy of the material they publish, encourage authors and readers to inform them if they discover errors in published work.
  • Editors shall publish corrections if errors are discovered that could affect the interpretation of data or information presented in an article; and that is distinguishable from retractions and statements of concern relating to misconduct.
  • Corrections shall be included in indexing systems and linked to the original article wherever possible.

b)     Rights of participants

  • MJFMCT is committed to the standards of the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki for clinical trials

https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/ [D1] 

As well Egyptian standards for research practices (in human and animal studies) http://new-v.ems.org.eg/ar/rules[D2] 

  • MJFMCT reserve the right to reject manuscripts if there is doubt whether appropriate procedures have been followed. If a manuscripts has been submitted from a country where there is no ethics committee, institutional review board, or similar review and approval, editors shall use their own experience to judge whether the paper should be published or not. If the decision is made to publish a paper under these circumstances a short statement will be included to explain the situation.
  • MJFMCT; editors shall only consider publishing information and images from individual participants/subjects or patients where authors have obtained the individual’s explicit consent. In exceptional cases, where gaining the individual’s explicit consent is not possible but where publishing an individual’s information or image can be demonstrated to have a genuine public health interest; before taking any action editors shall seek and follow council from the journal owners, and/or legal professionals for approval. In the case of technical images (for example, radiographs, micrographs) editors shall ensure that all information that could identify the subject has been removed from the image.
  • Authors should ensure that studies have been approved by relevant bodies (for example, institutional review board, research ethics committee, data and safety monitoring board, regulatory authorities including those overseeing animal experiments).

c)      Consent & ethics approval statement

  • Manuscripts reporting studies involving human, human data or human tissue must include a statement on ethics approval and consent; the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate

Studies involving animals must include a statement on ethics approval and the committee’s reference number

https://publicationethics.org/files/Best_Practices_for_Ensuring_Consent_for_Publishing_Medical_Case_Reports_guidance_from_COPE.pdf

  • Manuscripts that contain any individual person’s data in any form (including individual details, images or videos), consent to publish must be obtained from that person, or in the case of children, their parent or legal guardian. Or authors can use their institutional consent form
  • Consent for publication

A statement must be included in the manuscript declaring that the patient, or parent, guardian or next of kin (in case of deceased patients) provided written informed consent for the publication of any associated data and accompanying images. The consent form must be made available to the Editor if requested, and will be treated confidentially”.

 

3-      Competing interests " Conflicts of Interest"

  • MJFMCT Editors and board members shall, whenever these are relevant to the content being considered or published, declare their interests and affiliations.
  • All authors and peer reviewers should clearly provide disclosure statements to explain the conflicts of interest that they have regarding the manuscript they want to publish.
  • Authors’ conflicts of interest (or information describing the absence of conflicts of interest) should be published whenever these are directly or indirectly relevant to the content being published and whenever they are significant
  • Authors, reviewers and editors must declare whether there are any competing interests with regard to the publication of a study. A competing interest exists when the authors’ interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by, or may be perceived to be influenced by, their personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations, such as reimbursement for salaries, equipment or supplies, or a personal belief that may influence their objectivity and motivation, and consequently affect the data interpretation. This can include competing patents, grants, funding, employment, personal relationships and strong ethical beliefs, among other factors. Such conflicts must be declared, as they may affect the integrity or reliability of the science in the study, as well as that of otherwise unassociated studies in the same journal. Competing interest statements for public funding sources, including government agencies, charitable or academic institutions, need not be included. 

4-      Clinical Trials

  • Clinical trials should consider making registration a requirement before publication of such trials. Even if a journal does not make clinical trial registration compulsory for publication, editors should encourage clear identification of clinical trials and should have a policy about where such information is presented within the structure of the published article.
  • Authors are required that the clinical trials they consider for publication are registered in free, public clinical trial registries (for example, http://www.clinicaltrials.gov, http://clinicaltrialsdev. ifpma.org/, http://isrctn.org/[D3] ) before publication.
  • The clinical trials submitted should be registered in a publicly accessible database. Authors should include the name of the trial register and their clinical trial registration number at the end of their abstract. Notwithstanding, editor[s] may consider an unregistered trial for publication after authors explain briefly why the trial has not been registered. 

5-      Editorial Independence

  • MJFMCT shall ensure that Editorial independence is respected. Journal owners and publisher shall not interfere with editorial decisions.
  • Editors or board members should never be involved in editorial decisions about their own work. MJFMCT has clearly set-out a transparent and rigorous policy for handling submissions from members of their editorial board or employees; every effort will be made to minimize any bias in the review process where 1- another associate editor handle the peer review procedure independently of the editor. 2- Manuscripts shall be sent anonymously for external peer reviewers not in the editorial board. 3- If and when the article in question is published, the editor might like to publish an accompanying commentary showing how transparent the reviewing process had been conducted.

6-      Peer Review Processing

a)      Peer Review Policy:

MJFMCT has the responsibility to ensure a high standard of objective, unbiased, and timely peer review; and to establish and maintain a database of suitably qualified peer reviewers.

  • MJFMCT Editors shall ensure:
  1. Objectively monitoring the performance of peer reviewers/editorial board members and recording the quality and timeliness of their reviews.
  2. Ignoring rude, defamatory peer review, as well peer reviewers who repeatedly produce poor quality, tardy, abusive or unconstructive reviews should not be used again
  3. Encourage peer reviewers to identify if they have a conflict of interest with the material they are being asked to review, and editors should ask that peer reviewers decline invitations requesting peer review where any circumstances might prevent them producing fair peer review.
  4. If authors request that an individual (or individuals) does not peer review their paper, editors should use this information to inform their choice of peer reviewer.
  5. Choosing to use peer reviewers suggested by authors, but should not consider suggestions made by authors as binding.
  6. That peer reviewer who delegates peer review to members of their staff; to inform the editor when this occurs.
  • MJFMCT Editors shall ensure that peer reviewers will
  1. Clearly informed with their roles and responsibilities
  2. Treat submitted manuscript confidentially until it has been published.
  3. Destroy submitted manuscripts after they have reviewed them.
  • Editors receiving allegations of theft or plagiarism will treat these allegations seriously.
  • Editors shall protect peer reviewers from authors and, even if peer reviewer identities are revealed, should discourage authors from contacting peer reviewers directly, especially if misconduct is suspected

b)     Roles & responsibilities for reviewers (according to COPE):

  1. Reviews should be conducted objectively.
  2. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.
  3. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments and references as necessary and not be defamatory or libelous.
  4. Reviewers should declare any competing interests.
  5. Reviewers should decline to review manuscripts in which they have a competing interest resulting from competitive, collaborative or other relationships, or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the papers.
  6. Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of material supplied to them and may not discuss unpublished manuscripts with colleagues or use the information in their own work.
  7. Any reviewer that wants to pass a review request onto a colleague must obtain the editor’s permission first.

 

7-      Duplicate & Redundant Publication

  • A declaration that the submitted work and its essential substance have not previously been published and are not being considered for publication elsewhere; is mandate.
  • Editors have a right to demand original work and to question authors about whether opinion pieces (for example, editorials, letters, non-systematic reviews) have been published before.
  • The Journal may accept (i.e. consider ‘not redundant’) the re-publication of manuscript that have been accurately translated from an original publication in a different language. Authors should ensure that they have appropriate permission(s), indicate clearly that the manuscript has been translated and re-published, and should indicate clearly the original source of the manuscript. Editors may request copies of related publications if they are concerned about overlap and possible redundancy. Re-publishing in the same language as primary publication with the aim of serving different audiences is more difficult to justify when primary publication is electronic and therefore easily accessible, but if editors feel that this is appropriate they should follow the same steps as for translation. 

8-      Maintain intellectual property "Plagiarism & copyrights"

  • MJFMCT editors and readers have a right to expect that submitted work is the author’s own, that it has not been plagiarized; the test of plagiarism must not exceed 25%.
  • Authors are requested to declare that the work reported is their own and that they are the copyright owner (or else have obtained the copyright owner’s permission), please read section of copyrights. 

9-      Good Publication Practice & Research Misconducts:

You may refer to these sites:

https://publicationethics.org/files/u7141/1999pdf13.pdf

https://publicationethics.org/files/cope-retraction-guidelines-v2.pdf

10-  Ethical Commercial Practice

MJFMCT shall ensure that all information available to advertising team will be disclosed to them upon agreed from the relevant academic society partners and journal editors. This information will be only used after editorial decisions are finalized, to provide accurate and timely information.

The positions available for advertising in the journal will be agreed with the relevant academic society partners and journal editors; and whether it is permissible to sell reprints of Online Early papers (i.e. papers published online prior to print publication) will be agreed for the journal with the relevant academic society partners and journal editors.

11-  Appeals

  • Authors have a right to appeal editorial decisions.
  • MJFMCT Editors shall mediate all exchanges between authors and peer reviewers during the peer-review process and prior to publication. If agreement cannot be reached, editors shall consider inviting comments from additional peer reviewer(s), if they feel that this would be helpful.

12-  Guidelines to handle misconduct

MJFMCT is committed to  handle disputes in research conduct according to COPE regulations & guidelines