Ethical Guidelines

General guidelines.

Authors should accurately present their findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings. All and only those who qualify for authorship should be included as authors, and their contribution given in the manuscript. Any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission. Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the paper so that other researchers can replicate the work. Any raw data must be made publicly available unless there is a compelling reason otherwise (e.g., patient confidentiality).

Publication ethics.

- Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not permitted.

- Manuscripts must not have been previously published, including being previously published in another language.

- For any content previously published (including quotations, figures or tables), all necessary permission to publish must be obtained from the copyright holder by the authors.

- Errors and inaccuracies found after publication must be promptly communicated to the Editorial Office.

- Authors should not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work.

- Authors should not copy references from other publications if they have not read the cited work.

- Authors should not preferentially cite their own or their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications.

- Authors should not cite advertisements or advertorial material.

In accordance with COPE guidelines, we expect that “original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations”. This condition also applies to an author’s own work. COPE have produced a discussion document on citation manipulation with recommendations for best practice.

Plagiarism.

Plagiarism is not acceptable in any form. Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving credit to the original source. Reuse of text that is copied from another source must be between quotation marks and the original source must be cited. If a study's design or the manuscript's structure or language has been inspired by previous studies, these studies must be explicitly cited. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript will be rejected and further action may be taken. If plagiarism is detected after publication, we will publish a retraction of the paper.

Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any waythat could lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image. Irregular manipulation includes 1) introduction, enhancement, moving, or removing features from the original image, 2) grouping of images that should obviously be presented separately (e.g., from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels), or 3) modifying the contrast, brightness or color balance to obscure, eliminate or enhance some information. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, we will reject the manuscript and further action may be persued. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we will retract the paper.

Data presented must be original and not inappropriately selected, manipulated, enhanced, or fabricated. This includes 1) exclusion of data points to enhance significance of conclusions, 2) fabrication of data, 3) selection of results that support a particular conclusion at the expense of contradictory data, 4) deliberate selection of analysis tools or methods to support a particular conclusion (including p-hacking).

Ethical standards.

Reporting research that involves human subjects, human material, human tissues, or human data, authors must declare that the investigations were carried out following the rules of the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975 (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/), revised in 2013. According to point 23 of this declaration, an approval from an ethics committee should have been obtained before undertaking the research. At a minimum, a statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board should be stated. Data relating to individual participants must be described in detail, but private information identifying participants need not be included unless the identifiable materials are of relevance to the research (for example, photographs of participants’ faces that show a particular symptom). Editors reserve the right to reject any submission that does not meet these requirements.

Political stances.

Potential disputes over borders and territories may have particular relevance for authors in describing their research or in an author or editor correspondence address, and should be respected. Content decisions are an editorial matter and where there is a potential or perceived dispute or complaint, the editorial team will attempt to find a resolution that satisfies parties involved. Journal of Biomedical Reports stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Politically motivated content is unacceptable and will be disregarded by the journal.

Sex and gender in research.

We encourage our authors to follow the ‘Sex and Gender Equity in Research – SAGER – guidelines’and to include sex and gender considerations where relevant. Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) carefully in order to avoid confusing both terms. Article titles and/or abstracts should indicate clearly what sex(es) the study applies to. Authors should also describe in the background, whether sex and/or gender differences may be expected; report how sex and/or gender were accounted for in the design of the study; provide disaggregated data by sex and/or gender, where appropriate; and discuss respective results. If a sex and/or gender analysis was not conducted, the rationale should be given in the Discussion. We suggest that our authors consult the full guidelines before submission.

Authorship segregation.

Young researchers are encouraged to claim first authorship if they have been the primary writers, contributors to the work. Segregation in authorship is unacceptable in any form. If any contributor feels they have been unfairly placed in the authorship list due to gender, sexual orientation, race, political view, academic status, social position or class, region, etc., please contact the journal editors directly. Manuscripts with existing conflicts and noted authorship segregation will be halted until the authors reach an agreement.