Guideline for Publishing Ethics

General Rules

 

The Guideline for Publishing Ethics is formulated for authors, reviewers, editors and publishers by Chinese Journal of Experimental Traditional Medical Formulae, aiming to foster academic integrity, regulate article writing and editing and publishing process, and resist academic misconduct. This practical guideline is in line with copyright law, publishing ethics and other relevant terms in China and abroad.

In this guideline, “publishing ethics” refers to moral standards and codes of conduct that should be followed by all parties involved in the publication of academic journals.

Academic misconduct refers to behaviors violating academic norms and ethics, and generally includes data fabrication, data falsification and plagiarism. ① Data fabrication indicates data fabricated out of thin air. ② Data falsification is the manipulation of research data by alteration or misinterpretation. ③ Plagiarism refers to the misconduct of stealing or modifying others’ work as his/her own, completely or partially copying others’ work or changing the form or content to a certain extent. Plagiarism includes opinion plagiarism, paragraph plagiarism and full text plagiarism. The specific manifestations are plagiarism, forgery, falsification, improper authorship, duplicate submission, redundant publication, split publication, violation of relevant research ethics, etc.

Manuscripts with a reproduction ratio of more than 20% are rejected by the Journal. For those less than 20%, we should also consider: ① whether the repeated part is the main result and opinion. If so, it cannot be published. ② after the repeated content is deleted and then expressed in references, whether the rest can support an article. If not, it is deemed to have no value for publication.

Conflicts of interest refer to the conflict between the secondary interests of different individuals or groups in scientific activities, or between individuals and groups (e.g., economic interests, friendship, affection, etc.) and the primary interests denoted by their responsibilities (e.g., ensuring the objectivity of research results, etc.).

1 Author ethics

1.1 Authors shall be liable for the authenticity of the article and shall provide original images, original data, fund project approval, assignment letter, project name and other supporting materials required by the Editorial Office.

1.2 When submitting the manuscript, the author should verify that there is no duplicate submission, confidentiality issue, authorship disputes, etc., and submit the Copyright Transfer Agreement signed by all authors.

1.3 Authors shall abide by the principle of “Five bans”: ghostwritten by a third party; submitted by a third party; modified by a third party; providing false peer reviewer information; violating the norm of authorship (Articles 4-7), in which all listed authors shall make substantial contributions to the article.

1.4 Authorship should be limited to those who have made substantive contributions to the article, including: ① those who have made significant contributions to the idea or design of the research work, or data acquisition, analysis or interpretation; ② those who have drafted the article or modified important intellectual content; ③ those who have finalized the article to be published; ④ those who have agreed on the responsibility for all aspects of the research work to ensure that questions relevant to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the article are properly investigated and resolved. Those who do not meet all four criteria (e.g., only providing technical help or providing financial and material support) shall not be listed as authors, but they can be recognized in the acknowledgments section.

1.5 The order of authorship is, in principle, ranked according to their contributions, which shall be jointly agreed by all authors and determined upon submission. The corresponding author is marked with “*”, and the order can be determined in the process of revision. Once the manuscript is accepted (the author and the order should be consistent with the copyright agreement), it cannot be modified.

1.6 Generally, only one corresponding author is marked. In the case of standardized multi-center or multi-disciplinary collaborative research, the number of the corresponding author may be added as appropriate, if there is more than one corresponding author. The added corresponding authors should be academic leaders of different research institutions or different research groups in collaborative research.

1.7 Corresponding authors with equal contributions shall be indicated upon submission. The number of equal contributors is generally not more than two. In the case of standardized multi-center or multi-disciplinary collaborative research, it can be added as appropriate. The added equal contributors should come from different research institutions or different research groups in collaborative research.

1.8 Authors should state the author’s name and institutional affiliation on submission. The author’s affiliation should be relevant to the research content of the article; if not, the author’s contribution to the research shall be stated, or a statement about the contribution shall be issued by the author’s affiliation.

1.9 If the institutional affiliation of the author is inconsistent with the one that selected the research topic, designed research proposal, conducted research work and provided research conditions (e.g., graduate students leaving training units, advanced students, visiting scholars, collaborative research, etc.), the institution that provided research conditions and completed research work will have the priority for authorship.

1.10 Authors of clinical research articles should follow relevant guidelines, e.g., standards for randomized controlled trial reports-Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT), standards for non-randomized controlled trial reports-Transparent Reporting of Evaluations with Nonrandomized Designs (TREND), standards for observational study reports-Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology (STROBE), standards for diagnostic accuracy study reports-Standards for Reporting Diagnostic Accuracy (STARD).   

1.11 Clinical trial articles should follow the principles of “beneficence” and “non-maleficence” of bioethics. For manuscripts of clinical trials involving human beings and animal experiments, authors should provide ethical review documents of the research protocols. For manuscripts involving human subjects (patients), an informed consent form should be signed.

1.12 For manuscripts involving clinical trials (randomized controlled studies, cohort studies, case-control studies, case reports, studies with human subjects or specimens taken from human subjects, psychological and socio-medical studies containing questionnaires), authors should, in principle, register in the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform and state the clinical trial registration number in articles.

1.13 Authors shall take precautions to protect the privacy of research subjects, and shall not contain the patient’s name, hospital ID number and other personally identifiable information in the article. For medical research using identifiable human material or data, formal procedures are required to be followed to obtain consent from subjects, and patient-identifiable areas (especially face) should be obscured as much as possible in the article.

1.14 Authors shall declare whether there is a conflict of interest when submitting the article. If a conflict of interest exists, all financial interests that may influence the research results should be stated (whether the research has commercial interests with pharmaceutical companies; whether pharmaceutical companies provide any financial support for the experimental design and implementation, data processing, article writing and publication, etc.).

1.15 Authors who disagree with the review comments or review results may submit a written statement to the Editorial Office and provide detailed explanation for each review comment.

2 Reviewer ethics

2.1 Reviewers shall make responsible review comments on the manuscript in accordance with the principles of impartiality, confidentiality and timeliness. Reviewers shall not have prejudice or discrimination against the author’s scientific institution, region, qualification, ethnicity, etc., and shall not disclose the author’s research content.

2.2 When there is a conflict of interest between reviewers and authors (e.g., kinship, teacher-student relation, alumni relation, colleague relation and competition relation), reviewers shall declare the conflict of interest to the Editorial Office in time to ensure impartiality, and the Editorial Office will decide whether the reviewer is suitable to article review.

2.3 Reviewers shall not use the convenience of review to suppress or disparage an author’s article when they find that the author is engaged in research similar to their own.

2.4 Reviewers shall review the manuscript in time in line with the agreement. If any delay occurs, the reviewer shall promptly inform the Editorial Office and withdraw the review, and may recommend other reviewers. Without the consent of the Editorial Office, the reviewer shall not delegate the reviewing work to their student or colleagues.

2.5 In cases where a manuscript was reviewed, reviewers are obliged to report such cases to the Editorial Office and fill in the review comments in accordance with the inclusion standards of the Journal.

3 Editor ethics

3.1 Editors shall handle each manuscript in an impartial and timely manner, and should accept or reject manuscripts on the basis of the importance, originality, scientific merit, readability, research authenticity and relevance to the journal.

3.2 Editors shall abide by the principle of confidentiality. The information of reviewers and research content shall be kept confidential by editors. 

3.3 Editors shall not be motivated by interests to interfere in peer review and shall strive for independent peer review to ensure that the peer review process is fair and unbiased.

3.4 For peer reviewers recommended by authors, editors shall verify the information of reviewers and decide whether to invite the recommended reviewer on the basis of the research field and expertise of the recommended reviewer and the conflict of interest with the author, etc. If an author requests that his/her manuscript should not be reviewed by a reviewer and this request is reasonable, editors should respect it.

3.5 When selecting reviewers, editors should avoid those who are in the same institutional affiliation as the author and those who are involved in the article as authorship.

3.6 In cases where there is a conflict of interest between editors and authors (e.g., kinship, teacher-student relation, alumni relation, colleague relation and competition relation), editors should avoid handling the manuscript.

3.7 Editors should treat the author’s appeal with caution and organize collective discussion or invite reviewers to review the manuscript again.

3.8 Editors should prudently consider the publication of negative results obtained from scientific studies in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of studies by other researchers.

3.9 Editors are liable to avoid duplicate submission, redundant publication and other academic misconduct, and should double check and review the original manuscripts and articles to be published.

3.10 Editors are obliged to inform the authors of possible copyright and intellectual property problems that arise from changes in authorship, affiliation and order of authorship.

3.11 Editors should provide the author with detailed revision or reasons for the manuscript rejection as much as possible.

3.12 Editors should respect the author’s viewpoint and writing style, and any critical changes made to the article involving the viewpoint should be agreed to by the author.

4 Publisher ethics

4.1 The Journal follows the principle of first publication and reports only original research results.

4.2 For accepted manuscripts, if any academic misconduct is found, the Journal has the right to reject the manuscripts and notify the author’s affiliation and relevant journals.

4.3 For published articles, if any academic misconduct is found, the Journal will retract the article and publish a retraction statement.

4.4 The Journal shall publish and update detailed guidelines (e.g., submission guidelines, writing guidelines, etc.) required by authors.

4.5 The Journal shall formulate a system to manage conflicts of interest among editors, authors, reviewers and members of the editorial board. 

 

Chinese Journal of Experimental Traditional Medical Formulae

October 2021