Publication Ethics

  1. Publication Ethics Statement
  2. Ethical Guidelines for Authors
  3. Ethical Guidelines for Reviewers
  4. Ethical Guidelines for Editors
  5. Ethical Guidelines for Publisher

1. Publication Ethics Statement

All parties involved in the act of publishing, including authors, reviewers and editors, should strictly conform to the highest level of professional ethical standards. Prior to submission, proper statistical investigations and thorough ethical reviews should be acquired from data owning organizations. Authors have an obligation to ensure that the submitted manuscript is original and morally acceptable.

Journal Experimental and Clinical Application of Chinese Medicine (abbreviated as JECACM) adheres to the publication ethics guidelines from the following organizations:

⋄ International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)

⋄ Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

⋄ Council of Scientific Editors (CSE

⋄ National Institutes of Health (NIH)

⋄ National Information Standards Organization (NISO)

⋄ World Medical Association (WMA)

⋄ World association of Medical editors (WAME)

2. Ethical Guidelines for Authors

Responsible research publication international standards for authors

Prior to submission, authors have the obligations to ensure the accuracy of the content, originality of their work, and readability of language, and clarity of logical structure. In the process of peer review, it is not likely to identity the erroneous nature of a single dataset. To this end, authors must repeatedly examine their raw data in manuscripts to avoid unnecessary mistakes.

Authors should bear the following responsibilities:

⋄ Any act of plagiarism (partial or complete extract of the content in published articles by someone else without any citation sources) is strictly forbidden.

⋄ Data fabrication is not allowed.

⋄ Any fraud (altering or suppressing information ) is prohibited.

⋄ The article either published or to be published in other journals is not allowed to be submitted to JECACM.

⋄ Any potential conflicts of interest involving the manuscript should be stated.

⋄ The work should be described accurately.

⋄ All necessary information should be specified so that other researchers of interest can replicate and validate the experiments.

⋄ The data involved in the study, no matter whether it can verify the proposed conjecture or not, should be provided.

⋄ When applicable, all the relevant contribution of other investigations and references should be cited to support the explanation of the results.

⋄ Sources of all experimental materials utilized in the research should be specified.

⋄ Experimental samples or products (e.g., protein, DNA, clone, cell or other types of material) should be provided as much detail as possible to improve the replicability and testability of experimental data or ideas.

⋄ The care and use of laboratory animals should comply with the requirement of NIH (National Institute of Health) and the institution. The utilization of a recombinant DNA should comply with the requirement of NIH and the institution.

⋄ In case of any error or inaccuracy in the article, authors should report it to the journal editors for a timely correction.

⋄ Authors should actively participate in the peer-review process and properly respond to the comments from peer reviewers in time.

⋄ Authors should make significant contributions to the research and comply with the standards for the authorship criteria proposed by ICMJE.

⋄ Authors should note all sources used in the preparation of their manuscript.

For settlement of authorship disputes, JECACM will conform to the guidelines by COPE about authorship problems. Clear explanation from authors needs to be submitted to the journal for evaluation. The editorial office will consider recommendations from the discipline-specific standards or standard-setting bodies, such as COPE and ICMJE to make the final decision. Authorship qualifications can be proved by the authoritative statement from their institution(s).

3. Ethical Guidelines for Reviewers

COPE Ethical for Peer Reviewers

Please refer to Peer Review Policy for more details.

In addition, reviewers should:

⋄ Adhere to the journal’s instructions on the scope, content, and quality of the review.

⋄ Offer referable evaluation from scientific research levels, covering validity, originality and significance, data and methodology, reasonable results and discussion and so on.

⋄ Offer a proper guiding for authors to improve their research works.

⋄ Recommend decision (accept, revise, reject), using proper rating scale.

⋄ Provide suggestions to the editor, yet understand that the final decision rests with the editor.

⋄ Provide fair, evidence-based advices by seriously checking the scientific content of the manuscript in time.

⋄ Not provide any any inappropriate personal criticism or comments. 

⋄ Propose citation, once any relevant published work is helpful to improve the quality of publication but not cited in the manuscripts.

⋄ Maintain the confidentiality of the paper contents, and throughout the whole review process, never discuss or use information from unpublished materials.

⋄ Decline to review a submission when they have any potential interest that may affect the objectivity.

⋄ Declare any financial, competing, or personal conflicts of interest to the editorial office and ask for best solutions for this issue.

⋄ Report any ethical concern (e.g., any violation of ethical treatment of animal or human subjects, any considerable similarity between a previously published article or any reviewed manuscript) to the editorial office during reviewing process.

4. Ethical Guidelines for Editors

Responsible research publication: international standards for editors

Code of conduct and best practice guidelines for journal editors

Please refer to Editorial Responsibility and Independence for more details.

In addition, editors should:

⋄ Be responsible for making editorial decisions regarding revision , rejection or acceptance of all manuscripts submitted for peer-review and publication.

⋄Treat authors in fair, objective and respectful manners. 

⋄ Evaluate manuscripts objectively in light of academic merit, without any commercial or private interest.

⋄ Ensure that conflicts of interest do not exist when making decisions as rejection or acceptance.

⋄ Prompt publication of a correction or retraction of the article if having compelling evidence that the content or conclusions of a published paper are incorrect.

⋄ Ensure the equity, unbiasedness and timeliness of the peer-review process.

⋄ Ensure at least two independent reviewers involved in peer review process.

⋄ Not disclose the identity of the reviewers.

⋄ Not disclose any information about the submitted manuscripts prior to publication.

⋄ Describe, implement, and regularly review policies for addressing ethical problems and allegations/findings of misconduct by authors involved in the peer-review process.

⋄ Keep sensitive to any possible manuscript delaying from the editors or reviewers for improper reasons.

⋄ Cooperate with the editorial office to develop mechanisms for timely publication of accepted manuscripts.

⋄ Assign corresponding manuscripts to each reviewer in accordance with their area of expertise and interest.

5. Ethical Guidelines for Publisher

Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly

Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals

JECACM provide a reliable platform for scientific articles to be known, disseminated and evaluated by the public, adhering to the publication ethics requirements from Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.

Any act of research misconduct is not allowed under any circumstances. JECACM will work together with the editors to check and avoid publishing articles with misconducts. Once any alleged or proved scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism occur, all appropriate measures, such as prompt publication of an erratum, clarification or even retraction of the affected work, will be taken to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question.