Publication Ethics and Malpractice Policy
This statement explains the ethical responsibilities of all parties involved in the act of publishing an article for their journals, including authors, the Editor in Chief, Editorial Board Members, reviewers and the publisher.
Peer Review Policy
- Ethical Duties of Authors
- Ethical Duties of Editors
- Ethical Duties of Reviewers
- Ethical Duties of Publisher
- Human and Animal Rights Ethical Statement
International Standards for Authors and Editors
All Neoplasia Research journals follow the guiding principles of International Standards for Authors and Editors of Committee on Publication Ethics.
Ethical Duties of Editors:
The respective Editor-in-Chief of each Neoplasia Research Journal is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published and when. The Editor-in-Chief may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board concerning subjects of legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. Decisions to publish are not influenced by the government or any other agency’s policies outside the concerned journal. The Editor in Chief may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision however, bearing full authority over entire editorial panel. Editors of Neoplasia Research are expected to take notice of necessary corrections, retractions and apologies occurring in their journal and warrant the integrity of publications. The editors advise journals’ team the ways to improve the standard of publications and assure the strict evaluation of submitted articles by qualified peer reviewers. They are supposed to advise and support the steps taken by the members to discourage misconduct in publication and research activities. Editors make sure that the published articles do not involve the unethical practices of ghost authors and ambiguous financial supporters; any form of financial funding is therefore stressed to be clearly mentioned in the articles. All submissions from members of the journal’s staff or editorial board receive an objective and unbiased double-blinded evaluation.
Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used by anyone who has a view of the manuscript (while handling it) in his or her own research without the expressed written consent of the author. Editors will only evaluate manuscripts for which they have NO substantial conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the papers.
All submissions from members of the journal’s staff or editorial board receive an objective and unbiased double-blinded evaluation.
Neoplasia Research explicitly states that no submission from EiC/EBM/member of journal’s staff/ will be an exception to our double-blind review process. To maintain transparency in publication such submissions are reviewed by external reviewers and decisions about them are taken by the least conflicted editorial board member/EIC. At Neoplasia Research though every effort is made to exclude the possibility of a biased review at all steps, it is an ethical duty of Editors to refrain themselves from participating in review/evaluation of any article where apotential conflict of interest with the author/content of the article may exist.
Editors are suggested to follow COPE guidelines where they feel misconduct in review process of any article. For further help please see,
Ethical Duties of Authors:
Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Review articles should be accurate, objective and comprehensive, Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are therefore, unacceptable.
Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review and should be prepared to provide public access to such data. if practicable the authors should retain such data for a reasonable time (7-10 years) after publication.
Authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the work and/or words of others have been used, this must be appropriately cited or quoted appropriately. Plagiarism in any form (using another's paper as the author's own; copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another's paper without proper attribution; and claiming results from research conducted by others) constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable under all conditions.
An author should not, in general, publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal as primary publication. Likewise submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently is unethical in publishing world and is unacceptable.
Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should also cite the
publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.
Sources of financial support/funding for the research or project reported in the article should be duly acknowledged at the end of the article.
All authors should disclose any financial or another substantive conflict of interest in their manuscript that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript.
If the Editors or Publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then the author will be contacted and it will be the author’s obligation to make a prompt request to the editor for correction by providing corrected material or provide an evidence to the journal’s Editors of the correctness of the paper or else, the paper may be retracted as per decision of the editors.
Only persons who meet the following authorship criteria should be listed as authors on the manuscript, as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content: (a) made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study; (b) drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content; and (c) have seen and approved the final version of the paper and agreed to its submission for publication. All persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (such as technical help, writing and editing assistance, general support) but, do not meet the criteria for authorship, must not be listed as an author, rather acknowledged in the "Acknowledgements" section. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate coauthors(according to the above definition), and no inappropriate coauthors, are included in the author list and verify that all coauthors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its publication.
Authors should disclose any conflicts of interest that might influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript at the earliest stage possible (generally at the time of submission and including a statement in the manuscript). Examples include financial ones such as honoraria, educational grants or other funding, employment, consultancies, stock ownership participation in speakers bureaus, membership, and paid expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements, as well as non-financial ones such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs about the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the work should be disclosed (including the grant number or other reference number, if any).
Information obtained privately (from conversation, correspondence or discussion with third parties) must not be used or reported without written permission from the source.
If the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the authors must clearly identify these in the manuscript. If the work involves the use of animals or human participants, the authors should ensure that all procedures are performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committee(s) has approved them; the manuscript should contain a statement to this effect. Authors should also include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human participants. The privacy rights of human participants must always be considered.
Authors are obliged to cooperate fully by responding promptly to Editors requests for raw data, clarifications, and proof of ethics approval, patient consents and copyright permissions. In the case of a first decision of "revisions necessary", authors should respond to the reviewers comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal by the deadline.
If the Editors/Publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the authors obligation to promptly correct the paper through editors’ guidance and assistance (to prevent retraction of their article) or provide evidence to the journal’s Editors of the correctness of the paper.
The following actions may be considered by the editors to resolve a disputed article issue. All post-publication changes are carried out according to the COPE guidelines.
https://publicationethics.org/postpublication
Post-Publication Correction:
It is Neoplasia Research’s policy that our published articles should remain exact and unaltered to the maximally possible extent however, if an author discovers a scientifically significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work specially those that may affect the interpretation of data or reliability of the information presented in the article,it is the author's obligation to promptly notify the journal editor/ Publisher and cooperate with the editor to correct the error. The Editor of the journal will determine the impact of the change in the article and decide on the appropriate course of action. To keep our readers fully informed and maintain the integrity of the scholarly record any necessary changes will be accompanied with a post-publication corrigendum/Erratum/Editorial expression of concern, permanently linked to the original article. A correction for a published article will only be considered after receiving approval and instructions from the EiC of the journal. In rare cases, post-publication Corrections may be considered by the publisher if the errors adversely affect the publication record, or the repute of the journal. All corrections are made according to the COPE Guidelines
https://publicationethics.org/case/how-correct-published-paper
Article Withdrawal:
Requests for article withdrawal may be made by the authors, only for early versions of articles which sometimes contain errors or may have been accidentally submitted twice.
Article Retraction:
Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism and fraudulent use of data, falsification and fabrication by the authors can result in the retraction of their article from the journal’s website by the editor.
Article Removal:
This will only occur where the article is clearly defamatory or infringes on others legal rights, or where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk.
For more information on the International Standards for Authors click here .
Ethical Duties of Reviewers:
Peer review is imperial for all submissions to Neoplasia Research journals; it assists the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial board members in making editorial decisions, while editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.Thus reviewers are considered as the base of the whole quality process. Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the assigned manuscript or unable to provide a prompt review should notify the editor and excuse him/herself from the review process. All reviews should be conducted objectively with no personal criticism to the author. Reviewers should express their critique clearly with supporting arguments.
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that had been previously reported elsewhere should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call for the Editor-in-Chief's attention to any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper that is in their personal knowledge.
Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential by the reviewers and not used for personal advantage; this also includes the reviewers who have declined to review the manuscript.
Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have any conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, firms or institutions connected to the papers. Any such conflict should be disclosed to the Editor-in-Chief by the reviewer. The Editors will then determine sufficiency of the conflict to exclude the reviewer from peer review.
Reviewers are expected to follow COPE’s Guidelines which can be viewed in detail here https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers-cope.pdf
More details can be found here.
Ethical Duties of Publisher:
The editorial members are given independence in their relationship to the publisher; and their decisions about publication of articles are never influenced by the publisher, rather the quality and suitability of submission are given sole consideration. Neoplasia Research ensures its regular communication with the editors. To handle any unethical publishing behavior the Publisher will be involved. In cases of scientific misconduct, plagiarism or fraudulent publication, the Publisher (with the editors) is responsible to clarify the situation and take appropriate actions which may include release of an erratum or correction; even a retraction may be instructed. The Publisher, with the editors, will make every possible effort to prevent the publication of fraudulent material and to forbid any misconduct that may be taken place. Editors of the journal are supposed to work with Publisher for dealing with any issue related to the intellectual property issues and to handle potential breaches of intellectual property laws. In this regard editors are to support the authors who have become the plagiarism victims or whose copyrights have been exploited. Working with publisher the editors should defend authors’ rights and punish the offenders by making requests to the publisher for retraction of the published material from the journal website.
The Publisher is committed to ensure the all time-availability of its published material; the contents of its journals are preserved and made accessible to the readers by partnering with the corresponding organizations.
Human and Animal Rights Ethical Statement
If the research manuscript describes involvement of human participants, the approval granting from the the institutional review board or equivalent committee(s) must be clearly mentioned with the name of the board provided by the authors in the manuscript. Informed consent from human participants must have been obtained (or in case of lack of consent its reason must be explicitly explained, e.g. the data were analyzed retrospectively). All clinical investigations are expected to be conducted according to the principles specified in the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975, as revised in 2000. Authors should submit a statement from their ethics committee or institutional review board indicating the approval of the research.
All relevant national and international guidelines must be followed while conducting research on animals and submitting the article about such studies. Following the recommendations of the Weatherall report on "The use of non-human primates in research," the authors are specifically required to include details of animal welfare and steps taken to ameliorate suffering in all work involving non-human primates.
