Ethical considerations and Publication Malpractice Statement

Outline

The Journal of Reproduction & Infertility (JRI) is committed to apply the codes and principles of conduct of the publisher, Avicenna Research Institute (ARI) which is basically derived from "Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing" published & updated 15 September 2022 by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). Furthermore, in accordance with ICMJE’s Recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing and publication of scholarly work in medical journals, authors, reviewers, and editors are recommended to duly follow best-practice guidelines on ethical behavior.

1. Authorship

In line with ICMJE Recommendations, credit for authorship requires (1) significant contributions to the conception and design or the obtaining and execution, analysis and synthesis, or interpretation of the data; (2) the drafting of the article or critical revising to manifest the intellectual content; (3) obtaining the final approval of the version to be published; and (4) taking the full accountability for all aspects of the work and undertaking the commitment that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the article are appropriately investigated and resolved. If all four components are fulfilled in preparing the manuscript, the authorship credit is assigned. All persons who provided substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (such as technical help, writing and content editing assistance, language editing, and general support) but who do not meet the criteria for authorship must not be listed as an author; however, their contribution should be acknowledged in the "Acknowledgements" section after their written permission to be included. The corresponding author must verify that all coauthors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication. In line with COPE guidelines, our journal requires written confirmation from all authors indicating their agreement with any proposed changes in authorship of submission(s) or published item(s). More specifically, this agreement prevents any future disputes among the co-authors as it is not the journal editor’s responsibility to resolve authorship disagreements and arguments. A change in authorship of a published article can only be possible through publication of an Erratum or Correction. Authors are recommended to follow "The international standards for authors" outlined by COPE.

2. Clinical Trial Registry

In general, clinical trials consist research that studies new tests and treatments and evaluates their effects on human health outcomes. Based on the ICMJE recommendations, a clinical trial is defined as “any research project that prospectively assigns people or a group of people to an intervention, with or without concurrent comparison or control groups, to study the cause-and-effect, the relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome.” In agreement with the ICMJE’s recommendations, JRI permits publishing clinical trials that have already been registered with a clinical trial registry in terms of unique identification code that grants free online access to the public. As per our policy, registration of all trials in all public registries approved by the ICMJE as the primary register of the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform or Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (IRCT) is a mandatory procedure.

Moreover, in line with ICMJE recommendations, clinical trials must be prospectively registered (before the trial starts and subjects are enrolled). Therefore, if the study is registered following its completion, the paper is not eligible to be published in JRI.

3. Conflicting Interests

Authors are asked to declare all relationships or interests regarding their work. All submitted manuscripts must have a ‘conflict of interest’ paragraph at the end of paper to disclose all financial and non-financial competing interests. In cases that no conflict of interest is detected, the statement of "The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest" must be included. In this section, both financial competing interests and any non-financial competing interests must be referred to. However, the Editor in Chief preserves the right to ask for further information about competing interests. Associate editors, member of advisory board, associate editors, and reviewers are also required to declare any competing interests and will be excluded from the peer review process in case of competing interest.

4. Hazards, Human and Animal Ethics

If the work was carried out using chemicals, procedures or equipment with 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 reflect their procedure compliance with relevant laws, institutional guidelines, consent, and approval of institutional committee(s) besides the statement that study protocol conforms to the ethical guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki; the manuscript should explicitly contain a statement about such compliance. In studies involving animal experimentations, all criteria highlighted in the "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" should be addressed. Authors are also required to 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 observed. Regarding deceased patients, the corresponding author of study can request the informed consent from their relatives, family, or guardian (for children and minors). Any images and graphs, pathology sections or slides, laparoscopic and ultrasound images which convey information about the patient’s name or other personal data, jeopardizing confidentiality, must be crossed out from the manuscript.

5. Data Access and Retention

Raw data of the study in conjunction with the manuscript must be provided on request for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly accessible if needed. In any event, authors should preserve the data and ensure accessibility of it to other competent experts for at least 10 years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants and personal data can be protected and legal rights regarding proprietary data do not hinder their release.

6. Image Manipulation

The priority to use original images is the strict principle of JRI. All digital images in manuscripts accepted for publication will be checked for inappropriate manipulation. No specific feature within an image can be magnified, obscured, removed, distorted or changed. Adjustments regarding color balance, brightness, and darkness are acceptable as long as they are applied to the whole image and do not misrepresent any information present in the original image. If the editors are dubious about manipulated figures, they have the right to ask for original data from the authors to compare the two copies and evaluate the alterations.

7. Originality and plagiarism

Authors must ensure that they have prepared and submitted only original works, and if they have used the research and quotation of others, accurate and proper citations must have been provided throughout the whole manuscript. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the work reported in the manuscript should also be cited. In fact, we conceptualize originality as a degree to which a scientific finding provides unique knowledge that is not available in previous research. Plagiarism comprises a wide spectrum of misconducts, from "passing off" another's paper as the author's own, to copying or paraphrasing significant parts of another's paper (without proper citation and quotation marks), and to ascribing the results elicited from other research to authors’ own manuscript. JRI does not tolerate plagiarism in all its types which constitute unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable in our policy. Particularly, since literature reviews mostly rely on the published work of others, it is especially important to stay away from inadvertent plagiarism by copying and pasting sections of text from the original source. JRI is powered by the iThenticate software, a plagiarism detector service that considers the originality of content submitted before publication. When plagiarism is identified, we act based on flowcharts and workflows recommended by COPE.

8. Research fraud

Research fraud constitutes the examples of fabrication, falsification in proposing, performing, or reviewing research or the final report of research results. Fabrication is making up data or results and falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or altering or eliminating data or results such that the research is not precisely represented in the research record. Both of these misconducts are fraudulent acts and fundamentally alter the integrity, cohesion, and coherence of research. However, research misconduct should not be misinterpreted as honest error or differences of viewpoints. Therefore, articles must be written based on original data, and the use of falsified or fabricated data is strongly prohibited. COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are addressed in cases in which any of these two misconducts are spotted. To signify the importance of serious reaction in facing with such fraud, JRI keeps the right to ask for raw data from authors even after publication of their manuscript. Submitted manuscripts which are found to contain either fabricated or falsified data will confront with the data fabrication/falsification sanction.