For more details on publication ethics, read core practices by COPE

https://publicationethics.org/core-practices

https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing

 

Topmost logics for ethical publication:

    Ø For the establishment of scientific advancement.

    Ø For fostering  scientific ethical behavior.

    Ø For the prestigious reputation of you and your institute.

    Ø It is the exclusive way of publishing.

    Ø It secures life.

Check Points to Avoid Possible Types of Journal Publication Misconduct

1.     Authorship: 

Authorship should be restricted to those who have made a remarkable contributions to the study in respect of research design, execution of experimental study, interpretation, analysis, and conclusion of the reported study(s). Detailed clarity about the contribution of authors of the study should be mentioned in the “Authors contribution” section in the manuscript as per the author guidelines. Others, who contributed or supported the study and are not listed in the authors list, can be acknowledged in the “Acknowledgment” section in the manuscript. 

For more details about transparency on authorship, please read author guidelines.

https://publicationethics.org/files/2003pdf12.pdf

The corresponding author (those who submit the manuscript) is liable for giving the complete contributions of every author at the time of submission. The author/s will receive an email regarding the submission of the manuscript, its authorship, and its publication updates to ensure their awareness.  

 

2.   Plagiarism: 

Originality is the core property for good publication in any subject area. The authors have to assure that, they have written and submitted completely original work. If authors used any research methodology or work or words of other research authors that should be quoted appropriately. 

Every submitted manuscript will be screened to validate the plagiarism and articles with plagiarism will be redirected to the corresponding author/s if minor and if major plagiarism, the manuscript will be refused for the further review process. Prior to submission of the manuscript, authors should check the plagiarism. Various plagiarism checks or similarity check tools are available, for example, CrossRef“

https://www.crossref.org/faqs/similarity-check-transition/

are available to screen your manuscript. 

 

3.   Conflict of Interest 

The authors should give the facts about conflict of interest in the “conflict of interest” section of the manuscript. The statement of conflict of interest in the manuscript follows the operating ethics of transparency and liability for publication. Probable conflicts of interest may contain any support to research or funding sources or financial or non-financial interests of authors and authors’ interest or bias regarding research conclusions. The conflict of interest may become the basis for the editorial decision to accept or reject the manuscript. Editors and reviewers should reject the manuscript if there are any conflict interests mentioned or arises in the manuscript during the revisions. For every revision of the manuscript, conflicts of interest section must be doubled checked before acceptance. 

For more details on the conflict of interest, read 

https://publicationethics.org/competinginterests

 

4.  Fraud in Research 

Fraud is submitting the manuscript with data and conclusions that were not the results of experimental observations but by manipulation or creation of data.  Manipulating the data to fit the expected results and omitting inconvenient data is a deliberate research flaw and fraud.  SC is against fabrication and falsification. 

Referees or reviewers or readers inform the publisher or editor that: certain research institutes or laboratories do not have the amenities to do the research that they published or the images of gel data of the result look manipulated. 

Editors and Reviewers will make sure that manuscripts are free of fraud and if scientific fraud or misconduct is identified after publication, editors will investigate the accusations of fraud or scientific misconduct and take proper actions. The journal editor may refer any kind of fraud or scientific misconduct to a research institute or company or agency that supported the research work and manuscript unless the author gives a satisfactory explanation (should be accepted as satisfactory by the editor or publisher).  Editor or Publisher will take the appropriate actions as per the COPE guidelines in case of research fraud. Read more in detail

https://publicationethics.org/files/peer-review-manipulation-during-review-cope-flowchart.pdf

https://publicationethics.org/files/peer-review-manipulation-after-publication-cope-flowchart.pdf

 

5.  Salami Publications:

Splitting the complete or large research work into two or more segments for publication is against publication ethics. SC doesn’t encourage or support this kind of salami publication. Authors should avoid this kind of publication. Salami publication can result in misinterpretation of literature by readers to assume that data published in salami publication is obtained from a various subject samples. Salami publication generates repetition of literature and research methods that wastes the time of readers, editors, and reviewers who spend time on each paper one by one. 

For more details, read COPE guidelines on salami publications. 

https://publicationethics.org/case/salami-publication

6.   Multiple Submission in different journals

All the manuscripts submitted for publication should be novel and not submitted to any other journal for publication. Rarely, authors may neglect this requirement and submit the same research work and same manuscript to various journals. Authors have to confirm that their paper is original and never submitted or published to other journals earlier. Deliberately submitting research work for multiple publications is disobeying of publication ethics.  Parallel submission/publication occurs when the authors submit the manuscript to different journals at a similar time, which results in the publication of the manuscript in different journals at the same time.  Another possible way of multiple publications may arise when two more manuscripts without complete cross reference, submit the manuscript with the same data, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusions with slight modifications that may result in a partial or complete duplication of the manuscript. This kind of multiple submissions that results in multiple publications of the same research work is unethical. 

By submitting the manuscript to journals of Scientific Collegium, the author take  complete responsibility that he/she submitted the manuscript to only this journal and no other journal of other publishers.

 

7.    Article withdrawal 

Manuscript withdrawal can be used for Articles In-Press that may have previous versions of the manuscript and have errors or may have been submitted twice by mistake. Rarely, manuscripts may be against publication ethics such as the false claim of authorship, plagiarized data, multiple submissions, etc, and in such cases, the manuscripts will be withdrawn from the journal. 

If the author/s intends to withdraw the manuscript from the journal, the author should submit a letter signed by all authors or corresponding author within 72 hours to the publisher before the review process, stating the reasons to withdraw.  If the author/s intends to withdraw the manuscript from the journal, during the middle of the peer review process, author/s will be charged as per the journal article processing charges. Authors cannot withdraw the manuscript once it is published in the journal. 

 

8.  Article retraction 

Article retraction may be applied when infringements of ethics of publication, such as the false claim of authorship, plagiarised data, multiple submissions of the same manuscript to different journals, or to correct the errors in previous publication or submission. All the guidelines of COPE will be followed in these cases.

In rare cases, published articles data will be removed from the database if noticed unethical or infringes legal rights, or pose a severe health risk at any time but the metadata (Manuscript title and authors) will be kept, and the content will be replaced with a screen “Article has been removed for legal reasons”. 

In some cases where the authors like to replace the content (eg. content in the manuscript might pose a severe health risk and authors wish to replace it with a corrected good version) and in such situations, retraction procedure will be followed with changes that the database will publish a link to the rectified re-published article along with the previous record of the document.