Research and Publication Ethics
For more details on publication ethics, read core
practices by COPE
https://publicationethics.org/core-practices
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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.   Â
Authorship:Â
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 “Acknowledgmentâ€
section in the manuscript.Â
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. Â
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2. Â
Plagiarism:Â
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.Â
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.Â
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3. Â
Conflict of InterestÂ
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.Â
For more details on the conflict of interest, readÂ
https://publicationethics.org/competinginterests
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4. Fraud in
ResearchÂ
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.Â
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.Â
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
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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.Â
For more details, read COPE guidelines on salami
publications.Â
https://publicationethics.org/case/salami-publication
6. Â
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.Â
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.
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7.  Â
Article withdrawalÂ
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.Â
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.Â
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8. Article
retractionÂ
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 reasonsâ€.Â
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.
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