PRE-PUBLICATION

Authorship

Each person listed as an author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content and agree to be accountable for all aspects related to its accuracy or integrity. This participation must include conception and design of the manuscript, data acquisition or data analysis and interpretation, drafting of the manuscript and/or revising it for critically important intellectual content, revision and final approval of the manuscript and statistical analysis, obtaining funding, administrative, technical, or material support, or supervision.

The corresponding author is responsible for submission and all communication with the Journal regarding that submission. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all Authors meet the required authorship criteria indicated above.

Change in authorship

Once a manuscript has been submitted, the order of authorship (including adding or removing authors) cannot be changed without a written request to the Editorial Office from the Corresponding Author and a new copyright transfer form, signed by all authors, must be submitted. If an author is removed, a letter from that author agreeing to his/her removal is required; otherwise the paper should be withdrawn.

Guest authorship

The assistance of any contributors who do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged in the manuscript.

Competing interest

In order to present transparent information to our readers, any form of competing interest should be disclosed within the manuscript. Financial conflict of interest may exist if any financial gain is brought to the author or to his/her family, business partners, or employer by direct or indirect commission; stock ownership or options in manufacturing company; involvement in any for-profit or not-for-profit corporation where the author or his/her family is a director or recipient of a grant, including consultant and travel costs reimbursement.

Non-financial competing interest may be political, personal, or intellectual.

Compliance with funding agencies


All financial and material support for the research and the work reported should be clearly identified in the manuscript.

ETHICAL POLICIES

All articles are accepted and published expecting that they have not and will not appear elsewhere in any language or country. Presentation as an abstract is accepted. Cases of suspected misconduct may be reported to the author(s) institution(s).

The Editors in Chief and the Editorial Boards are primarily responsible for ensuring a fair review process. The final responsibility rests with the authors, not with the Journal, its Editors, or the Publisher and the statements and opinions are solely those of the individual authors and contributors. 

Plagiarism and duplicate submission

Research and publication misconduct is considered a serious breach of ethics.  The Journal systematically employs iThenticate, a plagiarism detection and prevention software designed to ensure the originality of written work before publication. Manuscripts including plagiarized content will be rejected.

Plagiarism is when an author reproduces another work without appropriate citation and credit. Plagiarism, whether intentional or not, is a serious violation of ethics. 


Duplicate submission/publication occurs when two or more papers without full cross-reference, share the same hypothesis, data, discussion and conclusion. 
Submitted contributions are scanned systematically to identify potentially similar articles already appeared in print or online.

Image manipulation

Figure and illustrations submitted with an article must be original. Image manipulation that may affect data interpretation is a frequent cause of rejection or retraction.

Copyright infringement

If the manuscript submitted includes parts (quotations, tables, or illustrations) to which the authors do not own copyright, then written permission from the copyright owner must be submitted before the peer reviewing process is completed, along with full details on the original source. Give yourself ample time to request and receive permission. Any permission fees required by the copyright owner are the responsibility of the authors.

Research involving human subjects

If manuscripts report research performed on human subjects, human-derived materials, or human medical records, they must have obtained formal review and approval or waiver by an appropriate institutional review board (IRB) or ethics committee and informed consent by all patients involved. For investigators who do not have formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed and stated in the manuscript.

Patient confidentiality protection

When a patient is identifiable in a photograph or in medical records submitted to the Journal, the author(s) must supply the Journal with written permission from all patients (parents or legal guardian for minors) or to ensure that personal information and identification is not possible by masking personal data.

Research involving animals

Experimental research performed on animals must comply with the NIH Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals or equivalent.

REVIEW AND PUBLICATION PROCESS

Each article received will be screened for scientific accuracy, novelty and importance. Usually two, and sometimes several, reviewers will participate in the review of a manuscript.

Our journals adopt single or double blind peer review and the reviewers’ identity is never revealed. Reviewers’ comments are shared with the authors with the scope of improving research.

We encourage authors to suggest potential reviewers but it is the Editor’s decision to invite them. Authors should avoid suggesting collaborators or colleagues from the same institution. Authors may also suggest opposed reviewers, explaining their motivation.

Reviewers are required to disclose potential conflict of interest between themselves and the manuscripts they are invited to review.

If the submission is accepted, the corresponding author will be informed. The article will be copyedited then processed into page proofs, with all figures and tables in place. The publisher reserves final editorial approval for style, format and grammar.

Revisions

If it is determined through the review process that a manuscript requires revision, authors will be notified and detailed reviewers’ comments will be supplied. They are intended to improve the manuscript and offer valuable contribution to our readers.

Advanced online publication

All accepted articles will be published online immediately after authors’ final approval. The version published in this section is the final version and cannot be further modified.

Corrections and retractions

In case an article has been published with major errors, it is often necessary to publish an erratum in the Journal.

Appeals and complaints

We have a high consideration of the judgements and evaluation of our expert reviewers. For this reason, only the most serious allegations will be considered and only if pertinent to the scientific content rather than to the evaluation process. Authors wishing to complain should contact the Editor. The Editor’s decision on their appeal is final.

In case of complaints which cannot be solved by the Editor, authors should contact the Publisher.