Publication Ethics

Animal research must be conducted in accordance with local or international guidelines, such as the US Department of Health and Human Services Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals or MRC guidelines, and must be accepted by the Institutional Review Board (IRB). A statement by the IRB must be included in the Materials and methods section. All investigations with human subjects must comply with the principles of the Helsinki Declaration and must include a statement that informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

Plagiarism and image screening check are done to any submitted manuscript. Manuscript with ‘Similarity Index’ of more than 50% will be rejected. However, If the ‘Similarity index’of a submitted manuscript is more than 20%  but less than <50% the manuscript will be resent to the author (with the plagiarism report) for adjustment. On resubmission, if the ‘Similarity Index’ is still above 20% the manuscript will be rejected. Images should be original and subjected to minimal processing. The following are considered inappropriate and lead to revoking acceptance: 1) reusing the same image in the manuscript 2) adding, removing, moving, enhancing or obscuring any feature in the image so that the data are altered, 3) alterations in total brightness, contrast, or color balance of the image so that the original data/ or background are altered. If data modification is suspected, the original data will be requested. Failure to provide the original data upon request will lead to non-acceptance.

After publication, suspected scientific misconduct (theft, fabrication, falsification of data, duplicate publications) will be thoroughly investigated by a board of at least three members of the editorial board. If proven, the corresponding author is asked to retract the published article, or otherwise declaration of an editorial statement of concern will take place together with informing the corresponding author’s institution. A submission embargo on the authors is considered.

Confidentiality

All manuscript contents, reviewer names, and their comments to the editors are considered confidential.

Conflict of interest

Reviewers and editors are asked to declare any conflict of interest before reviewing an article. Any of the following cases are considered as conflict of interest: 1) The author is at the same department or university, 2) The author is a family member, or a close friend.