Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement 

       The ethical policy of the journal is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with journal  Editorial Board codes of conduct. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with the journal. The fair policy is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or articles submitted to the journal should be published in the concerned issue. For information on publishing and ethical guidelines, please visit http://publicationethics.org.

 

Duties and Responsibilities of Publishers

1. The journal is committing to ensure that editorial decisions on manuscript submissions are the final.
2. The journal promises to ensure that the decision on manuscript submissions is only made based on professional judgment and will not be affected by any commercial interests.
3. The journal is committing to maintaining the integrity of academic and research records.
4. The journal monitors the ethics of Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
5. The journal continuously checks the plagiarism and fraudulent data issues involved in the submitted manuscript.
6. The journal is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.

Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

1. The journal's Editors should have the full authority to reject/accept a manuscript.
2. The journal's Editors should maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts under review or until they are published.
3. The Editor-in-Chief should decide on submitted manuscripts, published or not, with other editors and reviewers.
4. The Editors of the journal should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
5. The journal's Editors should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.
6. The Editors of the journal should maintain academic integrity and strive to meet the needs of readers and authors.
7. Journal's Editorsrnal should be willing to investigate plagiarism and fraudulent data issues to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
8. The journal's Editors should limit themselves only to the intellectual content.
9. The journal's Editors must not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
10. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or editorial board members for their research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

1. The journal's Reviewers should assist the Editorsdeciding to publish the submitted manuscripts.
2. The Reviewers should maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts, which they are invited to review.
3. The Reviewers should provide comments in time that will help editors to decide on the submitted manuscript to be published or not.
4. The Reviewers are bound to treat the manuscript received for peer reviewing as confidential and must not use the information obtained through peer review for personal advantage. 
5. The Reviewers comments against each invited manuscript should be technical, professional and objective.
6. The Reviewers should not review the manuscripts in which they have found conflicts of interest with any authors, companies, or institutions.
7. The Reviewers should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.

Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

1. Manuscripts must be submitted only in English and written according to sound grammar and proper terminology.
2. Manuscripts must be submitted with the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere and are not currently under consideration by another journal published by or any other publisher.
3. The submitting corresponding author is responsible for ensuring tall the other co-authors have approved the manuscript article's publication hours.
4. To sustain the peer review system, authors should participate in a peer review process to evaluate manuscripts from others. 
5. It is also the authors' responsibility to ensure that the manuscripts emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution.
6. It is a condition for submitting a manuscript that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.
7. Authors are requested to identify who provided financial support for the research and/or preparation of the manuscript and briefly describe the role of the founder/ sponsor in any part of the work.
8. A copyright release form must be signed by the corresponding author in case of multiple authorship, before the acceptation of the manuscript, by all authors for publication to be legally responsible towards the Journal ethics and privacy policy.
9. Under open access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are appropriately cited.
10. All authors have agreed to allow the corresponding author to serve as the correspondent with the editorial office to review the edited manuscript and proof.
11. When the author(s) discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work, they should promptly notify the journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript. 
12. All authors must know that the submitted manuscripts under review or published with the journal are subject to screening using Plagiarism Prevention Software. Plagiarism is a severe violation of publication ethics. 
13. All authors must ensure that all authors have read the final submission checklist before being submitted to the journal.

Principles of Transparency

1. Peer review process: the journal is a double-blind peer-reviewed electronic and print biannual publication concerned with all aspects of veterinary sciences. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal's peer review procedures, is clearly described on the journal's Web site (http://www.berj.mosuljournals.com/journal/process).
2. Governing Body: IJVS has a solid editorial board whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal's scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal's editors are provided on the journal's Web site (http://www.berj.mosuljournals.com/journal/editorial.board).
3. Contact information: Journal is provided with the contact information for the journal's editorial office (http://www.berj.mosuljournals.com/journal/contact.us).
4. Copyright: The journal clarified the type of copyright under which authors work would be published. Upon acceptance of a manuscript, authors will be asked to complete a "Journal Publishing Agreement".
5. Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct: Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.
6. Web site: A journal's Website (https://www.berj.mosuljournals.com) contains that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.
7. Conflicts of interest: Authors are requested to evident whether impending conflicts do or do not exist while submitting their articles to IJVS through the conflict of the interest disclosure form.
8. Publishing schedule: The periodicity at which a journal publishes is indicated (http://www.berj.mosuljournals.com).
9. Archiving: The journal's plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content is indicated (http://www.berj.mosuljournals.com).

Violation of Publication Ethics

1. Plagiarism: Plagiarism intentionally uses someone else's ideas or other original material as if they are one's own. Copying even one sentence from someone else's manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation, is considered by IJVS Journals as plagiarism. All manuscripts under review or printed with IJVS are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software. Thus, plagiarism is a severe violation of publication ethics. The development of CrossCheck is a service that helps editors verify the originality of papers. CrossCheck is powered by the I thenticate software from iParadigms, known in the academic community as providers of Turnitin. For a searchable list of all journals in the CrossCheck database, please visit www.ithenticate.com/search.
2. Data Fabrication and Falsification: Data fabrication and falsification means the researcher did not carry out the study but made up data or results and had recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.
3. Simultaneous Submission: Simultaneous submission occurs when a manuscript (or substantial sections from a manuscript) is submitted to a journal when it is already under consideration by another journal.
4. Duplicate Publication: Duplicate publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross-referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions.
5. Redundant Publications: Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, most often consequent to the desire to plump academic vitae.
6. Improper Author Contribution or Attribution: All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. Don't forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.
7. Citation Manipulation: Citation Manipulation includes excessive citations in the submitted manuscript that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely to increase sources to a given author's work or articles published in a particular journal. This leads to misrepresenting the importance of the specific position and journal in which it appears and is thus a form of scientific misconduct.
8. Sanctions: If there are documented violations of any of the policies as mentioned above in any journal, regardless of whether or not the violations occurred in a journal, the following sanctions will be applied: (i) Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript, (ii)Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submitted to any journal published by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript, (iii) Prohibition will be imposed for a minimum of 36 months against all of the authors for any new submissions to any journal, either individually or in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript, and (iv) Prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the editorial board of any journal.

Handling Cases of Misconduct

     Once the journal confirms a violation against journal publication ethics, cyber addresses ethical concerns diligently following an issue-specific standard practice as summarized below.

1. The first action of the journal editor is to inform the Editorial Office of IJVS by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner.
2. If the author's explanation is unacceptable and it seems that serious unethical conduct has taken place, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via Editorial Office. After deliberation, the committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently severe to warrant a ban on future submissions. 
3. If the infraction is less severe, the editor, upon the advice of the publication committee, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the author of publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the editor may request the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.
4. Notification will be sent to the corresponding author. Any work by the author responsible for the violation or these persons co-authored under review by the journal will be rejected immediately.
5. The authors are prohibited from serving on the journal editorial board as a Journal review renal. Journal reserves the right to take more action.
6. In extreme cases, notifications will be sent to authors' affiliations, and the authors are prohibited from submitting their work to the journal for five years.
7. In severe fraud cases that result in the retraction of the article, a retraction notice will be published in the journal and linked to the article in the online version. The online version will also be marked "retracted" with the retraction date.