Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

Objectivity and Independence

Editor-in-chief, editors, associate editors, and referees conduct the evaluation process of the manuscript sent to the journal objectively and in coordination within the framework of ethical principles. Editorial decisions are independent, and internal or external factors cannot influence these decisions. In accordance with the principle of impartiality, academics working in our institution are not deemed eligible to work as a section editor in the International Journal of Current Medical and Biological Sciences, in order not to be effective in the evaluation of articles due to conflict of interest.

Privacy

The content of the articles and the personal information of the authors such as name, e-mail address, and telephone numbers that are sent the International Journal of Current Medical and Biological Sciences is used only for the scientific purposes of the journal and not for other purposes, and cannot be shared with third parties. Article evaluation processes are also carried out confidentially.

Authors Rights

The authors of the manuscripts sent to International Journal of Current Medical and Biological Sciences must have contributed significantly to the design, execution or interpretation of the study. For instance, in view of the research and publication ethics as well as authors rights, it is not acceptable to include those as authors who do not actively contribute to the research but just only help in writing or data collection processes, which may not require any scientific knowledge. All the authors in a publication should be in agreement of the names and the orders of the authors in the manuscript.

The competence of the authors to the subject of the study is evaluated by the editor within the framework of deontological rules and the professional fields of each author.

The corresponding author of the article should declare the contributions of the authors to the work under the title of “Author contributions”. The corresponding author is primarily responsible for the problems that may arise in this regard. In multidisciplinary studies, 2 authors who are from different disciplines can be “equivalent first name authors” and up to most 3 authors who are also from different disciplines can be “equivalent second name authors”.

Originality of Research Findings

The authors should declare that the article they presented contained the original research results, that the study data were analyzed correctly, and that they were prepared for publication using adequate and appropriate references, in the “cover letter” section of the on-line system at the submission stage.

Similarity

Articles submitted to the journal are subjected to similarity analysis using appropriate software at the beginning and at every required stage. If unethical similarities are detected regardless of the rate of similarity, this situation is reported to the authors and corrections are requested or articles containing excessive similarities are rejected at the first evaluation stage without being evaluated.

Plagiarism/Self-Plagiarism, Duplicate Publication

International Journal of Current Medical and Biological Sciences applies publication ethics and verifies the originality of content submitted before publication and checks all submitted manuscripts for plagiarism/self-plagiarism, similarity, and duplication.  Before submitting manuscripts to our journal, it is suggested to check the similarity status/ratio in your manuscript with appropriate plagiarism software programs (iThenticate, Turnitin, etc.). In this respect, the articles/reviews submitted to our journal are subject to preliminary evaluation; manuscripts with a similarity ratio below 30% (including material and method), which is determined with the software’s, will be considered acceptable by our Editorial Board. Articles/reviews with more than the specified ratio (30% (including material and method) are returned to the author(s). Authors do not have the right to use entire paragraphs from their previous publications in a new submission. These actions are also considered plagiarism. In any case, the manuscript should be original in terms of scientific contents and writing. In the event of alleged or suspected research misconduct, the Editorial Board will follow and act in accordance with “COPE Guidelines”.

Conflicts of Interest

The editor-in-chief pays attention to whether there is a conflict of interest or union of interest between editors, reviewers and author(s) for an objective and unbiased evaluation of the article. In addition, the authors should disclose any financial interests or links or any conditions that may raise the bias issue in research and article under the above heading.

Withdrawal of a Submission

In case of if the authors detect a significant error or deficiency in their article under review or if this error is reported to them by the editor/subject editor/referees they can contact immediately to the editor-in-chief and ask the request to withdraw the article by stating the reason. The decision on this issue is up to the editorial board.

Retraction

If any ethical problem is detected about the article that cannot be compensated and cannot be eliminated with erratum after the article is published, the editor-in-chief and associate editors prepare a justification about the article and apply the retraction procedure to the article. The text file on the web page of a retracted article is blocked and the reason for retraction is added to the system as a file, ensuring that it is constantly in the archive.

Responsibilities of the Publisher, Editors and Associate Editors

The publisher contributes to the execution of the journal’s routine processes such as printing, archiving, and mailing, in line with requests from the editor.

The publisher undertakes to carry out an independent and fair decision-making mechanism for its editors and assistants in the article evaluation process and decisions.

The publisher undertakes to carry out an independent and fair decision-making mechanism for its editors and associate editors in the article evaluation process and decisions.

Editor-in-chief/editors/associate editors International Journal of Current Medical and Biological Sciences evaluate the articles submitted to the journal regardless of their race, gender, religious belief, ethnicity, citizenship or political views. In addition, it undertakes not to give any information about the article except for the authors, subject editors and referees.

International Journal of Current Medical and Biological Sciences follows internationally accepted principles and criteria and takes the necessary decisions to apply in the journal.

Editor-in-chief/editors/associate editors conduct the evaluation and decision process in the journal in coordination within the principles of confidentiality and have independent decision-making authority and responsibility without being affected by any internal or external factors.

Editor-in-chief/editors/associate editors make and implement all kinds of planning for the development of the journal and its international recognition. They also follow national and international meetings or events on the development of journals and article evaluation, and ensures that the journal is represented on these platforms.

The editor-in-chief/editors/associate editors make every effort to ensure that the journal’s subject editors and referee pool have international qualifications. Likewise, it makes the necessary attempts to strengthen the author’s profile. Editor-in-chief/editors/associate editors make plans to improve the quality of the articles published in the journal and carry out the necessary process.

Editor-in-chief/editors/associate editors regularly conduct and control the initial evaluation, preliminary evaluation, peer review and acceptance-rejection decisions of articles submitted to the journal. While carrying out these procedures, features such as the suitability of the study for the aims and scope of the journal, its originality, the up-to-date and reliability of the scientific methods used, and the potential it will contribute to the development of the journal as well as its benefit to science/practice are taken into consideration.

Editor-in-chief/editors/associate editors systematically review, inspect and make decisions about the articles submitted to the journal in terms of features such as author rights, conflict of interest, observance and protection of animal rights, and compliance with research and publication ethics.

The editor-in-chief conducts the evaluation/revision process between the authors and subject editors and referees, and ensures that it is completed within the prescribed time.

Responsibilities of Subject Editors

Subject editors do reviews and evaluations in accordance with the main publication goals and policies of the journal and in line with the criteria that will contribute to the development of the journal. Author information is kept confidential in articles sent to the subject editor for preliminary evaluation by the editor. 

Subject editors thoroughly examine the sections of the introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion and conclusion, in terms of journal publication policies, scope, originality and research ethics. Subject editor submits its decision (rejection, revision or peer-review) after evaluation to the chief editor in a reasoned report.

Subject editor may request additional information and documents related to the study from the authors, when necessary. In multidisciplinary studies, the article can be submitted for the evaluation of multiple subject editors.

Responsibilities of Referees

Double-blinded peer-review procedure is applied in International Journal of Current Medical and Biological Sciences in order to evaluate the articles submitted to the journal in accordance with the principle of impartiality and in objective criteria; that is referees and writers do not know about each other. The referees submit their opinions and reports to the editor in-chief to ensure the control and suitability of a submitted article, its scientific content, scientific consistency and compliance with the principles of the journal. When a referee makes a decision “reject” about an article, he/she prepares the reasons for the decision in accordance with the scientific norms and presents it to the editor.

The referee(s) also gives the authors the opportunity to improve the content of the article. Accordingly, the revisions requested from the authors should be of a quality that explains/questions specific issues rather than general statements.

Referees appointed for the evaluation of the articles agree that the articles are confidential documents and will not share any information about these documents with third parties, except for the editors participating in the evaluation.

Referees should place their criticism on scientific infrastructure and write their explanations based on scientific evidence. All comments made by the referees to improve the articles should be clear and direct, and should be written away from disturbing the feelings of the author. Insulting and derogatory statements should be avoided.

If a referee has an interest relationship with the author(s) on one or more issues, he/she must report the situation to the editor and ask his/her to withdraw from the referee position. The same is also applicable when the authors illegally obtain information about the referees of the article and try to influence them.

The editor-in-chief can share the comments and reports from the referees with the editors/associate editors and the relevant subject editor, as necessary, to ensure that the decision on the article is optimal.

If necessary, the editor may share the critical decision and its grounds that a referee has sent about the article with the other referee(s) and present them to their attention.

Referee(s) may request revision many times for the article they evaluated.

The content of the referee reports is checked and evaluated by editor-in-chief/editors/associate editors. The final decision belongs to the editorial.

Responsibilities of Author(s)

It is not tolerable for the author (s) to send an article, which has been already sent to another journal, to International Journal of Current Medical and Biological Sciences within the scope of “which accepts” or “which publishes first” approach. If this is detected, the article is rejected at any stage of the evaluation. As a possible result of these actions, in the process following the previous acceptance of the article sent to another journal, the withdrawal request with this excuse that the authors submit for this article, the evaluation process of which is going on in our journal, is evaluated by the editors and associate editors of the journal and disciplinary action on the grounds of ethical violations about those responsible is started. This unethical action is also informed to the journal editor (if known) who accepted the article.

It is essential that the articles to be sent to International Journal of Current Medical and Biological Sciences include studies that have up-to date, original and important clinical/practical results and prepared in accordance with the journal’s writing rules.

Authors should choose the references they use during the writing of the article in accordance with the ethical principles and cite them according to the rules. 

The authors are obliged to revise the article in line with the issues conveyed to them during the initial evaluation, preliminary evaluation and peer-review phases of the article and to explain the changes they made/did not make sequentially in the “response to editor” and “response to reviewer comments” sections.

If information, documents or data regarding to the study are requested during the evaluation process, the corresponding author is obliged to submit them to the editorial.

Authors should know and take into account the issues listed in the “General Ethical Principles” section regarding scientific research and authors.

The authors do not have the right to simultaneously submit multiple articles International Journal of Current Medical and Biological Sciences. It is more appropriate to submit them with acceptable time intervals for the journal’s policy.

Ethical Violation Notifications
Readers can inform us by sending an e-mail to info@ijcmbs.com if they notice any errors, inaccuracies, plagiarism or duplicate articles in published articles. Since we believe that this situation will provide an opportunity for the development of the journal, their notifications will be welcomed and a quick and constructive response will be provided.