Publication ethics
Checklist
- Unpublished and No Simultaneous Submission: When submitted to the IJPHE, the articles must be original, unpublished, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submitting a manuscript simultaneously to multiple scientific journals is a simultaneous submission. At the time of manuscript submission, we require a declaration from the authors that the manuscript is original and that it is not already being considered for publication by another scientific journal at the time of manuscript submission.
- Conflict of Interest: The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) states in its Guidelines on Good Publication Practice (2003) that: Conflicts of interest arise when authors, reviewers, or editors have interests that are not fully apparent and may influence their judgments on what is published. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived.’The IJPHE requires all contributors (authors) to disclose any personal interest or relationship that can be affected by the publication of the submitted manuscript.
- Data Accuracy: Authors' data should be truthful, accurate, and free from falsification and fabrication. Falsification is when study findings (data) are altered or left out to support statements, theories, other facts, etc. Manipulating research tools, materials, or procedures is one type of falsification. Fabrication is the creation and addition of data/information that were never obtained through data collection or experimentation.
- Plagiarism: Authors should ensure that their writing is entirely original, and if they have borrowed ideas or passages from other people's works or their own previously published papers, they should ensure that they have appropriately cited or quoted those passages. Plagiarism can take many forms, such as misrepresenting another article as the author's own, copying or summarising significant portions of another paper without acknowledging other people's study findings. All forms of plagiarism are prohibited and represent unethical publishing behaviour. Therefore, before publishing, every paper is checked for plagiarism.
- Ethics of Authorship: Only individuals who significantly contributed to the conception, design, implementation, or interpretation of the reported study should be given the privilege of authorship. Co-authors should be named for everyone who contributed significantly. Other people who have contributed to the research endeavour in meaningful ways should be recognised or identified as contributors when applicable. The corresponding author ensures that the manuscript has all necessary co-authors, none of whom should be, and that all co-authors have seen, approved, and agreed to the paper's submission for publication.
- Confidentiality:The IJPHE maintains the confidentiality of all information related to a submitted article and does not make any comments or make manuscripts public while they are being reviewed, accepted, or rejected. Before an article is published, the editors and reviewers are not permitted to discuss or divulge the submitted research's data. They are not authorised to enhance their interests by using the data, information and knowledge from unpublished papers. However, they are free to discuss the data once the article is published. The reviewers' identity, comments and feedback will be confidential.
- Third party copyright permissions: Before article submission, the authors must ensure they applied for and received written permission to use any material that a third party has created in their manuscript.
