Publication ethics

Conflict of interest

All participants in the peer-review and publication process—not only authors but also peer reviewers, editors, and editorial board members of journals—must consider their conflicts of interest when fulfilling their roles in the process of article review and publication and must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest.

A conflict of interest exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Perceptions of conflict of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest.

All manuscripts must acknowledge any possible conflict of interest related to the manuscript. If there is no conflict of interest in relation to the work performed or to the preparation of the manuscript, the authors should state that there are no conflict of interest in relation to the manuscript.  All the authors should also acknowledge any kind of material support, financial support or funding grants related to the work described in the manuscript.

Reviewers will be asked at the time they are asked to critique a manuscript if they have conflicts of interest that could complicate their review. Reviewers must disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that could bias their opinions of the manuscript, and should recuse themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if the potential for bias exists. Reviewers must not use knowledge of the work they’re reviewing before its publication to further their own interests.

Editors and Journal Staff Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts will recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that pose potential conflicts related to articles under consideration. Editorial staff will not use information gained through working with manuscripts for private gain.

In cases where the Managing Editor has any conflict of interest in connection with a manuscript, the entire work related to the review process of that manuscript will be undertaken by the Editor in Chief. In cases where the Editor in Chief has any conflict of interest in relation to a manuscript, the entire work related to the review process of that manuscript will be undertaken by the Managing Editor. In cases where both the Managing Editor and the Editor in Chief have any conflict of interest in relation to a manuscript, the entire work related to the review process of that manuscript will be undertaken by another member of the editorial board.

Submissions from members of the editorial board, editors and employees of the journal will be handled by the Editor in Chief, who will allocate the manuscripts for review to independent and blinded reviewers. Submissions from members of the owner institution will be assigned for review to members of the editorial board or external reviewers, taking into consideration the necessity to avoid any potential conflict of interest in the process of reviewer allocation.

Editorial manuscripts sent by members of the editorial board, following an invitation by the Editor in Chief, will undergo a review process in the editorial office.

Confidentiality

Editors of JIM will not share information regarding the manuscripts submitted to JIM to any other than the authors and the reviewers.At the time of reviewer allocation, reviewers will be instructed to keep the manuscripts and associated material strictly confidential. Reviewers should not publicly discuss author`s work and must not retain any manuscript for their personal use

In case of manuscript rejection, the full content of the manuscript will be deleted from the editorial content of the Journal. In

In case of manuscript acceptance and publication, the Journal will keep copied of all the manuscript-related materials for at least three years.

The identity of the reviewers will not be revealed to authors, under no circumstances.

Human and animal rights

The authors should make sure that all the experiments on humans or animals are in accordance with the guiding principles described in the Declaration of Helsinki. Animal experiments should comply with the institutional and national guidelines or regulations for laboratory animals. Informed consent should be obtained from  all the subjects participating in any experiment or clinical study and all the clinical studies should obtain the approval from the ethics committee of the institutions where the study is carried out, prior to initiation of experiments or studies.

When reporting research involving human data, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed have been assessed by the responsible review committee (institutional and national), or if no formal ethics committee is available, were in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration as revised in 2013 (www.wma.net/en/30publica tions/10policies/b3/index.html). If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study.

When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare (http://veteditors.org/ethicsconsensusguidelines.html)

Protection of research participants

In order to respect the patient`s right to privacy, no information related to patients` identification data, such as names, images or hospital identification codes should be included in the manuscript, unless there is a clear written approval obtained from the patient for this. This signed approval should be sent to the editorial office along with the manuscript.

Identifying information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that an identifiable patient be shown the manuscript to be published. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the published article.

Scientific misconduct

Scientific misconduct includes but is not necessarily limited to data fabrication; data falsification including deceptive manipulation of images; and plagiarism. All manuscript submitted to JCE will be first subject to a plagiarism check, that will be performed prior to referring the manuscript for review, in order to identity any possible fraud or scientific misconduct. The journal will use highly specialized anti-plagiarism soft-wares and if any suspicion of scientific misconduct is identified, the standard procedure recommended by COPE (Committee on publication ethics) will be followed.

 Clinical trials

Authors of manuscripts related to clinical trials should register the clinical trial in the official clinical trial related public registries prior to submission to JCE, following the rules stated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Information related to registration of clinical trials can be found at ClinicalTrials.gov.  In case of clinical trials, the trial registration number should be mentioned at the end of the abstract. Whenever a trial registration number is available, the authors should list this number the first time they use the trial acronym.