Manuscript publication in a peer-reviewed journal is an important element in developing a credible and respected body of knowledge. Publications provide evidence for the significance of research conducted by authors and the institutions that support them. Therefore, it is important to put in place standards of expected ethical behaviour by all parties involved in the act of publishing (the author, journal editors, peer reviewers and publisher). These standard practices spell out the minimum standards expected from each party to ensure a healthy and sustaining professional relationship. JIEPH guidelines have been adapted from standard-setting bodies, such as the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) and the Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE) [1-3].
Editorial freedom is defined by the World Association of Medical Editors as editors-in-chief having full authority over the entire editorial content of their journal and the timing of publication of that content. Editorial decisions made by JIEPH editors will be based entirely on quality, scientific validity and relevance of the work to the journal’s audience rather than driven by commercial or any other considerations. The Editor-in-chief holds full authority over any financial decisions, including sponsored content like supplements.
Editors will be liable to protect the confidentiality of authors and peer reviewers (including names and comments) as outlined in ICMJE.
JIEPH equips scholars, researchers, and reviewers, especially those in the public health space with knowledge, skills and advice on publication ethics standards through our quarterly webinars.
Conflicts of interest comprise those which may not be fully apparent but which may influence the judgment of the author, reviewers, and editors [3] . The potential for conflict of interest and bias exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as research validity) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). Perceptions of conflict of interest are as important as actual conflicts of interest. Financial relationships are the most easily identifiable, the ones most often judged to represent potential conflicts of interest and thus the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and science itself. Editors are encouraged to notify the journal when a work they coauthored is submitted to the journal. The editor-in-chief or his/her designee will ensure that such an editor-author is not involved in the processing or deciding on the manuscript that they coauthored. Editors are also not allowed to handle manuscripts in which their family members or people with which they have an interest have authored. In addition, editorial staff are forbidden to use information acquired through their work for personal gain.
The editor is independently responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The Editor is responsible for investigating and addressing ethical concerns, such as plagiarism, data fabrication, or duplicate submissions. This includes retracting or correcting published content if errors or misconduct are discovered. When misconducts are identified or communicated, it is the responsibility of the editors to ensure that they are investigated following the journal processes and decision is reached.
JIEPH uses the double-blind peer review model thus editors have the responsibility to ensure that the review process is unbiased and delivered in a timely manner. Research articles must be reviewed by at least two external independent reviewers, and where discordance arises, additional reviewers are invited to share their views on the paper. Editors shall identify and invite reviewers with the right expertise in the relevant field while taking into consideration the need for inclusive and diverse representation. Editors shall identify any potential bias by reviewing all disclosures of potential conflicts of interest and suggestions of self-citations by reviewers.
JIEPH editors evaluate submissions based solely on their scientific and scholarly soundness without regard to other considerations, including likely potential impact. The editor shall consider the expertise and inclusive and diverse representation when nominating potential editorial board members. The editorial policies of the journal should encourage transparency and complete, honest reporting, and the editor should ensure that peer reviewers and authors have a clear understanding of what is expected of them. The editor shall use an electronic journal management submission system for all journal communications.
The editor must not manipulate the journal’s ranking by inflating any journal metric through any unethical practices. Editors shall not engage in any practices such as excessive self-citation, coercing authors to cite papers from the same journal unnecessarily or publishing a disproportionate number of review articles solely to boost citation counts.
It is the responsibility of the editor to safeguard all material submitted to the journal and all communications with reviewers unless otherwise agreed upon with the relevant authors and reviewers. The editors will under no circumstance use the information in submitted manuscripts for personal goals. Editors will make it clear to reviewers that manuscripts, associated material, and the information they review are kept confidential. Reviewers must not retain the manuscript for their personal use and should destroy paper copies of manuscripts and delete electronic copies after submitting their reviews.
Any potential editorial conflicts of interest should be declared in writing prior to the appointment of the editor and then updated if and when new conflicts arise. JIEPH will take extra precautions and when evaluating manuscripts submitted by individuals involved in editorial decisions. The COPE guidelines will be used as a benchmark when evaluating articles in which editors are stated as co-authors. To ensure compliance with the COPE guidelines JIEPH will (i) put in place policies that outline the process for handling submissions by editors in the journal, (ii) train the journal staff to manage editor-authored submissions ethically and transparently and (iii) periodically review how submissions by editors are handled to maintain trust and accountability.
The editor has the responsibility to protect the integrity of the published record by reviewing and assessing reported or suspected misconduct in conjunction with the journal guidelines. This will include communicating with the author of the article and taking into account the complaints or claims. It will also involve further communications with any relevant institutions and research bodies concerned in the article or maybe help or be affected by such complaints/misconduct. When there is evidence of misconduct, the editor should coordinate with the editorial team to arrange the prompt publication of a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other correction to the record as may become relevant in accordance with the journal policy.
Reviewers must treat all manuscripts received for review as confidential documents. These materials and their content must not be shared with anyone. The reviewers must also not directly contact the authors without permission from the editor. JIEPH editors encourage discussion with colleagues or co-reviewing exercises, but reviewers should first discuss this with the editor to ensure that confidentiality is observed and that participants receive suitable credit. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. JIEPH does not currently allow the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the peer review process. Reviewers should not upload authors’ work to such platforms as we strive to maintain the confidentiality of the authors’ intellectual rights. If there are changes to these, they will be updated in subsequent versions of the policy.
Before the peer review process, JIEPH editors pass all submissions through the plagiarism check. In addition, reviewers are encouraged to be alert to potential ethical issues in all manuscripts shared for review. Any identified potential ethical issues should be brought to the attention of the editor. These could include overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which the reviewer has personal knowledge or any observation, derivation, or argument that had been previously reported without relevant supporting citations. Any potential breach of the ethical handling of humans or animals participating in the research should also be communicated.
Reviewers should be aware of and report any potential bias they may have when reviewing any assigned manuscript. Reviewers should consult the editor before reviewing any manuscript where they is a potential conflict of interest. The principles of objectivity, civility and respect should always be upheld while reviewing manuscripts. Comments should always be clear and constructive and aim at improving the paper with supporting arguments and references where possible.
Peer review is an important element of scholarly publishing. Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author and may also assist the author in improving their manuscript. Reviewers need to understand the journal’s scope to ensure that their evaluations align with the requirements of the journal. Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and decline to participate in the review process.
It is the responsibility of authors to present an accurate account of the work they performed and an objective presentation of its significance. The underlying data should be represented accurately in their manuscripts. All manuscripts should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly presenting inaccurate or fabricated statements constitutes unethical behaviour and is unacceptable. Authors are encouraged to use the relevant reporting guideline for their type of research when drafting their manuscripts, as detailed in Equator Network (https://www.equator-network.org/) to ensure complete and detailed reporting.
Authors may be asked to provide the research data supporting their paper as part of the editorial review and progress towards open science. Authors are encouraged to host their data in a publicly available repository and provide a permanent DOI or URL in their work or host their data together with their manuscript as a supplementary file. Where these are not practicable, authors should be prepared to provide public access to such data and should be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable number of years after publication.
TThe authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted and permission has been obtained where necessary. Proper acknowledgement of the work of others must always be given. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical behaviour and is unacceptable. JIEPH runs a plagiarism check on all submissions. All manuscripts with a similarity index of 20% or more are investigated, which could lead to outright rejection of the paper without peer review.
An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal of primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical behaviour and is unacceptable. In summary, an author should not submit for consideration in another journal a previously published paper. Such papers when discovered will be rejected, and if already published will be retracted.
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study, drafting and revising to add intellectual content and are able to take public responsibility for all its content. All those who have made substantial contributions according to the ICMJE’s condition for authorship should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the paper (e.g. language editing), they should be recognised in the acknowledgements section. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the manuscript and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Only in exceptional circumstances will the editor consider (at their discretion) the addition, deletion or rearrangement of authors after the manuscript has been submitted, and the authors must clearly flag any such request to the Editor. All authors must agree with any such addition, removal or rearrangement immediately after submission. Such changes are not allowed after the manuscript has been accepted for publication. Authors take collective responsibility for the work. Each individual author is accountable for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved, and authors should ensure that they comply with the policies
JIEPH does not approve the use of generative AI in the development of the manuscript and peer review process. Where it is used in aspects of manuscript development, its role should be clearly stated and acknowledged. JIEPH’s stand on the use of generative AI is progressive and will be updated as more information is available.
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, the authors should promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper if deemed necessary by the editor. If the editor learns from a third party that a published work contains an error, the author must cooperate with the editor upon notification to correct or retract the publication, including providing evidence to the editor where requested.
JIEPH respects the decisions taken by its authors as to how they choose to designate territories and identify their affiliations in their published content. Authors should use either the full, standard title of their institution or the standard abbreviation of the institutional name so that the institutional name can be independently verified for research integrity purposes.
If the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the author must clearly identify these in the manuscript. If the work involves the use of animal or human subjects, the author should ensure that the manuscript contains a statement that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committee(s) have approved them. Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that written informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed. For human subjects, the author should ensure that the work described has been carried out in accordance with The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans. Appropriate consents, permissions and releases must be obtained where an author wishes to include case details or other personal information or images of patients and any other individuals in JIEPH publication. Written consents must be retained by the author and copies of the consents or evidence that such consents have been obtained must be provided to JIEPH on request. In cases of minor, depending on applicable local and international laws, appropriate accent and consent from a legal guardian should be obtained. All animal experiments should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines and should be carried out in accordance with relevant local and international laws and associated guidelines as applicable.
It is not acceptable to enhance, obscure, move, remove, or introduce a specific feature within an image. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or colour balance are acceptable if and as long as they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original. Manipulating images for improved clarity is accepted, but manipulation for other purposes could be seen as scientific ethical abuse and will be dealt with accordingly.
JIEPH supports clinical trial transparency. Authors are expected to conform to the industry’s best standards in clinical trial registration and presentation, for example, the CONSORT guidelines
