Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement (PEMS)

The JBSMFS journal is committed to maintaining the highest level of integrity in the content published. JBSMFS journal follows the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers.

https://ejournals.vdu.lt/public/SOTER_Publication_Ethics.pdf

JBSMFS policies regarding the treatment of human participants follow those of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Ethical oversight includes policy regarding consent to publication, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using humans, handling of confidential data, and ethical business/marketing practices.  Editors will take responsive measures when ethical concerns are raised with regard to a submitted manuscript or published paper. Journal has a Conflict of Interest policy in place and complies with international, national and/or institutional standards on research involving Human Participants and/or Animals and Informed Consent. To ensure that the ethical standards of the journal are achieved, JBSMFS editors provide ethical oversight for the publication process. We focus on the СОРE definition, of Ethical oversight, namely “Ethical oversight should include, but is not limited to, policies on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, handling confidential data and of business/marketing practices”. Based on this definition, the editorial staff of the journal works under the issue of observing the ethical principles.

If the work involves the use of 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. The manuscript should be in line with the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals and aim for the inclusion of representative human populations (sex, age and ethnicity) as per those recommendations. Authors of any manuscript containing a study or evaluation involving human participants must seek ethical review and provide details  of this review in the manuscript including  the name of the approving committee (e.g., Institutional Review Board, Research Ethics Board) and the name of the institution at which approval was granted.

Authors who do not have access to a formal ethical approval process must provide the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed. If the study is judged exempt from review, a statement from the committee should be required. Informed consent by participants should always be sought. If not possible, an institutional review board must decide if this is ethically acceptable. It is the responsibility of the author(s) to ensure that studies have been conducted in accordance with the latest version of the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.

Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed. The journal will be bound to consider the appeals from the Ethics and Oversight Committee for professional and scientific activity concerning the non-observance of the ethical principles by our authors. We are also ready to consider other appeals in case they are not anonymous and substantiated. For research involving human subjects, authors should explain how informed consent was obtained from all participants.  Informed consent should be obtained if there is any reasonable possibility that complete anonymity cannot be maintained. The privacy of human subjects should never be violated without prior informed consent. Identifying information should be excluded from the study data unless the information is essential for the study purposes and the subject (or their legal representative has given prior written informed consent. However, subject information should never be falsified or modified. When informed consent has been given by the subjects, it should be included in the article.

Experimental research involving animalson should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. The Basel Declaration outlines fundamental principles to adhere to when conducting research in animals and the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) has also published ethical guidelines. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should  be  detailed  (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption and the reasons for the exemption).

Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. In rare cases, the Editor may contact the ethics committee for further information.

Conflicts of interest

All submitted manuscripts must include a ‘conflicts interests’ section at the end of the manuscript listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). Where authors have no competing interests, the statement should read “The author(s) declare(s) that they have no competing interests”. The Editor may ask for further information relating to competing interests. Conflicts of interest may be financial or non-financial. A competing interest exists when the authors’ interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by, or may be perceived to be influenced by, their personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations. Authors should disclose any financial competing interests but also any non-financial competing interests that may cause them embarrassment if they were to become public after the publication of the manuscript. Authors of any manuscript must provide details Conflicts of interest.

• defining, disclosing, and handling conflicts of interest for authors, reviewers, editors, staff, and journal publisher/owner                                                                                                                                                                                       • defining what needs to be disclosed by all parties, including type of competing interest, extent, and time frame                                                                                                                                                                      • how and when such information is collected

Authors should—at the earliest stage possible (generally by submitting a disclosure form at the time of submission and including a statement in the manuscript)—disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript.

Editorial Board Members and Editors

Editorial Board Members and Editors are required to declare any competing interests and may be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists. In addition, they should exclude themselves from handling manuscripts in cases where there is a competing interest. This may include – but is not limited to – having previously published with one or more of the authors, and sharing the same institution as one or more of the authors.Where an Editor or Editorial Board Member is on the author list they must declare this in the competing interests section on the submitted manuscript. If they are an author or have any other competing interest regarding a specific manuscript, another Editor or member of the Editorial Board will be assigned to assume responsibility for overseeing peer review.                                    These submissions are subject to the exact same review process as any other manuscript.                                              Editorial Board Members are welcome to submit papers to the journal. These submissions are not given any priority over other manuscripts, and Editorial Board Member status has no bearing on editorial consideration.grants or other funding

Consent to participate                                                                                                                                        For all research involving human participants, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) Documentary evidence of consent must be supplied if requested.

Consent for publication

For all manuscripts that include details, images, or videos relating to an individual person, written informed consent for the publication of these details must be obtained from that person (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 18). The manuscript must include a statement that written informed consent for publication was obtained. In cases where images are entirely unidentifiable and there are no details on individuals reported within the manuscript, consent for publication of images may not be required. The final decision on whether consent to publish is required lies with the Editor.

Availability of data and materials

All authors must include an “Availability of Data and Materials” section in their manuscript detailing where the data supporting their findings can be found. If your data cannot be shared openly, please include a statement to this effect, and provide the reason as to why the data cannot be shared openly. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, in machine-readable format (such as spreadsheets rather than PDFs) whenever possible. 

Authorship & contributorship

Authorship provides credit for a researcher’s contributions to a study and carries accountability. Authors are expected to fulfil the criteria below (adapted from McNutt et al.,Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Feb 2018, 201715374; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1715374115; licensed under CC BY 4.0):

The JBSMFS requires that all those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors.

These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work.

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work;

• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;

• Final approval of the version to be published;

• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Each author to have approved the author’s contribution to the study.

The individuals who conduct the work are responsible for identifying who meets these criteria and ideally should do so when planning the work, making modifications as appropriate as the work progresses. The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements, are properly completed.

Any changes to the author list after submission, such as a change in the order of the authors or the deletion or addition of authors, must be approved by every author and a change of authorship form must be completed. Changes of authorship by adding or deleting authors, and/or changes in Corresponding Author, and/or changes in the sequence of authors are not permitted after acceptance of a manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Corresponding authors are responsible for ensuring that all listed authors have approved the manuscript before submission, including the names and order of authors, and that all authors receive the submission and all substantive correspondence with editors, as well as the full reviews, verifying that all data, figures, materials (including reagents), and code, even those developed or provided by other authors, comply with the transparency and reproducibility standards of both the field and journal.

Any potential authorship disputes brought to the editors’ attention will be handled in line with COPE guidelines.

Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an ‘Acknowledgements’ section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help or writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support.

Journal policies on data sharing and reproducibility

JBSMFS is committed to a more open research landscape, facilitating faster and more effective research discovery by enabling reproducibility and verification of data, methodology and reporting standards. We encourage authors of articles published in our journals to share their research data including, but not limited to: raw data, processed data, software, algorithms, protocols, methods, materials. Authors may provide a data availability statement, including a link to the repository they have used, in order that this statement can be published in their paper. Shared data should be cited.” All accepted manuscripts may elect to publish a data availability statement to confirm the presence or absence of shared data. If you have shared data, this statement will describe how the data can be accessed, and include a persistent identifier (e.g., a DOI for the data, or an accession number) from the repository where you shared the data. JBSMFS is adhering to a data sharing policy and makes data available to secondary users, including by providing scientific content online open access, e.g. as supplementary files to a journal article. JBSMFS is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.

Journal’s policy on intellectual property

Authors certify that their submitted manuscript(and any supporting items) are their own intellectual property and the copyright has not been transferred to others.

Authors certify that the manuscript contains no plagiarism, no fabrication, no falsification, no manipulated citations, and that the manuscript conforms to JSS authorship policies. Authors certify that for any copyrighted tables, figures, data, text, etc. permission has been obtained from the copyright holders to reproduce.

Journal’s options for post-publication discussions and corrections

The journal allows debates to be published on its website through letters to the editor and has mechanism for correcting, revising or retracting articles after publication.