Publication Ethics
The International Journal of
Innovative Research in Medical Science (IJIRMS) is committed to maintaining
high standards of research integrity and responsible scholarly publishing. The
journal expects authors, editors, reviewers, and other contributors to act with
honesty, transparency, fairness, and respect throughout the publication
process.
IJIRMS follows the principles and
guidance of the Committee on
Publication Ethics (COPE) and considers the recommendations of the International Committee of
Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and other recognized standards relevant to
medical research and publishing.
Research Ethics
Research involving human participants,
human data, or human biological material must comply with applicable ethical
and regulatory requirements. Where required, appropriate approval from an
institutional or independent ethics committee must be obtained before the study
begins.
Research involving animals must comply
with relevant institutional, national, and international standards for animal
care and welfare.
Authors should report the relevant
ethical approval information in the manuscript.
Protection of Human Subjects and Animals in Research
When reporting research involving
human participants, authors must confirm that the study was conducted in
accordance with the Declaration
of Helsinki, as revised in 2024, and applicable institutional, national,
and international ethical requirements. Appropriate ethics committee or
Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval must be obtained where required, and
the relevant approval details should be reported in the manuscript.
Research involving animals must comply
with applicable institutional, national, and international standards for animal
care and welfare. Authors should provide details of ethical approval where
applicable and follow the ARRIVE 2.0
guidelines when reporting animal research.
Authors must ensure that research
involving human participants, animals, biological materials, or identifiable
data has been conducted responsibly and in accordance with all applicable
ethical and regulatory requirements. Where required, evidence of ethical
approval may be requested by the journal.
Informed Consent and Privacy
Appropriate informed consent must be
obtained from research participants whenever required by the study design,
applicable laws or regulations, or the relevant ethics committee/Institutional
Review Board (IRB). Where informed consent is waived or not required, authors
must clearly state the basis for the waiver or exemption.
Authors must protect the privacy,
confidentiality, and dignity of patients and research participants.
Identifiable information must not be published unless it is scientifically
necessary and appropriate consent for publication has been obtained.
For case reports, clinical
photographs, videos, genetic information, or any other potentially identifiable
material, authors are responsible for obtaining appropriate consent for
publication. Where consent cannot be obtained, the material must be sufficiently
anonymized or publication should not proceed, unless an applicable
ethics-approved waiver permits its use.
Obligation to Register Clinical Trials
IJIRMS requires the prospective
registration of all applicable clinical trials in a publicly accessible
clinical trial registry at or before the time of first participant consent or
enrollment, in accordance with the current ICMJE Recommendations.
For this policy, a clinical trial is a
research study that prospectively assigns participants to a health-related
intervention, with or without a comparison or control group, to evaluate health
outcomes. This includes interventions involving medicines, devices, surgical
procedures, behavioural treatments, dietary interventions, and other
health-related interventions.
IJIRMS accepts registration in WHO
ICTRP primary registries or ClinicalTrials.gov, provided the registry meets the
applicable ICMJE
requirements. Ethics committee or institutional review board approval does
not replace prospective clinical trial registration.
Authors must provide the registry name
and trial registration number in the manuscript, preferably at the end of the
abstract. Failure to prospectively register an applicable clinical trial may
result in the manuscript being considered ineligible for publication.
Exceptions, where justified, will be considered only in rare circumstances and
must be adequately explained.
Data Sharing and Availability Policy
IJIRMS is committed to promoting
transparency, reproducibility, and responsible sharing of research data.
Authors must provide a Data
Availability Statement with every manuscript, indicating whether the data
supporting the reported findings are available and, where applicable, how and
where they can be accessed.
Where ethically, legally, and
practically possible, authors are encouraged to deposit supporting data,
datasets, protocols, code, and other relevant research materials in a trusted
and appropriate repository and provide a persistent link or DOI.
Where data cannot be publicly shared
because of privacy, confidentiality, ethical, legal, contractual, or other
legitimate restrictions, authors must clearly state the reason and describe the
conditions under which the data may be accessed, where applicable.
For clinical trials, the Data Sharing
Statement must comply with the current ICMJE
Recommendations, including the applicable data-sharing plan in the trial
registration.
Authors remain responsible for
ensuring that shared data are accurate, appropriately documented, ethically
obtained, and do not disclose identifiable participant information.
Authorship and Contributions
Authorship should be based on
substantial intellectual contributions to the work. All listed authors must
approve the final manuscript and accept responsibility for the integrity of the
work.
Individuals who contributed to the
work but do not meet the requirements for authorship should be appropriately
acknowledged.
The journal does not permit guest,
honorary, gift, or ghost authorship.
Conflicts of Interest
Authors, editors, and reviewers must
disclose financial and non-financial relationships that could reasonably be
perceived as influencing the research, review, or editorial decision.
A competing-interest
statement should be included with every manuscript, including a clear
statement when no relevant competing interests exist.
Funding and Sponsor Role
All sources of financial support for
the research and manuscript preparation must be disclosed.
Where applicable, authors should
describe the role of the funding organization in study design, data collection,
analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and the decision to submit
the work for publication.
Authors should retain appropriate
access to the data necessary to verify the reported findings.
Editorial Independence
Editorial decisions are based on the
scientific quality, originality, relevance, methodological rigor, ethical
conduct, and clarity of submitted work. Decisions are not influenced by
commercial interests, financial relationships, institutional affiliations,
nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender, or other unrelated characteristics of
authors.
Editors are expected to manage
conflicts of interest and maintain independence throughout the editorial
process.
Plagiarism and Duplicate Publication
IJIRMS does not accept plagiarism,
self-plagiarism, substantial text recycling, duplicate publication, fabricated
content, or inappropriate reuse of previously published material.
Submitted manuscripts may be screened
for plagiarism or substantial overlap. Depending on the circumstances and
severity, a manuscript may be rejected or further investigation may be
undertaken.
If serious problems are identified
after publication, appropriate post-publication action may be taken.
Research and Publication Misconduct
The journal considers fabrication,
falsification, plagiarism, manipulation of research images or data, duplicate
publication, citation manipulation, peer-review manipulation, authorship
misconduct, undeclared conflicts of interest, and other forms of research or
publication misconduct to be serious matters.
Where concerns arise, the journal may
request clarification or supporting information from authors or relevant
institutions and may take appropriate editorial action in accordance with
established publication-ethics procedures.
Citation Ethics
Authors should cite literature that is
directly relevant to their work and should ensure that references accurately
support the statements for which they are cited.
Authors, editors, and reviewers must
not request or encourage unnecessary citations for the purpose of increasing
citation counts, journal metrics, or author metrics.
Peer Review Ethics
Peer review is conducted
confidentially and objectively. Reviewers should assess manuscripts only within
their area of expertise and should disclose any conflict of interest that could
affect their assessment.
Reviewers must not use unpublished
information obtained during peer review for personal or professional advantage
and must not share confidential manuscript content with unauthorized persons.
Editors and reviewers should not use
generative AI systems to process confidential manuscript material where
confidentiality cannot be adequately protected.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Policy
The journal permits the responsible
use of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI technologies in research
and manuscript preparation. Authors must disclose any substantive use of AI,
including the tool and its purpose. Routine spelling, grammar, and language
correction generally does not require disclosure.
AI tools must not be listed as
authors. Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality,
integrity, appropriate attribution, and plagiarism-free nature of all
manuscript content, including AI-assisted content. AI must not be used to
fabricate, falsify, or manipulate research data, results, images, references,
or other scholarly content.
Editors and reviewers must maintain
manuscript confidentiality and must not upload submitted manuscripts or
confidential peer-review materials to AI systems where confidentiality cannot
be assured. Any permitted AI use in peer review must be disclosed to the
handling editor.
Undeclared or inappropriate AI use may
constitute a breach of publication ethics and may result in appropriate
editorial action.
Manuscripts Submitted by Editors or Editorial Board Members
Editors and Editorial Board members
may submit manuscripts to IJIRMS. Such submissions are handled independently to
avoid conflicts of interest.
The submitting editor or board member
will not participate in the editorial decision, reviewer selection, or
management of their own manuscript. The manuscript is evaluated through the
journal's normal editorial and peer-review procedures.
Confidentiality
Information relating to submitted
manuscripts, editorial correspondence, peer-review reports, and unpublished
research is treated as confidential.
Editors, reviewers, and other
individuals involved in the publication process must not disclose or use
confidential information except as required for legitimate editorial, ethical,
or legal purposes.
Ethical Oversight
Where a manuscript raises significant
ethical or integrity concerns, IJIRMS may request additional documentation or
clarification from the authors, their institution, ethics committee, funding
body, or other appropriate authority.
The journal reserves the right to
decline or withdraw consideration of work that does not meet applicable ethical
and publication standards.
The Process for Handling Cases Requiring Corrections, Retractions, and Editorial Expressions of Concern
IJIRMS follows the current
recommendations of the International
Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and relevant guidance from the
Committee on Publication
Ethics (COPE).
We aim to ensure the integrity of the
academic record of all published or potential publications. Whenever it is
recognized that a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement, or distorted
report has been published, it must be corrected promptly and with due
prominence. If, after an appropriate investigation, an item proves to be
fraudulent, it should be retracted. The retraction should be clearly
identifiable to readers and indexing systems.
Corrections
Errors in published papers may be
identified in the form of a corrigendum or erratum when the Editor-in-Chief
considers it appropriate to inform the journal readership about a previous
error and makes a correction to the error in the published article. The
corrigendum or erratum will appear as a new article in the journal, and will
cite the original published article.
Retractions
Retractions are considered and
published when there are severe errors in an article that invalidate the
conclusions. Retractions are also made in cases where there is evidence of
publication malpractice, such as plagiarism, duplicate publication, or unethical
research.
According to industry best practice and in accordance with COPE guidelines, IJIRMS implements the following procedure if a retraction is confirmed:
- A retraction note titled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the authors and/or the editor is published in a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list.
- In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article.
- The online article is preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.
- The original article is retained unchanged save for a watermark on the HTML and PDF indicating on each page that it has been “retracted.”
Editorial expressions of concern
Where substantial doubt arises as to
the honesty or integrity of a submitted or published article, journal editors
may consider issuing an expression of concern. However, expressions of concern
should only be issued if an investigation into the problems relating to the
article has proven inconclusive, and if there remain strong indicators that the
concerns are valid. Under some rare
cases, an editorial expression of concern may also be issued when an
investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a
considerable time.
The expression of concern will be
linked back to the published article it relates to.