As a globally active open access publisher, we strive to promote the best practice in the academic arena and maintain integrity in all of our publishing activities. We follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Cope of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors issued by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
All of our publishing activities are guided by the following core ethical values:
· Authorship and contributorship: All authors and co-authors must meet criteria for authorship and ensure appropriate credit is given in their manuscript. Authors are encouraged to make a clear statement about contributions to their work.
· Originality: Authors must guarantee the submitted manuscript was originally written by them. The work must not have been published previously nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere. If the work and/or words of others are included, they must be appropriately cited or quoted.
· Data access and citation: Authors may be requested to provide the raw data relevant to the paper for editorial review. They should also be prepared to provide public access to such data. Data must be cited in the same way as article, book, and web citations and authors are required to include data citations as part of their reference list.
· Acknowledgement of sources: The authors should properly acknowledge any work in the manuscript that has been contributed by others.
· Declaration and conflicts of interest: All submissions must include disclosure of all relationships that could be viewed as presenting a potential conflict of interest.
· Reporting standards: Authors of original research papers should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance.
· Human and Animal Rights: For research that includes experiments involving humans, a statement of compliance is required to show that procedures were followed in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national). For research that reports on experiments involving animals, authors are asked to indicate whether the institutional and/or national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.
· Research ethics: The research we publish must have received a statement of approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and, where applicable, informed consent. Clinical trials must have been registered in clinical trial registries, in adherence with local and international standards.
· Authors’ ethical statement: Authors are accountable for all aspects of their work (including full data access, data integrity, and the accuracy of the data analysis) in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
