Editorial Policy:

Journals published by Functional Neurosurgery Research Center comply with the policies and guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and regulations of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and adhere to all of the recommendations and guidelines in reporting, reviewing and publishing of scientific research in medical journals.
Submitting a manuscript to the journals published by Functional Neurosurgery Research Center means that all of the authors noted as author have read and agreed to the content of the manuscript and confirmed its compliance with the journal’s policies.

Authors:

• The authorship of research publications should accurately reflect individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting.

• Authors must list all references used in/for the article and should only include citations for the works that they have read.

• Funding sources and relevant/potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed.

• There needs to be a complete differentiation between author and contributor. Only people who contributed significantly to the research and/or article can be listed as ‘author’. People who contributed in a lesser role must be acknowledged as ‘contributor’.

• Authors are obliged to participate in peer review process and should follow the peer review requirements.

• Authors should inform the editor(s) if they withdraw their work from review process or choose not to respond to reviewers comment after receiving a conditional acceptance.

• The correspondence needs to be timely and reflect professionalism.

• Authors should use appropriate methods of data analysis and display and avoid misrepresenting the data.

• Authors are responsible for validity of data, calculation, data presentation, proofs and methods used.

• Authors are responsible to respond appropriately to post-publication comments and published correspondence.

• Authors must alert the editor promptly if they discover any error(s) in their submitted, accepted or published work. Further cooperation of the author in an attempt for correction of the aforementioned error(s) is required. Otherwise authors agree that there can be no revisions after proof or publication of their work.

• The research being reported should have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and should comply with all relevant legislation.

• Authors should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, cheery picking, or inappropriate data manipulation.

• Methods need to be described clearly and unambiguously so that findings can be confirmed by others.

• Authors should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarized, and has not been published elsewhere.

• The author(s) are fully responsible for submitted and published work.

 

Peer Reviewer/ Responsibility of Reviewers:

• The reviewers must only agree to review manuscripts for which they have the required assessment expertise and which they can assess in a timely manner.

• In reviewing an article, the reviewer must respect the confidentiality of the review process and the rights of the authors of the articles.

• The reviewers will not use any information obtained during the peer-review process for their own or any other person’s or organization’s advantage or disadvantage. Accordingly, they shall keep any information they acquire at any time during or after review process confidential.

• The reviewers must declare all conflict of interests or potential conflict of interests.

• The reviewers will not be influenced by the origins of a manuscript, by the nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender, appeal to authority or other characteristics of the authors, or by commercial considerations. Peer review process is set up to minimize any instances of potential influence and bias.

• The reviewers must be professional, objective and constructive in their reviews and refrain from being hostile or inflammatory.

• The reviewers must provide their personal and professional information, to the best of their knowledge, that is an accurate and true representation of their expertise.

• The existence of a submitted manuscript is not revealed to anyone other than the reviewers and editorial staff. All persons involved adhere to confidentiality guidelines and requirements.

• Reviewers' and authors' identities are kept confidential.

 

Editorial Responsibilities:

• The Editor(s) are required to protect reviewers’ identities unless otherwise granted permission by reviewers themselves.

• The editor-in-chief is responsible for and has the authority to pursue reviewer and editorial misconduct.

• The editor(s) are responsible for and have the authority to critically assess the ethical consideration and standards of human and animal studies. They are responsible for the ethical standards of the journal.

• The editor(s) are accountable towards their publication,

• Editor-in-chief has authority to reject or accept an article.

• The editor(s) will make fair and unbiased decisions.

• Editor(s) should not be involved in papers in which they have a conflict of interest.

• The editor/s will guard the integrity of the published record by issuing corrections and retractions when needed and pursuing suspected or alleged research and publication misconduct.

 

Publishing Ethics Issues:

• The editorial board will maintain the integrity of the academic record of the journal.

• No plagiarism and no fraudulent data will be tolerated in this journal.

• The editorial board will monitor and safeguard the publishing ethics of the journal

• The guidelines for retracting articles are as follows:

- Articles that are seriously unreliable will be retracted. Redundant articles (published in other journals) will be retracted. Minor errors or authorship changes will not lead to retraction but require a correction notice.

- Notices of retraction will clearly state the reason and the retracted article will be clearly marked.

• The journal will not compromise intellectual or ethical standards in favor of the business needs of the journal.

 

Correction and Retraction of Articles:

 

Corrections may be made to a published article with the authorization of the editor of the journal. Editors will decide the magnitude of the corrections. Minor corrections are made directly to the original article. However, in cases of major corrections, the original article will remain unchanged, while the corrected version will also be published. Both the original and corrected version will be linked to each other. A statement indicating the reason for the major change to the article will also be published. When necessary, retraction of articles will be done according to COPE retraction guidelines

 

Further reading

ICMJE - Scientific Misconduct, Expressions of Concern, and Retraction

COPE Guidelines

COPE Flowcharts

COPE retraction guidelines

WAME - Publication Ethics Policies for Medical Journals

STM - International Ethical Principles for Scholarly Publication

 

Ethical Consideration for Human and Animal Subjects:

1) If human subjects are used then they have to be registered with the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials website (www.irct.ir) or the related country and ethical committee of the research center or University where the study was carried out.

2) Research with human subjects should be conducted in full accordance with ethical principles, including the WMA Declaration of Helsinki-Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects (2008) http://www.wma.net/en/30publications/10policies/b3/index.html

3) The submitted manuscripts must transparently state this in their methods and materials including a statement outlining whether the study has been independently reviewed and approved by an ethical board.

4) Moreover, where human subjects are used, the informed consent explaining the nature of the procedure and possible discomforts and risks should be obtained from all patients who participated in the experimental investigation and subjects should be able to freely reject participation.

5) If animals are used, a statement protocol approval by the institutional animal care and use committee must be included. Methods section must clearly show that adequate measures were taken to minimize pain and/or distress, for example the administration of local anesthetics or general anesthesia. Experiments should be carried out in accordance with the European Communities Council Directive of 24 November 1986 (86/609/EEC) and in accordance with local laws and regulations governed within that country or with the guidelines laid down by the National Institute of Health (NIH) in the USA regarding the care and use of animals for experimental procedures.

 

Authorship Conflicts:

Based on the ICMJE recommendations "all those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged".

Any change in authorship (i.e. order, addition, and deletion of authors) after initial submission must be approved by all authors via written confirmation, in line with COPE guidelines. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all authors confirm they agree with the proposed changes. If there is disagreement amongst the authors concerning authorship and a satisfactory agreement cannot be reached, the authors must contact their institution(s) for a resolution. It is not the journal editor’s responsibility to resolve authorship disputes. A change in authorship after publication of an article can only be amended via publication of an Erratum.

 

Plagiarism Policy:

Definition: When an author tries to present the work of someone else as his or her own, it is called plagiarism. In addition, when an author uses a considerable portion of his or her own previously published work in a new one without properly citing the reference, it is called a duplicate publication; sometimes also referred to as self-plagiarism. This may range from publishing the same article in another journal to 'salami-slicing', which is data segmentation, to adding little new data to the previous article.

Policy: The editorial team/reviewers of “International Clinical Neuroscience Journal” will check the submitted manuscripts for plagiarism twice (once after submission and once before publication) using available plagiarism detection software such as iThenticate. If suspected plagiarism is found in an article either before (by reviewers or editorial team) or after (by readers) publication, the journal will act according to COPE’s code of conduct and flowcharts.

 

 

Article Withdrawal

Articles can only be withdrawn before their acceptance.

Otherwise used during cases which contain errors or may have been accidentally submitted twice.

Occasionally, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, and fraudulent use of data or the like.

Articles that include errors, or duplicates of or very similar to other published article(s) or are determined to violate the journals’ publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors may be withdrawn.

The withdrawal letter must include the corresponding author and the submitting individuals’ signature explaining their decision and reason for withdrawal.

CrossMark Policy

CrossMark is a multi-publisher initiative to provide a standard way for readers to locate the current version of a piece of content. By applying the CrossMark logo Academic Journals is committing to maintaining the content it publishes and to alerting readers to changes if and when they occur.

Clicking on the CrossMark logo will tell you the current status of a document and may also give you additional publication record information about the document.

Kindly visit CrossMark Website for more information.

 

 

 

• A description of the process by which editors are selected for journal(s).

·         The quality of a journal is in a way reflective of the quality of its Editor(s) and Editorial Board and its members. As such, it is recommended that a meticulous screening criterion be adopted for their appointment.  

·         The members need to represent the full geographical range where the journal is published (example: a journal from Malaysia for the Malaysian scholarly community is likely to have its main Board members from Malaysia. If this journal published in Malaysia has International in its title, it would be necessary to see members on the main Board from other countries .These could also be invited to join an International Advisory Board –ensuring widespread dissemination of the journal’s activities and content)  

·         Board Members' expertise should represent the subject area (s) covered by the journal's aim and scope (Policy).

·         It is important that Board members are active in their specialist field and are therefore up to date with what is happening in research and developments in that field . The Editor should already be familiar with many of these and can invite new members from these colleagues and peers. Many of these will be authors who have already published in the journal and/ or written books on related topics. Editors need to be very clear as to why they have chosen to invite someone to the Editorial Board or any other related Board.

·         Former Guest Editors of special issues and authors of key reviews

• Editors-in-chief are members of academic universities and their payments are independent of their journal activities. They will not be paid for their journal activities and they are free to choose this extra duty. Therefore, they are completely independent of their role in the journal.
• Because of the EIC independency from FNRC (as the publisher), any decision making processes of a journal are completely separate from our commercial interests.
• On the other side, we also do not pay any salary to our editors. Therefore, any concern or complaint against our editors will be reflected to the journal owner without any limitation or consideration from our side.