Publication Ethics

Publication ethics

Although a paper is usually published when the science is good, if the authors are subsequently found to have transgressed the ethical code, the retraction will be mandated. A Wiley-Blackwell resource, Best Practice Guidelines on Publication Ethics: A Publisher’s Perspective, can be accessed at: www.wiley.com/bw/publicationethics.

Plagiarism is the term used when the work of someone else is presented as the author’s own. There is now dedicated software to identify this. Some journals now screen submissions against previously published material in order to identify such cases prior to acceptance. If plagiarism is discovered following publication, the paper will be retracted and the Editor may choose to contact the author’s institution or funding body to report the matter.

Redundant/duplicate publication is the publication of substantially the same paper in more than one journal. This can also be detected by specific software. “Salami slicing is the colloquial term used when the same study or data are used across more than one article.

Transparency involves the author understanding and accepting certain publication policies:

i) Declaration of interests—it is important to declare the funding that made the research possible.

ii) Registering clinical trials—clinical trials should be registered in publicly accessible registries.

iii) Respecting confidentiality—protecting patients from being recognized if used in research and in publication.

iv) Protecting research subjects, patients, and experimental animals.

Authorship

 We agree with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) that authorship should reflect all 4 of the following criteria:

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

• “Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content” AND

• “Final approval of the version to be published” AND

• “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. (http://www.icmje.org). Listed authors are held responsible for their contributions to the paper and must sign the Copyright Assignment Form.

 

Group Authorship: In multi-central or multinational clinical trials, one or more investigators should be selected to represent the group, and take responsibility for the contents. Authors also should meet all four criteria for authorship mentioned before. They all must sign the Copyright Assignment Form. Use the phrase: “on behalf of the [name of the study group]” for each representative author. Write the other researchers' names and affiliations in an appendix.

Authors in Clinical Trials: A disclosure must be stated by the author, for access to all data and their analysis, in studies that are sponsored by a drug manufacturing company or a surgical device producer. This disclosure should be submitted as a letter when the main manuscript is being submitted. The author should state that the manufacturer had no influence on what is reported in the manuscript. 

Author Representations:

The article I have submitted to the journal for review is original, has been written by the stated authors, and has not been published elsewhere.

The article is not currently being considered for publication by any other journal and will not be submitted for such review while under review by this journal.

The article contains no libelous or other unlawful statements and does not contain any materials that violate any personal or proprietary rights of any other person or entity.

I have obtained written permission from copyright owners for any excerpts from copyrighted works that are included and have credited the sources in my article.

If I am using any personal details or images of patients or research subjects, I have obtained written permission or consent from the patient.

If the article was prepared jointly with other authors, I have informed the co-author(s) of the terms of this publishing agreement and that I am signing on their behalf as their agent, and I am authorized to do so.

RIGHTS FOR SCHOLARLY USE

I understand that I am hereby granted (without the need to obtain further permission) rights to use certain versions of the article, as described and defined below:

Internal Institutional Use: Use by the author's institution for classroom teaching at the institution (including distribution of copies, paper or electronic, and use in course packs and courseware programs) for scholarly purposes. For authors employed by companies, use by that company for internal training purposes.

Personal Use: Use by an author in the author's classroom teaching (including distribution of copies, paper or electronic), distribution of copies to research colleagues for their personal use, use in a subsequent compilation of the author's works, inclusion in a thesis or dissertation, preparation of other derivative works such as extending the article to book-length form, or otherwise using or re-using portions or excerpts in other works (with full acknowledgment of the original publication of the article).

Permitted Scholarly Posting: Voluntary posting of a published article by an author on open Web sites for Commercial Use or Systematic Distribution is not permitted. Deposit in or posting to subject-oriented repositories (such as PubMed Central), or institutional repositories with mandates for systematic postings, is permitted only under specific agreements between the publisher and the repository, agency, or institution, and only consistent with the Copyright Owners policies concerning such repositories.

 

Privacy Policy in the Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery  

The contents of this journal include information relating to general principles of Orthopedics that should not be construed as specific instructions for individual patients. Application of this information in a particular situation remains the professional responsibility of the practitioner. Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery assumes no liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in such information. Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery respects your privacy and does not provide user information to third parties without permission. Any statistical analysis of user behavior is used for product development purposes and does not include personal user information. We do not sell our subscriber list. Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery sites frequently contain links to websites hosted by other parties. Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery is not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such websites. The list that follows indicates the times at which we collect information and describes exactly what is done with the collected data. Information collected at registration or during voluntary participation in online surveys is confidential. This information is used to provide you with online services, for statistical purposes or to help develop new features and services.

PERMISSION TO REUSE

Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery supports the exchange of information through the use of established procedures designed to expedite the granting of permissions for the use of material for professional purposes. Requests for tables and figures and quotations of fewer than 100 words should be directed to our address through journal official email. It is not allowed to use any Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery trademarks or logos without prior written consent from Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery.

Statement of Human and Animal Right for the Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 and 2008. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

For studies with human subjects include the following:

  • Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.
  • If any identifying information about patients is included in the article, the following sentence should also be included:
  • Additional informed consent was obtained from all patients for which identifying information is included in this article.

For studies with animals include the following sentence:

  • All institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

For articles that do not contain studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors: 

  • While it is not absolutely necessary, we recommend including the following sentence, just to make sure that readers are aware that there are no ethical issues with human or animal subjects:
  • This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

 

Statement of informed consent for the Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should identify Individuals who provide writing assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance.

Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.

 

Regulations for Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement in the Archives of Bone and Joint Surgery:

Section A: Publication and authorship

  1. All submitted papers are subject to a strict peer-review process by at least two reviewers that are experts in the area of the particular paper. Deputy Editors and Editor-in-Chief are selecting reviewers.
  2. The factors that are taken into account in the review are relevance, originality, readability, statistical validity, and language.
  3. The possible decisions include acceptance, minor revisions, major revisions, or rejection.
  4. If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.
  5. Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.
  6. The paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism.
  7. No research can be included in more than one publication, whether within the same journal or in another journal.

 

Section B: Authors' responsibilities

  1. Authors must certify that their manuscript is their original work.
  2. Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere, or even submitted and been in reviewed in another journal.
  3. Authors must participate in the peer-review process and follow the comments.
  4. Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
  5. All Authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research. The level of their contribution also must be defined in the “Authors’ Contributions” section of the article.
  6. Authors must state that all data in the paper are real and authentic.
  7. Authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest.
  8. Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscripts.
  9. Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.

 

Section C: Peer review/responsibility for the reviewers

  1. Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
  2. Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author. No self-knowledge of the author(s) must affect their comments and decision.
  3. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in 500 to 1000 words.
  4. Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
  5. Reviewers should also call to the Editor-in-Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
  6. Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

 

Section D: Editorial responsibilities

  1. Editors (Deputy Editors or Editor-in-Chief) have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
  2. Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.
  3. Editors should always consider the needs of the authors and the readers when attempting to improve the publication.
  4. Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.
  5. Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
  6. Editors should have a clear picture of a research's funding sources.
  7. Editors should base their decisions solely on the papers' importance, originality, clarity, and relevance to the publication's scope.
  8. Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.
  9. Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers
  10. Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines.
  11. Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
  12. Editors should act if they suspect misconduct, whether a paper is published or unpublished, and make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem.
  13. Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions; they should have proof of misconduct.
  14. Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers, and board members.
  15. Editors must not change their decision after submitting a decision (especially after rejection or acceptance) unless they have a serious reason.

 

Section E: Publishing Ethics Issues

  1. All editorial members, reviewers, and authors must confirm and obey rules defined by COPE.
  2. The corresponding author is the main owner of the article so she/he can withdraw the article when it is incomplete (before entering the review process or when a revision is asked for).
  3. Authors cannot make major changes in the article after acceptance without a serious reason.
  4. All editorial members and authors must will to publish any kind of corrections honestly and completely.

Any notes of plagiarism, fraudulent data, or any other kinds of fraud must be reported completely to COPE.