Ethics Policies
Editorial Policies
SSHRB expect the highest ethical standards from their authors, reviewers and editors while conducting research, submitting papers and throughout the peer-review process. SSHRB follows double-blind peer review process.
For authors who submit the article and vanishes
Authors, when disappear after submitting the article, the journal holds the right to either publish or not. Sometimes the journal will publish the article and will only retract if the authors sends an apology letter to the journal for wasting its time. Instead of vanishing, please send us a mail, that you do not wish to publish in the journal, it will save our time and resources. We will try to mail the authors multiple times before acknowledging the fact that the author has vanished. If we receive an apology post-publication, we would retract the paper. This even applies to the back dated papers and even those who has been sent a rejection mail due to no reply from authors.
Redundant or duplicate publication
A publication that overlaps or relates substantially with any article that is already published, in press, or under consideration/submission it is considered as Duplicate or redundant publication. (International Committee of the Medical Editors http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html).
Duplicate or redundant submission is identical manuscript (or having the similar data) that is submitted to various journals at the same time. International copyright laws, ethical conducts, and cost effective use of resource ensure originality of the manuscript submitted. (International Council of the Medical Editors.
http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/overlapping-publications.html)
Material submitted must be original and should not have published or submitted elsewhere while under consideration for publication. According to the APA code of ethics (APA Publication Manual, 2010) duplicate publication is violation and will lead to prompt rejection of the submitted manuscript.
In case of any doubts, author should seek advice from the editorial board member in handling their manuscript. If author is re-using a figure published elsewhere or that has been copyrighted then the author must get prior approval from the previous publisher or the copyright holder for the figure to be re-published. In case, author is unaware of the copyright issues and the material has been published, the author must submit a duplicate material for submission by acknowledging the source of the information, so that the ethical violation can be corrected.
Conflicts of interest
In order to maintain transparency and help readers to form their own judgments of potential bias, authors should declare any competing financial interests related to the work that has been described or presented.
During the submission, every author should reveal the financial interests or collaborations if any, that may raise conflict or bias directly or indirectly in the submitted work including conclusions, opinions given or implications, or any other sources of funding for related direct or indirect academic competition.
However, in case of manuscript acceptance, the information related to Conflict of Interest should be mentioned in a published statement.
Permissions to reproduce previously published material
Permission is essential to reproduce material from the copyright holder. Articles cannot be directly published without these permissions.
Withdrawal of articles
The journal is vowed to ensure the originality and authenticity of all articles published in it. In cases where the editorial team observes any technical or ethical discrepancy in an article viz. multiple submissions of the data, plagiarism, deceitful manipulation of data, spurious authorship claims, it may be withdrawn. The option of withdrawal mainly pertains to the articles that are currently in Press. Such articles are yet to be published formally and thus lack volume/issue/page information. Immediately after the article is withdrawn, the entire content of the article is removed from the journal website and a withdrawal notice is placed instead.
Retraction of published articles
Articles published in the journal may be retracted by the author(s), University or institute the authors are affiliated to, funding agency of the published work, editor-in-chief or publisher; if any ethical infringement or data manipulation is observed or notified by third party. Other situations that may lead to retraction of published articles include duplicate submissions, presentation of falsified data, unscrupulous authorship claims and detection of plagiarism.
Before retracting any of the published articles, the journal confers with the respective author(s) regarding the same. A retraction note duly signed by the author(s) and/or editor(s) is published in the paginated part of the subsequent issue of the journal.
Patient consent forms
It is very essential to protect the patient’s right to privacy. Kindly collect and preserve copies of patient’s consent forms that mention patient’s or’ your experiment details clearly, including the grant permission for the publication of photographs or any other material that may recognize them. Yet, if the consent form did not comprise these details it is essential to obtain it or remove the identified material from the document. However, the obtained statement must be included in the ‘Methods’ section of your manuscript. If required, the Editors may request a copy of any consent form.
Ethics committee approval
All the manuscripts dealing with the original human or animal data should include a statement on ethics approval at the commencement of the Methods section. It should information on the name and the address of the responsible ethics committee, the protocol number, along with the date of approval that is attributed by the ethics committee.
For the studies carried on human participants, it is necessary to state evidently that you obtained the written and informed consent from the participants involved. Kindly, refer the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki for this purpose. Similarly, experiments that involve animals must provide the state of animal care and licensing guidelines under which the study was performed and is reported. This should be provided in accordance with the ARRIVE statement (Animals in Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments). In any case, if ethics clearance was not obligatory or if there was any deviation or change from the standard of ethical requests, it is required to state the specified reason. Please note that the editors might ask you to provide evidence of ethical approval. Besides, If you have approval from a National Drug Agency (or similar), please state it by providing details. This can be particularly useful when discussing the use of unlicensed drugs.
