Publication Ethics

DYSONA journals work according to COPE core practices and workflows.

These workflows, charts and special cases are introduced by COPE. Each one is used to achieve and understand COPE core practices. For further information please consider reading the practices in the following table using the DOI adjacent to each practice.

 

COPE flowcharts in relation to COPE's core practices (DOI for each flowchart is provided)

 

DYSONA journals policy for ethical roles and duties of publishing parties is inspired by COPE recommendations which are detailed in the following guidelines:

For Editors: Code of conduct and best practice guidelines for journal editors

For Publishers: Code of conduct for journal publishers

For Reviewers: COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers

For Authors: Responsible research publication: international standards for authors


Furthermore, DYSONA - Life Science publication policy operates in correspondence with the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals provided by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Therefore, we highly recommend our authors to become acquainted with these guidelines.

 

Publisher and finance

DYSONA – Life Science journal is an open access peer-reviewed. The publisher of this journal is E-NAMTILA. The journal currently publishes free of charge (no submission, handling, or publishing fees are required) with no paid subscription plans or advertising campaigns,  and it is funded directly and entirely by E-NAMTILA publishing.

 

Plagiarism policy

All works submitted to DYSONA – Life Science journal are expected to be original. Therefore, this journal uses Turnitin plagiarism detection technology to reassure the originality of the works submitted for publishing. A similarity level of less than 20% for initial inspection is acceptable. Acceptable similarities are supposed to be involuntary (e.g., formulas, headings similarities, names of local areas, institutes names, and repeatable chemical procedures). However, deliberate plagiarism is unacceptable at any rate and would result in direct rejection of the submitted work.

The types of intolerable similarities (plagiarism) are:

  • Using ideas, results, findings, and debates from previously published works of the author(s) or others' works without proper citation of sources.
  • Using literal quotations (copied and pasted sections) from previously published works of the author(s) or others' works without proper contribution and paraphrasing.

The use of previously published data, findings, and figures is acceptable if the used sections are not copyright protected or if proper approvals are obtained.

A similarity check is conducted at every checkup point (after revisions and before acceptance) to ensure that similarities have stayed at an acceptable rate and that no plagiarism has occurred throughout peer review-related adjustments.

Re-publishing an already published work in other languages (translated works) is unacceptable and considered plagiarism. Therefore, plagiarism allegations might arise even after publication if the published work or part(s) of it were found to be previously published in other languages without proper citation. Appropriate actions according to our retraction policy will be taken in these cases.

When an author submits an article, they confirm that they fully understand our plagiarism handling policy and take responsibility for any misconduct.

 

Redundant publication policy

Redundant or duplicate publication is identified as re-publishing an already published article or a significant part of it in another medium, whether in a similar language or different languages. We ask our editorials and encourage our audience to report any case of suspected redundant publication concerning any of the published manuscripts.

When a duplicate publishing case is initiated, the corresponding author and the editor-in-chief of the other publication medium will be contacted. The duplication case and the reasons behind it will be discussed. If a duplicate case is confirmed, an editorial note will be issued to clarify the situation, and the corresponding author will be able to include a response in this note stating the reasons behind it.

 

Contributorship policy

Including the role of each author and their contribution to the research is mandatory with each submission. These roles should be consisted of one or more assignments of the following:

  1. Methodology
  2. Supervising
  3. Designing and experiment preparing
  4. Laboratory or field efforts
  5. Data handling and analyzing
  6. Result and outcome reasoning
  7. Manuscript writing and editing 

Further clarification might be requested when two or more authors share an assignment. Any other roles that do not qualify its doer to be among authors should only be mentioned in the acknowledgment section.

By submitting a new paper, the corresponding author is confirming that all included names have contributed significantly to the manuscript (with one or more of the aforementioned assignments), and no significant contributors were omitted.

If an adjustment to the authors; list and related affiliations (Addition, omission, or reordering) is requested before publication, a valid reason should be provided by the corresponding author. All affected authors should be contacted to verify the reason for the adjustment. The editor will process the adjustment based on the validity of the provided cause of adjustment.

 If an adjustment to the authors' list and related affiliations (Addition, omission, or reordering) is requested after publication, a valid reason should be provided by the corresponding author. All affected authors should be contacted to verify the reason for the adjustment. The editor will process the adjustment based on the validity of the provided cause of adjustment. An official corrigendum will be issued if an adjustment to authors' names or affiliations is made post-publication.

Corresponding author roles and responsibilities

The corresponding author is the co-author responsible for manuscript submission and later communications with the journal editorial office throughout the manuscript review, processing, publication, and post-publication. The corresponding author's name can be in any order among the participating authors. The corresponding author's responsibilities include but are not limited to submitting the original files, resubmitting the revised version, responding to reviewers' comments, and responding to raised issues throughout publication and post-publication. All these responsibilities are carried out in collaboration and coordination with other co-authors.

Although any author can initially submit the manuscript and assign a corresponding author from the co-authors, the subsequent communications will be strictly limited to the corresponding author. In This case, the corresponding author is obligated to confirm the conflict of interest statements sent initially by the submitting author.

Including more than one corresponding author or changing the corresponding author during processing is acceptable in case the assigned corresponding author might be unable to respond to the journal's communications due to certain obligations/circumstances. However, a written note by the primary corresponding author shall be provided prior to the new/additional corresponding author assignment. This note should contain the reasons behind the new corresponding author assignment.

 

Conflict of interests

all submitted materials should contain a detailed report of conflict of interests (COIs) for each one of the authors. By accepting our terms and conditions during the submission procedure, the authors declare that they understand the term "COIs", have reported all COIs, and take responsibility for un-declared COIs. On the other hand, It is the journal's responsibility to tackle and inspect these conflicts case by case and to, make the right decisions in light of these inspections before and after peer review, and follow up and share information between editors in chief regarding any case after publication or rejection in the light of COPE recommendations. Therefore, including the ICMJE Conflict of Interest form is mandatory when submitting an article to this journal. Since it includes a clear and detailed definition of COIs, the inclusion of this form serves as an explicit declaration of COIs understanding and reporting by the authors.

Adjustments to COI disclosures might be discussed with the corresponding author during manuscript processing if the referees and editorial board see it necessary or suspect a mistakenly un-disclosed COI.

COI disclosure forms will be shared after publication. Otherwise, if the author(s) declared no conflict of interest related to their accepted work, it will be stated in the published articles.

 

Data availability and reproducibility policy

Introducing reproducible results is crucial in any published research. Therefore, any submitted work to DYSONA – Life Science should contain a detailed materials and methods section.

The following points should be considered:

  • Study area: If the study was locally oriented or when external factors of the studied area can influence the results considerably (such as demographic composition and weather), a detailed description of the study area and the influencing external factors should be included.
  • Germplasm and genetic resources: Studies regarding genetic diversity, genetic resources, classification, breeding programs, and other related research should contain a complete description of the included germplasms and used genetic material.
  • Animal studies: These experiments should fully describe the provider and any related pre-treatments.
  • Methodologies: A complete description of the methods used should be included with proper contributions. Whenever an adjustment to the original methods was used, it should be detailed.

All submitted works should contain a clear data availability statement. This statement should consider any data that can influence the reproducibility of the research and can take any of the following forms:

  • All used data was included in the manuscript and submitted as supplementary material.
  • The data can be provided upon request
  • The data is confidential yet can be provided for peer review purposes (In this case, the author should declare the reasons why the data was not openly provided)
  • The data is confidential and cannot be provided even for peer review/editorial purposes (In this case, the author should declare the reasons why the data was not openly provided)

 

Ethical oversight

Animal experiments

In relation to animal-based experiments and the usage of laboratory animals, DYSONA – Life Science adopts workflows and recommendations of (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) (ARRIVE) guidelines provided by the national centre for the replacement refinement and reduction of animals in research (NC3Rs)

Medical studies and human medical case reports

All research involving human subjects should be carried out per the regulations and recommendations of World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki - ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects.

To ensure proper handling and publishing procedures for medical case report, DYSONA journals is adopting the Journals' Best Practices for ensuring consent for publishing medical case reports: guidance from COPE

Please visit the following DOI link for full details:

https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.6

Furthermore, DYSONA adopts the Good Clinical Research Practice (GCP) guidelines introduced by World Health Organization (WHO) as the road map to ethical clinical scientific research.

(WHO) also provided the workbook for investigators in tropical diseases as a part of UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR). Therefore, practices and guidelines introduced in this workbook should be considered.

Quantitative polymerase chain reaction experiments (qPCR)

All submitted qPCR manuscripts should confirm the usage MIQE: Minimum Information for Publication of Quantitative Real-Time PCR Experiments

Please visit the Real-time PCR Data Markup Language (RDML) for full details. The provided link contains full MIQE guidelines, in addition to step by step checklist to report qPCR experiments properly

Please consider that in genetic and molecular experiments, all related data (e.g., Gel blots photos, Nanodrop output files, Primer optimization, and efficiency standard curves) might be required through the review procedure. Therefore, keeping all these data reachable for future inquiries is recommended.

Stem cell researches

DYSONA adopts the Guidelines for Stem Cell Research and Clinical Translation provided by The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR )

Other ethical statements might be required based on editorial and referees' requests.

 

Misconduct handling policy

We believe that scientific publishing is built upon ethics. Therefore, we maintain a strict policy of misconduct handling throughout the publication process. The handled misconduct criteria contain the main following points:

  • Plagiarism (check plagiarism policy)
  • Reference manipulation: It is the responsibility of the handling editor to report cases of suspicious referencing activities. Redundant self-citation (by authors) and reference suggestions/omitting/replacing (by referees) should be reported.
  • Fraudulent results: All suspected data manipulation, result fabrication, and false interpretations during manuscript processing should be reported.
  • Conflict of interest: The reviewers and handling editor should report any suspected unreported conflict of interest. 
  • Double-blind peer review integrity: The main advantage of a double-blind peer review system is to maintain integrity in manuscript handling based on quality and regardless of authors' names and affiliations. In some cases, referees might recognize the works of other scientists in the field. In these cases, the reviewers should report any conflict of interest that might influence their reasonable judgment of the handled work. It is the editor's responsibility to decide the validity of review outcomes.

All review invitations and editorial assignments clearly state that the invited reviewers and assigned editors should consider the previous points carefully and report any suspensions to the editor-in-chief. All allegations are handled individually by the editor-in-chief according to COPE and ICMJE recommendations.

 

Intellectual property policy

All articles published in this journal are distributed under a creative commons license. All published articles in DYSONA - Life Science journal are Open Access distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This means that all the provided materials can be copied, distributed, displayed and remixed by giving the authors and the journal the proper citation credits.

The submitting author should declare the agreement of all authors for their manuscript to be distributed according to (CC-BY) conditions upon the first submission. The authors allow the download, reuse, print, reprint, modification, distribution, and copying of the published material as long as the authors and original material are adequately cited 

The authors are the copyright owners of the manuscript and have all the rights to distribute their published works in any repository or website. However, prior to online publication, the distribution of submitted, re-submitted, reviewed, revised, accepted, or any other version of the manuscript or parts of it is prohibited. The authors should state in their cover letter if the submitted work or any part of it is previously published or being considered for publication elsewhere.

The authors should indicate if there is a granted patent, pending patent, or specific copyright requirements related to the submitted work in their cover letter.

 

Submission, resubmission, and withdrawal policies

Submission and resubmission

By submitting your work to this journal, you agree to be bound by submission terms which are:

  • The submitted work corresponds with the scopes and aims of the considered journal and is written in correspondence with its manuscript preparation and ethical guidelines. All the results and data should be generated by considering all the related scientific standards.
  • The submitted work is not published or is currently being considered for publication in other mediums.
  • Manuscripts that were submitted to other publishing bodies with rejection for a final decision can be considered in our journals. However, the manuscripts rejected in one of our journals should be submitted with the rejection letter (cause of rejection) when resubmitting to another journal of ours. In this case, kindly ensure that the original cause of rejection has been removed, adjusted properly, or does not cause a problematic issue in the new considered journal.
  • Resubmitting a rejected manuscript to the same journal is prohibited unless clearly stated in the rejection letter that a resubmission can be taken into consideration
  • The submitting authors agree that they have all the rights to submit the work to our journals, and the submission is being made in total agreement and awareness of other participant authors. This awareness includes but is not limited to copyright terms, conflict of interest disclosure, full data providing, publishing procedure responsibilities, and withdrawal consequences. The submitting author is responsible for submitting consequences.
  • The submitted work will undergo a double-sided blind peer-review procedure, and all the authors agree that they are aware of this fact and to coordinate with publishing parties to facilitate the publication procedure.
  • The authors agree to be fully aware of the concepts and definitions related to conflict of interests (COIs) and declare that they have fully reported all the (COIs) cases that might be related to the submitted

Transfer

A transfer suggestion might be initiated under one of the following circumstances:

  • Case 1: The submitted manuscript might not correspond with the current journal's aims and scope.
  • Case 2: The submitted manuscript might better fit another journal in our publishing group.

In any of these cases, if the editor sees that the submitted paper fulfills our basic requirements, a manuscript transfer suggestion might be sent to the corresponding author.

The transfer suggestion email should contain all the reasons behind theeditor's suggestion (according to the aforementioned cases), and the author is expected to respond by accepting or rejecting it.

In case of accepting the transfer suggestion, the author is asked to resubmit the paper to the suggested journal by following the same submission steps without any further adjustments to the manuscript.

In case of rejecting the transfer suggestion, the manuscript will be either rejected (Under Case 1) or proceed for peer review and other editorial steps in the original journal (Under Case 2).

Withdrawals

Withdraw is a right protected by the journal. The corresponding author can initiate withdrawals at any stage prior to online publication. All withdrawal requests should include a valid reason. Therefore, due to limited resources, consequences can occur when requesting a manuscript withdrawal:

  • There are no consequences to withdrawals initiated prior to reviewers' decisions.
  • There are no consequences for single-time withdrawals initiated after reviewers' decisions.
  • A two-year submission embargo is applied if two consecutive withdrawals (after reviewers' decisions) for two different manuscripts were initiated. The influenced authors, in this case, are the shared names between the two manuscripts. The submission embargo is applied in this journal only.
  • A two-year submission embargo is applied to all authors if the withdrawal was initiated after acceptance.
  • Losing communication with the corresponding author (Failing to respond to reviewers' comments in a timely manner without any justification) is considered a withdrawal. A two-year submission embargo in this journal and all related journals will be applied against the corresponding author.
  • There are no consequences to withdrawals initiated for reasons related to the journal's extended processing time (more than twice the average time stated on the home page).
  • There are no consequences to withdrawals initiated for reasons related to non-disclosed or poorly disclosed publishing terms and conditions.

 

Submissions of journal body members

DYSONA – Life Science considers the submissions of editorials and reviewers and ensures unbiased handling of these submissions through the double-blind peer review system and the confidential submission management system. 

 

Archiving, preservation, and indexing

DYSONA has taken multiple private online and offline preservation precautions to ensure that your published works are always available. Furthermore, E-NAMTILA publishing is proudly a participating publisher in CLOCKSS archive. As a CLOCKSS participant journal, DYSONA – Life Science content will be available online if the preserved content is triggered.

DYSONA – Life Science is currently indexed in various international repositories (Kindly check our Indexing and Abstracting page). In addition to the HTML and PDF formats available on the journal's website, metadata of published articles, including titles, authors' names, affiliations, abstracts, keywords, publishing dates, and original links to the full texts, are regularly submitted to these databases. The full texts of published articles will also be available in HTML format on our publisher's website (E-NAMTILA). These data are submitted by the journal's office or the publisher on behalf of the journal.

 

Corrections and retraction policies

Errata and Corrigenda Policy

Authors and readers are encouraged to report the errors and issues that might be present in an accepted article by contacting the editorial office directly via the Contact us form and referring to the article and the error placement.

There are two types of issues:

Issues that do not affect the scientific methodology, findings, or conclusions of the article: these errors might be corrected by the original handling editor and the corresponding author without issuing a statement. Since most of these errors are language and/or style mistakes, a peer review session might not be required.

Issues that affect the scientific methodology, findings, and conclusions of the article, in addition to author names and affiliations related issues (check Contributorship policy): these errors should be handled by the original handling editor and the corresponding author as a new submission with all the needed peer review communications and all the needed statements of correction later.

Retraction

Our working retraction policy is inspired by COPE retraction guidelines. A retraction case is initiated under any of the following conditions:

  • The editorial office retains the full right to initiate a retraction case if any ethical policy infringement is suspected.
  • The authors are obligated to report any discovered ethical misconduct or fundamental scientific issue upon its discovery.
  • The readers are invited and encouraged to report ethical and scientific concerns in published material directly to the editorial office via our Contact Us form.

The office will thoroughly investigate all cases, and the needed communications between authors, the journal body, and any involved third parties will be made. A decision will be made in light of the aforementioned investigation, communications, and our ethical policy. A formal statement will be announced if the case results in a confirmed decision. All involved parties, including case initiators, will be notified of the outcome via email.

 

Complaints office

E-NAMTILA publishing has a complaint system for authors and readers. This system is independent of the journal's body and will guarantee honesty in the relationship between the readers/authors community and our journals. The complaints can be submitted by visiting the Contact Us page and choosing (Send a complaint) under the Question Type menu. Or by contacting the publisher directly via this contact form https://e-namtila.com/contact-us