Authorship criteria
All individuals designed as authors of the manuscript should meet all the following criteria and all individuals who meet all the following criteria should be identified as authors.
- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work
- Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content
- Final approval of the version to be published
- 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
Conflict of interest
Objectivity and impartiality of the individuals involved in scholarly publication should not be harmed by professional, financial, commercial or personal rivalries; otherwise, a potential conflict of interest may arise. A conflict of interest often, but not exclusively, arises for an individual between two competing interests such as interests of public duty and private interests. IJBIHN requires disclosure of all known or hidden sources of funding used by the authors in a direct relation to their research. A submitted manuscript cannot be published without a conflict of interest statement. If there are no conflicts of interest known by the authors, the authors should state “The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.”
Plagiarism
Unauthorized or unacknowledged appropriation of someone else’s work for one’s own use is called plagiarism. Submitted manuscripts must be original and offer novel insights. Manuscripts under consideration for publication or already published by other journals cannot be submitted. All submitted manuscripts will be subject to screening and strict checking for plagiarized material. Authors committing plagiarism will be blacklisted by the journal’s office.
Duplicate or simultaneous submission
Manuscripts currently under publication or already published by other journals, whether in whole or in part, cannot be submitted to the journal. If the authors have based their new manuscript on a work currently under review or already published elsewhere, they are required to explain how their new manuscript contributes beyond those of their other works.
Citation manipulation
Citations are the key metric for evaluation of scholarly publications in scientometrics. Citation manipulation refers to any systematic practice with the primary purpose of increasing citation rates to a specific author or a journal. Citation manipulation misrepresents the importance of the specific work and therefore, it is a form of scientific misconduct and unethical behavior. Manuscripts including an excessive number of unnecessary self-citations to the authors’ previous works not contributing to the scholarly content of the manuscript will require revision or may be rejected.
Data fabrication and falsification
Intentional misrepresentation of research results to support a hypothesis by data fabrication or data falsification is an unethical behavior and a form of scientific misconduct. Reviewers of an assigned manuscript should inform the editorial office of any possible data fabrication and falsification that they have noticed in the manuscript.
For more information regarding best practices in publication, you may visit Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE).