Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
- Authorship Criteria
- Study design and ethical approval
- Data analysis
- Conflicts of interest
- Data Fabrication and Falsification
- Duplicate Publication
- Citation Manipulation
- Peer-review
- Redundant publication
- Plagiarism
- Corrections and retractions
- Corrections
- Retractions
- Privacy and Confidentiality
- Authorship and Author’s Responsibility
- Human and animal studies
- Website
- Name of Journal
- Peer review process
- Ownership and management
- Governing Body
- Editorial team/Contact information
- Copyright and Licensing
- Author fees/ Revenue Sources
- Process for identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct
- Publication Ethics
- Publishing schedule
- Access
- Archiving
- Advertising
- Direct marketing
- COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts
- COPE’s Code of Conduct and Best Practices
The ethical policy of the Journal of Food Microbiology is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with the International Committee of Journal Editorial Board codes of conduct. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with the journal. The ethical policy of the journal is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or articles submitted to the journal should be published in the concerned issue. The publishing decision is based on the suggestion of the journal's reviewers and editorial board members. The ethical policy insisted the Editor-in-Chief, may confer with other editors or reviewers in making the decision. The reviewers are necessary to evaluate the research papers based on the submitted content in a confidential manner. The reviewers also suggest the authors improve the quality of the research paper by their reviewing comments. Authors should ensure that their submitted research work is original and has not been published elsewhere in any language. Applicable copyright laws and conventions should be followed by the authors. Any kind of plagiarism constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit http://publicationethics.org.
- Authorship Criteria
To ensure authorship for the submitted manuscripts, the contributors should meet the following three conditions:
- Conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data have been done by the author.
- Either drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content has been done by the author.
- The final approval of the version to be published has been given by the author. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to be allowed to take public responsibility for suitable portions of the content.
- Study design and ethical approval
Good research should be well justified, well planned, appropriately designed, and ethically approved. To conduct research to a lower standard may constitute misconduct. The authors are responsible for the whole scientific content as well as the accuracy of the bibliographic information.
- Data analysis
Data should be appropriately analyzed, but the inappropriate analysis does not necessarily amount to misconduct. Fabrication and falsification of data do constitute misconduct.
- Conflicts of interest
Conflicts of interest comprise those which may not be fully apparent and which may influence the judgment of author, reviewers, and editors. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived. They may be personal, commercial, political, academic or financial. “Financial” interests may include employment, research funding, stock or share ownership, payment for lectures or travel, consultancies and company support for staff.
- Data Fabrication and Falsification
Data fabrication and falsification mean the researcher did not really carry out the study, but made up data or results and had recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.
- Duplicate Publication
Duplicate publication occurs when two or more papers with essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions are published without full cross-referencing.
- Citation Manipulation
Excessive citations in a submitted manuscript that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and were included solely to increase citations to a given author's work or articles published in a particular journal are referred to as citation manipulation. This is a form of scientific misconduct since it misrepresents the importance of the specific work and publication in which it appears.
- Peer-review
This journal uses double-blind peer review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not give away their identity. Authors have the right to communicate to the editor if they do not wish their manuscript to be reviewed by a particular reviewer because of potential conflicts of interest. No article is rejected unless negative comments are received from at least two reviewers.
- Redundant publication
Redundant publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross reference, share the same hypothesis, data, discussion points, or conclusions. In such cases, the manuscript will be rejected.
- Plagiarism
Plagiarism ranges from the unreferenced use of others’ published and unpublished ideas, including research grant applications to submission under “new” authorship of a complete paper, sometimes in a different language. It may occur at any stage of planning, research, writing, or publication: it applies to print and electronic versions. All the manuscripts submitted to the journal are checked by authenticating for possible plagiarism. The authors are expected to check their manuscripts for plagiarism before submission.
If plagiarism is detected during peer review, the submission can be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication we reserve the right, as necessary, to issue a correction or retract the article. We reserve the right to notify the institutions of authors about the plagiarism that was found before or after publication.
- Corrections and retractions
To maintain the integrity of the academic record, the journal may have to publish correction or retraction of paper published in journal. According to agreed academic community norms, corrections or corrections of published articles are made by publishing an Erratum or Retraction article, without altering the original article in any other way than by adding a prominent connection to the Erratum / Retraction article. The original article remains in the public domain and should be commonly indexed to the subsequent Erratum or Retraction. We may have to delete the material from our website and archive sites in the exceptional event the material is considered to infringe those rights or is defamatory.
It may be necessary for the original author(s) to make minor corrections to published articles by making a comment on the published article. It will only be accepted if the modifications do not affect the article's results or conclusions.
- Corrections
Changes to published articles that affect the article's meaning and conclusion but do not invalidate the article in its entirety may be corrected, at the discretion of the editor(s), by publishing an Erratum indexed and linked to the original article. Changes in authorship of published articles are corrected through an Erratum.
- Retractions
If the scientific information in an article is significantly compromised on rare occasions it may be appropriate to retract published articles. In these cases, Journal must comply with the COPE guidelines. Retracted papers are indexed and the original article is referred to.
- Privacy and Confidentiality
(Based on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals).
All manuscripts must be reviewed with the utmost regard for the authors' confidentiality. Authors entrust editors with the results of their scientific work and creative effort when they submit manuscripts for review, and their reputation and career may be at stake. Disclosure of confidential details during the review of an author's manuscript may be a violation of their rights. Reviewers have the right to confidentiality, which the editor must respect. If there is a suspicion of dishonesty or fraud, confidentiality may have to be breached, but it must be honoured otherwise. Besides the authors and reviewers, editors are prohibited from disclosing information about manuscripts (including their receipt, content, status in the reviewing process, reviewer criticism, or ultimate fate). Requests to use the materials in legal proceedings are included in this category.
Editors must clarify to reviewers that manuscripts sent for review are privileged communications and the authors' private property. As a result, reviewers and editorial staff must respect the authors' rights by refraining from publicly discussing or appropriating the authors' work before the manuscript is published. Reviewers should not be allowed to make copies of the manuscript for their files, and they should not be allowed to share it with others except if the editor permits them. After submitting reviews, reviewers should return or destroy copies of the manuscripts. Editors should not keep copies of manuscripts that have been rejected. Without the permission of the reviewer, author, and editor, reviewer comments should not be published or otherwise made public.
- Authorship and Author’s Responsibility
During the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, the corresponding author is typically responsible for communicating with the journal and ensuring that all of the journal's administrative requirements, such as authorship details, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and conflict of interest statements, are properly completed. Throughout the submission and peer review process, the corresponding author should promptly respond to editorial queries and cooperate with any requests from the journal after publication.
After an article has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Food Microbiology, no additional authors or changes to the first or corresponding authors are allowed. If an author wishes to be removed from the byline, he or she must submit a letter signed by the author and all other authors indicating their wish to be removed from the list of authors. Any change in the authors' order in the byline requires a letter signed by all authors indicating their agreement.
- Human and animal studies
All manuscripts reporting the results of experimental investigations involving human subjects should include a statement confirming the informed consent was obtained from each subject or subject’s guardian. All animal or human studies should be used after approval of the experimental protocol by a local ethics committee.
The submitted manuscripts that are not as per the “Instructions to Authors” would be returned to the authors for technical correction, before they undergo editorial/peer-review. Generally, the manuscript should be submitted in the form of two separate files.
All manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Food Microbiology are scrutinized for plagiarism using tools including but not limited to iThenticate. This is necessary to protect the reputation of our journal as well as the reputation of genuine authors who might transgress without fraudulent intent. Articles that are found to be plagiarised, will be rejected, and appropriate action will be initiated.
journal, its editors, reviewers and staff take reasonably sufficient steps to avoid any untoward incident. However, authors should take the following steps to prevent any charges of ethical misconduct:
- Make sure that the article is not submitted to multiple journals.
- Make sure that the submitted article is original.
- Make sure that the data submitted is authentic.
- Make sure that images and tables submitted are original and not sourced from the internet. Similarity check software usually cannot check images. So, it becomes more important for the author to take additional steps regarding this issue.
- Provide citations wherever necessary without fail.
- Add names of all authors who have contributed significantly to the research.
- Provide acknowledgment to all others who have assisted in the research but who do not fall under the category of contributing authors.
- Disclose all sources of funding if relevant.
- Provide accurate contact details of the corresponding author.
- Openly disclose any conflict of interest submitted along with the article.
- Fully cooperate with subsequent investigations if any.
Action is taken if ethical misconduct is found post-publication:
- The investigation is started promptly.
- A statement of retraction may be issued after following the due process.
- The institution may be contacted regarding the same.
- Temporary or permanent ban on author/s depending on the case in question.
- Website
A journal’s Website (jfm.iaushk.ac.ir) contains that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.
- Name of Journal
The Journal's name is Journal of Food Microbiology (JFM) has unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal.
- Peer review process
Journal is a Double-blind peer-review electronic and print quarterly publication concerned with all aspects of Food Microbiology. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, is clearly described on the journal’s Web site (http://jfm.iaushk.ac.ir/journal/process?lang=en).
- Ownership and management
Islamic Azad University of Shahrekord.
- Governing Body
Journal has a very strong editorial board, whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors are provided on the journal’s Web site (http://jfm.iaushk.ac.ir/journal/editorial.board?lang=en).
- Editorial team/Contact information
Journal is provided with the contact information for the editorial office of the journal (http://jfm.iaushk.ac.ir/journal/about?lang=en).
- Copyright and Licensing
On the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge, this journal provides immediate open access to its content.
All journal papers are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits for non-commercial use, sharing, adaption, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as the original author(s) and source are properly credited. Authors have copyright but license exclusive rights in their article to the publisher*.
Authors have the right to:
- Share their article in accordance with the "Personal Use Rights"** as long as it contains the end-user license and a DOI link to the version of record in this journal.
- Retain intellectual-property-rights protection (including research data).
- Proper credit and attribution for the published work.
* This includes the right to make and authorize commercial use.
** Personal use rights
Authors can use their articles for scholarly, non-commercial purposes in whole or in part, such as:
- An author's use in classroom teaching (including distribution of copies, paper or electronic).
- Distribution of copies (including through e-mail) to known research colleagues for their personal use (but not for Commercial Use).
- Inclusion in a thesis or dissertation (provided that this is not to be published commercially).
- Use in a subsequent compilation of the author’s works.
- Extending the article to book-length form.
- Preparation of other derivative works (but not for Commercial Use).
- Using or reusing portions or excerpts from other works in any other work.
- Author fees/ Revenue Sources
As the Islamic Azad University of Shahrekord has supported all of the publishing costs of the Journal of Food Microbiology (JFM), article processing charges and any other publication fees in the journal are free for authors.
- Process for identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct
Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.
- Publication ethics
Details of the journal publication ethics consideration, codes, terms, and rules are mentioned at this page.
- Publishing schedule
Quarterly.
- Access
The Journal database is fully open access and full text of published articles is available for everyone who can get access to the Journal website free of cost.
- Archiving
The plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to a journal's content (http://jfm.iaushk.ac.ir/?lang=en) is clearly indicated.
- Advertising
The policy of the Journal of Food Microbiology is not to have advertising.
- Direct marketing
The policy of the Journal of Food Microbiology is not to have direct marketing.
- COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts
Journal of Food Microbiology (JFM) is committed to following and applying guidelines and flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in its reviewing and publishing process and issues.
- COPE’s Code of Conduct and Best Practices
- Editors
Everything published in the journal is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief. This means that the editors must:
1.1 Strive to meet the needs of readers and authors;
1.2 Strive to constantly improve their journal;
1.3 Have processes in place to assure the quality of the material they publish;
1.4 Champion freedom of expression;
1.5 Maintain the integrity of the academic record;
1.6 Preclude business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards;
1.7 Always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
Best Practice for Editors would include:
- Actively seeking the views of authors, readers, reviewers and editorial board members about ways of improving their journal’s processes.
- Encouraging and being aware of research into peer review and publishing and reassessing their journal’s processes in the light of new findings.
- Supporting initiatives designed to reduce research and publication misconduct.
- Supporting initiatives to educate researchers about publication ethics.
- Assessing the effects of their journal policies on author and reviewer behavior and revising policies, as required, to encourage responsible behavior and discourage misconduct.
- Ensuring that any press releases issued by their journal reflect the message of the reported article and put it into context.
- Readers
2.1. Readers should be informed about who has funded research or other scholarly work whether the funders had any role in the research and its publication and, if so, what this was.
Best practice for editors would include:
- Ensuring that all published reports and reviews of research have been reviewed by suitably qualified reviewers including statistical review.
- Ensuring that non-peer-reviewed sections of their journal are clearly identified.
- Adopting processes that encourage accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting including technical editing and the use of appropriate guidelines and checklists.
- Considering developing a transparency policy to encourage maximum disclosure about the provenance of non-research articles.
- adopting authorship or contributorship systems that promote good practise (i.e. so that listings accurately reflect who did the work) and discourage misconduct (e.g. ghost and guest authors).
- Informing readers about steps taken to ensure that submissions from members of the journal’s staff or editorial board receive an objective and unbiased evaluation.
- Informing readers about steps taken to ensure that submissions from members of the journal’s staff or editorial board receive an objective and unbiased evaluation.
- Relations with authors
3.1 Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, the study’s validity and its relevance to the remit of the journal.
3.2 Editors should not reverse decisions to accept submissions unless serious problems are identified with the submission.
3.3 New editors should not overturn decisions to publish submissions made by the previous editor unless serious problems are identified.
3.4 A description of peer review processes should be published, and editors should be ready to justify any important deviation from the described processes.
3.5 Journals should have a declared mechanism for authors to appeal against editorial decisions.
3.6 Editors should publish guidance to authors on everything that is expected of them. This guidance should be regularly updated and should refer or link to this code.
3.7 Editors should provide guidance about criteria for authorship and/or who should be listed as a contributor following the standards within the relevant field.
Best practice for editors would include:
- Review author instructions regularly and provide links to relevant guidelines.
- Publishing relevant competing interests for all contributors and publishing corrections if competing interests are revealed after publication.
- Ensuring that appropriate reviewers are selected for submissions (i.e. individuals who are able to judge the work and are free from disqualifying competing interests).
- Respecting requests from authors that an individual should not review their submission if these are well-reasoned and practicable.
- Publishing details of how they handle cases of suspected misconduct.
- publishing submission and acceptance dates for articles.
- Relations with reviewers
4.1 Editors should provide guidance to reviewers on everything that is expected of them including the need to handle submitted material in confidence. This guidance should be regularly updated and should refer or link to this code.
4.2 Editors should require reviewers to disclose any potential competing interests before agreeing to review a submission.
4.3 Editors should have systems to ensure that peer reviewers’ identities are protected unless they use an open review system that is declared to authors and reviewers.
Best practice for editors would include:
- Encouraging reviewers to comment on ethical questions and possible research and publication misconduct raised by submissions (e.g. unethical research design, insufficient detail on patient consent or protection of research subjects (including animals), inappropriate data manipulation and presentation)
- Encouraging reviewers to comment on the originality of submissions and to be alert to redundant publication and plagiarism
- Considering providing reviewers with tools to detect related publications (e.g. links to cited references and bibliographic searches)
- Sending reviewers’ comments to authors in their entirety unless they contain offensive or libellous remarks
- Seeking to acknowledge the contribution of reviewers to the journal
- Encouraging academic institutions to recognize peer review activities as part of the scholarly process.
- Monitoring the performance of peer reviewers and taking steps to ensure this is of a high standard.
- Developing and maintaining a database of suitable reviewers and updating this on the basis of reviewer performance.
- Ceasing to use reviewers who consistently produce discourteous, poor quality or late reviews.
- Ensuring that the reviewer database reflects the community for their journal and adding new reviewers as needed.
- Using a wide range of sources (not just personal contacts) to identify potential new reviewers (e.g. author suggestions, bibliographic databases).
- Following the COPE flowchart in cases of suspected reviewer misconduct.
- Relations with editorial board members
5.1 Editors should provide new editorial board members with guidelines on everything that is expected of them and should keep existing members updated on new policies and developments.
Best practice for editors would include:
- Having policies in place for handling submissions from editorial board members to ensure unbiased review
- Identifying suitably qualified editorial board members who can actively contribute to the development and good management of the journal regularly reviewing the composition of the editorial board.
- Providing clear guidance to editorial board members about their expected functions and duties, which might include:
- Acting as ambassadors for the journal.
- Supporting and promoting the journal.
- Seeking out the best authors and best work (e.g. from meeting abstracts) and actively encouraging submissions.
- Reviewing submissions to the journal
- Accepting commissions to write editorials, reviews and commentaries on papers in their specialist area
- Attending and contributing to editorial board meetings
- consulting editorial board members periodically (e.g. once a year) to gauge their opinions about the running of the journal, informing them of any changes to journal policies and identifying future challenges.
- Relations with Publisher
6.1 The relationship of editors to the Publisher and the owner is based firmly on the principle of editorial independence.
6.2 Editors should make decisions on which articles to publish based on quality and suitability for the journal and without interference from Publisher.
6.3 Editors have a written contract(s) setting out their relationship with Publisher.
6.4 The terms of this contract are in line with the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors.
Best practice for editors would include:
Communicating regularly with Publisher.