Human rights

IJMP promotes importance of ethical and responsible research practices

• Authors must demonstrate that their research complies with national standards for research involving human subjects, as outlined by the South African Department of Health’s guidelines NHREC-DoH-2015-Ethics-in-Health-Research-Guidelines-1_0.pdf

• Evidence of approval from relevant bodies, such as research ethics committees, institutional review boards, or regulatory authorities, must be provided.

• A statement confirming that appropriate informed consent was obtained from human participants is required with the manuscript.

• Editors are encouraged to prompt peer reviewers to evaluate ethical concerns raised by the research they are reviewing.

• Editors may request further details from authors if necessary and have the authority to reject manuscripts if ethical procedures seem questionable.

• If a manuscript originates from a country lacking an ethics committee or similar body, editors will assess the situation based on their experience to judge whether the manuscripts should be published. If a manuscript is published under these circumstances, a brief statement should be added to clarify the situation.
  
  
• Scholars are advised not to submit their manuscripts concurrently to multiple journals. This practice is considered unethical and can lead to complications in the publication process. Submitting to only one journal at a time allows for a fair review process and ensures that all parties involved can focus on the evaluation of the work without conflicts of interest.
• For studies discussing individual human subjects or case studies, such as in medicine, psychology, or criminology, confidentiality must be maintained. Any publication that might harm participants or breach confidentiality, such as the doctor-patient relationship, is not allowed.

IJMP will not publish identifiable personal information or images without explicit consent from the individuals involved.

Research integrity

All manuscript submissions must adhere to IJMP specific policies to ensure ethical academic publication.

Original content and duplicate publication
Only original material must be submitted to IJMP. This must be confirmed on the submission documents. Manuscripts submitted to IJMP must not have been previously published or be under consideration by another publisher. If an article has been submitted elsewhere, IJMP will only review it if the other publisher has formally rejected the submission at the time of submission to IJMP.

Fabrication and falsification
IJMP strictly oppose the fabrication (creating fake data or images) and falsification (manipulating data or images deceptively) of data. Manuscripts created by commercial entities (so-called ‘paper mills’) on behalf of researchers will not be accepted.

According to COPE (2020); Sanderson (2024); Else & Van Noorden (2021) and Chawla (2022) “a paper mill is a business that publishes poor or fake journal papers that seem to resemble genuine research, as well as sells authorship. In some cases, paper mills are sophisticated operations that sell authorship positions on legitimate research, but in many cases the papers contain fraudulent data and can be heavily plagiarized or otherwise unprofessional.”

IJMP will take active measures to reject suspicious manuscripts before they reach peer review. Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via “paper mills” | COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics

Redundant publication
Submitting and publishing articles that are excessively alike and originated from the identical research is deemed unethical by IJMP.

Plagiarism

Presenting previously published work as original constitutes plagiarism. All submissions to IJMP are subjected to plagiarism screening using Turnitin. Manuscripts with substantial textual similarity will not be included for publication. IJMP retains the authority to inform the affiliated institutions of authors in case of violation of ethical research and publication standards.

REFERENCE

Chawla, D. (2022) ‘Russian site peddles paper authorship in reputable journals for up to $5000 a pop’, Science. Available at: [URL] (Accessed: 12 April 2022).

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (2020) Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via paper mills: Forum discussion topic September 2020. Available at: [URL] (Accessed: 30 March 2021).

Else, H. and Van Noorden, R. (2021) ‘The fight against fake-paper factories that churn out sham science’, Nature, 591(7851), pp. 516–519. doi: 10.1038/d41586-021-00733-5. PMID: 33758408.

Frontiers Publishing Partnerships. (2024) ‘Policies and Publication ethics’. Available at: Acta Virologica | About (frontierspartnerships.org) (Accessed: 05 September 2024).

Sanderson, K. (2024) ‘Science’s fake-paper problem: high-profile effort will tackle paper mills’, Nature, 626(7997), pp. 17–18. doi: 10.1038/d41586-024-00159-9. PMID: 38243120.

https://aosis.co.za/legal-centre/publication-policies/#Correcting-the-record