Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Stateme

The corresponding author is responsible for all communications with the journal. While signing the copyright transfer form, the corresponding author should ensure that all listed authors concur with the submission and approved the final version. After starting the review process, the paper will be screened for any possible violations of the standard norms for publishing original research. For example, an acknowledgement will be emailed to all coauthors and they will be informed regarding the submission. Inappropriate image manipulation, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and data manipulation will be investigated by the editors. We have very strict rules regarding animal rights, therefore, in case of any invasive sampling, animal manipulation and sacrification, all permission and ethical approvals should be sent along with the manuscript and the permission number and issuing authority should be cited in the material and methods part. Any experiments involving animals must be demonstrated to be ethically acceptable and where relevant conform to national guidelines for animal usage in research (please refer to the journal conditions for animal research for further information). Please read the following details on different parts of the publication ethics and malpractice statement.

Animal rights policies

SRLS expect authors to follow the best-practice guidelines. SRLS follow Ethical Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research guidelines prepared by the Norwegian National Committee for Research Ethics in Science and Technology. In case of using any invasive sampling, or using any animals in the study in any form and way, authors must submit the Ethics Committee approval along with permissions and cite the number and date of the permission in the material and methods part. The protocol used by the authors and undertaken by national or internationally-accepted standards should be stated clearly in the material and methods part. Without presenting certificates, permissions and ethical committee approval, SRLS retains the right to reject any manuscript.  Scientific Reports in Life Sciences follows the Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines, developed by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement & Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs), as well as the Norwegian National Committee for Research Ethics in Science and Technology mentioned in the first sentence of the paragraph.

Human Rights, Scientific Requirements and Research Protocols

We follow the Declaration of Helsinki which has been developed by the World Medical Association (WMA) as a statement of ethical principles for medical research involving human subjects, including research on identifiable human material and data. For more information, please follow the LINK For the PDF version of the Declaration of Helsinki you can click on this LINK

Authors should also include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human participants. The privacy rights of human participants must always be observed. Any usage of chemicals, procedures or equipment with unusual hazards inherent in their use, should be clearly identified and explained by the authors along with legal permissions and ethical certificates.

Editorial Duties and Independence

After an initial screening of the submitted papers regarding the best practice guidelines, an editor with the closest expertise will be selected by the Editor in chief and the paper will be assigned to him/her. The corresponding editor will be asked to make a double screening and check with regard to the SRLS standards and ethical requirements and assign the paper to the related external reviewers.  The evaluation of the submitted papers should be only based on academic aspects such as novelty,  originality, clarity and relevance to the SRLS’s scope. SRLS strongly recommend the editors act without discriminating against the authors’ race, sexual orientation gender, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion, political philosophy or institutional, affiliation. The editor-in-Chief is responsible to ensure such independency and in case of any violence from this principle, the editor will be removed from the journal management board. The editor is not allowed to share the author(s)’s information, or data with any third party, or persons outside of the journal editorial board. Submitted papers should be assigned to external reviewers without author names and affiliation addresses. The editor should be ensured that any part of the manuscript should not give information about the manuscript writers, such as the acknowledgement part.

Conflicts of interest (COIs)  

In case of any conflict of interests (COIs) or competing interests relevant to the submitted paper such as patent, stock or data ownership, institutional rights, financial conflicts, etc the authors should disclose them in the submission process. This can be disclosed after the acknowledgement part under the headline of ‘Conflict of Interest’.  In case of any COIs, authors can write ‘Authors declare no conflicts of interest’. All funding sources should also be acknowledged in the acknowledgement part. In case of any possible conflict of interest between editors and authors, they should decline the responsibility for handling the assigned paper and inform the editor-in-chief. If the editor finds that the authors’ name may influence his/her decision on the paper in any form (situations such as belonging to the same institute, being a collaborator in any institute or project, being coauthors in previous works, personal relationship etc.) he/she should declare his/her unsuitable involvement in the assessment of a manuscript.

Publication decisions

SRLS benefits from a double-blind peer-review process using external reviewers who have related papers and research works. The editors will be asked to assign the screened paper to those reviewers who already published similar works or are known in the related field. At least two reviews should be received from the reviewers to accomplish the review process, but in many cases, SRLS try to send more than two reviewers’ comments to the authors which can improve the submitted manuscript quality more. The editor will inform the editor-in-chief regarding his/her decision which can be Acceptance, Acceptance with a minor change, acceptance with a major change, or Declined submission. The editor-in-chief will then send this decision along with the reviewer’s comments to the corresponding author. The corresponding author will be asked to share the editorial decision, and reviewers’ comments with all co-authors and send back the revised version, along with a file entitled ‘Response to the reviewers’ comments’ in a due time. After receiving the corrected manuscript from the authors along with an enclosed response to the reviewer’s comments, the editor should check the responses and changes point by point. At this stage, he/she will decide on the paper and in case of necessity, she/he can send the corrected version to the same reviewers or even a new reviewer for a final check. After this process, the editor will decide on the paper and inform the editor in charge regarding his/her final decision which can be one of these options: Acceptance, Decline submission, and more corrections should be done by the authors. The Editor-in-Chief is the main person who is responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal will be published, based on the validation of the work in question, its importance to researchers and readers, the reviewers’ comments, and such legal requirements as are currently in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The Editor-in-Chief may consult with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

For Reviewers

SRLS review process is based on a double-blind peer review process benefiting from external reviewers. A detailed and exact review is vital for a reliable publication process and improving human life and nature through novel findings in science. Therefore, SRLS editors will try to find reviewers who are the best match to the submitted paper’s scope. Therefore, we strongly recommend and ask those reviewers who may feel unqualified to review the assigned paper for any reason, to decline the review and inform the editor. Reviewers who accept to work on the assigned paper should have no conflicts of interest with the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the manuscript in any form of competitive, collaborative, or other relationships.

Those reviewers who accept the review process should deal with the manuscript in a confident way and not share any information about the assigned paper with a third person other than the journal authorities. While accepting the review, the reviewer will not be allowed to assign it to another person such as a colleague, student or any other person without permission from the journal’s editor-in-chief. The reviewer should first check the paper’s originality and novelty. Any proof of violating fair publishing practices such as plagiarism, substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript and previously published materials, data manipulation and etc. should be immediately shared with the editor or editor-in-chief. He/she then can start the review process in a standard way and any criticism should be based on scientific basics which can be linked to other papers, books, etc. Therefore, any personal criticism without a scientific basis should be avoided by the reviewers.

For Authors

We strongly recommend the authors read the SRLS’s writing rules and author guidelines. There is also a manuscript template which can be easily used by the authors to check the journal-accepted formats and standards. At the screening step by the editor-in-chief, manuscripts inconsistent with the journal writing rules and standards will be returned to the authors for resubmission. Submitted research work should follow scientific and ethical principles and contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Authors should avoid fraudulent, unethical behaviour, plagiarism, or any kind of activity which impacts the best practice principles and mentioned ethical frameworks. Accessibility to raw data should be provided by the authors in case of necessity. This means that, in the case of an editor-in-chief decision, authors need to upload their raw data as a supplementary file. These data will be then data publicly available as SRLS is an open-source journal. However, if there is some restriction based on legal rights, such as proprietary data, it can be discussed by editor in chief. For genetic sequences, we strongly encourage authors to upload the sequences in the related gene banks and cite the access number(s). We have some services to help authors to find some open source databases to share photos, scans, sequences, etc.

Originality and plagiarism

SRLS doesn’t tolerate plagiarism/self-plagiarism in any form, so the first immediate action after receiving a paper will be scanning the MS by suitable plagiarism checkers such as http://crosscheck.scitech.info/.  Authors need to ensure that the written text is entirely original, and follows a proper way of citations if they have used the work and/or words of others. Plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. Based on a definition presented by Oxford University plagiarism is ‘Plagiarism is presenting work or ideas from another source as your own, with or without consent of the original author, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. All published and unpublished material, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic form, is covered under this definition, as is the use of material generated wholly or in part through the use of artificial intelligence (save when the use of Artificial Intelligence - AI for assessment has received prior authorisation e.g. as a reasonable adjustment for a student’s disability). Plagiarism can also include re-using your own work without citation. Under the regulations for examinations, intentional or reckless plagiarism is a disciplinary offence’. For more information please refer to the Oxford University webpage as follows:

https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/plagiarism

Scientific Reports in Life Sciences follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. As such, this journal follows the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers. As SRLS publish papers on medical-related issues as well, it is highly recommended that medical case reports should be consistence with COPE guidance. For access to the PDF version of COPE guidance, in case the provided link doesnt work, please click on this LINK

Copyright transfer and authorship

By signing the copyright transfer form, authors confirm that the submitted paper is an original work and that it has not already been published in another journal, book or webpage (either as a full text or part of it). Meanwhile, the authors confirm that the submitted paper is not under review at the same time by other publication services. All listed authors should make significant contributions to the research work from conception, design, execution, data acquisition, analysis/interpretation of the data, manuscript drafting or critical revision of the draft. The corresponding author confirms that all authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and they agreed to its submission for publication. Any financial support (including the grant number or other reference number if any) can be mentioned and acknowledged in the "Acknowledgements" section.

Any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript should be expressed and disclosed along with the paper submission.

Peer review process

All manuscripts sent for publication in our journals are strictly and thoroughly peer-reviewed by experts. The Managing Editor of the SRLS will perform an initial check of the manuscript’s suitability upon receipt and will inform the editor-in-chief immediately. After this step, one of the editorial board members whose field of study is closer to the submitted paper will be assigned as the paper's editor (this will be done by editor in chief). The selected editor will be asked to assign the paper to different external reviewers. He/she can stop the review process as soon as receiving at least two reviewer comments on the paper. The editor will decide on the paper based on the reviewer’s comments. The editor will send his/her decision (Decline submission, Acceptance with minor change, Acceptance with major changes) to the editor-in-chief. The editor-in-chief will then contact the corresponding author for further steps.

The Editorial Office will then organize the peer-review process performed by independent experts and collect at least two review reports per manuscript. We ask our authors for adequate revisions (with a second round of peer review if necessary) before a final decision is made. The final decision is made by the academic editor (usually the Editor-in-Chief/Editorial Board Member of a journal or the Guest Editor of a Special Issue). Accepted articles are copy-edited and English-edited. If reviewers become aware of such scientific misconduct or fraud, plagiarism or any other unethical behaviour related to the manuscript, they should raise these concerns with the editor immediately.

Substantial errors in published papers

After publication, in case of finding any substantial error, or misleading findings, the authors are obligated to notify the journal’s editors/editor-in-chief and cooperate with them to correct the paper or retract the paper as a final solution. If the editors or publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the author’s obligation to promptly correct or retract the paper or provide evidence to the journal editors of the correctness of the paper. Journal editorial board and publisher can remove a paper at any time if they discover plagiarism or fraudulent publication in any time. The same right for any research misconduct or unethical behaviours will be applicable as well.

Copyright and License

As a completely open-access journal,  SRLS applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to the works we publish (https://creativecommons.org/) which facilitates open access strategy in publication. Under CC BY license, authors agree to make articles legally available for reuse, without permission or fees, for virtually any purpose. Upon proper citation way, anyone may copy, distribute, or reuse published papers. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online, on social media such as Researchgate, Academia, etc.