PUBLICATIONS ETHICS AND MISCONDUCT

In an attempt to uphold the intellectual property rights of others and to keep up the standards for academics, Journal of Punjab Academy of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology (JPAFMAT) is adopting a zero-tolerance policy towards papers associated with publication misconduct.

What Constitutes Publication Misconduct?

Publication misconduct includes plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, inappropriate authorship, duplicate submission/multiple submissions, overlapping publication and salami publication.

We (JPAFMAT) have developed publication definitions, policies in line with Publishers International Linking Association, Inc. (PILA) and Committee on Publication ethics (COPE) standards for publication misconduct, which are as follows:

1.     Plagiarism: It is the appropriation of another person's thoughts, ideas, data, figures, research methods, or words without giving appropriate credit, or the over-citation of another person's published work.

2.     Fabrication: It is the practice of making up data or results without having performed relevant research.

3.     Falsification: It is the practice of changing data or results intentionally such that misleading conclusion is drawn.

4.     Inappropriate Authorship: It means that authorship is not assigned based on the author's contributions.

5.     Duplicate Submission/ Multiple Submissions: It refer to the practice of submitting the same manuscript or several manuscripts with minor differences (e.g., differences only in title, keywords, abstract, author order, author affiliations, or a small amount of text) to two or more journals at the same time, or submitting to another journal within an agreed or stipulated period.

6.     Overlapping Publication: It refer to the practice of publishing a paper overlaps substantially with the one already published.

7.     Salami publication: It refer to the practice of slicing data from a large study, could have been reported in a single paper, into different pieces and publishing them in two or more articles, all of which cover the same population, methods, and question.

8.     Cross Checking references in connection with content

What will happen if Misconduct is Found?

• Rejection of the manuscript or retraction of the published paper.
• Not accept manuscripts submitted to JPAFMAT by the same research team within two years of misconduct
• Inform the institution to which the corresponding author is affiliated with and the sponsor(s) about such misconduct.
• Release all penalty documents on journal’s official website.

To fight against plagiarism and to ensure high ethical standards for all of the published papers, JPAFMAT has joined indianjournals.com for plagiarism Check.

We are following UGC regulations with respect to plagiarism.

Journal’s Policy Regarding Human Rights, Animal Rights and Informed Consent

• This policy has been adopted to publish responsible research findings and to endure that all the necessary approvals and consents have been obtained prior to publication of the outcomes.
• Authors need to testify that their research has been carried out in accordance with the procedure approved by the respective ethical committees of their organizations. The Editor of the journal takes the final decision on the acceptance and rejection of the manuscript that are subjected to scrutiny of issues regarding human and animal ethics.
• Clinical research/trials involving human data, human specimens and human subjects must have been performed in accordance with Helsinki Declaration of the World Medical Association in 1975 as revised in 2008 concerning Human and Animal Rights under the approval of ethics committee.
• Justification of the clinical procedure followed may have to be furnished if required by the editor or peer reviewer.
• Authors are expected to secure informed consent for participation in the study by the human subjects.
• The experimental procedure and the outcomes involving animal models must comply with the National or International guidelines. Manuscript must include the details (guidelines/permissions/licenses) of such compliance with appropriate references and specifications.