EDITORIAL POLICIES

For journals and eBooks, the following publication policies are applied by Medico Edge Publications.

Peer Review

Medico Edge Publications follows the single blind peer-review procedure for submissions of all manuscripts to its journals, except for a selected number of patent journals where the double-blind review is followed.

All submitted articles/eBook chapters are subjected to an extensive peer review in consultation with members of the journal’s editorial board and independent external referees (usually three reviewers). All manuscripts/chapters are assessed rapidly and the decision based on all the peer reviewers' comments, taken by the journal’s Editor-in-Chief/eBook Editor, is then conveyed to the author(s).

Submissions from the Editor-in-Chief will undergo independent peer-review and will be submitted to another Editor for his decision on acceptance.

Copyediting and Proofs

Articles and eBook chapters must be written in good English in a clear and correct style in order to maintain uniformity throughout the text. Articles/chapters submitted are copyedited before they are published.

Reprints

High-quality, bound/unbound, print can be purchased for all published articles and book chapters.

Editorial Policies

Articles must be written by one of the manuscript 's authors, and should not be written on behalf of anyone. The principal/corresponding author will be expected to send, on account of all co-authors (if any), a Copyright Letter along with the manuscript. The author(s) must confirm that the manuscript (or any part thereof) has not been previously published or is not being considered for release elsewhere. Any illustration, structure, or table that has been published elsewhere must also be reported, and copyright permission must be obtained for reproduction.

Appeals and Complaints

The author(s) must confirm that the manuscript (or any part thereof) has not been previously published or is not being considered for release elsewhere. Any illustration, structure, or table that has already been published elsewhere must also be reported, and copyright permission must be obtained for reproduction. A difference of opinion about the merit, novelty or suitability of the journal's manuscript would not be considered an appeal. The appeal will be considered by the EIC and other related editors, and the decision taken by the journal afterward will be deemed final. Manuscript acceptance is not guaranteed even if the journal agrees to reconsider the manuscript, and the reconsideration process may involve previous or new reviewers or editors, as well as substantive revision. Authors who wish to make a complaint should refer them to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal concerned. Complaints to the Publisher may be emailed to director@medrech.com

Conflict of Interest

Financial contributions to the work being reported should be clearly acknowledged, as should any potential conflict of interest.

Plagiarism Prevention

Medico Edge Publications uses the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. iThenticate software checks content against a database of periodicals, the Internet, and a comprehensive article database. It generates a similarity report, highlighting the percentage of overlap between the uploaded article and the published material. Any instance of content overlap is further scrutinized for suspected plagiarism according to the publisher’s Editorial Policies. Medico Edge Publications allows an overall similarity of 20% for a manuscript to be considered for publication.

Types of Plagiarism

We all know that scholarly manuscripts are written after a thorough review of previously published articles. It is therefore not easy to draw a clear boundary between legitimate representation and plagiarism. However, the following important features can assist in identifying different kinds of plagiarized content. These are:

•  Reproduction of others words, sentences, ideas, or findings as one’s own without proper acknowledgment.
• Text recycling, also known as self-plagiarism. It is an author’s use of a previous publication in another paper without proper citation and acknowledgment of the original source.
• Poor paraphrasing: Copying complete paragraphs and modifying a few words without changing the structure of original sentences or changing the sentence structure but not the words.
• Verbatim copying of text without putting quotation marks and not acknowledging the work of the original author.
• Properly citing a work but poorly paraphrasing the original text is considered as unintentional plagiarism. Similarly, manuscripts with language somewhere between paraphrasing and quoting are not acceptable. Authors should either paraphrase properly or quote and in both cases, cite the original source.
• Higher similarity in the abstract, introduction, materials and methods, and discussion and conclusion sections indicates that the manuscript may contain plagiarized text. Authors can easily explain these parts of the manuscript in many ways. However, technical terms and sometimes standard procedures cannot be rephrased; therefore Editors must review these sections carefully before making a decision.

Plagiarism in Published Manuscripts

After thorough review and approval by the journal's editor-in-chief, published articles found to contain plagiarized text are removed from the journal's website. On the electronic version of the plagiarized manuscript is published a 'Retraction Note' and also a link to the original article and an addendum with notice of withdrawal in the specific journal.

Copyright and License

Open Access Plus (Subscription Journals and eBooks)

Accepted papers for free open access can be published online. Publishing open access enables full distribution of the article to the broadest audience. Both writers are required to pay the AMC for their paper published freely on publication.

Copyright (Subscription Journals and eBooks)

Editors/Authors who contribute to a Medico Edge Publications Journal / eBook must move the copyright to Medico Edge Publications for their work. The submission of a manuscript to the respective journals means that both editors/authors have read the contents of the copyright letter and have accepted.

HUMAN AND ANIMAL RIGHTS

All clinical investigations should be conducted according to the Declaration of Helsinki principles. For all manuscripts reporting data from studies involving human participants, formal review and approval by an appropriate institutional review board or ethics committee are required. For research involving animals, the authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the standards set forth in the eighth edition of “Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals”(grants.nih.gov/grants/olaw/guide-for-the-care-and-use-of-laboratory-animals_prepub.pdf published by the National Academy of Sciences, The National Academies Press, Washington, D.C.).

Research Involving Animals

Research work on animals should be carried out in accordance with the NC3Rs ARRIVE Guidelines. For In Vivo Experiments, please visit https://www.nc3rs.org.uk/arrive-guidelines.

Authors should clearly state the name of the approval committee, highlighting that legal and ethical approvals were obtained prior to initiation of the research work carried out on animals and that the experiments were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations stated below.

• US authors should cite compliance with the US National Research Council's "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals"
• The US Public Health Service's "Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals" and "Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals"
• UK authors should conform to UK legislation under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 Amendment Regulations (SI 2012/3039).
• European authors outside the UK should conform to Directive 2010/63/EU
• Research in animals must adhere to ethical guidelines of The Basel Declaration and the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) has also published ethical guidelines.
• The manuscript must clearly include a declaration of compliance with relevant guidelines (e.g. the revised Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 in the UK and Directive 2010/63/EU in Europe) and/or relevant permissions or licenses obtained by the IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Non-identifiable Images

Anonymous images, that do not identify the individual directly or indirectly, such as through any identifying marks or text, do not require formal consent, for example, X-rays, ultrasound images, pathology slides, or laparoscopic images. In case consent is not obtained, concealing the identity through eye bars or blurring the face would not be acceptable.

Conclusion

• Author(s) and Reviewers must be informed in case of misinterpretation or mishandling of International Acceptable Standards
• A strict notice should be sent to the author and reviewer to avoid future unethical misconduct
• An Editorial on the reported misconduct should be published or official notice of unethical behavior should be posted on the website
• Official letter about this misconduct should be issued to the Head of Departments, Funding Agencies of the accused author and the reviewer, as well as Abstracting & Indexing Agencies
• Where required, retraction and withdrawal of publication may be undertaken from the Publisher’s journal in discussion with the Head of the Department of the author or reviewer, and other higher authorities should be informed. The Publisher may impose restrictions for some period on future publications from the accused author in the journals.

Errata and Corrections in Published Articles

Writers and readers are encouraged to alert the Editor-in-Chief if they notice inconsistencies in published material, names of writers and affiliations or whether they have reasons to be concerned about a publication's validity. In these cases, in conjunction with the Editor-in-Chief and the article authors, the journal should issue an ERRATUM, and/or delete or withdraw the post.

Article Withdrawal Articles in Press (articles that have been accepted for publication or published as E-pub Ahead of Schedule but which have not been formally published with volume/issue/page information) that include errors, or are determined to violate the publishing ethics guidelines such as multiple submission, fake claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like, maybe “Withdrawn” from the journal.

Withdrawal means the article files are deleted and replaced with a PDF indicating that the paper was withdrawn from the journal in compliance with the editorial policy of Medico Edge Publications.

Article Retraction Published articles (with volume/issue/page information) which may contain infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like are retracted.

• A retraction note titled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the authors and/or the Editor-in-Chief is published in the paginated part of a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list.
• In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article.
• The online article is preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.
• The original article is retained unchanged with a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”
• The HTML version of the document is removed.

Concurrent Publication/Simultaneous Submission

This is a condition of publication that manuscripts submitted to the Medico Edge Publications have still not been published, nor should they be submitted or published elsewhere concurrently. Plagiarism is strictly prohibited and, through submitting the manuscript for publication, the writers accept that publishers have the right to take disciplinary action against writers when plagiarism or false material occurs Abstracts and posters of conferences, results presented at meetings (for example, to inform investigators or participants about findings), results from databases (data without interpretation, discussion, context or conclusions in the form of tables and text to describe data/information where this is not easily presented in tabular form) are not considered prior publication. Authors who wish to publish translations of the articles that have been published elsewhere should ensure that they have appropriate permission(s), indicate clearly that the material has been translated and re-published, and indicate clearly the original source of the material. The Editor-in-Chief may request copies of related publications if he/she is concerned about overlap and possible redundancy.

Disclaimer

Responsibility for the content published by Medico Edge Publications in any of its journals, including any opinions expressed therein, rests exclusively with the author(s) of such content. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Medico Edge Publications (on its own behalf, and on behalf of its staff and members of its editorial board) disclaims responsibility for any and all injury and/or damage (whether financial or otherwise) to persons or property, resulting directly or indirectly from any ideas, methods, instructions or products (including errors in the same) referred to in the content of any of Medico Edge Publications journals. Any dispute arising, including any claim shall be governed exclusively by the laws of India, as applied in India under the jurisdiction area of Bilaspur.