Policy and Publication Ethics

Publication Policies

PreferPub will consider all types of the following scientific papers for publication:

- Editorial’s choice

- Original Research

- Review articles

- Case reports

- Case series

- Letter (to editors, to authors, etc)

- Short communications

- Medical Idea

Our Journals follows the ICMJE Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals.

Conference proceedings will be published electronically as a supplement issue or in the form of the abstract book and all requests from biomedical conferences are welcome.

Publication Ethics

PreferPub promotes ethical publication practices and its journals are committed to the highest standards of publishing integrity and academic honesty.

Editors, reviewers and authors of the journals published by PreferPub are encouraged to refer to The Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) for all aspects of publication ethics.

PreferPub follows the COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers:

  • For all journals, the relationship between PreferPub, editor and other parties, is defined in a contract.
  • PreferPub respects peer reviewers’ privacy.
  • PreferPub protects intellectual property and copyright.
  • PreferPub fosters editorial independence. We are committed to ensuring that editorial decisions are independent of commercial, political or other considerations. The relationship between PreferPub and the journal editors, sponsoring societies, or journal owners are based on trust and respect.
  • PreferPub works with journal editors to set journal policies appropriately and aim to meet those policies particularly with respect to research ethics, authorship, transparency and integrity and peer review:
    • All journals make clear their aims and scope, editorial policy and manuscript requirements in terms of presentation and submissions.
    • Journals' instructions for authors are available to any contributor.
    • Authors are expected to pursue objectiveness and rigor in all aspects of their work. Publications should be basically correct and sound and the results should represent a significant step forward, and not just a minor improvement on earlier work.
    • The list of authors should accurately reflect who did the work. Journal instructions for authors explain the concepts of academic authorship and require that nobody who meets the journal's criteria for authorship has been omitted from the list.
    • Journals only consider work that has not been published and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.
    • Editors, authors and peer reviewers are encouraged to disclose interests that might appear to affect their ability to present or review data objectively.
    • Journals recommend the use of a specific copyright and make it available on the journal pages.
  • PreferPub works in partnership with the research community, learned societies, scholarly organizations and other actors of scholarly publishing. We encourage authors, editors and peer reviewers to follow the "Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing".
Peer Reviewing Policy

Peer reviewing of scientific articles is a cornerstone in the full process of STM journal publishing. Reviewer selection is carried out by the Editorial boards of the journals published by PreferPub and is based on their expertise. Each reviewer receives only articles matching with their field of expertise. The reviewer has a duty to not accept an invitation to review should there be a potential conflict of interest or a situation where an unbiased review would not be possible. Each journal has its own criteria for reviewing, some are formal and give detailed instructions, whereas, others may only recommend that the reviewer should aim to improve the article’s scientific quality. In the first case, each article is checked against a fixed set of criteria and the reviewer must only check the article to ensure the content fits the requested items. In the latter case a more general review is carried out. The reviewer is expected to point out any inconsistencies in methodology and/or results and conclusions and also to raise any ethical concerns. The reviewer should provide any recommended improvements to the manuscript in a constructive, professional report. This report should be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief in a timely manner and the Editor-in-Chief may choose to adopt the recommendations or not. If a journal decides not to include all the submitted manuscripts in the peer reviewing process, this must be pointed out on the journal’s website with the given reasons. This is mostly due to the fact that the content does not fit with the journal’s scope, or the manuscript doesn’t comply with the journal’s instructions for authors. The journals published by PreferPub use single or double blind peer reviewing with either one or two reviewers per manuscript. If the two reviewers’ conclusions are opposing, a third peer reviewer may be invited by some journals. Reviewers are expected to give any constructive comments with the view to improving the article’s quality, however reviewers are also expected to inform the Editor-in-Chief about any suspicion of misconduct. The Editors-in-Chief then compile a report with the suggestions from the peer reviewers. Some journals allow authors to explain why they do not agree with the peer reviewer’s point of view and, depending on the justifications given by the authors, the Editor-in-Chief may or may not accept this. If the journal uses an online article submission and peer reviewing system, authors are given access to the system to monitor the progress of the peer reviewing process. The Editors-in-Chief are expected to monitor the peer reviewer’s activity, regarding timeliness, constructive comments and quality of the comments. The reviewers will be given the expectations that the Editors-in-Chief have regarding their activity.

Plagiarism

All journals published by PreferPub are committed to publishing only original material, i.e., material that has neither been published elsewhere nor is under review elsewhere. We accept all terms and conditions of COPE about plagiarism and in case, any attempt of plagiarism is brought to our attention accompanied by convincing evidence, we act based on flowcharts and workflows determined in COPE.

Duplicate Submission

Manuscripts that are found to have been published elsewhere, or to be under review elsewhere, will incur duplicate submission/publication sanctions.

If authors have used their own previously published work or work that is currently under review, as the basis for a submitted manuscript, they are required to cite the previous work and indicate how their submitted manuscript offers novel contributions beyond those of the previous work.

Citation Manipulation

Submitted manuscripts that are found to include citations whose primary purpose is to increase the number of citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal, will incur citation manipulation sanctions.

Data Fabrication and Falsification

Submitted manuscripts that are found to have either fabricated or falsified experimental results, including the manipulation of images, will incur data fabrication and falsification sanctions.

Improper Author Contribution or Attribution

All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. It is important to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.

Redundant Publications

Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles.

Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest (COIs, also known as ‘competing interests’) occur when issues outside research could be reasonably perceived to affect the neutrality or objectivity of the work or its assessment. Potential conflicts of interest must be declared – whether or not they actually had an influence – to allow informed decisions. In most cases, this declaration will not stop work from being published nor will it always prevent someone from being involved in a review process.

If unsure, declare a potential interest or discuss with the editorial office. Undeclared interests may incur sanctions. Submissions with undeclared conflicts that are later revealed may be rejected. Published articles may need to be re-assessed, have a corrigendum published, or in serious cases be retracted. For more information on COIs, see the guidance from the ICMJE and WAME.

Conflicts include:

• Financial – funding and other payments, goods and services received or expected by the authors relating to the subject of the work or from an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work.

• Affiliations – being employed by, on the advisory board for, or a member of an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work.

• Intellectual property – patents or trademarks owned by someone or their organization.

• Personal – friends, family, relationships, and other close personal connections.

• Ideology – beliefs or activism, e.g. political or religious, relevant to the work.

• Academic – competitors or someone whose work is critiqued.

Authors

Authors must declare all potential interests in a ‘Conflicts of interest’ section, which should explain why the interest may be a conflict. If there are none, the authors should state “The author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.” Submitting authors are responsible for co-authors declaring their interests.

Authors must declare current or recent funding (including for article processing charges) and other payments, goods or services that might influence the work. All funding, whether a conflict or not, must be declared in the ‘Acknowledgments’.

The involvement of anyone other than the authors who 1) has an interest in the outcome of the work; 2) is affiliated to an organization with such an interest; or 3) was employed or paid by a funder, in the commissioning, conception, planning, design, conduct, or analysis of the work, the preparation or editing of the manuscript or the decision to publish must be declared.

Declared conflicts of interest will be considered by the editor and reviewers and included in the published article.

Editors and Reviewers

Editors and reviewers should decline to be involved with a submission when they:

• Have a recent publication or current submission with any author

• Share or recently shared an affiliation with any author

• Collaborate or recently collaborated with any author

• Have a close personal connection to any author

• Have a financial interest in the subject of the work

• Feel unable to be objective

Reviewers must declare any remaining interests in the ‘Confidential’ section of the review form, which will be considered by the editor. Editors and reviewers must declare if they have previously discussed the manuscript with the authors.

Copyright and Open Access Policy

PreferPub journals requests an ‘Assignment of Copyright’ for open access articles but provides re-use of the content under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Indeed, articles are published online under the CC BY 4.0 usage license. Ownership of copyright of the manuscript contents remains with the authors. The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.

Any exceptions to this are set out where appropriate on individual journal home pages.

Article Processing Charge (APC)

Some journals may require Author Publication Charges (APCs) upon acceptance for publication. APC are set at the level necessary to cover associated publishing costs and sustain PreferPub’s services to the research community. Visit the individual journals to view their submission requirements, author guidelines, APC information and frequently asked questions. You can also create a free user account at the journal, enabling you to submit your manuscript. Technical support, automated tracking alerts and feedback on publication dates are just a few of the ways in which we assist our authors.

General Advertising Policy

In order to generate additional income, journals published by PreferPub have the ability to include advertising. This income remains “additional” and is not dominant neither with respect to subscriptions, nor to article processing charges, depending on the journal’s business model.

Advertising is available for both versions of the journals, electronic and print (if a print version is still available).

Selling of advertisements is carried out independently of the published content, and adverts are not positioned next to an article about the product or in relation to the product.

In print versions, the advertisements precede or follow the editorial section. For the electronic versions, it is possible to have banner adverts on the journal’s homepage or in ToC alerts.

There is a clear distinction between the editorial content and the advertisements as the latter are clearly identifiable with respect and in opposition to scientific content.

PreferPub does not accept any advertisement about harmful or dangerous products.

All the medical journals published by PreferPub are fully complaint with ICMJE and WAME and the Editor-in-Chief has final authority for approving the publication of any advertisements. All the advertisements respect national and/or international regulations.

Each journal displays its own policy on the journal’s homepage as it may differ from PreferPub policy.

Sanctions

In the event that there are documented violations of any of the above-mentioned policies in any journal, regardless of whether or not the violations occurred in a journal published by PreferPub, the following sanctions will be applied:

• Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript

• Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submitted to any journal published by PreferPub by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript

• The prohibition against all of the authors for any new submissions to any journal published by PreferPub, either individually or in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript, as well as in combination with any other authors. This prohibition will be imposed for a minimum of 36 months

• The prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the Editorial Board of any journal published by PreferPub

In cases where the violations of the above policies are found to be particularly egregious, the publisher reserves the right to impose additional sanctions beyond those described above.

Appeals and Complaints

PreferPub adheres to COPE guidelines regarding appeals to editorial decisions and complaints. Please contact to PreferPub via email (support@PreferPub.com) for more information