Ethical Guidlines

Publication ethics and malpractice statement

Journal of Otolaryngology and Rhinology Research publish peer-reviewed manuscripts based on the novelty, clarity, and significance as relevant to a better understanding of the biological sciences. The publish articles in Journal of Otolaryngology and Rhinology Research is a direct reflection of the authors hard work and their institute prestige and cooperation. It is therefore necessary for the author, editors, reviewers and publisher to meet the standard of the expected publication ethics and performed ethical behavior. Journal of Otolaryngology and Rhinology Research takes the duties of monitoring ethical guideline at all the stages of publication. Publisher is fully committed to ensuring that revenue generated from Advertising or APC does not have any impact on the decision on the publication of an article. Again, publication of an article is not contingent upon the authors ability to pay the charges. Neither is acceptance to pay the handling fee by the author a guarantee that the paper will be accepted for publication.

Ethical expectations

Editors’ responsibilities:

  • To acknowledge receipt of submitted manuscripts within two working days and to ensure an efficient, fair, and timely review process.
  • To clearly identify manuscripts that are fully within the scope and aim of  Journal. To treat all submissions fairly without any favour of prejudice regarding authors’ gender, religious or political beliefs, ethnic or geographical origin.
  • To only authorise to review and publication content of the highest quality.
  • To recuse himself or herself from processing any manuscript if he or she has any conflict of interest with any of the authors or institutions related to the manuscripts.
  • To provide advice to the authors during the submission process when necessary.
  • To be transparent with regards to the review and publication process with an appropriate care that individuals will not be identified when it is inappropriate to do so.
  • To not use any parts or data of the submitted manuscript for his or her own future research as the submitted manuscript is not published yet.
  • To respond immediately and take reasonable action when ethical problems occur concerning a submitted or a published manuscript.

Authors’ responsibilities:

  • To carefully read the Instructions for authors published on the website of  Journal.
  • To claim that the submitted manuscript is not under consideration or accepted for publication elsewhere. To acknowledge and cite accordingly all content overlap with already published content.
  • To ensure that the submitted manuscript is original, prepared to a high scholarly standard and fully referenced using the prescribed referencing convention.
  • To obtain permission to reproduce any content from other published sources. To clarify that all data used in the manuscript has been acquired following ethical research standards.
  • To accurately acknowledge funding sources related to the submitted manuscript.
  • To carefully read all the conditions included in the copyright form and to accept the copyright form during the submission process.
  • To declare any potential conflicts of interest (real or apparent) at any stage during the publication process.
  • To recognise that the Editorial Board of  Journal has the final decision to publish the submitted, reviewed and accepted manuscript.
  • To immediately inform the editors whenever any obvious error in his or her published manuscript is identified. To cooperate with the editors in retraction or correction of the manuscript if necessary.

Reviewers’ responsibilities:

  • To immediately notify the editors whenever feels unqualified to review the assigned manuscript or sees difficulties to meet the deadline for completion of the review.
  • To agree to review a reasonable number of manuscripts at the same time.
  • To inform the editors if there is any possible conflict of interest related to the assigned manuscript. Specifically, to avoid reviewing any manuscript authored or co-authored by a person with whom the reviewer has an obvious personal or academic relationship.
  • To treat the manuscript in a confidential manner and to not use any parts or data of the reviewed manuscript for his or her own future research as the reviewing manuscript is not published yet.
  • To assist in improving the quality of the manuscript reading the manuscript with appropriate care and attention, reviewing the manuscript objectively and being constructively critical.
  • To immediately notify the editors of any similarities between the reviewing manuscript and another article either published or under consideration by another journal.

Conflicts of interest and financial disclosures

Conflicts may be financial, academic, commercial, political or personal. Financial interests may include employment, research funding (received or pending), stock or share ownership, patents, payment for lectures or travel, consultancies, non financial support, or any fiduciary interest in a company. When any author(s) has such type of financial or personal obligation, it is required to mention such potential conflict of interest along with financial interests and related affiliations (other than those affiliations listed in the title page of the manuscript) relevant to the subject of their manuscript. For all accepted manuscripts, author must declare such conflicts of interest at the end of the manuscript before the manuscript publish. Author without a conflict of interest should include a statement that no such conflicts exist.

Funding / Support and Role of sponsor

All the author(s) who have received financial assistance for carried out research work and publication should be described clearly in an Acknowledgment section of the manuscript.

Data access and responsibility

Regardless of funding source for any manuscript containing original data, corresponding author must indicate in acknowledgement section that he/ she had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. Modified statements or generic statements indicating that all authors had such access are not acceptable.

Acknowledgment section

The acknowledge section should be at the end of the manuscript text but before the reference section. It should includes the list of contributor(s), information on author access to data, conflicts of interest including financial interests and relationships, sources of funding and support like informationâs. Authors should obtain written permission from all individuals whose names included in the Acknowledgment section and the corresponding author must confirm that such permission has been obtained in the Authorship Form.

Plagiarism

Author should make clear that manuscripts submitted to the journal for consideration of publication should not be previously publish anywhere either in print or electronic format. Submitted manuscript should not be under consideration by another publication or electronic medium. Copies of related or possibly duplicate materials (i.e. those containing substantially similar content or using the similar data) that have been previously published or are under consideration elsewhere are coming in the plagiarism and such manuscript will be rejected on the first step of publication.

Ethical approval of studies and informed consent

For all manuscripts reporting data from studies involving human participants or animals, formal review and approval, or formal review and waiver, by an appropriate institutional review board or ethics committee is required. For investigations involving humans, state in the Methods section whatever oral or written informed consent was obtained from the study participants. Editors may request that authors provide documentation of the formal review and recommendation from the institutional review board or ethics committee responsible for oversight of the study.

 

Procedures for dealing with unethical behaviour

Dealing with possible misconduct:

  • Editors have a duty to act if they suspect any misconduct or if a claim of misconduct has been reported by anyone. This duty applies to both published and unpublished article.
  • Editors should not simply reject an article that raise concerns about possible misconduct. Editors are ethically obliged to pursue alleged cases.
  • Whoever informs the editors of such conduct should provide sufficient information and evidence to initiate an investigation.
  • Editors must take all allegations seriously and treat them in the same way, until a successful decision or conclusion is reached.
  • Editors should first seek a response from those suspected of misconduct. If the editors are not satisfied with the response, they should ask the relevant employers, or institution, or some appropriate body to investigate.
  • Editors should make all reasonable efforts to ensure that a proper investigation into alleged misconduct is conducted. If this does not happen, editors should make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem.

Minor breaches:

  • Minor misconduct might be dealt without the need to consult more widely. In any event, the author should be given the opportunity to respond to any allegations.

Serious breaches:

  • Serious misconduct might require that the employers of the accused be notified. The editors should make the decision whether or not to involve the employers, either by examining the available evidence themselves or by further consultation with a limited number of experts.

Retraction of an article if:

  • Editors have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct or honest error.
  • The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission or justification (i.e. redundant publication). The journal that first published the article may issue a notice of redundant publication, but should not retract the article unless the findings are unreliable. Any journals that subsequently publish a redundant article should retract it and state the reason for the retraction.
  • The article constitutes plagiarism and reports unethical research.
  • The article should be retracted as soon as possible after the editors are convinced that the article is seriously flawed and misleading.

Outcomes of unethical behaviour (in increasing order of severity):

  • Informing or educating the author or reviewer where appears to be a misunderstanding or misapplication of acceptable standards.
  • A more strongly worded letter to the author or reviewer covering the misconduct and as a warning to future behaviour.
  • Publication of a formal notice on the journal website detailing the misconduct.
  • Publication of an editorial on the journal website (as well as in both electronic and printed issue) detailing the misconduct.
  • A formal letter to the head of the author's or reviewer's department or funding agency.
  • Retraction or withdrawal of a publication from the journal, in conjunction with informing the head of the author or reviewer's department, as well as Abstracting & Indexing services.
  • Imposition of a formal embargo on contributions from an individual in the journal for a defined period.