Ethical standards for publication exist to ensure high-quality scientific publications, public trust in scientific findings, and that people receive credit for their ideas. Publications Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and abides by its Code of Conduct and aims to adhere to its Best Practice Guidelines.

Article Assessment

All manuscripts are subject to peer review and are expected to meet standards of academic excellence. If approved by the editor, submissions will be considered by peer-reviewers, whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors.

Our Research Integrity team will occasionally seek advice outside standard peer review, for example, on submissions with serious ethical, security, biosecurity, or societal implications. We may consult experts and the academic editor before deciding on appropriate actions, including but not limited to: recruiting reviewers with specific expertise, assessment by additional editors, and declining to further consider a submission.

Plagiarism

All journals published by Publications Journal are committed to publishing only original material, i.e., material that has neither been published elsewhere, nor is under review elsewhere. Publications Journal as a participant of CrossCheck uses the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Manuscripts that are found to have been plagiarized from a manuscript by other authors, whether published or unpublished, will incur plagiarism sanctions.

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.

RedundantConflicts 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.

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 TMJPDS Journal, the following sanctions will be applied:

• Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript
• Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submitted to any journal published by TMJPDS Journal by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript
• Prohibition against all of the authors for any new submissions to any journal published by TMJPDS Journal, 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
• Prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the Editorial Board of any journal published by TMJPDS Journal

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.

Reviewer Responsibilities

Peer-reviewer responsibilities toward authors

• Providing written, unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the work, together with the documented basis for the reviewer’s opinion
• Indicating whether the writing is clear, concise, and relevant and rating the work’s composition, scientific accuracy, originality, and interest to the journal’s readers
• Avoiding personal comments or criticism
• Maintaining the confidentiality of the review process: not sharing, discussing with third parties, or disclosing information from the reviewed paper

Peer-reviewer responsibilities toward editors

• Notifying the editor immediately if unable to review in a timely manner and providing the names of potential other reviewers.
• Alerting the editor about any potential personal or financial conflict of interest and declining to review when a possibility of a conflict exists. Complying with the editor’s written instructions on the journal’s expectations for the scope, content, and quality of the review.
Providing a thoughtful, fair, constructive, and informative critique of the submitted work, which may include supplementary material provided to the journal by the author. Determining scientific merit, originality, and scope of the work; indicating ways to improve it; and recommending acceptance or rejection using whatever rating scale the editor deems most useful. Noting any ethical concerns, such as any violation of accepted norms of ethical treatment of animal or human subjects or substantial similarity between the reviewed manuscript and any published paper or any manuscript concurrently submitted to another journal which may be known to the reviewer. Refraining from direct author contact.

Peer-reviewer responsibilities toward readers

• Ensuring that the methods are adequately detailed to allow the reader to judge the scientific merit of the study design and be able to replicate the study, if desired.
• Ensuring that the article cites all relevant work by other scientists.

Benefits for reviewers

Using reviewer code, you are able to get 10 USD voucher for each paper that you have reviewed. This voucher can only be used during payment of publication fee for a paper that is accepted in TMJPDS. After reviewing more than 10 papers for AP, you are able to apply for regional editorship. During manuscript submission to TMJPDS, you should mention the reviewer code in the cover letter section. Once our online system confirmed your code with your registered email address, your paper will be put on express tracking which speeds up the review process for your manuscript. The reviewer can check its own file using Turnitin Plagiarism Checker. Note that the maximum one file per month can be checked. You are eligible to propose a special issue for TMJPDS. Follow the link to submit your proposal.

Guest Editor Responsibility / Guest Editing a Special Issue

We appreciate collaborations with scholars all over the world. Special issues are normally edited by a Guest Editor who invites colleagues from the same research field to contribute an article on a topic within their expertise. The Guest Editor works together with the Editorial Office to prepare a description and keywords for the special issue webpage. We aim for at least ten articles published per special issue. Often, the Guest Editor will also write an editorial paper for the special issue. The Guest Editor usually makes decisions on the acceptance of manuscripts submitted to his or her special issue (depending on the journal’s policy—in some cases they may make a recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief). Papers belonging to a special issue are published online in the journal immediately after acceptance and collected together on the special issue webpage. This means that there is no delay for authors who submit their work: it will appear shortly after acceptance, even if other papers in the special issue are still being processed.

Guest Editors should not hold conflicts of interest with authors whose work they are assessing, e.g. if they are from the same institution or collaborate closely. In this case, the Editor-in-Chief or a suitable editorial board member will make final acceptance decisions for submitted papers.