Publication Criteria and Authorship
Licenses
Journal of Experimental and Clinical Anatomy (JECA) publishes articles under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, for noncommercial purposes only. If others modify or adapt the material, they must license the modified material under identical terms.
Correction to an Article
In traditional journals, where articles are peer reviewed before publication, Corrections (or Errata) are published to alert readers to errors in the article that became apparent following the publication of the final article.
By contrast, articles in JECA undergo peer review post publication and publication is not ‘final’ as new versions can be added at any stage. Possible mistakes that come to light during the peer review process may be highlighted in the published peer review reports, which are part of the article. Authors can publish revised versions, and any errors that become apparent during peer review or later can be corrected through the publication of new versions. Corrections and changes relative to the previous version are always summarized in the ‘Amendments’ section at the start of a new version.
Conflicting interests
Authors must include a ‘Conflicting interests’ statement. A conflicting interest will not preclude publication, but it provides full transparency for readers. If there are no conflicting interests to declare, the following standard statement is added: ‘No conflicting interests were declared’.
A conflicting interest may be of non-financial or financial nature. Examples of conflicting interests include (but are not limited to):
- individuals receiving funding, salary or other forms of payment from an organization, or holding stocks or shares from a company, that might benefit (or lose) financially from the publication of the findings;
- individuals or their funding organization or employer holding (or applying for) related patents;
- official affiliations and memberships with interest groups relating to the content of the publication;
- political, religious, or ideological competing interests.
Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical trials, should declare these as conflicting interests on submission. The relationship of each author to such an organization should be explained in the ‘conflicting interests’ section. Publications in JECA must not contain advertising.
The International Society for Medical Publication Professionals provides good practice guidelines, which are aimed at ensuring that “clinical trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies are published in a responsible and ethical manner”.
Readers who contribute comments on a poster, slide or document are also required to declare any competing interests.
If an undisclosed competing interest is brought to the attention of the editorial office after publication, TJNPR will follow the COPE guidelines.
Permanency of content
All articles published in JECA receive a DOI and are permanently published, so they cannot be withdrawn once a DOI has been issued.
In order to maintain the integrity and completeness of the scholarly record, we will apply the following policies when published content needs to be corrected; these policies take into account current best practice in the scholarly publishing and library communities:
Retraction
This action is reserved for documents that are seriously flawed. They may be retracted for several reasons, including:
- honest errors reported by the authors (for example, errors due to the mixing up of samples or use of a scientific tool or equipment that is found subsequently to be faulty)
- research misconduct (data fabrication)
- duplicate or overlapping publication
- fraudulent use of data
- clear plagiarism
- unethical research
For any retracted poster, slides or document, the reason for retraction and who is instigating the retraction will be clearly stated in the Retraction notice. A publication is usually only retracted at the authors’ request or by the publisher because serious misconduct has been brought to our attention.
Removal
The removal of an article would only be undertaken where legal limitations have been placed upon the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), for example, if the document is clearly defamatory or infringes others’ legal rights. The bibliographic information for a removed poster, slide or document will be retained on the site along with information regarding the circumstances that led to its removal.
Allegations of misconduct
JECA is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and provides an ethical publishing framework in accordance with COPE’s codes of conduct for editors and publishers.
Manuscripts are peer-reviewed or checked before being published in JECA; publication of such shared content in JECA does not imply endorsement of its content, methods or ethical standards.
If a case of suspected research or publication misconduct is brought to our attention, we will follow COPE guidelines. This may involve contacting the authors’ research institution, an ethics committee or other third parties.
Research misconduct includes data fabrication or falsification, or cases where research involving animals or humans has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. Publication misconduct includes duplicate publication of articles or plagiarism. Honest errors or differences of opinion are not considered ‘misconduct’.
If you suspect potential misconduct in an article published on JECA, please contact the editorial office (jecajournal@gmail.com).
Appeals and complaints
JECA follows the COPE guidelines in relation to complaints and appeals. If you wish to make an appeal or complaint you should contact the editorial office (jecajournal@gmail.com) In the instance that your issue cannot be resolved by the editorial office, the publishing director should be contacted.
Research involving plants
Studies on plants must be carried out within the guidelines provided by the authors’ institution and national or international regulations. Where applicable, a statement of permissions granted or licenses should be included. Authors should comply with the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Publication of Reviews and Opinion articles
JECA encourages open, scholarly review and debate of research findings, trends and topics that are of direct relevance to researchers in the form of Reviews and Opinion articles. Submissions of this type must represent a useful addition to the scientific literature and must be presented in a format that is suitable for peer review. While researchers who meet the criteria outlined above are entitled to publish any article presenting new research and data, the decision of whether a submitted review or opinion article is suitable for publication and subsequent open peer review by experts, ultimately lies with the Editor-in-Chief of JECA.
Publication criteria for research outputs presenting original data and results:
- Authors must be formally affiliated at an accredited institution or recognized organization.
- Author affiliation is verified through institutional/organizational email address AND institutional/organizational website profile (or other means).
- At least one author on the article (who should have made a key contribution to the article) must meet these key criteria for it to be suitable for publication.
- If authors do not believe that they meet the publication criteria, please contact the editorial office jecajournal@gmail.com for more discussion.
Use of AI-Based tools
Authors must be aware that using AI-based tools and technologies for article content generation, e.g. large language models (LLMs), generative AI, and chatbots (e.g. ChatGPT), is not in line with our authorship criteria. All authors are wholly responsible for the originality, validity and integrity of the content of their submissions. Therefore, LLMs and other similar types of tools do not meet the criteria for authorship.
Stopping Peer Review
Peer review may be discontinued on some articles that have not received sufficient peer review reports after a long period of time. As a general rule, authors may choose to stop peer review if their article has not received any reports after 6 months, or if only 1 report has been received after 9 months. In some cases, where authors have not actively pursued peer review, the JECA editorial team may add an explanation on the article to alert readers that the peer review of the article is not active.
Articles with 0 or 1 report have not passed peer review and are not indexed in bibliographic databases; if peer review is stopped in consultation with the JECA team, the authors may choose to submit the manuscript to a journal for peer review and publication elsewhere.
