Ethical Guidelines for Publication

 

Shanghai Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine (Shanghai J Tradit Chin Med) has formulated ethical guidelines for authors, reviewers, editors and publishers in accordance with the Copyright Law of the People’s Republic of China, the relevant code of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and the actual context of our journal in order to strengthen academic integrity, regulate the process of manuscript submission, editing, review and publication, and prevent academic misconduct. 

1 How to Identify and Handle Academic Misconduct  

The “Academic Misconduct Literature Check” (AMLC) System of China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) is used to assess new submissions and manuscripts that are finalized before publication. In general, a text similarity in a manuscript is required below 15%. Submissions with a text similarity less than 15% shall be checked on whether the duplicated parts are the main results, ideas and core data before the final editorial decision is made.

For manuscripts with academic misconduct: unpublished manuscripts will be returned; published manuscripts will be retracted and the authors’ institutions shall be informed. 

2 Publishing Ethics

2.1 Author’s Responsibilities

2.1.1 Authors shall be responsible for the authenticity of the article, and have the responsibility to cooperate with the editorial office to provide supporting materials such as original pictures, original data, fund project charter and project name, etc.

2.1.2 When submitting the manuscript, authors must submit the “Copyright Transfer Agreement” of the article signed by all co-authors, as well as a review certificate issued by corresponding institutions, which should prove, in addition to the authenticity of the content of the manuscript (data, author information), that there is no multiple submission, no confidentiality issues, no dispute over authorship, and no false funding, etc.

2.1.3 Authors shall abide by the principle of “five no’s”: no third-party ghostwriting; no third-party submission; no third-party revision; no provision of false information of peer reviewers; no violation of the norms of authorship (see 2.1.4-2.1.7), and those with no substantial academic contributions to the articles should not be co-authored.

2.1.4 An author is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study. Authorship credit should be based on：①substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; ②drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; ③final approval of the version to be published; ④accepting direct responsibility for all aspects of the research work to ensure that issues related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the manuscript are properly investigated and resolved. Those who do not meet all four conditions (e.g., those who provided purely technical assistance, or financial and material support) should not be listed as byline authors, but may be acknowledged in the acknowledgments for their assistance.

2.1.5 In principle, the authorship order indicates the magnitude of contribution. The order of authorship on the byline should be a joint decision of the co-authors, which should be determined at the time of submission. The names of authors and their institutions shall not be changed randomly. If a change is necessary, the main person in charge of the manuscript (first author and corresponding author) should submit an application for change to the editorial office, obtain confirmation from all co-authors and provide a written agreement signed by all co-authors to the editorial office with a full explanation. No unauthorized changes are allowed in the revised manuscript.

2.1.6 Usually there is only one corresponding author tagged. In the case of standardized multicenter or multidisciplinary collaborative research, it is allowed to introduce more than one corresponding author, as appropriate. The additional corresponding author should be academically responsible for different research institutions or different research groups in the collaborative study.

2.1.7 Authors with equal contributions should be indicated at the time of submission. Generally, it is allowed to have no more than two authors who have worked together on a publication and contributed equally, but if there are more than two authors with equal contributions in a standardized multicenter or multidisciplinary collaborative study, additional authors may be added as appropriate. Additional authors with equal contributions should be from different research institutions or different research groups in the collaborative study.

2.1.8 Authors should state their names and institutions when submitting the manuscript. The author’s institution should be related to the research content; if not, the author should state his or her contribution to the research, or the author’s institution should issue a certificate to prove that the author has actually engaged in the research.

2.1.9 If the institution to which the author is affiliated is not the same as the institution in which the author completed the topic selection, research proposal design and all the research work, and not the same institution that provided the research conditions (e.g. graduate students leaving the education institute, advanced students, visiting scholars, collaborative research, etc.), the institution that provided the research conditions and the institution in which the author completed the research work should be the first institution to be listed.

2.1.10 Authors of clinical research articles should follow relevant guidelines (e.g., the CONSORT Statement, which is a set of recommendations for reporting randomized controlled trials). Articles on clinical trials should follow the ethical principles of “beneficence” and “non-maleficence”. For clinical trials involving human subjects and some animal experiments, authors should provide ethical review documents of the research protocols, and for those involving patients (subjects), the authors should have informed consent forms signed.

2.1.11 For studies involving clinical trials (randomized controlled studies, cohort studies, case reports, studies conducted on human participants or specimens taken from human participants, etc.), the authors should register in global clinical trial registries recognized by WHO and include the clinical trial registration number in the manuscript.

2.1.12 Authors must take every precaution to protect the privacy of research participants and must not include personally identifiable information of patients such as name and hospital ID number in their articles. For medical research using identifiable human material or data, informed consent must be obtained from the subjects according to the formal procedures, and body parts that can help identify the patient (especially the face) must be obscured in the articles to the extent possible. 

2.1.13 Authors should declare whether there is a conflict of interest at the time of submission. If there is a conflict of interest, all financial interests that may have an impact on the research results should be stated (whether there is a commercial interest between the research and the pharmaceutical company; whether the pharmaceutical company has given any financial sponsorship for the experimental design and implementation, data processing, article writing and publication, etc.).

2.1.14 If authors disagree with the review comments, they can submit their statement to the editorial office in the submission/review system, providing detailed explanations and clarifications for each review comment.

2.1.15 Authors shall take sole responsibility for their manuscripts. After publication, if authors find any obvious errors in the published articles or any points that need immediate correction, please inform the editorial office immediately, and publish an erratum or retract the article. 

2.2 Reviewer’s Responsibilities 

2.2.1 Reviewers shall adhere to the principles of fairness, impartiality, confidentiality, and timeliness in making responsible review comments on manuscripts. There shall be no prejudice or discrimination against the author’s scientific research institutions, regions, qualifications, nationalities, etc., and the author’s research contents shall not be disclosed.

2.2.2 When there is a conflict of interest between the reviewer and the author (e.g., family relationship, teacher-student relationship, competitive relationship), the reviewer should declare the conflict of interest to the editorial office in a timely manner in order to ensure the fairness of the review, and the editorial office will decide whether the reviewer should be recused.

2.2.3 Reviewers shall not use their position to limit or devalue any author’s article when they find that the author is engaged in research similar to their own.

2.2.4 Reviewers shall review manuscripts in a timely manner as agreed, and if they are unable to return comments on time, they shall promptly inform the editorial office by leaving a message in the review system and withdraw the review, and they may recommend other reviewers. Without the consent of the editorial office, the reviewers shall not delegate their students or colleagues to review the manuscript on their behalf.

2.2.5 When reviewers encounter a previously reviewed manuscript, they are obliged to inform the editorial office and write the review comments according to the inclusion criteria of the journal as appropriate.

2.2.6 Reviewers are not allowed to use unpublished information obtained from submitted manuscripts for their own related research without the consent of the authors of original manuscripts. 

2.3 Editor’s Responsibilities

2.3.1 Editors shall handle each manuscript in a fair, impartial, and timely manner and make a decision to accept or reject an article based on its importance, originality, scientific merit, readability, authenticity of the research, and its relevance to the journal.

2.3.2 Editors shall observe the principle of confidentiality and keep the reviewers’ information and the authors’ research content strictly confidential.

2.3.3 For peer-reviewed experts recommended by authors, editors should verify whether their reviewer information is true and decide whether to invite the recommended reviewers by assessing their research area and expertise, and whether there is a conflict of interest with the author. If an author requests to recuse an expert from reviewing his or her manuscript, and this request is reasonable, the editor should respect that.

2.3.4 When selecting experts to review manuscripts, editors should try to avoid selecting experts from authors’ institutions or inviting byline authors as the reviewers.

2.3.5 Editors should give careful consideration to author’s rebuttals, and they should either organize a group discussion or invite another reviewer to re-review the manuscript.

2.3.6 Editors should consider publishing negative results obtained based on scientifically rigorous studies to avoid duplication of unnecessary studies by other scholars.

2.3.7 Editors should be alert to academic misconduct such as multiple submission and duplicate publications, and should check and review the initial submission manuscripts and finalized manuscripts to be published.

2.3.8 Editors need to remind authors of the copyright and intellectual property issues that may arise after changing their authorship, institutions and authorship order.

2.3.9 Editors should provide the authors with as much detail as possible on the reasons for revision or rejection of the manuscripts.

2.3.10 Editors should respect the author’s point of view and style of writing, and any critical changes made to the manuscripts involving academic viewpoints should be agreed to by the authors.

2.3.11 It is the editor’s responsibility to verify and review all articles (including articles under review and published) and authors, and make a final decision when possible academic misconduct was reported or found. 

2.4 Publisher’s Responsibilities

2.4.1 Shanghai J Tradit Chin Med follows the first publication rule and reports only original research results. The re-publication of articles is subject to the conditions below. ① Republish in another language for readers in different regions; ② Obtain authorization from the journal for first publication and the journal for republication; ③ The interval between the republication and the first publication should be at least one week; ④ The republished article should indicate the journal name, volume number, issue number and page number in which it was first published, as well as the title and the URL of the original article.

2.4.2 If academic misconduct is found in a manuscript that has been finalized and accepted, Shanghai J Tradit Chin Med reserves the right to reject the manuscript and notify the author’s institution and relevant journals.

2.4.3 If academic misconduct is found in a published article, Shanghai J Tradit Chin Med will retract the article and publish a retraction statement.

2.4.4 The detailed guidelines for authors (e.g. submission instructions, table requirements, etc.) have been published on the journal’s official website (www.shzyyzz.com/shzyyzz) and will be kept up to date.

2.4.5 Shanghai J Tradit Chin Med undertakes that whether or not a manuscript is published and the order in which it appears in the issue is not related to economic actions such as article processing charge (APC), but only to the Journal’s scope and the acceptance date of the article.

2.4.6 Shanghai J Tradit Chin Med is always willing to publish an erratum, an apology statement or a retraction statement when necessary.

The above terms and conditions shall come into force from the date of promulgation, and all the interpretation rights shall be reserved by the editorial office of Shanghai Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine.