Research and Publication Ethics Policy

  1. All research work involving human subjects, human material, human data, or animals submitted for publication must be approved by an appropriate Institutional Review Board (IRB).
  2. All articles are required to have IRB in accordance with ethical standards set by ICMJE.
  3. All research involving human subjects, human material or human data must be in accordance with Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.who.int/bulletin/archives/79(4)373.pdf) and Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) guidelines (https://cioms.ch/). A statement detailing the name of the IRB and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research.
  4. All experimental and interventional studies must be accompanied by approval letter from IRB.
  5. All RCTs must be in accordance with CONSORT.
  6. All clinical trials must be registered at clincaltrials.gov
  7. If a study has been granted exemption from ethics review, this should also be detailed in the manuscript and exemption letter signed by IRB Chair must be submitted with the manuscript. The Editor may contact the IRB for further information on special cases.
  8. The Editor reserves the right to reject a manuscript if the editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework.
  9. Retrospective ethics approval from IRB, in cases when a study has not been granted IRB approval prior to commencing, is usually not obtainable and it may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review. The decision on whether to proceed to peer review in such cases is at the Editor's discretion.
  10. If tables, illustrations or photographs, which have already been published, are included, a letter of permission for re-publication should be obtained from author(s) of that research article as well as the editor of the journal where it was previously published.
  11. Written consent to reproduce photographs, investigation reports (images of reports or other radiological images like X Ray, MRI scans etc.) of patients, should be sent with the manuscript.
  12. Authors must declare time and place of the study.
  13. COPE guidelines are followed by JSHMDC. Any scientific misconduct will be dealt with as per COPE guidelines. Publication misconduct is dealt by asking the corresponding author an explanation. If there is no/unsatisfactory response, the manuscript is rejected from publication and retracted if already published. Retraction notice will be in print and on the journal’s website as well. The authors will be blacklisted. The institutional head, HEC, PMC, and other editorial associations may also be informed of this misconduct.
  14. The authors will retain the copyrights of their submitted manuscripts for all purposes. The readers may “Share-copy and reorganize the material in any medium or format” and “transform and build upon the material”. The readers must give appropriate credit to the source of the material and indicate if changes were made to the material. Readers may not use the material for commercial purpose. The readers may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
  15. If the author wishes to withdraw the manuscript during its processing, an official email needs to be sent the editor for withdrawal. No manuscript is considered “withdrawn” without official email sent to the editor. A manuscript cannot be withdrawn after its acceptance by the journal.
  16. A declaration of conflict of interest must be signed by authors before publication.
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