Research and Publication Ethics

Research and publication ethics are the cornerstone of responsible and trustworthy scientific inquiry. These ethical guidelines encompass a comprehensive set of principles and standards that govern the conduct of researchers and the dissemination of their work. Adhering to these guidelines is critical for upholding scientific research's integrity, reliability, and credibility. Furthermore, ethical research and publication practices are essential for advancing knowledge, maintaining public trust in science, and ensuring the responsible use of research findings. Institutions, journals, and individual researchers must collaborate and uphold these standards to foster a research environment characterized by transparency, honesty, and integrity. Some critical aspects of research and publication ethics include the responsible conduct of research, proper attribution of credit, transparency in reporting, and the ethical treatment of human and animal subjects.

  • Research Ethics
  1. Informed Consent: Before participating in a research study, participants must be provided with detailed information about the study's purpose, procedures, potential risks, and benefits. Researchers must ensure that participants fully understand what their involvement will entail before they provide their consent.
  2. Confidentiality and Privacy: It is essential to safeguard the privacy of research participants and ensure that their personal information and data are kept confidential. This includes preventing unauthorized access to sensitive information and using anonymization techniques when reporting research findings.
  3. Avoiding Harm: Researchers are responsible for minimizing the risk of physical or psychological harm to participants during a study. This includes carefully designing research protocols to mitigate potential risks and providing support services or referrals to participants who may experience distress due to their participation.
  4. Honesty and Integrity: Research should be conducted with the utmost honesty and integrity. This means that researchers must accurately report their findings and avoid any form of data fabrication, falsification, or misrepresentation. Transparency and adherence to ethical standards are essential in maintaining the integrity of research outcomes.
  5. Conflict of Interest: Researchers must disclose any potential conflicts of interest that could influence the outcome of their research. This transparency is necessary to maintain the research's credibility and ensure that any potential biases are acknowledged and addressed.
  6. Research Involving Human Subjects and Animal Welfare: When research involves the use of animals, ethical guidelines for the humane treatment and care of animals must be followed. This includes providing appropriate housing, nutrition, and veterinary care and minimizing any discomfort or distress the animal experiences during the research process. When reporting research involving human subjects, human material, tissues, or data, authors must declare compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki. ( https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-Helsinki/ ), revised in According to point 23 of this declaration, researchers must obtain approval from the local institutional review board (IRB) or another appropriate ethics committee before researching to ensure the study complies with national and international guidelines. At a minimum, the article should include a statement in the 'Institutional Review Board Statement' section with the project identification code, date of approval, and the name of the ethics committee or institutional review board. An example of an ethical statement is: "All subjects provided informed consent before participating in the study. The Declaration of Helsinki carried out the study, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code)."

All participants must be informed about non-interventional studies such as surveys, questionnaires, and social media research. They should be assured about the anonymity of their participation, be provided with an explanation of why the study is being conducted, and be informed about how their data will be used. Also, any associated risks should be communicated to the participants.  Just like with all research involving humans, it is necessary to obtain ethical approval from an appropriate ethics committee before conducting the study. In cases where ethical approval is not required, authors must provide an exemption from the ethics committee or cite the local or national legislation that indicates ethics approval is not necessary for this type of study. If a study has been granted an exemption, the name of the ethics committee that provided this should be stated in the 'Institutional Review Board Statement,' along with a full explanation regarding why ethical approval was not required.

The involved patients must obtain written informed consent to publish information about individual participants. It is essential to provide detailed data about the individual participants. Still, including private information that could identify the participants is only necessary if such identifiable materials are relevant to the research (e.g., photographs of participants' faces showing a particular symptom). Any case details, personal information, and images of patients included in the manuscript require authors to obtain signed informed consent for publication from the patients (or their relatives/guardians) before submitting to the SJAST journal. Patients' initials or other personal identifiers mustn't appear in any images. 

Please ensure that patient details are anonymized to the fullest extent possible. Do not mention specific age, ethnicity, or occupation unless relevant to the conclusions. You can download a template permission form. When you turn in your work, please upload a blank version of the form used to obtain permission (with the patient's name or signature). Editors may only accept submissions that meet these requirements.

To publish in SJAST journal, the consent, permission, or release form should grant unlimited permission for publication in all formats (including print, electronic, and online), sublicensed and reprinted versions (including translations and derived works), and other works and products under an open access license. To protect individuals' privacy, please don't send signed forms. The journal may request authors to provide signed forms if necessary.

An additional check may be performed if the study involves research with vulnerable groups. The editorial office will carefully review the submitted manuscript. Documentary evidence (such as blank consent forms and related discussion documents from the ethics board) must be provided upon request. Additionally, if studies involve categorizing groups by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, disease, etc., the article must clearly explain why such categorization was necessary.

  • Publication Ethics
  1. Authorship:

A research paper's authorship should truthfully represent each individual's contributions. All authors must approve the final manuscript and agree to take responsibility for the research. When deciding who should be listed as an author of a work, it is essential to adhere to the following guidelines:

  • The author must have contributed to the conception or design of the work or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data.
  • The author must grant their final approval for the version that will be published.
  • It is crucial to get approval from all authors, including those removed if the list changes.
  • The corresponding author should act as a point of contact between the editor and the other authors.
  • The journal points out that it reserves the right to request confirmation that all authors meet the conditions for authorship. Therefore, it is necessary to follow these guidelines.
  1. Author contributions

To ensure transparency, we ask authors to provide a list of co-author contributions to the manuscript. These contributions should be categorized into one of the 14 relevant roles describing each contributor's specific role in creating the research output. The roles include Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Roles/Writing - original draft, and Writing - review & editing. It's important to note that only some roles may apply to some manuscripts, and authors may have contributed through multiple roles.

  1. Plagiarism: Using someone else's work without giving them credit is considered plagiarism and is not allowed. This includes not correctly citing sources when using someone else's ideas, words, or creations.
  2. Duplicate Publication: It is considered unethical and a violation of academic integrity to submit the same manuscript to multiple journals or republish the same research in different places without properly citing the source.
  3. Peer Review: The peer review process plays a crucial role in maintaining the integrity of published research. It must be impartial, confidential, and comprehensive to uphold the quality and validity of published research.
  4. Data Transparency: Researchers have an ethical responsibility to make their data and methodology accessible to others in the scientific community. This transparency allows for verifying and replicating findings, which are essential aspects of the scientific process.
  5. Corrections and Retractions: If errors are found in a published work, the authors must promptly address them by correcting or retracting the paper. This is necessary to maintain the accuracy and integrity of the scientific record.
  • Publication Ethics Statement

The journal has a strict peer-review process and ethical standards to ensure high-quality scientific works are added to scholarly publications. However, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, and inappropriate authorship do arise. The editors take publishing ethics issues seriously and have a zero-tolerance policy. Authors who wish to publish in the journal must disclose any potential conflicts of interest, present accurate research findings, provide detailed data and methods, and deposit raw data publicly before submission. Simultaneous submission to multiple journals is not allowed. Translations of previously published work are accepted, but errors found after publication should be promptly reported. Manuscripts should only contain information that has already been published with permission. Plagiarism, data fabrication, and image manipulation are not tolerated. Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data without proper credit. All submissions are checked for plagiarism using iThenticate. Image files must not be manipulated in a way that could lead to misinterpretation. If irregular image manipulation is identified, the manuscript may be rejected or corrected after publication.

  • Regulatory and Institutional Oversight
  1. Institutional Review Boards (IRBs): Research conducted by various institutions is subject to review by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to ensure that the proposed studies adhere to ethical standards and guidelines.
  2. Funding Transparency: Disclosed funding sources are essential to identifying potential biases or conflicts of interest.
  3. Compliance with Guidelines: Researchers must strictly follow ethical guidelines established by professional societies, academic journals, and research institutions. These guidelines ensure research integrity, protect participants' rights and well-being, and maintain the scientific community's credibility. Adhering to these ethical standards is essential for upholding the trust and reliability of research outcomes.
  • Common Ethical Issues in Research and Publication
  1. Fabrication and Falsification: Falsifying or manipulating data to achieve desired results.
  2. Ghostwriting and Guest Authorship: Failing to properly acknowledge individuals who contributed significantly to the research or including authors who did not substantially contribute to the work.
  3. Predatory Journals: Publishing in predatory journals that exploit authors and do not provide legitimate peer review or editorial services.
  • Ethical Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research

The editors will require that the benefits potentially derived from any research causing harm to animals be significant in terms of any cost endured by animals and that procedures followed are unlikely to offend most readers. Authors should mainly ensure that their research complies with the commonly accepted '3Rs':

  1. Replacement of animals by alternatives wherever possible,
  2. Reduction in the number of animals used, and
  3. Refine experimental conditions and procedures to minimize animal harm.

Authors are required to include details about housing, farming, and pain management in their manuscript. For additional guidance, authors should consult the Code of Practice for the Housing and Care of Animals Used in Scientific Procedures, the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science, or the European Animal Research Association. If no animal ethics committee is available to review applications, authors should be aware that reviewers and editors will evaluate the ethics of their research. Authors should provide a statement justifying the work from an ethical perspective, using the same practical framework that ethics committees use. Authors may be asked to give this statement even if they have already received ethical approval.

Research Involving Cell Lines

When submitting research reports involving cell lines, the methods section should specify the source of any cell lines used. The origin should be clearly stated for established cell lines and references to a published paper or commercial source. If using newly created cell lines, including those obtained from another laboratory, details of institutional review board or ethics committee approval must be provided. Additionally, if the cell line is of human origin, written informed consent must be confirmed. An example of Ethical Statements: The HCT116 cell line was obtained from XXXX. XXXXX, Ltd provided the MLH1+ cell line. The DLD-1 cell line was obtained from Dr.XXXX. The DR-GFP and SA-GFP report plasmids were obtained from Dr. XXX, and the Rad51K133A expression vector was obtained from Dr. XXXX.

Research Involving Plants

Experimental research involving plants, whether cultivated or wild, and the collection of plant material must adhere to institutional, national, or international guidelines. We advise authors to comply with the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

For all submitted manuscripts that include genetic information, the origin of the genetic material must be provided. Regarding research manuscripts involving rare and non-model plants, voucher specimens must be deposited in an accessible herbarium or museum. These vouchers may be requested for review by future investigators to verify the identity of the material used in the study. Details of the populations sampled, including GPS coordinates and collection dates, should be included. This requirement may be waived for rare, threatened, or endangered species, but the author must explain this in the cover letter.

Citation Policy

Authors must appropriately cite any material from other sources, including their own published work, and obtain permission when necessary. They should refrain from excessive self-citation and copying references from other publications without reading the cited work. Additionally, authors should not show a preference for citing their own, their friends, peers', or institutions' publications or citing advertisements or advertorial material.

Declaration of Originality and Integrity

I affirm that this document's research and content are my work. I have actually cited all the sources used. I have not used AI programs to generate content, except for minor grammar checking and formatting tasks. I understand the importance of academic integrity and pledge to abide by these principles in all my educational pursuits. I recognize the consequences of violating this policy and accept the outlined disciplinary actions.