POLICIES

AUTHORSHIP

We adhere to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) 4 criteria of authors:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Source: ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals. December, 2014 update

http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

Persons who contribute to the manuscript, but don’t meet all four criteria, may be listed in the acknowledgements. This may include internal reviewers, data analysts who don’t contribute to the writing, study staff, etc.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

We ask all authors to report a conflict of interest.

A conflict of interest is a situation/secondary interest that can or has potential to impact professional judgment, transparency and objectivity with regards to a primary interest such as conduct of research, results dissemination or peer review process. This can include a situation in which a person is involved in multiple interests (financial, emotional, or otherwise), any of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual.

Source: ICMJE

Some potential conflicts of interest:

Revenue paid to you, your family, your institution
Funding from drug companies or sources that could be perceived as having a financial stake in the outcome of your manuscript
Intellectual Property: copyrights and patents
Any relationship or activity that might be perceived as influencing your manuscript
Personal beliefs that are in direct conflict with the topic being researched

If you’re uncertain, it would be better to report than not to report.

How to avoid conflict of interest:

Absolute disclosure and transparency
When there is no conflict of interest, you need to state so
When in doubt, consult seniors/others for guidance

PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism is taking someone else’s words or ideas without credit and passing them off as your own.We will reject any manuscripts with plagiarism. We check each submitted manuscript with an online plagiarism checker.

How to avoid plagiarism:

If you use the exact wording from another source, put the exact wording in quotation marks and credit the source.
Even if you use your own words, you must document the source of the ideas by citing that source as a reference.
You do not need to cite a source for information that is considered common knowledge.

When in doubt, be cautious and cite the source. A critique of too many citations is always better than a critique of plagiarism.

Source: http://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QPA_plagiarism.html

Detecting Plagiarism