Journal of Improvement Management

Journal of Improvement Management

Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

General Considerations 
  • The Journal of Improvement Management's ethical policy is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines.
  • Readers, authors, reviewers, and editors should follow these ethical policies when working with the journal.
  • Authors should ensure that their submitted research work is original and has not been published elsewhere in any language.
  • The authors should follow applicable copyright laws and conventions. 
  • Any kind of plagiarism constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines, please visit http://publicationethics.org.

 

COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts 
Publisher responsibilities
  • The publisher should ensure that editorial decisions on manuscript submissions are final, only made based on professional judgment, and will not be affected by commercial interests.
  • Publisher should monitor the ethics of Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
  • Publisher is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.
Editorial responsibilities

(https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_1.pdf)

  • The editorial team should have the full authority to reject/accept a manuscript.
  • The editorial team should maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts under review or until publication.
  • The editorial team should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
  • The editorial team should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.
  • The editorial team should be willing to investigate plagiarism and fraudulent data issues and publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
  • The editorial team must maintain the confidentiality of the content of the submitted articles until their publication.
  • The editor makes the final decision on whether or not to accept articles based on the opinions of the judges and editorial board members.
  • Due to the journal's review policy (Double-Blind), the anonymity of the judges and authors should be maintained.
  • The editorial team should not disclose the information and content of the articles to anyone other than the lead author, the reviewers and, if necessary, other editorial staff.
Reviewers’ Responsibilities  

(https://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Peer%20review%20guidelines.pdf)

  • Confidentiality of article information must be observed in all areas. The article review process is to be done anonymously.
  • Reviewers should judge articles at the appropriate time and assist the editorial team in deciding whether or not to accept the article.
  • The referees' suggestions regarding the published articles should be submitted as judging forms and in the comment section for the author and editor.
  • Reviewers should refrain from judging articles with conflicts of interest and report any such conflicts as soon as possible.
  • Reviewers' judgments about the quality and content of articles should be based on professional and objective opinions.
Authors’ responsibilities

(https://publicationethics.org/files/u7141/1999pdf13.pdf)

  • It is necessary to observe the basic principles of writing and research in writing articles, and articles should be written and arranged according to the journal's format.
  • Before submitting an article, all authors should read the authors' guide and the terms and conditions of submitting an article in this journal.
  • The corresponding author must confirm and submit the consent and knowledge of other co-authors of the article in this publication through the authors' commitment form.
  • All authors whose names are mentioned in the article and the letter of commitment form must participate in writing and compiling the article.
  • Appreciation and organizational affiliation of authors should be mentioned in the article, and any conflicts of interest between authors or organizations should be mentioned.
  • For the sustainability and development of the specialized review process, qualified authors are invited to participate in the review process of other articles in this journal.
  • Authors should report the sponsor of the research (if any).
  • Authors must notify the editor as soon as possible if they find a mistake or correction in their published article to correct or revoke it.
  • All authors should know that articles submitted to this journal are reviewed by similarity check software to prevent scientific misconduct.
  • Authors should cite correctly and appropriately all the sources they have used, both directly and indirectly.

 

Authorship Criteria

 To ensure authorship for the submitted manuscripts, the contributors should meet the following three conditions:

  • The author has done the conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data.
  • Either drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content has been done by the author.
  • The author has given the final approval for the version to be published. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to be allowed to take public responsibility for suitable portions of the content.
 
Authorship and Author’s Responsibility
  • During the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, the corresponding author is typically responsible for communicating with the journal and ensuring that all of the journal's administrative requirements, such as authorship details, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and conflict of interest statements, are properly completed. Throughout the submission and peer review process, the corresponding author should promptly respond to editorial queries and cooperate with any requests from the journal after publication.
  • After an article has been accepted for publication in the  Journal of Improvement Management, no additional authors or changes to the first or corresponding authors are allowed. If an author wishes to be removed from the byline, he or she must submit a letter signed by the author and all other authors indicating their wish to be removed from the list of authors. Any change in the authors' order in the byline requires a letter signed by all authors indicating their agreement.
 
Human and animal studies

All manuscripts reporting the results of experimental investigations involving human subjects should include a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from each subject or subject’s guardian. All animal or human studies should be used after a local ethics committee approves the experimental protocol.

The Principles of Transparency

  • Study design and ethical approval

Good research should be well-justified, well-planned, appropriately designed, and ethically approved. To conduct research to a lower standard may constitute misconduct. The authors are responsible for the scientific content and the accuracy of the bibliographic information.

 

  • Data analysis

Data should be appropriately analyzed, but inappropriate analysis does not necessarily amount to misconduct. Fabrication and falsification of data do constitute misconduct.

 

  • Data Availability

A data availability statement should describe how readers can access the data supporting the study's conclusions and clearly outline the reasons why unavailable data cannot be released. The data used to support the study's findings should be available from the corresponding author upon request.

 

  • Conflicts of interest

Conflicts of interest comprise those that may not be fully apparent and may influence the judgment of the author, reviewers, and editors. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived. They may be personal, commercial, political, academic, or financial. “Financial” interests may include employment, research funding, stock or share ownership, payment for lectures or travel, consultancies, and company support for staff.

 

  • Peer-review
    • This journal uses Double-blind peer review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not give away their identity.
    • Authors have the right to communicate to the editor if they do not wish their manuscript to be reviewed by a particular reviewer because of potential conflicts of interest.
    • No article is rejected unless negative comments are received from at least two reviewers.
    • This process and any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures are clearly described on the journal’s Web site (Please See Peer review process). 

 

 

  • Publishing schedule

The  Journal of Improvement Management is published four issues per year. All the content from the beginning to the end will be available forever on the journal's exclusive website (https://www.behboodmodiriat.ir/browse?_action=issue&lang=en). 

 

  • Privacy and Confidentiality
    • All manuscripts must be reviewed strictly for the authors' confidentiality.
    • When authors submit manuscripts for review, they entrust editors with the results of their creative and scientific labor, and their reputations and careers may be on the line.
    • It may breach the author's rights to disclose private information while the author's manuscript is being reviewed.
    • Editors must respect the reviewers' right to confidentially.
    • Confidentiality may need to be broken if there is a suspicion of fraud or dishonesty, but it must be upheld otherwise.
    • Editors are not permitted to reveal information regarding manuscripts (including their reception, content, status during the reviewing process, reviewer critique, or eventual outcome) to anybody but the authors and reviewers.
    • Before the article is published, reviewers and editorial staff must respect the authors' rights by refraining from publicly criticizing or appropriating their work.
    • Reviewers should only be permitted to share the manuscript with others if the editor permits them. They should not be permitted to make copies of the document for their files. 
    • Copies of manuscripts that have been rejected shouldn't be kept by editors. 
    • Reviewer comments should not be published or otherwise made public without the author, editor, and reviewer's consent.

 

  • Ownership and management

Defence Industries Training and Research Institute

 

  • Copyright and Licensing Statement

On the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge, this journal provides immediate access to its content.

All journal papers are released under the  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaption, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as the original author(s) and source are properly credited. Under an open-access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly. In this journal, authors retain copyright ownership for their content without restrictions. 

 

  • copyright holder

The authors are the copyright holders of this journal and retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions.

 

  • Advertising

The policy of the journal is not to have advertising.

 

  • Archiving
    • The plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal's content sets out how the authors of the  Journal of Improvement Management can archive copies of their work on their web pages, corporate web pages, and various other subject repositories. 
    • Journal of Improvement Management has an open-access license. Articles can be made available immediately according to the terms of their specific Creative Commons license. This journal will encourage the authors to share the version of the record upon publication instead of the accepted manuscript.
    • Authors may also reuse the Abstract and Citation information (e.g. Title, Author name, Publication dates) and Full text of their article anywhere at any time, including social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and Twitter, providing that, where possible a link is included back to the article on the Journal of Improvement Management Preferably the link should be or include, the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) which can be found in the Citation information about the article online. The accepted version may be placed on the author's website and/or the author's company/institutional repository or archive. 

Journal of Improvement Management is now formally archived at:

 

  • Corrections and retractions

To maintain the integrity of academic records, journals may have to publish corrections or retract papers published in journals and according to agreed academic community norms, published article corrections are made by publishing an Erratum or Retraction article without altering the original article in any other way than by adding a prominent connection to the Erratum / Retraction article. The original article remains in the public domain and should be commonly indexed to the subsequent Erratum or Retraction. We may have to delete the material from our website and archive sites if the material is considered to infringe those rights or is defamatory. It may be necessary for the original author(s) to make minor corrections to published articles by commenting on the published article. It will only be acceptable if the modifications do not affect the article's results or conclusions.

 

    • Corrections

Changes to published articles that affect the article's meaning and conclusion but do not invalidate the article in its entirety may be corrected, at the discretion of the editor(s), by publishing an Erratum indexed and linked to the original article. Changes in authorship of published articles are corrected through an Erratum.

 

    • Retractions

On rare occasions, if the scientific information in an article is significantly compromised, it may be appropriate to retract published articles. In these cases, the Journal must comply with the COPE guidelines. Retracted papers are indexed, and the original article is referred to.

Process for identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct

Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication.

  • The first action of the journal Editor is to inform the Editorial Office of the  Journal of Improvement Management by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation nonjudgmentally.
  • If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and it seems that serious unethical conduct has occurred, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via the Editorial Office.  After deliberation, the Committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions. 
  • If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Publication Committee, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the author of  Journal of Improvement Management publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the Editor may request the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.
  • Notification will be sent to the corresponding author, and any work by the author responsible for the violation or any work these persons coauthored that is under review by the Journal of Improvement Management journal will be rejected immediately.
  • The authors are prohibited from serving on the  Journal of Improvement Management editorial board and serving as reviewers for the   Journal of Improvement Management. The Journal of Improvement Management reserves the right to take more action.
  • In severe cases of fraud that result in the retraction of the article, a retraction notice will be published in the journal and linked to the article in the online version. The online version will also be marked “retracted” with the retraction date.

Procedure for Appeals and Complaints

We support legitimate editor judgment challenges. But, you must provide strong backing or new data/information to answer the editor's and reviewers' concerns. Editors seldom reverse their initial decisions and don't count on many appeals. Hence, if your paper is rejected, you should submit it to another publication. Since they are based on the unbiased views of the reviewers, the Editorial Board's final decisions are often irrevocable and cannot be modified. But, if you disagree with the publication's decision and think you have a valid reason to appeal, follow these steps:

  • Describe your valid concerns and the reasons you disagree with the decision.
  • Any additional material or data that you would like considered throughout the review process should be provided to the journal's editors.
  • If you think the reviewers misjudged your manuscript, explain why and provide supporting evidence.
  • Provide evidence if you believe there was an interest conflict throughout the arbitration process.
  • The editors only take into account one appeal for each article. After receiving the appeal, the editors may speak with the referees and editors who read the piece.
  • The editors and editorial board's decisions on appeals are final, and they may involve rejecting the article, seeking more peer review, or requiring submission of a revised version of the manuscript.

Possible Misconducts

  • Data Fabrication and Falsification

Data fabrication and falsification mean the researcher did not carry out the study but made up data or results and recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.

 

  • Duplicate Publication

Duplicate publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions. 

 

  • Citation Manipulation

Excessive citations in a submitted manuscript that did not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and were included solely to increase citations to a given author's work or articles published in a particular journal are referred to as citation manipulation. This is a form of scientific misconduct since it misrepresents the importance of the specific work and publication in which it appears.

 

  • Simultaneous Submission

Simultaneous submission occurs when a manuscript (or substantial sections from a manuscript) is submitted to a journal when another journal has already considered it.

 

  • Redundant Publications

Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, most often consequent to the desire to plump academic vitae.

 

  • Improper Author Contribution or Attribution: 

All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. Don’t forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.

 

  • Plagiarism

Plagiarism is intentionally using someone else’s ideas or other original material as one's own. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation is considered by this journal as plagiarism. All manuscripts under review or published in the Journal of Improvement Management are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software (Hamtajoo" and "Samim Noor). Thus, plagiarism is a severe violation of publication ethics. The authors are expected to check their manuscripts for plagiarism before submission.

If plagiarism is detected during peer review, the submission can be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, we reserve the right, as necessary, to issue a correction or retract the article. We reserve the right to notify the authors' institutions about the plagiarism found before or after publication.

 

COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts  

Journal of Improvement Management is committed to following and applying the guidelines and flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in its reviewing and publishing process and issues.

For more information on COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts, please see: (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts-new/translations). 

 

COPE’s Code of Conduct and Best Practices for Editors

(https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf),

(https://publicationethics.org/files/2008%20Code%20of%20Conduct.pdf)

  • Everything published in the journal is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief. This means that the editors must:
  • Strive to meet the needs of readers and authors;
  • Strive to improve their journal constantly;
  • Have processes in place to ensure the quality of the material they publish;
  • Champion freedom of expression;
  • Maintain the integrity of the academic record;
  • Preclude business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards;
  • Always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

Best Practices for Editors would include:

  • Actively seeking the views of authors, readers, reviewers, and editorial board members about improving their journal’s processes.
  • Encouraging and being aware of research into peer review and publishing and reassessing their journal’s processes in the light of new findings.
  • Supporting initiatives designed to reduce research and publication misconduct.
  • Supporting initiatives to educate researchers about publication ethics.
  • Assessing the effects of their journal policies on author and reviewer behavior and revising policies, as required, to encourage responsible behavior and discourage misconduct.

 

Relations with Readers

  • Readers should be informed about who has funded research or other scholarly work, whether the funders had any role in the research and its publication, and, if so, what this was.

Best practices for editors would include:

  • Ensuring that all published reports and research reviews have been reviewed by suitably qualified reviewers, including statistical reviews.
  • Adopting processes that encourage accuracy, completeness, and clarity of research reporting, including technical editing and appropriate guidelines and checklists.
  • Consider developing a transparency policy to encourage maximum disclosure about the provenance of non-research articles.
  • Adopting authorship or contributorship systems that promote good practice (i.e. so that listings accurately reflect who did the work) and discourage misconduct (e.g. ghost and guest authors).
  • Informing readers about steps taken to ensure that submissions from members of the journal’s staff or editorial board receive an objective and unbiased evaluation.

 

Relations with authors

  • Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based on the paper’s importance, originality, and clarity, and the study’s validity and relevance to the journal's remit.
  • Editors should not reverse decisions to accept submissions unless serious problems are identified with the submission.
  • New editors should not overturn decisions to publish submissions made by the previous editor unless serious problems are identified.
  • Journals should have a declared mechanism for authors to appeal against editorial decisions.
  • Editors should publish guidance to authors on everything that is expected of them. This guidance should be regularly updated and refer to or link to this code.
  • Editors should provide guidance about criteria for authorship and/or who should be listed as a contributor following the standards within the relevant field.

Best practice for editors would include

  • Review author instructions regularly and provide links to relevant guidelines.
  • Publishing relevant competing interests for all contributors and publishing corrections if competing interests are revealed after publication.
  • Ensuring that appropriate reviewers are selected for submissions (i.e. individuals who can judge the work and are free from disqualifying competing interests).
  • Respecting requests from authors that an individual should not review their submission if these are well-reasoned and practicable.
  • Publishing details of how they handle cases of suspected misconduct.
  • Publishing submission and acceptance dates for articles.

 

Relations with reviewers

  • Editors should guide reviewers on everything expected of them, including the need to handle submitted material confidently. This guidance should be regularly updated and should refer or link to this code.
  • Editors should require reviewers to disclose any potential competing interests before agreeing to review a submission.
  • Editors should have systems to protect peer reviewers’ identities unless they use an open review system declared to authors and reviewers.

Best practices for editors would include:

  • Encouraging reviewers to comment on ethical questions and possible research and publication misconduct raised by submissions (e.g. unethical research design, insufficient detail on patient consent or protection of research subjects (including animals), inappropriate data manipulation and presentation)
  • Encouraging reviewers to comment on the originality of submissions and to be alert to redundant publication and plagiarism
  • Considering providing reviewers with tools to detect related publications (e.g. links to cited references and bibliographic searches)
  • Sending reviewers’ comments to authors in their entirety unless they contain offensive or libelous remarks
  • Seeking to acknowledge the contribution of reviewers to the journal
  • Encouraging academic institutions to recognize peer review activities as part of the scholarly process.
  • Monitoring the performance of peer reviewers and taking steps to ensure this is of a high standard.
  • Developing and maintaining a database of suitable reviewers and updating this based on reviewer performance.
  • Ceasing to use reviewers who consistently produce discourteous, poor quality, or late reviews.
  • Following the COPE flowchart in cases of suspected reviewer misconduct.

 

Relations with editorial board members

  • Editors should provide new editorial board members with guidelines on everything that is expected of them and should keep existing members updated on new policies and developments.

Best practices for editors would include:

  • Having policies in place for handling submissions from editorial board members to ensure unbiased review
  • Identifying suitably qualified editorial board members who can actively contribute to the development and good management of the journal by regularly reviewing the composition of the editorial board.
  • Providing clear guidance to editorial board members about their expected functions and duties, which might include:
  • Acting as ambassadors for the journal.
  • Supporting and promoting the journal.
  • Seeking out the best authors and best work (e.g., from meeting abstracts) and actively encouraging submissions.
  • Reviewing submissions to the journal
  • Accepting to write editorials, reviews and commentaries on papers in their specialist area
  • Attending and contributing to editorial board meetings
  • Consulting editorial board members periodically (e.g., once a year) to gauge their opinions about the running of the journal, informing them of any changes to journal policies and identifying future challenge.