Publication Ethics and Publications Malpractice Statement

The HSJ follows the latest edition of the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals  of  the  International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE Recommendations), available at www.icmje.org. Reading the recommendations by the authors and reviewers is highly recommended.

The HSJ follows the ethical principles outlined in the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) code of conduct (http://publicationethics.org/resources/code-conduct), although it is not a committee member.

As a participant in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the HSJ fully adheres to its Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, available here.

Editors, Reviewers, and Authors participating in the HSJ editorial workflow must strictly adhere to the Singapore Statement on Research Integrity, available here.

The HSJ Editorial Team is mindful of the Hong Kong Principles for Enhanced Research Integrity and Open Science. We require that authors and study teams base their lines of research on these principles, which are available at https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000737.

The entire editorial decision is independent, exclusively based on academic merit and scientific relevance, regardless of gender, race, belief, ethnicity, institution of origin, or any other non-scientific factor. The editorial flow is exclusive to the responsible editor, and it is up to him to define the priority and order of publication.

Editors' decisions must be fair, objective, and impartial and should not be influenced by affiliated companies, organizations, or other public or private institutions. Editors should refuse manuscripts submitted for review that may contain conflict of interest or that may affect their impartiality. For example, the reviewer should not accept to review an article submitted by a close friend, individuals from the same institution, individuals with whom he/she has collaborated, or a scientist with whom the reviewer has personal differences. In such a situation, the reviewer should immediately inform the Editor-in-Chief.

The editor-in-chief will be responsible for evaluating the final quality of the submitted work and deciding on publication or archiving, considering its importance to the scientific community, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, or copyright infringement.

The reviewers have an essential editorial task in improving the quality of the manuscripts, as well as suggesting the non-publication or sending of the submission to another journal. Any reviewer who feels unqualified for the task or identifies conflicts of interest should immediately inform the responsible editor. Personal criticism of the authors is not acceptable.

Reviewers are encouraged to point out important sources not previously cited and report evident similarities between the revised manuscript and papers already published or in press they are aware of.

Authors must submit accurate and accurate information from their original research. Authors may also be asked to provide the raw data to editors or reviewers as part of the editorial process.

If the authors identify errors in the data submitted for publication or in articles already published, they must immediately inform the responsible editor to take the appropriate measures, which can range from a new round of evaluation to the exclusion of the article published in full along with an explanatory note.

Any author or individual external to a publication or manuscript undergoing an evaluation process who feels harmed can and should make a complaint to the editorial board. The complaint must be sent to the email hsj@hcitajuba.org.br or directly to the Editor-in-Chief (melissa.moraes@hcitajuba.org.br), containing the number or title of the submission or the title of the published article. The content of the complaint will be analyzed by the Editor-in-Chief and shared with the other members of the Editorial Board.

 

Duplicate submission

Authors should not submit the same manuscript simultaneously to two or more journals, even in different languages. This prevents not only the duplicated editorial workflow and peer review but also the conflict of copyright and right of first publication. If a duplicate submission is detected, the Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to interrupt the editorial workflow until disagreements are resolved or the manuscript is finally rejected.

 

Republishing articles and preprints

Republishing articles is an accepted way to expand the dissemination of scientific knowledge, including overcoming linguistic barriers through translation. The acceptance rules for republications followed by the HSJ are the same as defined by the ICMJE, available here. The Health Sciences Journal will only accept reprints of articles with the express citation of the journal in which it was initially published and the direct authorization of its Editor-in-Chief.

The HSJ will accept manuscripts previously published in preprint repositories. However, it is convenient for authors to use servers that certify that the work has not been submitted for peer review and report potential conflicts of interest, such as medRxiv and SciELO Preprints. The authors must inform the original repository if the manuscript was accepted and its final bibliographic identification.

 

Data availability

The HSJ does not require the availability of raw data, codes, and research methods at the time of submission of a manuscript. However, if requested, authors must make available to editors and interested readers access to research content and other supplementary content not initially shared, whether in the form of database files or links to repositories, following the policy of sharing information — open access data. Refusal to provide information may lead to a revision of the publication, rejection of submission, or retraction of the published article.

 

Plagiarism detection tool

From October 2020, the HSJ, in partnership with ABEC and CrossRef, started using the powerful anti-plagiarism tool iThenticate, screening all submissions before they go through the peer review or editing process. Documents already published that may have their originality questioned are also subject to analysis.

Cases of high similarity that may point to error or ethical conduct failure are analyzed by the Editorial Board, as previously noted. In the event of plagiarism detection, the Editor in Charge will decide to immediately reject the submission or contact the corresponding author to assess the origin of the text replication.

As part of the partnership and authorization to use this tool, HSJ makes available to CrossRef's Similarity Check service all articles published in its final version (PDF).