Publishing policy and ethics
The following text describes the principles that the MEFANET Journal (MJ) publisher and editors commit to adhere to in order to ensure the highest ethical publication practices. The document generally follows the standards recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (http://publicationethics.org/) [1] and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (http://www.icmje.org/) [2].
Authors
Authorship
Authorship is limited to the persons who:
- substantially contributed to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
- drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content; AND
- approved the final version to be published.
The individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet all of the above-mentioned authorship criteria (technical assistance, data collection etc.) should not be listed as co-authors; they should rather be acknowledged.
Originality and plagiarism
By submitting the paper the authors declare that their work is entirely original, and that any works or results of others are appropriately cited or quoted. All papers that do not meet these standards will be rejected or retracted.
If copyright-protected material is reproduced within the paper, the authors must seek permission to use that material and fully acknowledge the owner and/or copyright owner.
Multiple or redundant publication
Submitting the same paper or a paper presenting the same results to more journals at the same time or after its acceptance for publication in another journal is regarded as unacceptable. Prior publication in the form of conference abstracts or presentations, databases, or MSc/PhD theses usually do not present cause for concerns about duplicate or redundant publication.
Publication of a work translated from original language to English is essentially possible; this fact, however, must be disclosed on the submission, and the final decision will be made by the editor.
License and copyright
Unless stated otherwise, all articles are distributed as Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction for non-commercial purposes in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited with original URL and bibliographic citation information. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://mj.mefanet.cz/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
Disclosure and conflict of interest
Authors must disclose any potential financial or other conflicts of interest that might appear to affect the results or interpretation of their work. All financial sources that supported the presented work must be stated.
Reporting standards
Authors should report results of their research concisely and in the context of prior studies in the field. The data and results have to be reported precisely and in a way that does not allow for ambiguity and inaccuracy.
Raw data access
Authors have to be prepared to provide raw data to the editorial office during the review process and to other competent professionals ten years after the publication.
Fundamental errors in published works
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author's obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
Editors
Publication decisions
The editor is responsible for deciding which of the papers submitted to the journal will be published. The decision is based exclusively on paper's quality, originality, importance and relevance to the scope of the journal; evaluation of the manuscript is performed by the assigned editor and by independent reviewers.
Confidentiality
The editor and the editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, editorial advisers, and the publisher if appropriate for the submission and review process.
Unpublished data and information contained in the submitted manuscript must not be used by the editor or any other person involved in the submission and review process for their own purposes without the author's explicit written consent.
Reviewers
Contribution to editorial decisions
Submitted manuscripts are evaluated by independent reviewer(s) selected by the assigned editor. The reviews assist the editor in deciding whether the manuscript is suitable for publication (as it is or after corrections), and provides the authors feedback and suggestions for improving their manuscript.
Promptness
An invited reviewer who feels unqualified to evaluate the manuscript or knows that her/she is unable to perform the review in the required time must notify the editor immediately.
Objectivity
A reviewer evaluates the manuscript exclusively in terms of quality, originality, importance and relevance to the scope of the journal.
The evaluation should be conducted objectively and without any personal criticism. All objections and recommendations have to be presented clearly and supported by factual arguments.
Confidentiality
All manuscripts received for review must be handled as confidential. No data or information contained in the manuscript can be disclosed or discussed with another person unless authorised to do so by the editor.
Disclosure and conflict of interest
Reviewers must not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
References and sources
[1] Committee on Publication Ethics. Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. 2011. Available from: http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors.pdf
[2] International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. 2014. Available from: http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf
