International Journal of Integrative Pediatrics and Environmental Medicine

Publication Ethics and Malpractice

SPPH, LLC is adherent to the policy guidelines described in our website of the journals. We follow recommendations of:

COPE (https://publicationethics.org/) – Committee on Publication Ethics

ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org/) - International Committee of Medical Journal Editors

STM (https://www.stm-assoc.org/) - International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers

and

WAME (http://www.wame.org/) - World Association of Medical Editors. 

An author is an individual who has significantly contributed to the development of a manuscript. He/she substantially contributed 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 an 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.

Individuals who participated in developing a manuscript but do not qualify as an author should be acknowledged. Organizations that provided support in terms of funding and/or other resources should also be acknowledged.

Whenever there is a need to make changes in a manuscript's authorship, only corresponding authors can request a change in authorship. The request should be made to the editor of the journal.  

Authors should read the "Instructions for Authors" on the journal's website before submitting. The manuscript should be prepared according to the style and specifications of the journal's policy.

The authors listed on the manuscript should have met the requirements for Authorship specified above. Where possible, specify the contribution of each of the authors. All authors should approve the final version of the manuscript before submission. Once a manuscript is submitted, it is assumed that all authors have read and given their approval to submit the manuscript. All authors' contact information should be stated in the manuscript: surname/other names, affiliation, emails. Declaration of conflicts of interest should be stated in the manuscript. Submission should be made online.

Authors should disclose all financial/relevant interests that may have influenced the development of the manuscript. Reviewers should disclose any conflict of interest and, if necessary, decline the review of any manuscript they perceive to have a conflict of interest. Editors should also decline from considering any manuscript that may have a conflict of interest. Such manuscripts will be re-assigned to other editors.

Informed consent policy

Informed consent, permissions, and releases must be obtained where authors wish to include case details or other personal information or images of patients and any other individuals in an SPPH, LLC publication, to comply with all applicable laws and regulations concerning the privacy and/or security of personal information, including, but not limited to, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ("HIPAA") and other U.S. federal and state laws relating to privacy and security of personally identifiable information, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (EU) 2016/679 and member state implementing legislation, Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, India's Information Technology Act, and related Privacy Rules, (together "Data Protection and Privacy Laws").

It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure that each individual, or the individual's legal guardian or another person with legal authority to act on the individual's behalf who appears in any photograph, image, illustration, or case report (or in any other identifiable form) is made aware in advance of the fact that such photographs are being taken or photograph, image, illustrations or report is being made, and of all the purposes for which they might be used. That individual, legal guardian, or person with legal authority must give his/her explicit written consent if such consent is made subject to any conditions (for example, adopting measures to prevent personal identification of the person concerned). The author must retain written consents, and copies of the consents or evidence that such consents have been obtained must be provided to SPPH, LLC on request. The form of written consent should comply with each requirement of all applicable Data Protection and Privacy Laws. Care should be taken with obtaining consent where children are concerned, where an individual's head or face appears, or where reference is made to an individual's name or other personal details. In the case of a child, if parents or guardians disagree on using the images of that child, then consent should be deemed not to have been given, and those images should not be used. It is also important to ensure that only images of children in suitable dress are used to reduce the risk of images being misused. Even if consent has been obtained, care must be taken to ensure that the individual concern's portrayal and captioning are respectful.

Patients' and research subjects' names, initials, hospital or social security numbers, dates of birth, or other personal or identifying information should not be used. Images of patients or research subjects should not be used unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and explicit permission has been given as part of the consent. Even where consent has been given, identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, authors should provide assurances that such alterations do not distort scientific meaning.

Formal consents are not required for the use of entirely anonymized images from which the individual cannot be identified- for example, x-rays, ultrasound images, pathology slides, or laparoscopic images, provided that these do not contain any identifying marks and are not accompanied by text that might identify the individual concerned.

If consent has not been obtained, it is generally not sufficient to anonymize a photograph simply by using eye bars or blurring the individual's face.

For studies with animals, include the following sentence in the manuscript in a section of text preceding the References: "All institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed."

For studies with no human subjects or animals, please include the following statement in the manuscript in a section of text preceding the References: "The authors carried out no animal or human studies."

If you have not included or cannot include one of these statements in your manuscript, please provide the reason or an alternative statement in the manuscript.

Ethical Standards Form

Hereby, I /insert author name/ consciously assure that for the manuscript /insert title/ the following was fulfilled:

1) This material is the authors' original work, which has not been previously published elsewhere.

2) The paper is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere.

3) The paper reflects the authors' research and analysis truthfully and completely.

4) The paper properly credits the meaningful contributions of co-authors and co-researchers.

5) The results are appropriately placed in the context of prior and existing research.

6) All sources used are properly disclosed (correct citation).

7) All authors have been personally and actively involved in substantial work leading to the paper and will take public responsibility for its content.

I agree with the above statements and declare that this submission follows the policies of IJIPEM as outlined in the Authors Guidelines and the Ethical Statement.

Date:

Corresponding author's signature:

Processing Fee: Regular Article Processing/Publishing Charges fee is $350 applies to all accepted manuscripts. The journal does not charge a submission fee. Some discounts and/or waivers may be granted per request sent to an editor during the submission process with an explanation of hardship or the waiver's reason. The submission page states the updated publication charges; as soon as the author starts a new manuscript submission, he/she gets this information upfront.

Copyright Notice

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post links to their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.

https://creativecommons.org/choose/#

A submitted manuscript is a confidential document. SPPH, LLC will not disclose the submitted manuscript to anyone except individuals who participate in the manuscript's processing and preparation for publication (if accepted). These individuals include editorial staff, corresponding authors, potential reviewers, actual reviewers, and editors. 

SPPH, LLC uses a double-blind peer-review process for Articles, Brief Communications, Reviews, Case Reports. Letters to the editor may be reviewed just by Editorial Team. Correspondence and all forms of published correction may also be peer-reviewed at the discretion of the editors. We ask peer-reviewers to submit their reports via our secure online system by following the link provided in the editor's email. IT support is available for any technical difficulties.

In general, we ask reviewers to ensure that a paper provides strong evidence for its conclusions, is novel, and is of importance to scientists in the specific field. A paper should represent an advance in the field.

The editorial staff reads all submitted manuscripts. Only those papers that seem most likely to meet our editorial criteria are sent for formal review. Those papers judged by the editors to be of insufficient general interest or otherwise inappropriate are rejected promptly without external review (although these decisions may be based on informal advice from specialists in the field).

If an Editor thinks that a paper could be interesting and potentially published, it is sent for formal review, typically to two reviewers (blind with authors' names removed).

There are a few possible outcomes after the review process, which are communicated to the authors: Accept, with or without editorial revisions; invite the authors to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached; reject, but indicate to the authors that further work might justify a resubmission; reject outright, typically on the grounds of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance, or major technical and/or interpretational problems. 

The editor-in-chief makes the final decision based on the reviewers' recommendations. An editor evaluates the strength of the arguments raised by each reviewer and by the authors and considers other information not available to either party. An editor may ask reviewers to be willing to provide follow-up advice as requested. If reviewers agree to assess a paper, we consider this a commitment. If a reviewer does not have access to any published paper necessary to evaluate a submitted manuscript, the journal will supply the reviewer with a copy. Under these circumstances, the reviewer should send the paper's reference request to the editor who sent them the paper to review. The editor will obtain the paper, paying any necessary fees, and send it to the reviewer.

SPPH, LLC asks reviewers to assess key results, validity, originality, and significance of the data & methodology, as well as appropriate use of statistics and treatment of uncertainties and conclusions. They should suggest improvements to references, clarity, and context. SPPH, LLC is committed to rapid editorial decisions and publication and believes that an efficient editorial process is a valuable service both to our authors and to the scientific community. We, therefore, ask reviewers to respond promptly within the number of days agreed upon when the reviewers look at the task. We ask reviewers to avoid statements that may cause needless offense; conversely, we strongly encourage reviewers to state plainly their opinion of a paper; alternatively, we may edit a report to remove offensive language or comments. 

Editors, authors, and reviewers must keep confidential all details of the editorial and peer review process on submitted manuscripts. SPPH, LLC reserves the right to contact funders, regulatory bodies, journals, and the authors' institutions in cases of suspected research or publishing misconduct.

The process for handling cases requiring corrections, retractions, and editorial expressions of concern

Circumstances may arise where an article is published that must later be retracted or removed. These are exceptional circumstances and are not taking lightly. When a paper is retracted, the journal and the journal's preservation site will retain all versions of retracted or removed papers. We will follow the best practice and recommendations of ICMJE: http://www.icmje.org/index.html#corrections.

Article withdrawal

Withdrawal could be used for published papers, papers in the Press, an early version of the articles containing some errors, or submitted twice. An article could be withdrawn if it represents infringements of professional or ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, or fraudulent use of data. Withdrawn means that the article content is removed and replaced with the statement that the article has been withdrawn according to the SPPH, LLC Policy on Article Withdrawal.

Article retraction

Retraction could happen if a manuscript contains infringements of professional or ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data. It may also happen when error correction is needed in a publication. In this case, the following steps will be followed:

 A retraction note titled "Retraction: [article title]" signed by the authors and/or the editor will be published in the journal's subsequent issue and listed in the contents list.

• A link will be made to the original article.
• The online article will be preceded by a screen containing the retraction note.
• The original article will be retained unchanged save on the .pdf indicating on each page that it is "retracted."
• The HTML version of the document will be removed.

 If the paper is defamatory or infringes on others' legal rights, or we have good reason to expect it will be, the subject of a court order, or where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk, we will remove an article from the online database. In these cases, while the metadata (Title and Authors) will be retained, the text will be replaced with a screen indicating the article has been removed for legal reasons.

Article replacement

If an author thinks a paper might pose a serious health risk, an author may wish to retract the flawed original and replace it with a corrected version. In these cases, the retraction procedures will be followed with the difference that the database retraction notice will publish a link to the corrected re-published article and a history of the document.