Editorial policies
Wolters Kluwer and Medknow expect the highest ethical standards from their authors, reviewers and editors when conducting research, submitting papers and throughout the peer-review process.
Peer review
Medknow journals employ a double-blind review process, in which the author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process.
Redundant or duplicate publication
Duplicate or redundant publication is publication that overlaps substantially with one already published, in press, or in an electronic media submission (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors).
Duplicate or redundant submission is the same manuscript (or the same data) that is submitted to different journals at the same time. International copyright laws, ethical conduct, and cost effective use of resources require that readers can be assured that what they are reading is original (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors).
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published or currently submitted elsewhere. Duplicate publication is a violation of the APA code of ethics (APA Publication Manual, 2010) and will be grounds for prompt rejection of the submitted manuscript. If the editor was not aware of the violation and the article has been published, a notice of duplicate submission and the ethical violation will be published.
Retraction policy
All Medknow journals abide by COPE Retraction Guidelines
Download The PDF: COPE Retraction Guidelines.
Conflicts of interest
At the point of submission, policy requires that each author reveal any financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated - including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition.
If the manuscript is accepted, Conflict of Interest information will be communicated in a published statement.
Permission to reproduce previously published material
Permission is required to reproduce material (such as illustrations) from the copyright holder. Articles cannot be published without these permissions.
Patient consent forms
The protection of a patient's right to privacy is essential. Please collect and keep copies of patients’ consent forms on which patients or other subjects of your experiments clearly grant permission for the publication of photographs or other material that might identify them. If the consent form for your research did not specifically include this, please obtain it or remove the identifying material.
A statement to the effect that such consent had been obtained must be included in the ‘Methods’ section of your paper If necessary the Editors may request a copy of any consent forms.
Ethics committee approval
All articles dealing with original human or animal data must include a statement on ethics approval at the beginning of the Methods section. This paragraph must contain the following information: the name and address of the ethics committee responsible; the protocol number that was attributed by this ethics committee; and the date of approval by the ethics committee.
The paragraph could read, for example:
“Ethical approval for this study (Ethical Committee N° NAC 207) was provided by the Ethical Committee NAC of Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, on 12 February 2007"
In addition and as stated above, for studies conducted on human participants you must state clearly that you obtained written informed consent from the study participants; please also look at the latest version of the Declaration of Helsinki. Similarly, for experiments involving animals you must state the care of animal and licensing guidelines under which the study was performed and report these in accordance with the ARRIVE (Animals in Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) statement. If ethics clearance was not necessary, or if there was any deviation from these standard ethical requests, please state why it was not required. Please note that the editors may ask you to provide evidence of ethical approval. If you have approval from a National Drug Agency (or similar) please state this and provide details, this can be particularly useful when discussing the use of unlicensed drugs.
Plagiarism
Journals published at Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications, evaluate submissions on the understanding that they are the original work of the author(s). Reuse of text, data, figures, or images without appropriate acknowledgment or permission is considered plagiarism, 25 is the paraphrasing of text, concepts, and ideas. All allegations of plagiarism are investigated in accordance with COPE Guidelines.