Publication Ethics

• Editorial Standards and Processes
  • Authorship: Published work must be attributed to one or more authors who comply with authorship standards. A description of each author’s contribution should be summarized in a statement titled “Authors Contributions.”
    
  • Authorship Problems: To handle authorship problems, editors refer to COPE.
    
  • Fund and Support: Authors are requested to disclose any received funds or support from individuals or organizations in the “Acknowledgment” section.
    
• Peer-Review Process
  • Reviewers Selection: Authors have to provide the list of potential reviewers in their cover letter and the uploading system. ZUJ has the right to adopt the same list of provided reviewers or switch to another.
    
  • Peer-Review Conflict of Interest: Any conflict of interest should be reported directly to the editors as soon as receiving the invitation to review manuscripts.
    
  • Confidentiality during Manuscript Handling: To ensure utmost confidentiality, ZUJ’s editors don’t share manuscripts with any third party except the peer reviewers.
    
  • Manuscript Handling Time: Strict rules are adopted by ZUJ’s editors to ensure timely processing and updating authors of any possible delays.
    
• Publication Ethics
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  • Misconduct: ZUJ’s editors make every effort to identify, detect, and prevent any practices of data fabrication, authorship abuse, falsification, image manipulation, unethical research, plagiarism, biased reporting, duplicate publication, and undeclared conflicts of interest.
    
  • Fabrication, Falsification, and Image Manipulation: All ZUJ journals make every effort to identify, detect, and prevent data fabrication, falsification, and image manipulation by implementing advanced image processing systems. Except for some cases where it is necessary to manipulate an image, and in this case, authors have to explain where manipulation has been done.
    
  • Plagiarism: ZUJ’s editors make every effort to ensure that manuscripts are original material and prevent any practices of plagiarism and duplicate publication. If such practices are detected, authors are informed to handle them.
    
  • Duplicate Submission: To make sure that all manuscripts are not being published elsewhere, ZUJ’s journals make every effort to identify, detect, and prevent concurrent or duplicate submission. If such practices are detected, ZUJ applies strict actions and sanctions against these authors, i.e., papers are withdrawn from the website.
    
  • Sanctions: If any violations of the publication ethics or professional codes are detected, strict action is taken, according to ZUJ’s procedures for dealing with unethical behavior as follows:
    
  • Editors and Board Members as Authors: ZUJ’s journals adopt well-defined procedures and policies to exclude editors from publication decisions when they are authors.
    
  • Conflicts of Interest: To ensure objectivity in the review procedure, editors and peer reviewers are requested to disclose that there is no conflict of interest.
    
  • Libel and Defamation: ZUJ’s editors make every effort to identify, detect, and prevent any language or expression either in the manuscripts or peer reviewer reports that could lead to legal action for defamation and negligent misstatement.
    
  • Editorial Independence and Commercial Issues: To ensure a formal relationship between the editors and the publisher (ZUJ), each ZUJ journal adopts policies and establishes mechanisms to avoid biased decisions that are financially influenced by authors.
    
  • Academic Debate: Comments or constructive criticism of any published work are allowed by all ZUJ journals. If such practice occurs, authors are informed to respond before the comments are published.
    
  • Appeals: To appeal against editorial decisions, authors refer to the internationally based mechanism that is adopted by ZUJ.
    
  • Corrections: ZUJ welcomes authors or readers to notify the journal editorial office if any errors are discovered in the published work. If such occurs, editors and authors are notified to correct these errors, then an erratum will be published in an issue of the same journal.
    
• Research Ethics in Journal Articles
  • Human Rights, Privacy, and Confidentiality: Outcomes of clinical trials studies must be officially registered with a public health authority in the country. Otherwise, authors are requested to provide a letter of explanation.
    
  • Cultures and Heritage: ZUJ’s editors make every effort to identify, detect, and prevent publishing any images or texts related to religious or historical events that could be offensive to some social groups.
    
  • Reporting Guidelines: ZUJ’s editors and peer reviewers make every effort to ensure that the necessary information is available in the submitted manuscripts for the purpose of evaluation by readers.