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Publication Ethics Policies

Editorial Policies:

Advanced Spine Journal (ASJ) follows the ethical considerations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and ratifies the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations for the handling, Reporting, editing, and Publication of Academic and Scholarly effort in Medical Journals. ASJ also endorses the Good Publication Practice 3 (GPP3) instructions and guidelines related to submission and authorship of manuscripts. All Authors should read and agree upon ASJ publication’s instructions and conform to the policies of the journal.

Affiliations:

Authors must report relevant affiliation to contribute where the research was approved, supported, and/or conducted. They must report their current affiliation for non-research articles. If an author moved to another institution before publishing the article, he must report affiliation where the work was conducted, while the current affiliation and contact data reported in the acknowledgement.

Authorship and Authors’ Contributions:

Authorship credit should be based on criteria established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Each author should have made the following contributions towards the completion of the manuscript:

1. Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data
2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content
3. Final approval of the version to be published.

This is an example for the role of each author, a mandatory component of the title page.

Authors	Role
	1) Conception and design of study 2) Acquisition of data 3) Analysis and/or interpretation of data 4) Drafting the manuscript 5) Revising the manuscript critically for important intellectual content 6) Approval of the version of the manuscript to be published (the names of all authors must be listed

Appeals and complaints:

The editor in chief is responsible to investigate complaints, appeals or concerns related to authorship issues, the process of peer review or complaints issued after publications. The investigation process involves data collection from all relevant parties, then actions proposed must be in line with the academic ethical principles mentioned by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Articles in press can be halted during the review process until a final decision taken by the editor in chief, then all parties must be notified. The most senior member of the editorial board must lead the investigation if the editor in chief is involved with complaint.

Acknowledgement:

Any person/s who participated in the conduction of the article, but their contribution does not qualify as an author should be mentioned in the acknowledgement. Any organization/institution that provided any form of support in the form of funding and/or other resources should be mentioned in the acknowledgement. Authors are responsible for notifying and obtain permission from those they identify in the acknowledgement section.

Citation:

Research and non-research articles must cite relevant, timely, and verified literature (per-reviewed where appropriate) to support any claims reported in the article. Authors must avoid excessive and inappropriate self-citation or prearrangements among authors to inappropriately cite each other's work. This can be considered a form of misconduct called "citation manipulation". Please refer to the COPE guidance on citation manipulation. Authors of non-research articles (review/opinion/others) must ensure that citations are relevant and provide a fair and balanced view of the current state of the research on the topic.

Copyright Statement:

Submitted manuscripts must represent original research not previously published nor being considered for publication elsewhere. The editors combat plagiarism, double publication, and scientific misconduct with the software CrossCheck powered by iThenticate. Your manuscript may be subject to an investigation and retraction if plagiarism is suspected.

If you plan to reproduce text, tables, or figures from a published source, you must first obtain written permission from the copyright holder (usually the publisher). This is required even if the material is from your own published work. For material never published before and given to you by another person, you must obtain permission from that person. Serious delays to publication can be incurred if permissions are not obtained.

As the author, it is your responsibility to obtain all permissions, pay any permission fees, furnish copies of permissions to ASJ with your manuscript, and include a credit line at the end of the figure caption, beneath the table, or in a text footnote.

Once an article has been accepted by the ASJ, the author(s) will be asked to transfer copyright of the article to the publisher. This is to ensure the widest possible spread of the published scientific material under general copyright laws. Through this ASJ don’t allow authors to hold copyright or to retain publishing right. All requests to reproduce or make available any material from the ASJ either in whole or in part, in digital, print or any other format including translation must be requested from the ASJ office.

Disclosures:

It is required that a list of disclosures from every named author is submitted alongside the manuscript. In it, each author should identify any financial or non-financial conflicts relevant to the article. If no conflicts exist, please state so in this section. ASJ will only accept the ICMJE Disclosure Form.

Types of conflicts include: Consulting, Royalties, Research Support, Institutional Support, Ownership, Stock/Options, Speakers Bureau, and Fellowship Support. Any commercial entity whose products are described, reviewed, evaluated, or compared in the manuscript, except for those disclosed in the Acknowledgments section, are potential conflicts.

All authors must fill out the ICMJE Disclosure Form and submit it with their manuscript. This form can be downloaded at http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/. Each form must be uploaded as separate files.

Statement of Ethics:

The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal is an essential building block in the development of a coherent and respected network of knowledge. It is a direct reflection of the quality of the work of the authors and their institutes. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer, and the publisher.

This journal adheres to the ethical standards described by the Committee on Publication Ethics and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Authors are expected to adhere to these standards. All manuscripts reporting data from studies involving human, or human tissue or animal participants must; Include formal review and approval, or formal review and waiver (exemption), by an appropriate institutional review board (IRB) or ethics committee is required, as well as any necessary HIPAA consent, and should be described in the Methods section with the full name of the reviewing entity, Include the name of the ethics committee that approved the study and the committee’s reference number if appropriate, All clinical trials must be registered in a public trials registry. Denote the registry and registry number.

Conflict of interest:

Conflict of interest (COIs) or competing interests can occur when issues outside research affect objectivity or neutrality of the work or its evaluation. Potential COIs must be declared to allow informed decisions. In most instances, declaration of COIs will not prevent the article from being published nor prevent some from reviewing an article.

The ASJ requires all authors to declare any conflict of interest in relation to their work. Authors are required to disclose all sources of institutional, private, and corporate financial support for their study. If no funding has been available other than that of the author's institution, this should be specified upon submission. Donors of materials (for free or at a discount from current rates) should be named in the source of funding and their location included.

Authors are also required to disclose any other potential conflict of interest. Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any conflict of interest and will be excluded from the peer review process if a conflict of interest exists and matters.

Conflicts include:

• Financial: funding, goods, and service received or expected by authors related to the work, patent, ownership, stock ownership, consultancies, speaker's fee, provision of study materials by their manufacturer for free or at a discount from current rates.
• Affiliation: being a member, employed, advisory board of an organization related to the work.
• Personal: friends, family, relationships, etc.
• Academic: competitors.

Corrections, expression of concerns, and retractions

Post publications corrections may be made with the authorization of the editor in chief who must ensure that changes are done according to Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Editor decide the magnitude of corrections. Minors are made directly to the original article, where in case of majors the original version remain unchanged, and the corrected version will also be published. Both versions will be linked to each other and a statement indicating the reason of major change will also be published. When necessary, retraction of articles will be done according to COPE retraction guidelines.

Human and Animal Rights:

The ASJ encourages authors submitting manuscripts reporting from a clinical trial to register the trials registries and bear a clinical trial registration number and name of the trial. Authors must state that the protocol for the research project has been approved by a suitably constituted Ethics Committee of the institution within which the work was undertaken and that it conforms to the provisions of the Declaration of Helsinki. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript.

Any experiments involving animals must be demonstrated to be ethically acceptable and where relevant conform to national guidelines for animal usage in research.

If there is suspicion that the work has not taken place within an appropriate ethical framework, Editors may reject the manuscript, and/or contact the author(s)’ ethics committee. On rare occasions, if the Editor has serious concerns about the ethics of a study, the manuscript may be rejected on ethical grounds, even if approval from an ethics committee has been obtained.

Reports of randomized clinical trials should present information on all major study elements, including the protocol, assignment of interventions (methods of randomization, concealment of allocation to treatment groups), and the method of masking (blinding), based on the CONSORT statement (Moher D, Schulz KF, Altman DG: The CONSORT Statement: Revised Recommendations for Improving the Quality of Reports of Parallel-Group Randomized Trials. Ann Intern Med. 2001; 134:657-662, also available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html

Authors reporting the use of a new procedure or tool in a clinical setting, for example as a technical advance or case report, must give a clear justification in the manuscript for why the new procedure or tool was deemed more appropriate than usual clinical practice.

Consent for publication:

For all articles that include any details or images relating to an individual a written informed consent for publication must be obtained from that person or parent or legal guardian if person under 18 years old. A copy of the document must be submitted to the ASJ Editorial Office. All investigations on human subjects must include a statement that the subject gave informed consent. The article should include clearly a statement that a written informed consent for publication was obtained. Patient anonymity should be preserved. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to prevent human subjects being recognized or an eye bar should be used. A consent of publication of their details in a way they will be freely available the internet must be under (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) If the person has died, a consent must be obtained from their next of skin. Here is a sample patient permission form/statement of consent.

Confidentiality:

All submitted articles are confidential material, and the ASJ will not disclose it to anyone except the ASJ team who ae responsible for article processing until publication if accepted. If a misconduct was suspected, the article may be revealed to the academic journal's ethics committees and institution/organization that could require it to resolve the issue. ASJ will follow the appropriate COPE flowchart wherever necessary.

Data Falsification/fabrication:

Any actions taken to inappropriately manipulate or fabricate data are considered a serious form of misconduct, mislead others, and damage the integrity scholarly records with long term consequences. Authors must ensure that all data in their manuscript is accurate and adequately represents their research. Authors are expected to retain and/or submit all raw data presented in their work to help journal editors assess the work. In case the raw data could not submitted upon request, manuscript acceptance or publishing may be declined.

Desk rejection policy:

1. The topic and/or scope of the article is not appropriate to scope of the journal.
2. Publication ethics troubles, not following the international standards, and plagiarism (similarity index>30%)
3. Subject does not have adequate impact nor provide new knowledge.
4. Defects in study design
5. Objectives are not adequately defined.
6. Transcription difficulty of inadequate language and grammar.
7. Affiliation is missing some constituents.
8. Does not respect submission/author instructions.

Duplicate submission/publications:

Upon submission, authors should declare that the manuscript is under consideration elsewhere, and such a duplicate submission or publication is misconduct. This includes manuscript published in different languages. Secondary submission / publication (manuscripts translated to different language) is acceptable in accordance with ICMJE guidelines. In this case, authors must get permission from publisher and copyright holder of the original manuscript and inform the receiving journal editor about the manuscript history. It must be clarified to the readers as well that this article is a translated version with citation of the original article.

Funding:

ASJ requires that authors must declare any form of funding including financial support. They must describe the role of the sponsors in any stage during work processing. They must ensure that information is accurate and according to the funder's requirement.

Images and figures:

Authors must use only images and figures that are relevant and valuable to the work. Those which are purely illustrative and does not add value should be avoided. Authors must obtain written permission to include material that is owned and held in copyright by a third party.

Misconduct:

ASJ takes all forms of misconduct seriously and will take all the necessary actions in accordance with COPE guidelines to protect the integrity of scholarly records.

Misconduct includes and not limited to affiliation mispresentation, citation manipulation, unethical research, undisclosed conflict of interest, break in copyright, use of third-party material without permission, duplicate submission/publication, plagiarism, ethics dumping, data manipulation/fabrication, peer review manipulation, text recycle/self-plagiarism.

Editor, Reviewer, Author Publication Ethics:

I) Editor's Duties

i) Publications Decisions:

The editorial board decided which of the manuscripts submitted to the ASJ must be accepted. Editorial board members refer to reviewers' recommendations in making decisions guided by legal requirements of libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. Editorial board decisions are affected by the origins of manuscript including race. Ethnicity, nationality, political beliefs, religion of the authors.

ii) Confidentiality, disclosures, and conflict of interest

Editors must not disclose information a submitted manuscript to any one other that the corresponding author, reviewers, and other editorial advisors during the review process, unpublished material reported in a manuscript must not be used in editor's, reviewer's, or any other reader's own work without a written consent from the author. The Journal's readers must be informed about the founders of the work and whether funders had any role in the work and its publication.

iii) Authors relationship

The editorial board must ensure that peer review at the ASJ is fair, unbiased, and timely. The ASJ has established strict policies to handle submissions from the editorial board members to ensure unbiased review. ASJ's author instructions provide guidance about the criteria for authorship.

iv) Reviewer relations

The ASJ encourages reviewers to comment on ethical issues and possible misconduct raised by submissions and to be alert to redundant publication and plagiarism. Comments of reviewers must be forwarded to authors in their entirely unless they contain libelous or offensive remarks. Contributions of reviewers who consistently produce discourteous, poor quality, or late reviews.

v) Quality assurance

The editorial board must ensure the quality of the material they publish, considering that different sections have different aims and standards. Editors must ensure that the research they publish has been approved by an appropriate body (research ethics committee, institutional review board) where one exists. Editors must be alert to intellectual property issues and work with their publishers to handle potential breaches of laws and conventions. Errors, inaccurate or misleading statements must be corrected and with due prominence.

II) Reviewers' duties

i) Qualification of reviewers

Reviewers who selected to review a manuscript and feels unqualified to review the research or knows that its prompt review will be impossible must notify the editor and decline review process. Reviewers should not consider manuscript revision in which they have COIs.

ii) Contribution to editorial decisions

Reviewers help the editorial board in making editorial decisions. They must conduct objectively, and their observations must be formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can make use of to enhance the work. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate.

iii) Confidentiality

Articles received for review should be treated as confidential documents. Ideas or information obtained through the per review process should be kept confidential and not for personal advantages.

iv) Acknowledgement of sources

Journal reviewers must identify significant relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. References to the ideas of others must be accompanied by relevant citations. A reviewer must notify the editor regarding any substantial similarity or overlap between the article under consideration and any other published work.

III) Authors' duties

i) Reporting standards

Authors of original articles must present an accurate data of the research performed and objective discussion of its significant. Authors must be ready to provide public access to the raw data of the research and retain this data for at least two years after publication. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements are unacceptable and unethical behavior.

ii) Originality, plagiarism, and concurrent publications

Authors must ensure that their work is entirely original and that any work of others have been appropriately acknowledge. All forms of plagiarism are unacceptable and unethical behavior. Concurrent submission of the same article to more than one journal is unacceptable and unethical behavior.

iii) Disclosures and conflict of interest

Authors must disclose any financial or other substantive COIs that might influence the results or its interpretation in the work. All forms of support for the project must be disclosed.

iv) Authorship of the article

Corresponding authors must ensure that all appropriate and in inappropriate co-authors are included in the work and that all co-authors have read and approved the final version of the work and have agreed the submission for publication. Only those who have made significant contribution to the work must be listed as co-authors. Those who have participated to the work in some substantial aspects of the work must be acknowledge or listed as contributors.

v) Fundamental errors in publication work

When authors discover a significant inaccuracy or errors in their published work, they are obliged to promptly notify the editor and work with him to correct or retract the work.

Peer review process:

All manuscripts are subjected to peer review and are expected to meet the standards of academic excellence. If approved by the editor, submissions will be considered by peer reviewers, whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors and vice versa, identities of authors will remain anonymous to the reviewers (Double-blind peer review). The decision regarding the acceptance or rejection of a manuscript is the responsibility of the editorial board and is based on the recommendations of the reviewers (peer-reviewed process).

Our Research Integrity team will occasionally seek advice outside standard peer review, for example, on submissions with serious ethical, security, biosecurity, or societal implications. We may consult experts and the academic editor before deciding on appropriate actions, including but not limited to recruiting reviewers with specific expertise, assessment by additional editors, and declining to further consider a submission.

Plagiarism:

The journal has a strict policy against plagiarism, where the journal does not tolerate using others’ ideas, words, or work without acknowledgment. Submissions containing plagiarism in whole or part, duplicate and redundant publication, or self-plagiarism (same or a different language), will be rejected. The Preprint archive will not be considered a duplicate publication. The corresponding author is responsible for the manuscript through and after the evaluation and publication process with the authority to act on behalf of all co-authors. All submitted manuscripts are checked for plagiarism using professional plagiarism-checking software. Submitted manuscripts with an unacceptable similarity index resulting from plagiarism are rejected immediately.

Preprint policy:

The authors can share their preprints anywhere and at any time. In case of accepted articles, the ASJ encourages authors to link from the preprint to their formal publication via its DOI. Also, authors can update their preprints on arXiv or RePEc, etc., with their accepted manuscript.

Standards of reporting:

Research should be communicated in a way that supports verification and reproducibility, and authors are encouraged to provide comprehensive descriptions of their research rationale, protocol, methodology, and analysis.

Use of third-party material:

Authors must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material. These materials may include – but are not limited to – text, illustration, photographs, tables, data, audio, video, film stills, screenshots, or musical notation. The use of short extracts of text and some other types of material is usually permitted, on a limited basis, for the purposes of criticism and review without securing formal permission. Authors wish to include any material for which they do not hold copyright, they must obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission.

Digital Archiving:

The ASJ is preserved in CLOCKSS and Portico, the two leading preservation archives that guarantee persistent access for the very long term. Articles also receive Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) from the CrossRef organization to ensure they can always be found.