Publication Ethics

Frontiers in Medical and Clinical Sciences (FMCS)

eISSN: 2978-3747

1. Introduction & Core Principles

Frontiers in Medical and Clinical Sciences (FMCS) is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics, intellectual rigor, editorial independence, and scientific integrity. Maintaining public trust and academic credibility across basic medical sciences, clinical research, translational medicine, and healthcare studies requires that authors, editors, peer reviewers, and publishers strictly adhere to standardized ethical conduct.

FMCS operates in strict accordance with the core practices, guidelines, and flowcharts established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the World Medical Association (WMA Declaration of Helsinki), and the standards prescribed for indexing in Scopus, PubMed/MEDLINE, and other global abstracting databases.

2. Duties & Ethical Responsibilities of Authors

Authors submitting their manuscripts to FMCS must ensure total transparency, compliance, and adherence to the following scientific and clinical standards:

Originality & Novelty: Manuscripts submitted to FMCS must represent entirely original research that has not been previously published elsewhere (in full or in part) and is not currently under consideration by any other journal, book chapter, or conference proceedings platform.
Human and Animal Rights & Ethical Approvals: Research involving human subjects, human biological tissue, or medical records must explicitly confirm approval by an appropriate institutional Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board (IRB). All clinical studies must follow the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Studies involving experimental animals must state compliance with institutional or national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals.
Informed Consent: For clinical research involving human participants, written informed consent must be obtained from all patients/participants (or their legal guardians) prior to inclusion. Patient privacy and anonymity must be strictly maintained; identifying information (including patient names, initials, or hospital numbers) must be omitted from text, figures, and images unless written informed consent for publication is provided.
Clinical Trial Registration: In accordance with ICMJE guidelines, all clinical trials must be prospectively registered in a publicly accessible registry (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov, WHO ICTRP) prior to patient enrollment. Registration details must be explicitly stated in the manuscript.
Data Transparency & Integrity: Authors must present accurate clinical or experimental data, precise methodologies, and objective interpretations of their research findings. Fabricating, falsifying, or selectively omitting data is strictly prohibited. Raw data, anonymized patient records, and statistical code must be retained and made available upon reasonable request from editors or reviewers.
Proper Attribution & Referencing: Credit must be explicitly given to all source material, prior research, theories, and instruments used. Third-party work must be cited accurately according to standard medical citation styles (Vancouver or AMA/APA format as required by the journal).
Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest: Authors must disclose all potential financial, commercial, personal, or institutional conflicts of interest that might bias or appear to influence the research design, clinical analysis, or conclusions.
Funding Statements: All financial support, research grants, pharmaceutical sponsorships, or institutional funding received for conducting the study must be explicitly acknowledged in the manuscript.
Use of Generative AI Tools: The use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as Large Language Models (LLMs), must be clearly disclosed in the Methods or Acknowledgments section. AI tools do not meet authorship criteria and cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.
Post-Publication Obligations: If an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work, they are obligated to promptly notify the Handling Editor or Editor-in-Chief and cooperate fully to publish an erratum, corrigendum, or retraction notice.

3. Originality, Plagiarism & Research Misconduct

FMCS maintains a strict zero-tolerance policy regarding academic dishonesty, unethical practices, and research misconduct. Every manuscript undergoes automated plagiarism detection software (e.g., Turnitin / iThenticate) prior to initial editorial evaluation.

The journal strictly prohibits:

Direct Plagiarism: Copying text verbatim from another source without quotation marks and appropriate citation.
Mosaic & Paraphrased Plagiarism: Rephrasing or restructuring concepts from third-party sources without clear attribution.
Self-Plagiarism & Text Recycling: Reusing substantial sections of the author’s own previously published papers without disclosure or citation.
Data Fabrication & Falsification: Inventing false clinical/experimental data sets, manipulating statistical outputs, or altering qualitative findings to support false conclusions.
Image & Graph Manipulation: Modifying visual data representations (such as radiological scans, histology slides, Western blots, or charts) in a way that alters the underlying scientific truth.

Consequence of Misconduct: Confirmed instances of deliberate research misconduct, ethical breaches, or plagiarism exceeding the allowable threshold (typically >15% overall similarity, excluding references and standard clinical methodology terms) will result in immediate desk rejection, formal notification to the authors' affiliated institutions, and a temporary or permanent ban on future submissions.

4. Authorship Criteria & Acknowledgment

Authorship credit must accurately reflect meaningful intellectual and scholarly contributions to the manuscript. FMCS adheres strictly to the ICMJE/COPE authorship standards.

Authorship Eligibility

To be listed as an author, an individual must meet all four of the following criteria:

Substantial contributions to the conceptualization, design, data acquisition, clinical trial execution, empirical analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
Drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
Approval of the final version of the manuscript to be published.
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.

Acknowledgments & Contributors

Individuals who contributed to the study (e.g., general clinical supervision, technical assistance, language editing, formatting, or administrative support) but do not meet all four authorship criteria must be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section, rather than named as co-authors.

5. Duties & Responsibilities of Editors

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board of FMCS maintain absolute independence and responsibility for all publication decisions:

Fair & Impartial Evaluation: Manuscripts are evaluated solely on their scientific quality, clinical relevance, methodological rigor, originality, clarity, and importance to medical and healthcare literature. Evaluations are completely free from bias regarding the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, geographic origin, religious beliefs, political views, or institutional affiliation.
Editorial Independence: Decisions to accept or reject a manuscript are entirely independent of commercial interests, pharmaceutical influences, publisher pressures, or Article Processing Charge (APC) payments. Acceptance cannot be purchased or guaranteed under any circumstances.
Confidentiality: Editors and editorial staff must safeguard the confidentiality of all submitted manuscripts and patient data, ensuring no details are disclosed to anyone other than the corresponding author, assigned reviewers, and editorial advisers.
Handling Conflicts of Interest: Editors must recuse themselves from evaluating manuscripts in which they have competing interests arising from direct collaborative, commercial, financial, or personal relationships with any of the authors.

6. Duties & Responsibilities of Peer Reviewers

Peer review is the foundation of scholarly medical publishing integrity. Reviewers invited by FMCS must fulfill the following duties:

Objective & Constructive Critique: Reviews should be conducted objectively, impartially, and constructively. Reviewers should clearly express their scientific views with supporting arguments and avoid personal or derogatory comments against authors.
Confidentiality: Reviewers must treat all assigned manuscripts and clinical data as strictly confidential documents. Un-published manuscript details or data must not be shared, discussed, or utilized for personal research gain.
Promptness: Invited reviewers must respond promptly to review requests and complete evaluations within the specified timeframe. If a reviewer feels unqualified or unable to review within the deadline, they should notify the editor immediately.
Identification of Ethical & Safety Issues: Reviewers must alert the Handling Editor if they detect substantial overlaps with previously published works, suspected data fabrication, lack of IRB/ethical board approvals, un-consented patient data, or undisclosed conflicts of interest.

7. Double-Blind Peer Review Integrity

To eliminate potential unconscious biases, FMCS strictly enforces a Double-Blind Peer Review process.

The identities of the authors are withheld from the peer reviewers throughout the process.
The identities of the peer reviewers are concealed from the authors.

Peer Review Outcomes

Following external clinical review, the handling editor renders one of four standard decisions:

Accept without Revision
Minor Revisions Required
Major Revisions Required (Subject to mandatory re-evaluation)
Reject

The Editor-in-Chief retains final authority and responsibility for all editorial decisions.

8. Corrections, Retractions & Expressions of Concern

FMCS is dedicated to maintaining the permanent accuracy, completeness, and integrity of the medical and clinical record. Post-publication issues are handled in strict compliance with COPE guidelines:

Errata / Corrigenda: Published when minor honest errors, typos, or inadvertently omitted disclosures occur that do not alter the main scientific or clinical findings of the published paper.
Expressions of Concern: Issued by the Editor-in-Chief if a formal investigation into potential research misconduct, clinical trial irregularity, or data manipulation is ongoing, but definitive evidence is not yet available.
Retractions: Executed in severe cases of confirmed plagiarism, duplicate publication, ethical non-compliance (e.g., lack of patient consent/IRB approval), data fabrication, or flawed clinical conclusions that render the work unreliable. A formal Retraction Notice will be attached to the original article detailing the precise grounds for retraction.

9. Appeals, Complaints & Editorial Governance

Appeals: Authors who believe their manuscript was rejected due to a factual misunderstanding or procedural error may submit a formal appeal to the Editorial Office within 14 days of the decision. Appeals must provide detailed, evidence-based responses addressing the specific points raised by reviewers and editors.
Complaints: Allegations regarding editorial misconduct, reviewer bias, clinical ethics breaches, or violations of publication standards should be addressed directly to the Editor-in-Chief. Complaints are thoroughly, confidentially, and impartially investigated following established COPE flowcharts.

10. Digital Archiving & Open Access Policy

FMCS is a fully Open Access journal operating under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. All articles are published and immediately made freely available to the global medical and scientific community.

To ensure long-term preservation and permanent digital availability, FMCS's published content is archived across digital repository systems, institutional archives, and permanent Crossref DOI metadata registers, ensuring accessibility even if the journal ceases operation.

11. Contact Information

For questions regarding publication ethics, reports of scientific misconduct, IRB compliance, or inquiries about editorial policies, please contact the Editorial Office:

Editorial Email: editor@irjernet.com