OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING POLICY:
All articles published by International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research journals are readily available and immediately accessible online upon publication and readers can read, download and/or print open access articles without any charges.
All articles are licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode) which allows the open distribution and reproduction in any means, provided that the work is perfectly cited.
Authorship acknowledgments:
All individuals listed as authors must have devoted substantially to the conception, execution, analysis, or summarizing of the work and are required to indicate their particular contribution. The names and order of author’s list must be finalized before submission to the journal and no responsibility lies on International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research regarding authorship matters. Any article with disputed authorship may not be published by International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research until complete resolution of the issue and a written consent provided to the editor by corresponding author. Granting Guest or honorary authorship to some individual merely due to his/her designation (e.g., research supervisor, departmental head) is highly discouraged.
In addition to authors of the article, individual/company/institution who has substantially contributed to studying important intellectual content or was involved in drafting or revising the manuscript may be acknowledged at the end of the article before the References.
Mentioning of corresponding author(s) is mandatory for all submissions. Only corresponding author will communicate with journal regarding all article-publication matters. Being a corresponding author doesn’t renders seniority to an author rather, is required for managerial responsibilities only.
Copyrights: Authors who publish in International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research retain copyright to their work. Submission of a manuscript to the journal implies that all authors have read and agreed to the content of the Covering Letter.
All articles by International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode), which permits free distribution and reproduction of published content in any medium provided that the work is properly cited. International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research grants the author(s) a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and non-commercial perpetual license to exercise the below rights of their published article.
• The authors retain the copyright of their published article. They will also have the right to reproduce the article, to incorporate the article into one or more collective works, and to reproduce the article as incorporated in collective works;
• Create and reproduce Derivative Works for educational purposes.
• Distribute Copies
• Any commercial application of the work, with prior agreement by the author, is exclusively granted to International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research.
Plagiarism Prevention: International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research uses the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. iThenticate software checks the content against a database of periodicals, the Internet, and a comprehensive article database. It generates a similarity report, highlighting the percentage overlap between the uploaded article and the previously published material. Any instance of content overlap is further examined for suspected plagiarism according to the publisher's Editorial Policies. International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research allows an overall similarity of 20% for a manuscript to be acknowledged for publication. The similarity percentage is further checked keeping the following important points in view:
Low Text Similarity: The text of every submitted manuscript is examined using the Content Tracking mode in iThenticate. This mode ensures that manuscripts with an overall low percentage similarity (but which may have a higher similarity from a single source) are not neglected. The acceptable limit for similarity of text from a single source is 5%. If the similarity level is above 5%, the manuscript is returned to the author for paraphrasing of the text and citing the source of the copied material.
It is essential to mention that the text taken from different sources with an overall low similarity percentage will be considered plagiarized content if most of the article is a combination of copied material.
High Text Similarity: There may be some manuscripts with an overall low similarity percentage but a higher percentage from a single source. A manuscript may have less than 20% overall similarity, but 15 % similar text is taken from a single article. The similarity index in such cases is higher than the approved limit for a single source (5%). Authors are encouraged to thoroughly rephrase similar text and properly cite the original quote to avoid plagiarism and copyright violation.
Types of Plagiarism: We all understand that scholarly manuscripts are drafted after a careful review of previously published articles. It is therefore not easy to draw a clear boundary between legitimate representation and plagiarism. However, the following important features can assist in identifying different kinds of plagiarized content:
- Plagiarism: The use of another author’s words, ideas, sentences, or findings without proper citation or acknowledgment, presenting them as one’s own work.
- Self-plagiarism (Text recycling): The reuse of one’s own previously published material in a new paper without proper citation or acknowledgment of the original source.
- Poor paraphrasing, copying complete paragraphs, and modifying a few words without changing the structure of original sentences or changing the sentence structure but not the words.
- Verbatim copying of text without placing quotation marks and not acknowledging the work of the original author.
- Correctly citing a work but poorly paraphrasing the original text is considered unintentional plagiarism. Similarly, manuscripts with language presenting paraphrasing and quotingboth are not acceptable. Authors should either paraphrase properly, or quote; and in both cases cite the original source.
- Higher similarity in the abstract, introduction, materials and methods,discussion and conclusion sections indicates that the manuscript may contain plagiarized text. Authors can easily explain these parts of the manuscript in many ways. However, author technical terms and sometimes standard methods cannot be rephrased; therefore, editors must carefully review these sections before deciding.
Plagiarism in Published Manuscripts: Published manuscripts containing plagiarized text are retracted from the journal website after careful investigation and approval by the Journal's Editor-in-Chief. A 'Retraction Note' and a link to the original study are published on the plagiarized manuscript's electronic version.
Article Withdrawal policy:
Only in rare cases where an article has significant errors which are compelling and unavoidable; or has been accidently submitted multiple times, withdrawal of an unpublished article by authors is permissible.
As per policy, if the withdrawal of article is requested within the 48 hours of submission, no withdrawal penalty will be charged, however, if authors withdraw manuscripts during/after review; and acceptance, a withdrawal penalty will be applicable as the article may have caused the time waste of the editors, reviewers, and the editorial staff. Withdrawal will only be allowed after withdrawal penalty has been fully paid to the journal.
The Editor-in-Chief of the journal is the highest authority solely responsible to take decisions on withdrawal policies.
In cases only where a manuscript has taken more than six months for review process, the authors have the right to withdraw their manuscript without paying any charges. Authors may not assume that their manuscript has been withdrawn until they have received a formal letter notifying about the Manuscript Withdrawal from the editorial office.
To avoid time-waste of our publishing team, and the withdrawal penalties by authors we suggest our authors to be certain that the data and facts presented in the article are error free, and best practices in the publication ethics have been complied before submission to the journal.
Post publication policies:
Errata, Corrigenda, and Corrections in Published Articles: Authors and readers are advised to notify the Editor-in-Chief if they discover errors in published content, author's names, and affiliations; or if they have reasons for concern over the legitimacy of a publication. In such cases, International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research will publish an ERRATUM or a CORRIGENDUM, in discussion with the Editor-in-Chief and authors of the article, and/or substitute or retract the article.
Article Retraction:
If manuscripts are published, have been assigned certain information of volume/issue/page number, and it is found that there are infringements of professional ethical codes in their content, such as plagiarism, excess similarity with some other article, fraudulent use of data, etc., that has been overlooked during our internal review process(rarely a case)orwas informed about by a third party then such manuscripts are retracted by relevant editors of International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research.
A retraction note entitled "Retraction: [article title]" is published in the paginated part of the next scheduled issue of the journal and is also listed in the table of contents.
Editors may consider retracting a publication' if:
• They have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of major error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error), or as a result of fabrication (e.g., of data) or falsification (e.g., image manipulation)
• It is heavily plagiarized
• The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution to previous sources or disclosure to the editor, permission to republish, or justification (i.e., cases of redundant publication)
• It contains material or data without authorization for use
• Copyright has been infringed or there is some other serious legal issue (e.g., libel, privacy)
• It reports research that is considered unethical in research community
• It has been published solely on the basis of a compromised or manipulated peer review process
• The author(s) failed to disclose a major competing interest/conflict of interest that, in view of the editor, would have unduly affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and peer reviewers.
Removal of Published Content:
In exceptional circumstances, if International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research finds that a published content is defamatory, breaches a third party’s legal rights, or is unlawful otherwise; would be seriously risky to health if acted upon; or receives a government/court order to remove the published content; it reserves the right to temporarily or permanently remove such article. Bibliography(title and authors’ names) will be retained on the journal’s website but, accompanied by a declaration briefly explaining the reasons for removal of the content.
Data Fabrication and Manipulation:
International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research does not support any makeup of research findings/data to give a false impression. Manipulating images, removing unsupportive results, changing/adding/deleting data points etc. are all included in data fabrication and not allowed in submitted articles. However, proper technical manipulation of a complete image is permissible for readability purposes only and this must be clearly mentioned in cover letter while submitting the article to the journal. Improper manipulation involving parts of the image is strictly forbidden. Finding such manipulation post-publication may culminate in retraction of the article from the journal.
Concurrent Publication/Simultaneous Submission: all submitting authors need to affirm that manuscripts being submitted to the International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research journal have not been published in any other language or simultaneously submitted for publishing elsewhere. Plagiarism is strictly forbidden, and by submitting the article for publication, the authors agree that the publishers have the legal right to take appropriate action against authors if plagiarism or fabricated content is discovered.
Abstracts and posters of conferences, results presented at meetings (for example, to inform investigators or participants about findings), results from databases (data without interpretation, discussion, context, or conclusions in the form of tables and text to describe data/information not properly presented in tabular form) are not considered before publication.
Authors who wish to publish translations of the articles that have been published elsewhere should present appropriate permission(s) from primary authors clearly indicating that the material has been translated and is allowed to re-publish, and show the primary source of the material. The Editor-in-Chief may request the related publications if he/she is concerned about overlap and possible redundancy.
Allegations of misconduct:
International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research will investigate if any form of misconduct is suspected in a submitted article. Editorial members/ editorial staff, as appropriate will be responsible for following up of such cases. Such articles are not only rejected but the submitting author is contacted first, for questions regarding any unfair actions. In case of no/unsatisfactory reply from authors International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research has the authority to contact their employers, institutions/organizations, or relevant regulatory body for investigating and resolving the issue.
All cases of misconduct are followed up till final settling of the issue. In rare situations of any allegation of ethical misconduct discovered and evidently proved in a post-published article, the case will be appropriately probedand an action may be taken by handling editor of the article which may include retraction/ removal of the article from the journal. EIC will be contacted by the handling editor in case of complicated cases before taking final decision. The editorial staff bears the responsibility to follow up the cases of misconduct till final solution of the issue is achieved. The extremely unusual cases of evident misconduct may be directed to COPE team by EIC in case no guiding rules are found regarding such issues.
Disclaimer: Responsibility for the content published by International Journal of Statistics in Medical Researchincluding any opinions expressed therein, rests exclusively with the author(s).To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research (on its behalf and behalf of its staff and members of its editorial board) disclaims responsibility for any injury and/or damage (whether financial or otherwise) to persons or property, resulting directly or indirectly from any ideas, methods, instructions, or products (including errors in the same) referred to in any published content of International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research.
Appeals and Complaints:
Generally, the editorial decisions are not reverted. However, authors who consider that their manuscript was rejected due to a misunderstanding or mistake may seek an explanation for the decision. Appeals must give sound reasoning and compelling evidence of the criticism raised in the rejection letter. A difference of opinion as to the interest, novelty, or suitability of the manuscript for the journal will not be considered an appeal. The EIC and other relevant editors will consider the request and their decision afterwards will be deemed final.
Acceptance of the manuscript for publishing is not guaranteed even if the journals’ concerned personals agree to reconsider the manuscript. The reconsideration process may involve previous or new reviewers or editors and substantive revision.
Authors who wish to make a complaint should refer them to the Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Statistics in Medical Research. All appeals and complaints must be sent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
