Publication and Authorship

• References should be complied numerically according to the order of citation in the text in the Vancouver style. The numbers of references should not preferably exceed 40 for original articles, 15 for brief, and 5-10 for case reports. For the references credited to more than 6 authors please provide the name of the first six authors and represent the remaining authors by the phrase “et al.”
• A statement should be included in the title page indicating any financial support the authors had received.
• The authors are not allowed to utilize verbatim text of previously published papers or manuscripts submitted elsewhere.
• Authors should sign an Assignment Form stating that the article is an original work, has not been published before and is not being considered for publication elsewhere in its final form either in printed or electronic form. The same research must not be published in more than one journal.

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Author's Responsibilities

• Authors should actively participate in the peer review process and provide suitable responses to the comments raised by peer reviewers on time.
• All authors must have significantly contributed to the research and fullfil the authorship criteria.
• Authors must state that all data in the article are real and authentic.
• All authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
• Copyright: If a manuscript contains any previous published image or text, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain authorization from copyright holders. The author is required to obtain and submit the written original permission letters for all copyrighted material used in his/her manuscripts.

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Peer Review/Responsibility for the Reviewers

• Judgments should be objective.
• Reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the research funders.
• Reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.
• Reviewed articles should be treated confidentially.
• Reviewers should advise editors, but the final decision on an article is made by the Editors-in-Chief.
• Reviewers should provide constructive comments to improve the quality of the article.

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Editorial Responsibilities

• The Editors-in-Chief have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
• Editors should have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept.
• When errors are found in a manuscript, the editors promote publication of corrections or retractions.
• The anonymity of reviewers is preserved.

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Issues on Publishing Ethics

• The journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are approached upon confronting any ethical misbehavior.
• IJVLMS uses the COPE flowchart for retraction of a published article.
• All patients and participants of the research should be thoroughly informed about the aims of the study and any possible side effects of the drugs and intervention. Written informed consent from the participants or their legal guardians is necessary for any such studies. The Journal reserves the right to request the related documents.
• IJVLMS precludes business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.
• The Editors-in-Chief are always willing to publish corrections, clarifications.
• Plagiarism: Use of verbatim texts from other sources without acknowledgement is prohibited. The content of all articles must be the original work of authors and must not be plagiarized from other articles. COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are approached in cases in which plagiarism is detected.
• Data falsification/fabrication: Falsification is the practice of omitting or altering research materials, data, or processes so that the results of the research are no longer accurately reflected. Fabrication is the practice of inventing data or results and reporting them in the research. Both of these misconducts are fraudulent and seriously alter the integrity of research. Therefore, articles must be written based on original data and use of falsified or fabricated data is strongly prohibited.
• Image manipulation: IJVLMS encourages authors to send their original images. All digital images in manuscripts accepted for publication will be checked for inappropriate manipulation. No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable as long as they are applied to the entire image and do not misrepresent any information present in the original, including the background. The editors will request the original data from the authors to compare the manipulated figures in cases suspected of inappropriate manipulation.

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Human & Animal Rights Statement

Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an independent local, regional or national review body (e.g., ethics committee, institutional review board).

When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. Further guidance on animal research ethics is available from the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines on Animal Ethics and Welfare.

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Ethical Approval Code

To publish an article in a research journal, author(s) are requested to get the ethical permission from their institute. In this permission, authors will agree upon standard ethical behavior.

• "Ethical Approval Code" is required for all studies on people, medical records, and human samples.
• This code must be linked to a webpage showing the details of approval.
• The code must be approved by the authors' local authorities. For example, the national center of ethics or ethics department of universities. 

How can I receive the "Ethical Approval Code"?

Before you plan to start a research, project involving human participants or personal data, you must apply for an “ethical approval” for that from one of the University’s research ethics committees. The information requested by your local committee will depend on your discipline and the type of research that you intend to undertake.

Examples of local ethics authorities in different universities:

• https://www.ed.ac.uk/education/rke/research-support/ethical-approval
• https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/rs/code/ethical
• https://www2.le.ac.uk/institution/ethics/approval
• http://ethics.research.ac.ir/

Which type of manuscripts are required to declare "Ethical Approval Code"?

The below table describes the requirement of approval code and informed consent in different types of manuscript.

Table notes:

* : Veterinary clinical cases: For studies using client-owned animals, a high standard (best practice) of veterinary care and an informed client consent statement should be included in the Materials and Methods section.

* : Animal Studies: The ethical review committee approval, and the international, national, and/or institutional guidelines followed regarding the animal's welfare is strongly required in these types of studies.

** : In vitro studies on human or animal tissues are obliged to show "ethical approval code".

*** :  Case reports are not obliged to show “Ethical Approval Code”. But it is strongly recommended to obtain written and signed informed consent from patient/ guardians for publishing the case report. 

 

Which type of manuscripts does not need ethical approval code?

• studies involving the collection or analysis of data
• studies involving information freely available in the public domain (e.g. published biographies, newspaper accounts)
• review articles
• letter or editorial

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Authorship Rules and Regulations

Based on the ICMJE recommends that authorship criteria are as below:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data.
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
3. Final approval of the version published.
4. 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.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their coauthors. All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding, the gathering of data, technical help, writing assistance, and general supervision of the research group does not warrant authorship. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged. Please guarantee that anyone stated in the Acknowledgements section has granted its clearance for permission to be listed.

Authorship Statement

An authorship statement is required for every manuscript submitted and should state who has contributed what to the planning, conduct, and reporting of the work described in the article. Please note that authors' initials must be typed in this statement.

Example:

K.R developed the original idea and the protocol, abstracted and analyzed data, wrote the manuscript, and is guarantor. C.F.N and D.P contributed to the development of the protocol, abstracted data, and prepared the manuscript.

Acknowledgments

Recognize individuals who provided assistance to the project. Report all sources of grant and other support for the project or study, including funds received from contributors, institutions and commercial sources. Consultancies and funds paid directly to investigators must also be listed.

 

Authorship Changes

NEW: Based on our internal policy, we don´t accept any change in the authorship including addition and or deletion of the authors after initial submission except for those cases that are decided by the editorial board.

• Only Minor changes in the authors including any change in the order of authors will be reviewed by the editorial board. Authors should determine the order of authorship among themselves. In addition, any alterations must be clarified to the Editor/Editor-in-chief.
• To apply a request for a minor change in the authors, please fill the agreement form and send it to: ijvlms@sums.ac.ir
• Changes or rearrangements in authorship after acceptance and publication are strictly prohibited.

Competing Interests

A competing interest exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain - employment, Consultancy, stock ownership or options, honoraria, patents, and paid expert- testimony or personal relationship). There is nothing unethical about a competing interest but it should be acknowledged and clearly stated. All authors must declare all competing interests in their covering letter and in “Competing Interests” section at the end of the manuscript file (before the references). Authors with no competing interests to declare should obviously state that.

• The policy of publisher is that none of the editors should have any financial relationship with any Biomedical company.

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Allegations of Misconduct

Journals should have a clearly described process for handling allegations, however they are brought to the journal’s or publisher’s attention. Journals must take seriously allegations of misconduct pre-publication and post-publication. Policies should include how to handle allegations from whistleblowers.

Find out more: publicationethics.org/misconduct

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Complaints and Appeals

Journals should have a clearly described process for handling complaints against the journal, its staff, editorial board or publisher.

Find out more: publicationethics.org/appeals

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Conflicts of Interest/Competing Interest

There must be clear definitions of conflicts of interest and processes for handling conflicts of interest of authors, reviewers, editors, journals and publishers, whether identified before or after publication.

Find out more: publicationethics.org/competinginterests

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Data and Reproducibility

Journals should include policies on data availability and encourage the use of reporting guidelines and registration of clinical trials and other study designs according to standard practice in their discipline.

Find out more: publicationethics.org/data

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Ethical Oversight

Ethical oversight should include, but is not limited to, policies on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, handling confidential data and of business/marketing practices.

Find out more: publicationethics.org/oversight

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Intellectual Property

All policies on intellectual property, including copyright and publishing licenses, should be clearly described. In addition, any costs associated with publishing should be obvious to authors and readers. Policies should be clear on what counts as prepublication that will preclude consideration. What constitutes plagiarism and redundant/overlapping publication should be specified.

Find out more: publicationethics.org/intellectualproperty

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Online Submission

The Journal accepts manuscripts only through the online submission system, easy to use and easy to track, thus the submission will be done rather faster by electronically submission. Once you submit an article, it will be forwarded to one of the editors and afterwards to at least two peer-reviewers. At once after submission, the author will be notified of the both submission process via the email and the follow-up ID code. It is recommended to save the sent ID code for all the next correspondence regarding each article, separately.

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Peer Review Processes

All peer review processes must be transparently described and well managed. Journals should provide training for editors and reviewers and have policies on diverse aspects of peer review, especially with respect to adoption of appropriate models of review and processes for handling conflicts of interest, appeals and disputes that may arise in peer review.

Find out more: publicationethics.org/peerreview

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Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections

Journals must allow debate post publication either on their site, through letters to the editor, or on an external moderated site, such as PubMed Commons or PubPeer. They must have mechanisms for correcting, revising or retracting articles after publication.

Find out more: publicationethics.org/postpublication

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Plagiarism and Similarity Rates

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted. We recommend reviewers in the peer review process to completely check and control the similarities and guide authors to avoid similarities with other published materials.

• We accept all terms and conditions of the COPE regarding similarity rates and plagiarism and in case, any attempt for plagiarism accompanied with convincing evidence is considered. Accordingly, we act based on the flowcharts and workflows by the COPE.
• The highest responsibility to control and avoid plagiarism is held by the EIC of the journal.

We check all manuscripts using iThenticate plagiarism checker in at least 2 important steps:

1. Early submission: The journal office detects submissions with high similarity rates and prevents them from proceeding to the next step.
2. Before the primary stage of publishing:  Accepted manuscripts will be checked once again before the publishing process.