Best practice for Editors would include:
- Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance to the remit of the journal, whithout any kind of discrimination towards the author or the reseach subject.
- Editors should make use of manuscripts for review and publication only, recognising the need to handle submitted material in confidence.
Best Practice for authors would include:
- The authors should submit original unpublished work (the main results and conclusions must not have been published or submitted elsewhere). An exception is made if the article has been translated from a foreign langauge. In this case consent from the original publisher is required and the orignial paper will be published along with the transposition
- Everyone who is listed as an author should have made a substantial, direct, intellectual contribution to the manuscript. The work needs to be approved by all authors before submission.
- The primary author should take responsability for the work as a whole
- Authors should be responsible for obtaining authorization to publish copyrighted material.
- Authors should be blinded to the reviewers’ idenities as ruled by scientific criteria and Journal editorial policies
- Authors should always protect the confidentiality of individual information obtained in the course of research or professional interactions (e.g. between doctors and patients). It is therefore necessary to obtain written informed consent for publication from people who might recognise themselves or be identified by others (e.g. from case reports or photographs)
- Authors should declare any potentially competing interests as part of the submission process. They should also declare if there is any funding involved. (No manuscript will be considered for publication unless this information is included.) anche senza
Best practice for reviewers would include:
- Respect the confidentiality of peer review and not reveal any details of a manuscript or its review, during or after the peer-review process, beyond those that are released by the journal
- Be objective and constructive in their reviews and provide feedback that will help the authors to improve their manuscript. Be clear in their criticisms and provide evidence with appropriate references to substantiate their feedback.
- Declare any potentially conflicting or competing interests (which may, for example, be any kind of collaboration competition or link with authors or companies/institutions related to the subject of the manuscript), seeking advice from the journal if they are unsure whether something constitutes a relevant interest
For any further details please refer to Code of Conducts by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)