The Neuroscience Journal of Shefaye Khatam Ethical Statements

for the Editor, Authors and Reviewers

 Up to the Shefa Neuroscience Research Center approach for producing and distributing accurate and original scientific contents and intentionality and commitment to the international conventions principals like to the Declaration of Helsinki (updated 2008), and guidelines published as COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors), and WAME (World Association of Medical Editors), The Neuroscience Journal of Shefaye Khatam (Shefaye Khatam), as a Scientific and Research indexed Journals of Journal Commission of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education, the Islamic Republic of Iran, must strive to maintain the highest of ethical standards. Therefore, ethical principles listed below are standards of conduct to be regarded by all The Neuroscience Journal of Shefaye Khatam responsible persons (including the editor, consultants and reviewers) and the audiences (including authors, co-authors, ghost-writers, readers and researchers).

 A. Principal Ethical Codes for the Shefaye Khatam Editor

1. The editor respects the intellectual independence of authors.

 2. The editor gives unbiased consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication, judging each on its merits without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s).

 3. The editor will consider all manuscripts submitted for publication with all reasonable speed.

 4. The editor is the sole responsible person for acceptance or rejection of a manuscript based on gained advice from reviewers and consultant board members. However, manuscripts may be rejected without external review if considered by the editor to be inappropriate for the Shefaye Khatam journal. Such rejections may be based on the failure of the manuscript to fit the scope of the journal, to be of current interest, to provide adequate depth of content, or other reasons.

 5. The editor reserves the right to reject papers for which the ethical aspects are open to doubt.

 6. The editor is fully authorized in choosing manuscripts peer-reviewers. The editor may seek for advice for proper reviewers form the Shefaye Khatam consultant boards or even from the manuscript itself author(s).

 7. The editor or a journal delegate member in charge will seek copyright transfer, declarations of originality, conflicts of interest, and disclosing a signed statement indicating that the submitted manuscript is neither duplicate nor intended to be submitted in the future to any other journal in any format. The corresponding author commitment to the incidence of plagiarism will also be sought.

 8. Since direct consideration of the manuscript written by the editor would constitute a conflict of interest, in this case the decision will be delegated to some other qualified member of the Shefaye Khatam Consultant Board.

 9. Unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations disclosed in a submitted manuscript will not be used in the editor’s own research except with the consent of the author.

 10. The editor welcomes reports of possible errors appeared in the Shefaye Khatam. The report of the confirmed errors will be delivered to the journal audiences as soon.

 B. Principal Ethical Codes for the Shefaye Khatam Authors

1. An author’s central ethical obligation is to present an accurate and complete account of the research performed, absolutely avoiding plagiarism in any way including verbatim or near-verbatim copying, or very close paraphrasing of text or results from another’s work, etc...

2. When requested, the authors should make every reasonable effort to provide the journal with the manuscript data such as completed data sheets, other additional related figures or diagrams, designed or used tool (if available) and samples or used materials.

 3. All explicitly or implicitly used materials during the report of a research must be properly cited by the author(s). The corresponding author is in charge with the accuracy of citations and any incidence of plagiarism.

 4. Any potential of hazards inherent in the procedures or materials used in an investigation should be clearly identified in the submitted manuscript. Besides, authors should inform the editor for the possibility of misuse or abuse of the reported results or adopted procedures in any forms.

 5. Authors are advised to avoid fragmentation of research reports (and submitting related parts to several journals).

 6. The editor should be made aware of the submitted manuscript history of rejection or withdrawn from publication (in Shefaye Khatam or other journals) and the reason of rejection or withdrawn or the possible modification.

 7. The co-authors of a paper should be all those persons who have made significant scientific contributions to the work reported. Other contributions should be indicated in “Acknowledgments” section. Deceased persons who meet the criterion for inclusion as co-authors should be so included. No fictitious name should be listed as an author or co-author. The corresponding author is responsible of sending each living co-author a draft copy of the submitted manuscript to the Shefaye Khatam and have obtaining the co-author’s assent to co-authorship of it.

 8. The corresponding author is responsible for reporting conflicts of interest and sources of funding of the research.

 9. Authors are highly advised to not manipulate or even modify clinical Images. An accurate description of how the images were generated and produced should be provided.

 C. Principal Ethical Codes for Shefaye Khatam Reviewers of Manuscripts

1. Since the reviewing of manuscripts is an essential step in the publication process, a chosen reviewer who feels inadequately qualified to judge the research reported in a manuscript should return it promptly to the editor.

 2. While a reviewer should respect the intellectual independence of the author(s), he/she should evaluate objectively the quality of the manuscript.

3. A peer-reviewer should be sensitive to the appearance of a conflict of interest when the manuscript under review is closely related to the reviewer’s work in progress or published. If in doubt, the reviewer should return the manuscript promptly without review, advising the editor of the conflict of interest or bias.

4. A reviewer should treat a manuscript sent for review as a confidential document. It should neither be shown to nor discussed with others except for while he/she seeks specific advice.

 5. Reviewers should explain and support their judgments adequately. Unsupported assertions by reviewers (or by authors in rebuttal) are of little value and should be avoided.

 6. A reviewer should be alert to failure of authors to cite relevant other works.

 7. While a delay in reviewing process seems inevitable, the reviewer might notify the editor of probable delays and propose a revised review date.

 8. Reviewers are not allowed to disclose unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a manuscript under consideration, except with the consent of the author.

 9. Reviewers should notify editors of concerns with respect to manuscripts that report research that can be reasonably expected to be directly misapplied by others.