Publication Ethics

Iranian Journal of Veterinary Science and Technology is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). IJVST takes the responsibility to enforce a rigorous peer-review together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The journal takes such publishing ethics issues very seriously and the journal members (editor, editorial board and the journal manager) proceed in such cases with a zero tolerance policy. To verify the originality of content submitted to our journals, we use iThenticate to check submissions against previous publications.

COPE membership number: JM13619

Ethical guidelines for authors

  • Manuscripts must be submitted with the understanding that they have not been previously published and are not currently under consideration by another journal.
  • Authors are expected to submit manuscripts with enough detail and references to enable others to replicate the work.
  • Authors may be requested to provide the original data from their study for editorial review and should be ready to make the data publicly available if feasible.
  • The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all co-authors have approved the manuscript prior to submission.
  • Only individuals who meet the authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript, as they are expected to take public responsibility for the content. The “Conflict of interest declaration and author agreement form” must be signed and completed by all authors. This statement and signatures certifies that all authors have seen and approved the manuscript being submitted. Also, the authors by signing this form warrant that the article is the Authors’ original work, that the article has not received prior publication and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that the corresponding author shall bear full responsibility for the submission.
  • Before submission, all authors are required to review the Article Submission Checklist.
  • Authors should disclose any conflicts of interest that might be perceived as influencing the results or their interpretation in the manuscript at the earliest stage possible. This can be done by uploading the Conflicts of Interest Form along with the manuscript submission.
  • The authors are responsible for ensuring that the submitted manuscript is a complete and original work, free from any form of plagiarism. All authors are advised to use plagiarism prevention software to check for similarities.
  • Authors are required to identify in their manuscript if their work involves chemicals, procedures, or equipment that have any inherent unusual hazards.
  • All researchers should have a written and signed informed consent form from whom voluntarily participate in their researches. This signed form shows obviously the consent of the subject to participate. All steps of the experiment were carried out based on the Guidelines for Animal Care at Ferdowsi University of  Mashhad  in Iran that are approved by the Committee of Biological Ethics, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Ferdowsi University of  Mashhad, Iran  (https://ethics.research.ac.ir/docs/pages/Guideline-En.pdf).  The experiments that are carried outside the university should have a written and signed informed consent form related to ethic protocols of university or institute that they are carried.
  • If the decision is 'Needs Revision,' authors are expected to respond systematically and promptly to the reviewers' comments, addressing point by point, and revising their manuscript accordingly. The revised manuscript should then be submitted to the journal within the given deadline.
  • Authors are requested to clearly identify who financially supported the research and/or preparation of the manuscript and briefly describe the role of the founder/ sponsor in any part of the work at the end of their manuscript under “Acknowledgements” section.
  • It is a condition for submission of a manuscript that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.
  • All authors agree to allow the corresponding author to serve as the correspondent with the Journal’s editorial office, to review the edited manuscript and proof.
  • Under open access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but allow anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly.
  • When author(s) discover(s) a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the Journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript. 
  • All authors must know that the submitted manuscripts under review with the IJVST are subject to screening, using Plagiarism Prevention Software. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics and in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
  •  Editors and members of editorial board as authors should be excluded from publication decisions when they are authors or have contributed to a manuscript.
  • The artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT or Large Language Models cannot meet the requirements for authorship. Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics( Authorship and AI tools).

Ethical guidelines for Peer reviewers

Iranian Journal of Veterinary Science and Technology (IJVST) follows and adheres to COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

  • Reviewers are expected to provide insightful comments that assist the editors in making a decision about whether or not to publish the submitted manuscript.
  • Reviewers are expected to maintain the confidentiality of the manuscripts they are invited to review.
  • Reviewers are expected to disclose any conflicts of interest they have with the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the manuscripts they are invited to review. If a conflict of interest exists, reviewers should immediately notify the Editor-in-Chief, decline the invitation to review, and suggest alternative reviewers.
  • If reviewers feel unqualified to review an assigned manuscript or are unable to provide a timely review, they should inform the Editor-in-Chief and excuse themselves from the review process. If they know of any other expert reviewers, they may suggest them to the Editor-in-Chief through the dedicated email/comments section in the Reviewer Dashboard.
  • Reviewers are expected to maintain the confidentiality of the manuscripts they review and not discuss any information from the manuscript with anyone other than the Editor-in-Chief, unless they have obtained explicit permission to do so. This also applies to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.
  • Reviewers are obligated to treat the manuscripts they receive for peer review as confidential and must not use any information obtained through this process for personal gain.
  • Reviewers are expected to provide technical, professional, and objective comments on the manuscripts they are invited to review.
  • Reviewers are expected to avoid personal biases in their comments and judgments, and express their views clearly with supporting arguments that assist the author in improving the manuscript.
  • Reviewers are expected to identify any relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. If a statement has been previously reported elsewhere, it should be accompanied by the appropriate citation.
  • Reviewers should also bring to the attention of the Editor-in-Chief any significant similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other publications of which they are personally aware.

 IJVST peer reviews all submitted manuscripts with contents in the scope of the journal. The process has been explained in the section “Peer Review Process”. 

 Ethical guidelines for Editor

Iranian Journal of Veterinary Science and Technology (IJVST) regarding the responsibilities of the editors follows and adheres to COPE Ethical Guidelines for editors. The main guidelines are summarized in the guide to ethical editing from COPE.

  • The editors should evaluate submitted manuscripts to determine if they fall within the scope of the journal. Additionally, the editors should recommend expert reviewers based on their integrated recognition of specialized reviewers.
  • The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for deciding whether to accept or reject submitted manuscripts for the journal. This decision takes into consideration several factors, such as the judgment of the editorial board members, the validation of the work in question, its significance to researchers and readers, as well as any feedback from reviewers. Furthermore, the decision must also comply with legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism, which are currently in force. The Editor-in-Chief works closely with other editors and reviewers to ensure that all submissions are fairly evaluated.
  • The editors ought to uphold the anonymity of both reviewers and authors.
  • The editors should disclose any potential conflicts of interest and make efforts to avoid them. If such circumstances arise, they are expected to delegate the handling of the manuscript to another member of the editorial board.
  • The editors, particularly the Editor-in-Chief, should demonstrate a willingness to investigate cases of plagiarism and fraudulent data. When ethical concerns are raised about a submitted manuscript or published paper, the editors will take appropriate measures in response. Any reported incidents of unethical publishing behavior will be thoroughly examined, even if they come to light years after publication.
  • When dealing with cases of suspected misconduct, the Editor-in-Chief follows the COPE Flowcharts. If an investigation supports the ethical concern, the journal will publish a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or any other relevant note.
  • The editors must not share any information about submitted manuscripts with anyone until they are published, as appropriate.
  • The Editor-in-Chief and members of the editorial board will not use unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper for their own research purposes without obtaining explicit written consent from the author.
  • Editors are expected to give fair consideration to all manuscripts submitted for publication, evaluating each on its own merits and without prejudice based on the author(s)' country, race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority or institutional affiliation. Decisions about editing and publishing are made solely based on the quality and relevance of the manuscript and are not influenced by external policies of governments or other agencies beyond the scope of this journal.
  • The Editor-in-Chief has complete authority over the editorial content of the journal as well as the timing of its publication.

    Ethical guidelines for Publisher

    • "Ferdowsi University of Mashhad press (FUM)" is promising to ensure that the decision on manuscript submissions is only made based on professional judgment and will not be affected by any commercial interests.
    • FUM is committed to maintain the integrity of academic and research records.
    • FUM is monitoring the ethics by Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
    • FUM, together with the Journal’s editors, shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of manuscripts where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow taking place.
    • FUM is always checking the plagiarism and fraudulent data issues involving in the submitted manuscripts and willing to publish corrections, clarifications and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.
    • FUM as the publisher supports the Journal for each published issue by paying a defined budget according to its published annual rank in the Portal of Scientific Journals of Iranian Ministry of Science, Research and Technology for costs including those pertaining to setup and maintenance of the publication infrastructure, routine operation of the Journal, processing of manuscripts through peer-reviews, editing, publishing, maintaining the scholarly record, and archiving.
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    Violation of Publication Ethics

    The Editorial board of IJVST acknowledges that plagiarism is unacceptable in any of its forms:

    • Plagiarism: Plagiarism is intentionally using someone else’s ideas or other original material as if they are one's own. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation is considered by the JAM as plagiarism. All manuscripts under review or published with JAM are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software (e.g. iThenticate). Thus, plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics.
    • Simultaneous Submission: Care should be taken to ensure that the work has not been published elsewhere, in any language and is not simultaneously submitted to other journals.
    • Duplicate Publication: Duplicate publication occurs when two or more articles, without full cross referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions.
    • Redundant Publications: Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, most often consequent to the desire to plump academic vitae.
    • Data Fabrication: Data fabrication means the researcher did not really carry out the study, but made up data or results and had recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.
    • Citation Manipulation: Citation Manipulation implies excessive citations in the submitted manuscript that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely for the purpose of increasing citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal. This leads to misrepresenting the importance of the specific work and journal in which it appears and is thus a form of scientific misconduct.
    • Improper Author Contribution or Attribution: All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. Do not forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.

    Handling Misconduct Cases

  • The Editorial board of IJVST takes the necessary measures to examine the incoming papers on their originality, reliability of contained information and correct use of citations.

  • If any of the unethical publishing behavior is detected by the Journal Editorial board or by one of the reviewers, the first action is to inform the Editor-in-chief by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner.

  • If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Committee on Publication Ethics, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the JAM publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the Editor may request the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.

  • If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and it seems that serious unethical conduct has taken place, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via Editorial board. After deliberation, the Committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions.

    Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections

    This journal allows debate post publication on journal’s site, through "Send comment about this article" section to the editor up to one month before final publication. Our mechanisms for correcting, revising or retracting articles after publication depends on the content of the received comment and if the sent comments are useful and applicable for readers/authors, they will be showed under reference section of the articles pages.

    Complaint Policy

    If the authors disagree with the editorial decision on their manuscripts, they have a right to appeal. Authors who wish to appeal an editorial decision should contact the Editor-in-Chief of the Iranian Journal of Veterinary Science and Technology. In such cases the Editor-in-Chief will review the manuscript, the editorial and peer reviewers' comments and gives his/her decision for accepting or rejecting a manuscript. Editor-in-Chief may, if so required, send the manuscript to a new handling editor for a fresh editorial review and to new reviewer for further peer reviewing. In such case, the final decision maker will be the Editorial board of the journal.

    How to Make a Complaint

    The procedure to make a complaint is quite simple. The complaint can be made by writing an e-mail to: ijvst@um.ac.ir. All complaints will be acknowledged within a week.