Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Arman Process Journal (APJ), with the respect accorded to the rules of ethics in publishing, follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. Editorial Board Members, editor-in-chief, readers, authors, reviewers, and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with APJ. For information on publishing and ethical guidelines, please visit http://publicationethics.org.

Publisher responsibilities

• The publisher should ensure that editorial decisions on manuscript submissions are final, are only made based on professional judgment, and will not be affected by commercial interests.
• The publisher should monitor the ethics of the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
• The publisher is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.

Editorial responsibilities

(https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_1.pdf)

• The editorial team (editor, managing director, and editorial board) has full authority to reject or accept any article.
• The editorial team maintains the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts under review or until they are published.
• The editorial team preserves the anonymity of reviewers.
• The editorial team discloses and tries to avoid any conflict of interest.
• The editorial team is willing to investigate plagiarism and fraudulent data issues and publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
• The editorial team maintains the confidentiality of the content of the submitted articles until their publication.
• The editor makes the final decision on whether or not to accept articles based on the opinions of the judges and editorial board members.
• The journal's review policy (Double-Blind) requires the anonymity of the judges and authors to be maintained.
• The editorial team should report any conflict of interest and prevent it from occurring.
• The editorial team should always monitor issues of ethics in publishing, plagiarism, and scientific violations and provide necessary explanations if necessary.
• The editorial team should not disclose the information and content of the articles to anyone other than the lead author, the reviewers, and, if necessary, other editorial staff.

Reviewers’ Responsibilities  

(https://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Peer%20review%20guidelines.pdf)

•  Confidentiality of article information must be observed in all areas. The article review process is to be done anonymously.
• Reviewers should judge articles at the appropriate time and assist the editorial team in deciding whether or not to accept the article.
• The referees' suggestions regarding the published articles should be submitted as judging forms and in the comment section for the author and editor.
• Reviewers should refrain from judging articles with conflicts of interest and report any such conflicts as soon as possible.
• Reviewers' judgments about the quality and content of articles should be based on professional and objective opinions.

Authors’ responsibilities

(https://publicationethics.org/files/u7141/1999pdf13.pdf)

• It is necessary to observe the basic principles of writing and research in writing articles, and articles should be written and arranged according to the format of the journal.
• Before submitting an article, all authors should read the authors' guide and the terms and conditions of submitting an article in this journal.
• The corresponding author must confirm and submit the consent and knowledge of other co-authors of the article in this publication through the authors' commitment form.
• All authors whose names are mentioned in the article and in the letter of commitment form must participate in writing and compiling the article.
• Appreciation and organizational affiliation of authors should be mentioned in the article, and any conflicts of interest between authors or organizations should be mentioned.
• For the sustainability and development of the specialized review process, qualified authors are invited to participate in the review process of other articles in this journal.
• Authors should clearly report the sponsor of the research (if any).
• Authors have a duty to notify the editor as soon as possible if they find a mistake or correction in their published article to correct or revoke the article.
• All authors should know that articles submitted to this journal are reviewed by similarity check software to prevent scientific misconduct.
• Authors should cite correctly and appropriately all the sources they have used, both directly and indirectly.

Changes of Authorship

All authors must approve the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscripts. Any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made and explained by reasons given by the corresponding author and confirmed by all other authors before reviewing the process of the manuscript and only if approved by the editor-in-chief.

Authorship and Author’s Responsibility

 To ensure authorship for the submitted manuscripts, the contributors should meet the following three conditions:

• The author has done the conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data.
• Either drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content has been done by the author.
• The author has given the final approval for the version to be published. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to be allowed to take public responsibility for suitable portions of the content.
• During the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, the corresponding author is typically responsible for communicating with the journal and ensuring that all of the journal's administrative requirements, such as authorship details, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and conflict of interest statements, are properly completed. Throughout the submission and peer review process, the corresponding author should promptly respond to editorial queries and cooperate with any requests from the journal after publication.
• After an article has been accepted for publication in the Arman Process Journal (APJ), no additional authors or changes to the first or corresponding authors are allowed. If an author wishes to be removed from the byline, he or she must submit a letter signed by the author and all other authors indicating their wish to be removed from the list of authors. Any change in the authors' order in the byline requires a letter signed by all authors indicating their agreement.

 Human and Animal Studies

All manuscripts reporting the results of experimental investigations involving human subjects should include a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from each subject or subject’s guardian. All animal or human studies should be used after a local ethics committee approves the experimental protocol.

Scientific Misconducts

• Data Fabrication and Falsification

Data fabrication and falsification mean the researcher did not carry out the study but made up data or results and 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.

• Duplicate Publication

Duplicate publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross-referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions. 

• Simultaneous Submission:

Simultaneous submission occurs when a manuscript (or substantial sections from a manuscript) is submitted to a journal while another journal is already considering it.

• Redundant Publications:

Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, often in response to the desire to fill a curriculum vitae.

• Citation Manipulation

Excessive citations in a submitted manuscript that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and were included solely to increase citations to a given author's work or articles published in a particular journal are referred to as citation manipulation. This is a form of scientific misconduct since it misrepresents the importance of the specific work and publication in which it appears.

• 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. Don’t forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.

• Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism is intentionally using someone else’s ideas or other original material as 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 plagiarism by APJ. All manuscripts under review or published with APJ are subject to check for similarity (Hamanandjoo) to ensure their authenticity and originality. Thus, plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. The authors are expected to check their manuscripts for plagiarism before submission.

If plagiarism is detected during peer review, the submission can be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication we reserve the right, as necessary, to issue a correction or retract the article. We reserve the right to notify the institutions of authors about the plagiarism that was found before or after publication.

The Principles of Transparency

• Study design and ethical approval

Good research should be well-justified, well-planned, appropriately designed, and ethically approved. Conducting research to a lower standard may constitute misconduct. The authors are responsible for the scientific content and the accuracy of the bibliographic information.

• Data analysis

Data should be appropriately analyzed, but the inappropriate analysis does not necessarily amount to misconduct. Fabrication and falsification of data do constitute misconduct.

• Conflicts of interest

Conflicts of interest comprise those that may not be fully apparent and may influence the judgment of authors, reviewers, and editors. They have been described as those that, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived. They may be personal, commercial, political, academic, or financial. “Financial” interests may include employment, research funding, stock or share ownership, payment for lectures or travel, consultancies, and company support for staff.

• Peer-review

This journal uses double-blind peer review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not give away their identity. Authors have the right to communicate to the editor if they do not wish their manuscript to be reviewed by a particular reviewer because of potential conflicts of interest. No article is rejected unless negative comments are received from at least two reviewers. This process and any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures are clearly described on the journal’s Web site (https://www.armanprocessjournal.ir/journal/process?lang=en).

• Archiving

• • The plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal's content (https://www.armanprocessjournal.ir) is clearly indicated. This policy sets out how the authors of APJ can archive copies of their work on their own web pages, corporate web pages, and various other subject repositories. 
  • APJ is an open-access license. Articles can be made available immediately according to the terms of their specific Creative Commons license. Suppose an author has published an article under an Open Access license. In that case, APJ will encourage the author to share the version of the record upon publication instead of the accepted manuscript.
  • Authors may also reuse the Abstract and Citation information (e.g., Title, Author name, Publication dates) of their article anywhere at any time, including social media such as LinkedIn, Facebook, blogs, and Twitter, providing that, where possible, a link is included back to the article on the APJ site. Preferably, the link should include the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which can be found in the Citation information about the article online. The accepted version may be placed on: the author's personal website and/or the author's company/institutional repository or archive. Self-archiving of the submitted version is not subject to an embargo period.

APJ  is now formally archived at 

• • National Library and Archives of Iran (NLAI). 
  • Magiran
  •  Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC)

• Publishing schedule

APJ publishes four issues per year. All the content from the beginning to the end will be available forever on APJ's exclusive website (https://www.armanprocessjournal.ir). 

• Privacy and Confidentiality

All manuscripts must be reviewed with the utmost regard for the authors' confidentiality. Authors entrust editors with the results of their scientific work and creative effort when they submit manuscripts for review, and their reputation and career may be at stake. Disclosure of confidential details while reviewing an author's manuscript may violate their rights. Reviewers have the right to confidentiality, which the editor must respect. Confidentiality may have to be breached if there is a suspicion of dishonesty or fraud, but it must be honored otherwise. Besides the authors and reviewers, editors are prohibited from disclosing information about manuscripts (including their receipt, content, status in the reviewing process, reviewer criticism, or ultimate fate). Requests to use the materials in legal proceedings are included in this category.

Editors must clarify to reviewers that manuscripts sent for review are privileged communications and the authors' private property. As a result, reviewers and editorial staff must respect the authors' rights by refraining from publicly discussing or appropriating the authors' work before the manuscript is published. Reviewers should not be allowed to make copies of the manuscript for their files, and they should not be allowed to share it with others except if the editor permits them. After submitting reviews, reviewers should return or destroy copies of the manuscripts. Editors should not keep copies of manuscripts that have been rejected. Without the permission of the reviewer, author, and editor, reviewer comments should not be published or otherwise made public.

• Ownership and management

• Copyright and Licensing

This journal provides immediate access to its content based on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global knowledge exchange.

All journal papers are released under the  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits use, sharing, adaption, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as the original author(s) and source are properly credited. Under an open-access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly. The authors are the copyright holders in this journal and retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions.

• Advertising

The policy of the journal is not to have advertising.

• Corrections and retractions

To maintain the integrity of academic records, journals may have to publish corrections or retract papers published in journals. According to agreed academic community norms, published article corrections are made by publishing an Erratum or Retraction article, without altering the original article in any other way than by adding a prominent connection to the Erratum / Retraction article. The original article remains in the public domain and should be commonly indexed to the subsequent Erratum or Retraction. We may have to delete the material from our website and archive sites if the material is considered to infringe those rights or is defamatory. It may be necessary for the original author(s) to make minor corrections to published articles by commenting on the published article. It will only be acceptable if the modifications do not affect the article's results or conclusions.

• • Corrections

Changes to published articles that affect the article's meaning and conclusion but do not invalidate the article in its entirety may be corrected, at the discretion of the editor(s), by publishing an Erratum indexed and linked to the original article. Changes in authorship of published articles are corrected through an Erratum.

• •  Retractions

On rare occasions, if the scientific information in an article is significantly compromised, it may be appropriate to retract published articles. In these cases, the Journal must comply with the COPE guidelines. Retracted papers are indexed, and the original article is referred to.

Process for identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct

The editor-in-chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers containing research misconduct, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication.

1. 1. The first action of the journal Editor is to inform the Editorial Office of the Journal of Arman Process Journal (APJ) by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner.
   2. If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and it seems that serious unethical conduct has occurred, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via the Editorial Office.  After deliberation, the Committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions. 
   3. If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Publication Committee, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the author of Journal of Arman Process Journal (APJ) 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.
   4. Notification will be sent to the corresponding author, and any work by the author responsible for the violation or any work these persons coauthored that is under review by APJ will be rejected immediately.
   5. The authors are prohibited from serving on the Journal of Arman Process Journal (APJ)
   6. The editorial board and serving as a reviewer for Arman Process. APJ reserves the right to take more action.
   7. In serious cases of fraud that result in the retraction of the article, a retraction notice will be published in the journal and linked to the article in the online version. The online version will also be marked “retracted” with the retraction date.

COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts 

Arman Process is committed to following and applying guidelines and flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in its reviewing and publishing process and issues. For more information on COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts please see: 

(https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts-new/translations). 

COPE’s Code of Conduct and Best Practices for Editors

(https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf)

(https://publicationethics.org/files/2008%20Code%20of%20Conduct.pdf)

• • Everything published in the journal is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief. This means that the editors must:
  • Strive to meet the needs of readers and authors;
  • Strive to improve their journal constantly;
  • Have processes in place to ensure the quality of the material they publish;
  • Champion freedom of expression;
  • Maintain the integrity of the academic record;
  • Preclude business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards;
  • Always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.