Duties and Responsibilities of Authors
Authorship
The journal considers an author as the one who has significantly or substantially contributed to the experimentation and interpretation, in addition to writing up the manuscript for publication. All those who have made subtantial contributions should be listed as co-authors. All co-authors who have contributed appropriate portions of the content must agree to the manuscript submission. Any requests for addition or removal of author(s) before/after publication must seek approval of the Chief Editors/Editors. The corresponding authors must ensure that all authors have agreed and approved the manuscript submission to the journal. The corresponding authors must read and sign prescribed form of copyright transfer statements.
Research Misconduct
Copying, stealing, or manipulating intellectual properties of another person constitute acts of plagiarism whereas fabrication and falsification are considered fraud or research misconduct. It is incumbent on all authors to refrain from acts of plagiarism, fabrication, or falsification associated with the submitted manuscript (see Section 4.0 for details).
Any plagiarism, fraud or research misconduct will be reported by Journal Chief Editors to UNIMAS Publisher. Authors, reviewers or sponsors can also report an allegation of publication malpractices directly to UNIMAS Publisher. Investigation into any plagiarism, fraud or research misconduct, or publication malpractices is under the purview of UNIMAS Publisher, the Senior Ethics Advisor and panels. (see Section 4.0 for details).
Image Manipulation
Manipulation of images may lead to manipulation of results and infringe the image integrity. It is prohibited and not allowed to enhance, obscure, move, remove or introduce a specific feature within an image. Exception and acceptable merely subject to manipulating images for improved clarity such as adjusments of brigtness, contrast or colour balance as long as they do not obscure or eliminate information present in the original material. An act of wrong doing in manipulating images which could be seen or detected as scientific ethical abuse will not be accepted and will be taken action accordingly.
Any submitted digital images with suspected manipulations or has been manipulated, this matter will be referred to the Chief Editors/Editors. Primary data may be requested from the authors concerned for comparison with the submitted digital images. Any images/data proven to have been manipulated may be considered as research misconduct. Investigation will be carried out by UNIMAS Publisher and may result in rejection of the manuscript by the journals (see Section 4.0 for details).
Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publications
In the case of authors using published figures, data and/or copyrighted materials in the submitted manuscript, it is the responsibility of authors and corresponding authors to:
a) acknowledge the sources in the manuscript;
b) obtain permission from the original publisher; and
c) cite the original article and acknowledge the duplication in the figure/table caption.
Upon submission of the manuscript, the author(s) must confirm and agree that no similar work has been or will be submitted or published elsewhere in any language.
The author are not permitted and restrained from publishing and submitting concurrently the same essential research manuscript in more than one journal of primary publication, which is consinder as unethical behaviour.
Notwithstanding, the author are allowed to submit or publish similar manuscript in form of abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
Transparency is vital in scientific research and publication. A conflict of interest may exist when an author, financial or grant supporter, stock owner, patent-licensing owner, editor, or reviewer has a financial or personal interest that could affect his/her professional judgement or influence his/her actions.
Failure of author(s) to declare any financial or personal conflicts may undermine the credibility of journal. Thus, all authors are expected to disclose any conflict of interest during submission of their manuscripts.
Availability of Materials and Data Access
Upon acceptance of publication, all authors must agree that sample materials and data described in the article are to be made available to the scientific community for non-commercial purposes. Such sample materials and data may include, but are not limited to, biological samples, sequence data, images, statistical data, etc.
Manuscripts must contain sufficient details, and necessary materials or information must be made available upon request to enable the research work can be repeated by other researchers. However, the legitimate interests of the authors will be protected with appropriate agreements to restrict the field of use of sample materials or data that have been made available.
Biosecurity, Animal Use and Research Permit
UNIMAS journals are obligated to discourage any use of infectious agents or their derivatives that could potentially be used as biological weapons, and contrary to the welfare of mankinds. Members of Journal Editorial Board will evaluate any manuscript that may have raised such issues.
Any experiment or research conducted must be in compliance with all current laws of the country or countries involved. Authors describing experimental studies involving animals/human in their manuscripts must obtain approval from their respective Institutional Animal/Human Ethics Committee prior to manuscript submission. This document must be made available upon request. Misconduct in animal use will result in revocation of the submitted manuscript.
Authors describing research which involves biological resources or collection of biological samples in their manuscripts must obtain research permits from their respective local or state government department (such as Forest Department, Fishery Department, etc.). Permit number or approval reference number (if any) must be listed in the acknowledgment section of the manuscript.
Authors should include statement in the manuscript that informed consent obtained for implementation with human subjects and the privacy right of human subjects must always be observed.
Article Retraction or Correction
It is the responsibility of the authors to promptly report to the Chief Editors if significant errors or inaccuracy have been identified in their published articles. The Chief Editors will decide to retract or to notify the authors to make necessary correction of the article in the form of an erratum (see Section 4.0 for details).
Article processing charges (APC)
APC may be applied for some journals under UNIMAS Publisher. This information is available on the journal webpage. Authors may be requested to pay an APC when their manuscripts are editorially accepted before publication.
Author can report an error in his/her articles to the journal. UNIMAS Publisher will refund an APC if an error has resulted in a failure to publish an article or publish the corrected version in UNIMAS journals. A refund will only be offered if the error has not been corrected within sixty (60) days of publication.
UNIMAS Publisher will not refund an APC when an article is retracted as a result of an author error or publication/research misconduct.
Reviewer suggestions
UNIMAS journals practice a double-blind peer review process. However, authors are welcome to suggest suitable reviewers to review their submitted manuscript. Authors may also request to exclude individuals from reviewing their manuscript due to possible conflict of interest. However, the decision on the reviewers is made by the journal editors.
Confidential process
All the communication between the authors and the journal must be treated as confidential, including email communication, reviewers’ reports, etc. Authors is restricted from posting any confidential materials on any website or published materials, without prior permission from the journal, regardless if the submission is published or rejected.
References:
Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (2016). Code of Conduct. Available at: https://publicationethics.org/resources/code-conduct
Council of Science Editors (2018). White Paper on Publication Ethics. Available at: https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/resource-library/editorial-policies/white-paper-on-publication-ethics/
European Science Foundation (2011). The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity. Available at: https://www.nsf.gov/od/oise/Code_Conduct_ResearchIntegrity.pdf
Kassirer, JP (1995). Authorship criteria. Science, 268: 785-786.
Mandal, J, Ponnambath, DK, & Parija, SC. (2016). Ethics of scientific publication. Tropical Parasitology, 6(2): 100-102.
Nature Cell Biology. (2014). Improving author experience. Exploring avenues to optimize the peer-reivew process and improve author experience. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncb3081
Natural Research Journals’ Policies on publishing ethics. Available at: https://www.nature.com/authors/policies/publication.html
Nature Nanotechnology (2012). A matter of duty. Corresponding authors should not neglect their responsibility to a journal or their co-authors. Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/nnano.2012.234
PLoS Medicine. Ethical Publishing Practice. Available at: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/s/ethical-publishing-practice
Science Journals: editorial policies. Available at: http://www.sciencemag.org/authors/science-journals-editorial-policies