Ethical Guidelines
Ethical Guidelines for Authors: When you submit a paper to Academic Research Publishers, you are confirming that you have read these ethical guidelines, agree to the contents and have taken any appropriate actions.
Content
By submitting a paper to Academic Research Publishers, it is understood that all authors have thereby declared that they have read and agree on the content of the submitted paper.
Ethics
Submissions may be rejected by Academic Research Publishers Editorial Office if it is felt that the work was not carried out within an ethical framework for scholarly publications.
Academic Research Publishers adheres to the principles outlined by COPE – Committee on Publication
Ethics. [https://publicationethics.org/]
Competing/conflicting interests
Authors must make a declaration in their paper of all potential competing interests involving people or organisations that might reasonably be perceived as relevant.
Examples of competing interests include, but are not limited to, financial, professional and personal interests such as:
- Research grants (from any source, restricted or unrestricted)
- Relationships (paid or unpaid) with organisations and funding bodies including non- governmental organisations, research institutions or charities
- Membership of lobbying or advocacy organisations
- Personal relationships (i.e. friend, spouse, family member, current or previous mentor,
adversary) with individuals involved in the submission or evaluation of a paper, such as
authors, reviewers, editors, or members of the editorial board of an Academic Research journal
- Personal convictions (political, religious, ideological, or other) related to a paper's topic that may interfere with an unbiased publication process (at the stage of authorship, peer review, editorial decision making or publication).
Plagiarism
Plagiarism in any form constitutes a serious violation of the principles of scholarship and is not acceptable© Academic Research Publishers.
Examples of plagiarism include:
- Word-for-word copying of portions of another's writing without enclosing the copied passage
in quotation marks and acknowledging the source in the appropriate scholarly convention.
- The use of a particularly unique term or concept without acknowledging the original author or
source.
- The paraphrasing or abbreviated restatement of someone else's ideas without acknowledging
that another person's text has been the basis for the paraphrasing.
- False citation: material should not be attributed to a source from which it has not been
obtained.
- False data: data that has been fabricated or altered in a laboratory or experiment; although
not factually plagiarism, this is clearly a form of academic fraud.
- Unacknowledged multiple authors or collaboration: the contributions of each author or
collaborator should be made clear.
- Self-plagiarism/double submission: the submission of the same or a very similar paper to two or more publications.
The use of AI technology
In line with COPE guidelines, artificial intelligence tools (e.g. ChatGPT) cannot be listed as named authors on submitted articles. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their article, even those parts produced by any AI tool, and are thus liable for any inaccuracies or breach of publication ethics.
Authors who have used AI tools to develop their article must include a note in the article's Acknowledgements section describing the technologies used and the purpose.
Please note that this does not apply to software such as spelling or grammar checkers or reference managers.
Medical research
Medical writers, or anyone else who assisted in the preparation of the paper, should be
acknowledged in the paper, either as an author, or in the Acknowledgements section, as per the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
See section II. A. 2. Contributors Listed in Acknowledgments
From the European Medical Writers Association web site, Resources for Medical Writers section. Medical writers should list their source of funding and/or employer as appropriate. Experimental research on humans must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee and comply with the Helsinki Declaration (2013).
Informed consent
Informed consent must be documented in your paper in cases where information or clinical photographs of human subjects are used. Signed copies of consent forms will be required before a paper can be considered for review.
Animal research
When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed.
Sponsorship
Authors from pharmaceutical companies or other commercial organisations that sponsor clinical trials should comply with the good practice described by The International Society for Medical Publication Professionals at GPP3 – Good Publication Practice for Communicating Company-Sponsored Medical Research. These guidelines also apply to companies or individuals that work on industry-sponsored publications, such as freelance writers, contract research organisations and communications companies.
