Ethical standards for publication exist to ensure high-quality scientific publications, to maintain public trust in scientific findings, and to ensure that investigators receive credit for their work.
It is important to avoid:
Data fabrication and falsification
Data fabrication occurs when investigators did not carry out the study, but present faked data. Data falsification occurs when a researcher performed the experiment or study, but then changed or manipulated some or all of the data.
Plagiarism
Presenting as own work the findings of others or not giving other investigators credit for information cited. Copying text passages from other text sources or from an own previously published text without proper citation is considered plagiarism or autoplagiarism, respectively, and will not be accepted.
Multiple submissions
It is unethical to submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. This wastes time for editors and peer reviewers, and can damage the standing of authors and the journals. Duplicate publication will lead to retraction of the whole manuscript.
Redundant publications
The publishing of similar manuscripts based on the same set of experimental data instead of combining the results in a single robust paper is to be discouraged. Such papers are scientifically weak and are likely to be rejected.
Improper author contribution
All authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research and the content in the manuscript and have to approve the whole manuscript. Authorship must not be „donated“ to anybody who has not contributed to the paper, “honorary authorship” is not accepted. The rules for authorships are based on guidelines on authorship by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which we consider to be useful for authors in all medical fields ( International Committee of Medical Journal Editors).
Unethical behavior in this respect will lead to rejection without review and the institution of those involved will be notified.
Authorship
All authors must agree that the list of authors is correct in its content and order and that no modification can be made without the approval of the Editor-in-Chief after submission of the manuscript. All authors have to accept that the Editor-in-Chief's decisions over acceptance or rejection, or of retraction in the event of a breach of publication ethics as stated under Item 1 of these guidelines, are final.
No additional authors will be added post-submission, unless the Editor receives agreement from all authors and information is supplied as to why the author list should be amended.
The submitting author guarantees that the manuscript is capable of copyright protection and that no other copyright or other rights have been violated. With acceptance of the manuscript all exploitation rights are transferred to the publisher. The submitted article or parts of it may not be translated into other languages, or reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. The submitting author is responsible for reprint permission of material from other publications. Already published material (also in modified form) from publications of other publishers can only be considered if the submitting author proves to have the perpetual copyright permission (also for the online version) of the publisher of the original material.
All submitted manuscripts are read by at least one editors, who aim at accepting only high-quality papers that contribute to the current knowledge. Papers judged by the editors to be of insufficient general interest, have serious scientific flaws, or are outside the aims and scope of the journal may be rejected without external review. Papers that seem most likely to meet our editorial criteria are sent for formal review. The reviewers are matched to the paper according to their expertise, and our database is constantly being updated. The reviewers remain anonymous to the authors throughout the entire process. Reviewers are asked to evaluate composition, scientific accuracy, originality, and interest of the paper. As a rule, each paper is evaluated by at least two reviewers.. Based on the reviewers' recommendations, the editors make a decision among several options:: – Accept, with or without editorial revisions – Invite the authors to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before a final decision is reached; this may include the request for language editing – Reject usually for reasons of specialist interest, lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance, or major technical and/or interpretational flaws.
Conflicts of interest arise when financial, personal, social or other interests directly or indirectly influence the conduct of the author with respect to the presentation and interpretation of the findings. Having competing interests in a product or device under consideration is not itself unethical, but failure to disclose such interests will have a major negative impact on acceptance of the published material. Disclosure of conflicting interests enables readers to determine for themselves how the findings should be assessed regarding validity and impartiality. A conflict of interest exists when authors are provided free of charge with drugs, materials, services such as drug assays, receive payment of salaries and honoraria for lectures or any reward such as research grants that could be interpreted as a payment for undertaking work having a commercial impact. The holding of shares/stocks or patents relevant to the agent under study represents a direct conflict of interest as is funding of any kind both financial and material.
What constitutes a conflict of interest is at the author’s discretion, and authors are advised to openly declare all financial involvement, even when they are marginally relevant. Consequences of infringement of Conflict of Interest declaration is given in the COPE guidelines.
Studies in humans and animals must receive approval from an appropriate ethics committee or IRB (Internal Review Board). Receipt of approval has to be stated in the manuscript. Studies have to be carried out in accordance with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments.
Only registered trials will be accepted with the exception of long-term trials begun before 2002. We define a clinical trial as any research project that prospectively assigns human subjects to intervention or comparison groups to study cause and effect relationships of interventions. Trials must register at or before the onset of patient enrollment. Registries that currently meet required standards (e.g. of accessibility, information validation, comprehensive documentation) include: US National Library of Medicine, http://www.clinicaltrials.gov – The International Standard Randomised Controlled Trial Number Registry, http://www.controlled-trials.com – European Clinical Trials Database, https://eudract.ema.europa.eu – UK Research Registries, nihr.ac.uk.
Investigators submitting reports on clinical trials with human subjects, whether patients or volunteers, and involving interventions, i.e., treatment with drugs, cells, or other biological products, testing of devices, and carrying out of surgical procedures in order to evaluate the effects on health outcomes or use/collection of personal data, genetic material, or biological samples from an individual are required to obtain written informed consent from all participants. Written informed consent documents with a signature and date on an Informed Consent form, the willingness of the participant to subject themselves with appropriate regard to anonymity to the procedures described in the clinical trial protocol after they have been informed of all aspects of the trial that are relevant to their decision to participate. Documentary evidence of consent must be supplied if requested.
Vulnerable populations, e.g., children and incompetent/incapacitated persons where there is the potential for coercion or where consent may not have been fully informed, require particular ethical protection afforded by written informed consent.
In the case of experimental animal studies, many countries have legal safeguards requiring personnel in commercial and academic research establishments to be trained and hold licenses covering research on animals and that like human studies, such studies must also be registered. This has to be indicated in publications describing animal studies. Although the number of publication dealing with animal studies in dustri-Verlag journals is small in comparison to human studies, we maintain an internal editorial scrutiny group containing animal research license holders to monitor the adherence to ethical standards in such reports.
If an author discovers an error in their published article, they must contact the publisher/journal as soon as possible using the contact details listed on the publisher’s/journal’s website, explain the details of the error, and propose a correction or mode of action (see below).
The journal Editor will review the proposed correction and may decide to send it for further peer review. Together with the publisher and authors, the journal Editor will determine the appropriate mechanism to correct the article.
Corrigendum: A Corrigendum will be published to correct an error introduced by the author(s). Errors that affect the interpretation or conclusion of the article must be reported to the publisher. All authors must agree to publication. The Corrigendum will be published in the print (if applicable) and online versions of the journal with a consecutive page number, and the online version will be bi-directionally linked to the online version of the article that it corrects.
Erratum: If an error was introduced by the publisher during the publication process, the publisher will publish an Erratum. The Erratum will be published in the print (if applicable) and online versions of the journal with a consecutive page number, and the online version will be bi-directionally linked to the online version of the article that it corrects.
Retraction: If the integrity of a published article is significantly compromised due to errors in conduct, analysis, and/or reporting, it may be necessary to retract the article. A retraction notice will be published in the print (if applicable) and online versions of the journal with a consecutive page number, the online version of the original article will be marked as retracted, and a bi-directional link will be made between the retraction notice and the original article. Retractions can be initiated not only by the authors but also by the editors and usually include note of whether or not the authors have consented.