This journal is committed to upholding the integrity of the scientific record. Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results, which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavour. Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation is helped by adhering to the rules of good scientific practices, but not limited to, as mentioned below
- The research being reported should have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner.
- The submitted work should be original and should not have been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work.
- The MS shall not be submitted to any other Journal for simultaneous consideration.
- A single study should not be split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time.
- Results should be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation (including image-based manipulation).
- No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (‘plagiarism’). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks (to indicate words taken from another source) are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions secured for material that is copyrighted. Please note that JFAS screens each MS through an anti-plagiarism software and excessive reproduction of previous works will result in rejection.
- Authors should make sure they have permissions for the use of material(s) mentioned in the MS, including reproduction(s) of images/figures/tables from published papers.
- Include only those authors who have contributed meaningfully and have made primary contributions (like design of work, interpretation of results, writing of the paper etc.) to the work. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that every author has read and approved the manuscript before submission.
- Excessive and inappropriate self-citation or coordinated efforts among several authors to collectively self-cite is strongly discouraged; and, will be treated as an unethical publishing behaviour.
- Upon request, authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results presented. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential or proprietary data is excluded.
- If any reader, through a written communication to Editor, points to scientific discrepancy, Author(s) should provide scientific justification and/or a rebuttal. This may or may not be published and the decision solely lies with the Editor and the publisher.
- If there is suspicion of misbehaviours or alleged fraud, the Journal and/or Publisher will carry out an investigation following COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, there are valid concerns, the author(s) concerned will be contacted under their given e-mail address and given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the Journal’s and/or Publisher’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to –
(a) If the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
(b) If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction –
– an erratum/correction may be placed with the article
– an expression of concern may be placed with the article
– or in severe cases retraction of the article may occur.
– Informing the author’s institution / funding agency
For more information please see “Responsible research publication: international standards for authors” from COPE (http://publicationethics.org/files/International)
Changes in authorship
Authors are strongly advised to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. Either adding and/or deleting authors /rearrangement of author names during the revision stages is generally not permitted, but in some cases may be warranted and possible, only if approved by the editor.
To request such a change, the editor must receive the following from the corresponding author –
- the reason for the change in author list
- written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement.
- In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed.
Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript.
Animal or Human Studies
Manuscripts describing studies in which the use of live animals or human subjects is involved must include in the Materials and Methods section a statement that such experiments were performed in compliance with the appropriate laws and institutional guidelines, and also name the institutional committee that approved the experiments. For experiments with human subjects, a statement that informed consent was obtained from each individual must be included and the consent forms made available to the journal on request. Consent must be obtained not only when subjects are involved directly in the study but also when samples (tissue, blood, plasma, etc.) are required for in-vitro experiments. Reviewers of MS involving animal or human experiments will be asked to comment specifically on the appropriateness and conformity to regulations of such experiments. Authors are encouraged to include the approval code or number or give the name of the approving office of official in the MS.
In case, the MS has any component dealing with genetically manipulated materials either in the process or during the experiment, the MS should clearly make a statement in the MS declaring the following –
- Appropriate clearances from any institutional/national committee on biosafety aspects
- Statement on clearance/permission to use products with manipulated DNA/cells (Author(s) should provide necessary documents, if the Journal requests for it)