Editorial Policy

To ensure consistency, quality and ethical standards in the review process, the journal's editorial team adheres to certain policies when selecting, reviewing, and publishing content. This policy ensures consistency, quality, and ethical standards in the publication process. While specific editorial policies may vary from journal to journal, here are some common elements typically included in the editorial policy of a health journal:

https://sites2.uol.edu.pk/journals/jucmd/Policy-Document

The above link encompasses all the editorial policies including Aims and scope of the journal, peer review process, author guidelines, data sharing and transparency, repositor policy, withdrawal and retraction policy.

ISSN ONLINE: 2790-3451	ISSN ONPRINT: 2790-3443
Email: editor.jucmd@journals.uol.edu.pk	Website: jucmd.pk

Journal of University College of Medicine and Dentistry (JUCMD) is a bi-annually published, peer reviewed, open access journal. It accepts original and innovative research articles in all areas of Medicine, Dentistry, Public Health, Biological Sciences and Allied Health Sciences. The aim of JUCMD is to publish and provide platform to researchers aligned with International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, PMC and HEC guidelines. It facilitates all health professionals to publish their research work free of cost. The Journal is comprised of 5 sections, namely, the editorial, section for original articles, section for review articles, case report/ case series and short communications.

The Journal of JUCMD employs ‘double blind’ reviewing, in which the reviewer remain anonymous to the author(s) throughout and following the review process, whilst the identity of the author(s) is likewise unknown to the reviewers. Reviewers are requested to evaluate whether the manuscript:

Is original as to thought and method (including data)
Is methodologically sound
Has results which are clearly presented and support the conclusions
Correctly and exhaustively references previous relevant work
Follows appropriate ethical guidelines, especially as concerns plagiarism
Clearly adds to the knowledge and development of the field.

Manuscripts submitted to JUCMD are reviewed for originality. All manuscripts are subject to a similarity check using the Turnitin service, and articles exceeding the limit of more than 19% similarity are returned for clarification and/or correction. The whole process from submission to acceptance of the manuscript takes around 12-14 weeks or less.

All articles submitted to JUCMD are free of charge. There are no peer review or publication charges. All the work of JUCMD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Privacy Policy: The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Ethical Approval: Every original article submitted to JUCMD must have an ethical approval by the ethical review board of the institution, written on an official letterhead, duly signed and stamped.

Repository Policy: The Journal of University College of Medicine and Dentistry is an Open Access journal where authors are entitled to make their article publicly available according to the terms of the CC BY license. Authors who have published under a CC BY-4.0 license may share and distribute their articles on non-commercial websites and repositories. There is no embargo period during the whole process from submission to publication, or after publication.

Re-use guidelines for open access content

When uploading, disseminating or repurposing Open Access publications, the journal should be clearly identified as the original source and proper citation information provided. In addition to the Version of Record (final published version), authors should deposit the URL/DOI of their published article in any repository.

Repository Policy for submitted, accepted and online version of manuscript

The original submitted version of an article is the author's version that has not been peer reviewed and at this stage it can be shared online as a preprint without mentioning JUCMD as the source of submission. When an article is peer reviewed and accepted for publication in the print format, the author will be required to clearly identify the journal as the original source and proper citation information provided.

Accepted for publication articles should not be made available online as a pre-print version without identifying JUCMD as the source of acceptance for publication by the author . Publication will allow the author to retain the copyright and share the article under the agreement described in the licensing rights with creative commons, with appropriate attribution to JUCMD. Creative Commons attribution license CC BY 4.0 is applied to articles published in JUCMD: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ , or in certain cases it can be stated that all articles and content there in are published under creative commons license unless stated otherwise. On publication, the author may link to the Version of Record using the DOI or can post the article PDF on website and repositories according to CC-BY license guidelines.

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, in a journal or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.

Withdrawal Policy

If the authors want to withdraw the manuscript during its processing, an email has to be sent notifying as to their intention, to the effect that the manuscript withdrawal form will be emailed for the signatures of all the authors. This needs to be completed, scanned and sent back. A final letter from the editorial office for withdrawal of the manuscript will then be dispatched. Electronic signatures will not be accepted.

Please note that without a formal letter of withdrawal, a manuscript is not considered withdrawn and use of such a manuscript elsewhere will be construed as an ethical misconduct.

Retraction Policy

Retraction of an Unpublished Article

Please note that without a formal letter of withdrawal, a manuscript is not considered withdrawn and use of such a manuscript elsewhere will be construed as an ethical misconduct.

Retraction of a Published Article

Retraction of a published article is considered on the following grounds:

If an article has gross errors in the results or the experimental miscalculations are detected after publication.
Plagiarism detected after publication

iii. Redundant or Duplicate publication

Unethical Research results
Major Conflict of Interest

There is no time bar for retraction

Guidelines on Ethical Conduct and Publication of Health Research

These guidelines are intended as a reference for authors and reviewers. JUCMD endeavours to maintain the highest ethical standards for the articles it publishes. To do so, the journal follows established international standards and guidelines on the conduct and publication of health research, including the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki, the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

JUCMD considers these guidelines as necessary to make its position known and to provide authors with clear and easily accessible information on the important ethical issues to ensure that their papers are ethically compliant.

Authors’ responsibilities

Papers submitted for consideration for publication to the EMHJ should comply with the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly work in Medical Journals of the ICMJE.

Ethical approval

JUCMD expects authors to adhere to the Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects outlined in the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki and CIOMS. For research involving humans, every research article submitted must include a declaration that before carrying out its field work, the study had obtained ethical clearance from a recognized body in the country, for example, the institutional review boards or research ethics committees. Research involving animals are expected to follow the relevant standards of ethical research. If ethical clearance was not considered to be required, a statement indicating the reasons it was not required must be provided. In any case, authors are expected to follow all requirements of ethical conduct of research, reporting of the findings, and preparation of manuscripts.

Participant confidentiality and respect

Manuscripts should be prepared in such a way that they preserve participants’ confidentiality. Authors are expected to obtain an individual’s explicit consent for the use of any personal or medical information that may make the participant identifiable and must ensure the dignity and respect of the participants and their communities in their manuscript.

Competing interests

JUCMD requires authors to provide details of any competing interests. A competing interest may occur when an author’s personal, family, or institutional interests (e.g. sources of funds, earnings, relationships, etc.) may affect the research, its findings, or publication of the manuscript. JUCMD will not reject a paper solely on the basis of a declared competing interest but will take this into consideration, when assessing a paper and, if considered relevant, including such information in the published paper.

Funding

JUCMD requires authors to state all sources of funding for their study.

Clinical trials registration

JUCMD requires registration of clinical trials in national trials registry before undertaking the trial, as a condition of consideration for publication.

Authorship

JUCMD follows the ICMJE recommendations on authorship credits, which aim to ensure that all and only those who have made material contribution to the research are named as authors. These require that all four of the following criteria be met to be considered an author:

substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

final approval of the version to be published; AND

agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Every person who meets all four criteria should be identified as an author. Those who meet some, but not all, of these criteria should be included in an acknowledgement. It should be noted that data collection, laboratory testing, data management, acquisition of funds, provision of support for the study, etc. do not qualify (on their own) an individual for being included as an author.

JUCMD expects papers submitted to be original and not already published, accepted for publication, or currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. Authors must affirm this and disclose any papers that overlap with the submitted paper, including paper(s) published in other languages, although translation may occasionally be considered with the agreement of the other journal. Oral presentation of study findings at a conference, or publication of an abstract only in conference proceedings, does not normally prohibit submission of the full paper to JUCMD. Such abstracts should not exceed 500 words.

Scientific misconduct

JUCMD takes any allegation or evidence of scientific misconduct seriously. Examples of scientific misconduct include:

Violation of ethical research standards: failing to adhere to standards for research involving humans and animals.

Fabrication and falsification of data and abuse of accepted research practices such as making up data, deliberately suppressing and/or altering data, and manipulating experiments/analysis to obtain desired results.

Plagiarism: using the published language or ideas of others without appropriate acknowledgment of the source and representing such ideas as one’s own. When referring to the published ideas/opinions of others, full referencing is expected. Brief quoted statements could be acceptable if good justification is provided and such statements are placed within inverted commas.

Duplicate publication: this refers to the publication of a paper by at least one of the authors, that overlaps substantially with another one already published, without clear reference to the previous publication. Duplicate publication is considered unethical particularly for original research because it can lead to double-counting of data and inappropriate weighting of the results of a single study.

Impropriety of authorship: this refers to improperly assigning authorship credit either by inclusion (“guest” authorship) or exclusion (“ghost” authorship).