Editorial policies

1. Editorial Principles

SOUTH ARAL SEA MEDICAL JOURNAL is committed to maintaining high standards of scientific quality, editorial integrity, transparency, ethical conduct, and academic independence.

Editorial decisions are based exclusively on the scientific merit, originality, methodological quality, relevance, clarity, ethical compliance, and contribution of a manuscript to the scope and readership of the journal.

Decisions regarding submitted manuscripts are not influenced by the authors’ nationality, institutional affiliation, gender, ethnicity, religious or political beliefs, commercial interests, or personal relationships.

The journal follows internationally recognized principles of scholarly publishing and takes into account the recommendations and best practices of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and other relevant international standards for biomedical publishing.

2. Editorial Independence

The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over the editorial content of the journal and is responsible for final decisions regarding the acceptance, revision, or rejection of manuscripts.

The publisher, journal owner, sponsoring institution, advertisers, financial supporters, or other external parties shall not interfere with individual editorial decisions.

Editorial decisions are based on the scientific validity and relevance of submitted work and not on commercial considerations.

3. Initial Editorial Assessment

All submitted manuscripts undergo an initial editorial assessment before being sent for external peer review.

During this stage, the editorial office evaluates whether the manuscript:

  • falls within the aims and scope of the journal;

  • meets the journal’s submission and formatting requirements;

  • presents sufficient scientific relevance and originality;

  • follows appropriate research and reporting standards;

  • includes required ethical statements;

  • provides appropriate declarations of funding and conflicts of interest;

  • demonstrates acceptable scientific and methodological quality;

  • contains no evidence of plagiarism, duplicate publication, or other forms of publication misconduct.

Manuscripts that do not meet these requirements may be rejected without external peer review.

4. Editorial Decision-Making

Following editorial assessment and peer review, a manuscript may receive one of the following decisions:

  • Accept;

  • Accept subject to minor revisions;

  • Major revision required;

  • Resubmit for review;

  • Reject.

The Editor-in-Chief or an authorized handling editor makes the final editorial decision after considering the reviewers’ reports, scientific quality of the manuscript, ethical considerations, and relevance to the journal.

Acceptance of a manuscript is not guaranteed solely because reviewers recommend publication. Similarly, editorial decisions are not determined by individual reviewer recommendations alone.

5. Editorial Criteria

Manuscripts are evaluated according to the following criteria:

  • originality and scientific contribution;

  • relevance to medicine, biomedical sciences, public health, or related disciplines;

  • appropriateness and transparency of research methodology;

  • adequacy of statistical analysis;

  • reliability and reproducibility of findings;

  • consistency between results and conclusions;

  • appropriate interpretation of findings;

  • ethical conduct of research;

  • quality and completeness of reporting;

  • relevance of references;

  • clarity of language, tables, figures, and supplementary materials.

The journal considers scientifically sound studies regardless of whether their findings are positive, negative, statistically significant, or inconclusive.

6. Editorial Board Responsibilities

Members of the Editorial Board are expected to:

  • uphold the scientific and ethical standards of the journal;

  • provide objective and impartial editorial assessments;

  • maintain confidentiality of submitted manuscripts;

  • disclose potential conflicts of interest;

  • avoid participating in editorial decisions when a conflict exists;

  • support the identification of qualified and independent reviewers;

  • contribute to the development of the journal’s editorial policies;

  • promote responsible research and publication practices.

Editorial Board membership does not guarantee publication of manuscripts submitted by board members.

7. Manuscripts Submitted by Editors and Editorial Board Members

Manuscripts submitted by the Editor-in-Chief, editors, Editorial Board members, journal staff, or individuals closely associated with the journal are subject to the same editorial and peer-review standards as all other submissions.

Such manuscripts are handled independently by an editor who has no conflict of interest with the authors.

The submitting editor or Editorial Board member shall not participate in:

  • reviewer selection;

  • access to confidential reviewer identities where applicable;

  • editorial discussion of the manuscript;

  • the final publication decision.

This procedure is intended to ensure editorial independence and prevent preferential treatment.

8. Confidentiality

Editors, Editorial Board members, reviewers, and journal staff must treat all submitted manuscripts as confidential documents.

Information concerning a submitted manuscript shall not be disclosed to anyone other than the authors, assigned reviewers, editors, and individuals directly involved in the editorial process.

Unpublished information, data, ideas, or interpretations obtained through manuscript handling or peer review must not be used for personal, academic, financial, or professional advantage.

9. Conflicts of Interest

Editors, reviewers, and authors are required to disclose any financial, professional, institutional, personal, academic, or other relationships that could reasonably be perceived as influencing their work or judgment.

Editors and reviewers must decline involvement in a manuscript when a significant conflict of interest exists.

Authors must provide a Conflict of Interest statement in their manuscript.

The existence of a conflict of interest does not necessarily prevent publication, but transparent disclosure is required.

10. Research Integrity and Misconduct

The journal does not tolerate scientific or publication misconduct, including but not limited to:

  • fabrication or falsification of data;

  • plagiarism;

  • inappropriate image manipulation;

  • duplicate or redundant publication;

  • simultaneous submission to multiple journals;

  • citation manipulation;

  • authorship manipulation;

  • undisclosed conflicts of interest;

  • fraudulent peer review;

  • unethical research practices.

Suspected cases of misconduct may be investigated by the journal in accordance with internationally recognized publication ethics principles.

Where appropriate, the journal may contact authors’ institutions, ethics committees, research organizations, or other relevant bodies.

11. Plagiarism and Similarity Screening

Submitted manuscripts may be screened using plagiarism-detection or similarity-checking software.

Similarity reports are evaluated by editors in context. The journal does not make publication decisions based solely on a numerical similarity percentage.

Confirmed plagiarism, substantial unattributed copying, duplicate publication, or inappropriate reuse of previously published material may result in rejection, correction, retraction, or other appropriate editorial action.

12. Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; drafting or critical revision of the manuscript; and who approve the final version and accept accountability for the work.

Individuals who contributed to the research but do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged appropriately.

Guest, honorary, and ghost authorship are not acceptable.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that the author list and order of authors accurately reflect individual contributions.

13. Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

The journal is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scientific record.

After publication, the journal may issue:

  • corrections;

  • corrigenda or errata;

  • retractions;

  • expressions of concern;

  • other editorial notices,

when necessary to correct or clarify the published record.

Retraction may be considered when findings are unreliable because of major error or misconduct, plagiarism, duplicate publication, unethical research, or other serious violations of publication standards.

Editorial notices will be clearly linked to the original article whenever technically possible.

14. Appeals and Complaints

Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a significant error occurred during the editorial or peer-review process.

Appeals must provide a clear scientific justification and address the reasons given in the editorial decision.

Appeals are evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief or another qualified editor who was not directly responsible for the original decision when appropriate.

Complaints relating to editorial conduct, publication ethics, conflicts of interest, peer review, or other journal processes are considered objectively and confidentially.

Submission of an appeal does not guarantee reversal of an editorial decision.

15. Duplicate and Prior Publication

Manuscripts submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by another journal at the same time.

Authors must disclose any previous publication, preprint, conference abstract, related manuscript, or overlapping publication that may be relevant to the submitted work.

Substantial duplicate or redundant publication without appropriate disclosure is not permitted.

16. Funding and Sponsorship

Authors must disclose all sources of financial and material support for their research.

Funding organizations, sponsors, or commercial partners must not control editorial decisions or prevent authors from accessing, analyzing, interpreting, or publishing their research data.

Where applicable, the role of the funder or sponsor in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or publication decisions must be stated.

17. Clinical Trials

Clinical trials should be conducted and reported according to internationally recognized ethical and reporting standards.

Where applicable, clinical trials should be registered in a publicly accessible clinical trial registry before or at the time required by applicable international recommendations.

Authors should provide the trial registration number in the manuscript.

18. Reporting Guidelines

Authors are encouraged to follow appropriate reporting guidelines for their study design, including internationally recognized guidelines such as:

  • CONSORT for randomized clinical trials;

  • STROBE for observational studies;

  • PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses;

  • CARE for case reports;

  • STARD for diagnostic accuracy studies;

  • ARRIVE for animal research;

  • SPIRIT for clinical trial protocols.

Use of appropriate reporting guidelines improves transparency, completeness, reproducibility, and scientific quality.

19. Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Technologies

Artificial intelligence tools must not be listed as authors because they cannot take responsibility or accountability for published work.

Authors who use artificial intelligence or AI-assisted technologies in manuscript preparation, data analysis, image generation, or other substantive aspects of the research or publication process must disclose such use where appropriate.

Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, integrity, and validity of all submitted content.

Editors and reviewers must protect manuscript confidentiality and should not upload confidential manuscript content into external AI systems when confidentiality cannot be guaranteed.

20. Editorial Policy Updates

The journal may periodically revise its editorial policies to reflect developments in publication ethics, biomedical research standards, scholarly communication, and international best practices.

The most recent version of the Editorial Policies published on the journal website shall be considered the current policy of SOUTH ARAL SEA MEDICAL JOURNAL.