Publication of an article in an academic peer-reviewed journal serves several functions, one of which is to validate and preserve the “minutes” of research. It is, therefore, of immense importance that these “minutes” are accurate and trustworthy. The act of publishing involves many parties, each of which plays an important role in achieving the aims of the publication. It follows that the author, journal editor, peer-reviewer, publisher, and owner of Society-owned journals are responsible for meeting the expected ethical standards at all stages in their involvement from submission to publication of an article.  

Hospital Practices and Research (HPR) is committed to meeting and upholding the standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process. We follow closely those industry associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME), and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), that set standards and provide guidelines for the best practices in order to meet industry requirements. Below is a summary of our key expectations of editors, peer-reviewers, and authors.

 

Ethics in Publishing

HPR strictly follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE); please visit COPE for information on publishing and ethical guidelines.

Please note that any submission including data collected from human subjects requires ethical approval. In this case, a clear statement must be made in any submitted manuscript presenting such research, specifying that the free and informed consent of the subjects was obtained. If your manuscript does not include ethical approval, it will not be sent out for review. For qualitative articles it is mandatory that the following general principles be considered when submitting your manuscript.

Details of formal ethical approval should be stated in the main body of the article. If authors were not required to obtain ethical approval (as is the case in some countries) or unable to obtain ethical approval (as sometimes occurs in resource-poor settings), the circumstances should be explained. Please anonymize the information as appropriate in the manuscript and give the information when asked during submission.

Procedures for securing informed consent should be provided.

 

Responsibilities of Authors

If you wish to publish the data/information of an institution, you should obtain the institution’s permission and provide us with a signed permission form when we request it. You should inform us whether such permission has been obtained during submission of your article.

Most material on the Internet is protected by copyright. To publish data/information from a website, you must obtain permission from the website which owns the copyright. Some website materials may not be original to the website; in such case, you must identify and obtain permission from the right-holder of the data.

 

Informed Consent

According to ICMJE guidelines, patients or participants (in general research) have a right to privacy that should not be compromised without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, on photographs, or in pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) has given written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should identify individuals who provide writing assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance.

 

Conflict of Interests

The authors must declare any conflict of interests of contributed authors very briefly in a separate paragraph at the end of the paper. All sources of funding should be declared; unless otherwise the following sentence should be given “Authors declare no conflict of interests”.

To prevent the information on potential conflict of interest for authors from being overlooked or misplaced, mention this information in the cover letter. Authors must identify any potential financial conflicts of interest before the review process begins. Declared conflict of interest will not automatically result in rejection of paper but the editors reserve the right to publish any declared conflict of interest alongside accepted. The following would generally be regarded as potential conflicts of interest:

  1. Direct financial payment to an author for the research or manuscript production by the sponsor of a product or service evaluated in an article.
  2. Ownership of shares by an author in the company sponsoring a product service evaluated in an article (or in a company sponsoring a competing product).
  3. Personal consultant for companies or other organizations with a financial interest in the promotion of particular health care products and services.

 

Copyright Assignment

If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper, the corresponding author should study and accept the copyright statement that is available on the journal website.

 

Open Access Policy

HPR supports the Open Access initiative. Access to all the abstracts and full texts (PDF format) of articles published by HPR are free to everyone immediately upon publication. Reusing and publishing HPR published articles (main text, Tables, and figures) is permitted by the Creative Commons user license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Users are free to copy and redistribute the HPR published articles in any medium or format under the Creative Commons license terms and conditions, but need to provide the appropriate bibliographic citation of HPR published articles in their works.