GMPC-Policy on Editors and Reviewers' ethics

The GMPC Editorial Boards are independent, and there is no interference from the publisher with the editorial decision. However, the editorial office may reject manuscripts that do not follow to the GMPC- ethical policies. Although the editorial office pre-evaluates the ethical issue of submitted manuscripts, any raised issues by the reviewers and/or editors should be sent to the editorial office immediately. The reviewers' and editors' ethical guidelines of the GMPC journals follow to the COPE Guidelines. Editors' ethics according to the COPE Guidelines:
i) Editors’ decisions should be based only on the paper’s importance, originality, and clarity and the study’s relevance to the journal's scope.
ii) Particular consideration has to be given to studies that contradict earlier work that has been published in the journal.
iii) Studies reporting negative results should not be excluded.
iv) All original studies should be peer-reviewed before publication, considering possible bias due to related or conflicting interests.
v) Editors must treat all submitted papers as confidential.
vi) Editors must take responsibility for swiftly and prominently updating the record when a published paper is later discovered to have significant problems.

Editors and reviewers should consider the following ethical issues: Are ethical approval and permission for experiments conducted in humans, animals, or cell lines provided?; Is the manuscript original, without plagiarism, data fabrication, or image manipulation?; Is permission, if necessary, from the copyright holders provided?; Is the clinical trials registration provided and mentioned in the methodology?; Are the conflicts of interest disclosed? Are the findings presented accurately and discussed objectively?; Are materials and methods presented in detail?; Does the manuscript fit the scope of the journal? and are the source of funding is mentioned?

Additional Ethical Responsibilities of Reviewers
  • Constructive critique: Reviewers should constructively highlight the positive and negative aspects and recommend how the manuscript can be improved when needed.
  • Competence: Reviewers should accept to review the manuscript only when they have adequate expertise to provide an authoritative assessment.
  • Declaration of confidentiality: Reviewers should keep the reviewed manuscript's contents confidential until the article is published, not expose their identities to authors in the assessment report, and notify the editorial office if the reviewer intends to delegate a colleague to review the manuscript on his behalf.
  • Disclosure conflicts of interest: The potential conflicts of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: i) the reviewer had previous cooperation or was a co-author with the submitted author/s within the last five years, ii) the reviewer is working at the same institute/university of the author/s, iii) reviewer has a close personal relationship with any of the authors, iv) financial conflict of interest (reviewer may profit or lose financially from the publication of the reviewed manuscript), v) non-financial conflicts of interest (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial) with any of the authors.

Last updated: 15-Feb-2023