Editorial Policies
Egeria Publishing ensures best practices in research reporting and high-quality publications. Egeria Publishing endorses and adheres to:
- publication ethics by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE),
- recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and
- guidelines pertinent to authorship by the Good Publication Practice (GPP).
Submission of a manuscript to Egeria Publishing journals implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content and that the manuscript conforms to the editorial and publishing policies.
Authorship Criteria
Qualification for authorship is recognized based on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) for manuscripts submitted to Egeria Publishing. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. The ICMJE lists four conditions for authorship credit and all authors must meet all four conditions in order to be listed.
- Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, and
- Drafting the article 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.
For group authorship, the ICMJE states that
When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship/contributorship defined above, and editors will ask these individuals to complete journal-specific author and conflict-of-interest disclosure forms. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship.
When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation in the manuscript title page and identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments.
Acknowledgements
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an acknowledgments section with a brief description on their contribution. Contributors in the acknowledgement section should provide permission to be acknowledged. Financial and material support should also be added to acknowledgements section.
Authorship Changes
Egeria Publishing follows the COPE guidelines for any changes in authorship. Any changes to the author list, including additions, deletions, and re-ordering after submission requires agreement from all authors. Corresponding author should request the change by providing an explanation and consent from all authors. Egeria Publishing will review the appropriateness of the required change and contact corresponding author with the decision.
Egeria publishing does not permit the change/addition/deletion of authors after the manuscript is approved for publication. However, relevant authorship issues identified after publication may result in a correction. In the case of an authorship dispute, the journal and/or publisher will not arbitrate. If the authors are unable to resolve the dispute themselves, we will raise the issue with the authors’ institution(s) and abide by its guidelines.
Authorship Issues
The common issues about authorship are based on GPP3 publication practice guidelines and are presented as follows. For more information, please refer to Battisti WP, et al. Good Publication Practice for Communicating Company-Sponsored Medical Research: GPP3. Ann Intern Med. 2015;163:461-464.
Number of authors: It usually depends on the complexity of work involved in research and publication. It would be unusual in research (with few exceptions) to require >10 authors. A high number of authors calls into question whether they could all have provided “substantial intellectual contribution.” Therefore only authors with substantial contribution should qualify for authorship, and other contributors can be acknowledged (e.g., as non-author contributors or collaborators).
Author sequence: This should be determined by authors at the initiation of the work, including the designation of the lead and corresponding authors, who may or may not be the same person. Final order, however, should be based on authors’ actual roles and contributions in the development of the publication (and therefore cannot be agreed upon until this in complete). In general, those who made the greatest contribution are listed first, but alphabetical order may also be used, based on the contribution.
Addition or removal or author: In certain circumstances during the development of a publication, it may be necessary to add or remove an author (e.g., if an author fails to provide a substantial contribution or approve the final version of the work). In such cases, all authors should agree to the change. Only in rare cases where the work has substantial changes in response to reviewers’ comments, addition or removal of an author can be considered after submission.
Death or incapacity of an author: In circumstances, where an author dies after completing a major part of the work, posthumous authorship can be considered if agreed to by all other authors. We suggest, as a first step, seeking advice on correct attribution and process from journal instructions or the editorial office. If the journal agrees to posthumous authorship but requires submission forms to be signed, then in the case of a sponsor-employed author or a contractor, a supervisor may be the most appropriate proxy. Otherwise, a family member or person with power of attorney should be approached. In all cases, efforts should be made to contact the family of the deceased author to inform them of the intention and request their consent to the listing or acknowledgment.
Change of affiliation: If an author changes affiliation before the work is published, his or her affiliation should reflect where the major part of the work was done. The current affiliation and contact details should be listed in the acknowledgment section. Change of affiliation alone is not a valid reason to remove an author from a publication if he or she meets authorship criteria.
Company- or sponsor-employed authors: Sponsor-employed scientists and clinicians are often qualified to participate as authors of company-sponsored research publications and should have that opportunity. Such authors should not be denied authorship because of concerns about perception of bias. Whatever criteria are used to determine authorship should be applied equally to company employees, contractors, and others.
Professional writers as authors: Professional medical writers who meet applicable authorship criteria should be listed as authors. If writers do not meet authorship criteria, their contribution should be disclosed (e.g., as a non-author contributor in the acknowledgment section). Writers who were not involved with study design, data collection, or data analysis and interpretation (e.g., those developing a primary publication from a clinical study report) generally do not meet ICMJE authorship criteria. However, professional writers working on other types of publication (e.g., literature reviews) may qualify as authors.
Egeria Publishing ensures thorough review process. All manuscripts submitted to Egeria Publishing journals are initially screened by the editor for their relevancy and interest level for the journal. Manuscripts not meeting the initial screening requirements may be recommended for submission to another Egeria Publishing journal or rejected.
Manuscripts selected in initial screening are then subjected to double-blind peer-review, in which both the reviewer and author identities are concealed throughout the review process. The peer-review usually involves 2-3 independent reviewers who are expert in the specific field. Editors will make a decision based on the reports submitted by reviewers. All reviewers’ comments will be considered for the final decision. Authors will receive reports from reviewers along with the decision.
For the manuscripts, where an editorial board is on the author list or has any other competing interest, the responsibility for review process will be assigned to another member of the editorial board.
All Egeria Publishing journals abide by the COPE and aims to adhere to its best practice guidelines . The Committee on Publication Ethics provides advice to editors and publishers on all aspects of publication ethics.
Authors, editors, and reviewers should be aware of, and comply with, best practice and ethical standards in publication. Egeria Publishing makes every effort to ensure publication ethics are upheld on all manuscripts by its journals. All the allegations of research or publication misconduct will be vigorously investigated. In cases of suspected misconduct, Egeria Publishing will follow the COPE flowcharts and may seek advice at the COPE forum. In case of conclusive evidence of misconduct, Egeria Publishing reserve the right to contact authors’ institutions, funders or regulatory bodies. Further, the steps may be taken to correct the scientific record, by issuing a correction or retraction, if needed.
If you have any concerns about potential misconduct, please contact the journal and address correspondence to the journal’s editor as appropriate.
Competing Interests
Egeria Publishing requires everyone involved in the peer-review process, including authors, reviewers, editors, and readers to disclose all potentially competing interests. Competing interests, also known as conflict of interest can be financial or non-financial is a situation and can arise in relationship to an institution, organization, or another person. It is a situation where an individual’s interest could reasonably be perceived as interfering with the information presented, peer review, editorial decision-making, or publication of research or non-research articles submitted to Egeria Publishing. For detailed information, please refer to the ICMJE guidelines for guidelines on competing interests.
Financial competing interests include, but are not limited to funding and other payments, goods and services received or expected by the authors relating to the subject of the work or from an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work, ownership of stocks or shares, gifts, paid employment or consultancy, board membership, patent applications, research grants, travel grants, or honoraria for speaking or participation at meetings .
Non-financial competing interests include, but are not limited to any affiliations, memberships, and /or relationships with the advisory board, organizations, government, or funding bodies, writing or consulting for an educational company, personal relationships, personal convictions related to paper’s topic that might interfere with an unbiased publication process.
Declaration of Competing Interests
Authors must declare all competing interests pertinent to the submitted work in Authorship & Disclosures form. Authors must also declare funding and other payments, goods or services that might influence the work, whether a conflict or not, in the “Acknowledgments” section.
Editors and reviewers must declare their own competing interests, and if necessary should decline themselves from involvement in the assessment of a manuscript. Competing interests might arise when editors or reviewers share or recently shared an affiliations with an author, collaborate or recently collaborated with an author, have a recent publication or current submission with an author, have personal connection to any author that hinder objective evaluation of the work, have a financial interest in the subject of work, or have held grants with an author (currently or recently).
Readers must disclose all competing interests at the time of posting any comments on articles published by Egeria Publishing.
Egeria Publishing is committed to ensuring the integrity of the peer-review process and considers all manuscripts submitted as confidential. Editors and reviewers are required to abide by COPE ethical guidelines, thereby respecting the confidentiality of the submitted work throughout the peer-review process. Details of the work in the manuscript should not be revealed at any point during or after the peer-review process, until the information is published and released by the journal.
Egeria Publishing strictly forbids scientific misconduct and takes all reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of articles where research misconduct has occurred.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to direct copying content, ideas, images, any data from other sources without any acknowledgement or permission from the authors of original work. Further, reusing content from your own previous publications (except methodology related text) without acknowledgement or approval from the editor is not acceptable. Manuscripts with plagiarized content will not be considered for publication. Egeria Publishing screens all manuscripts using iThenticate, an anti-plagiarism software. In case of plagiarism detection, manuscript will be rejected or retracted (if published). Manuscripts based on a thesis or dissertation should be significantly reworded with unique aspects to be considered for publication.
Manipulation
All the manuscripts submitted to Egeria Publishing will be scrutinized for any kind of manipulation and will follow COPE guidelines for dealing with the cases of potential publication misconduct relevant to any manipulation and falsification of data. Manipulation includes, but is not limited to:
- Image files, as a part or whole, manipulated in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information.
- Including citations whose primary purpose is to increase the number of citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal is not acceptable.
- Falsification or fabrication of data, such as experimental results.
Redundant publication
It may involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles or submission of an article that has been previously published or is under review elsewhere. Authors are required to provide information if they have previously published or presented part of their work elsewhere.
Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have documented review and approval from a formally constituted review board (Institutional Review Board or Ethics committee). The principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed throughout the research. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, should be provided in all manuscripts reporting such research. If a study is judged exempt from review and requiring ethics approval, this should also be reported in the manuscript. Further information and documentation to support this should be made available to the Editor on request, including any associated informed consent.
Patient privacy and informed consent
The consent is required for all the manuscripts that comprise details, images, or videos relating to individual participants. Authors should obtain written informed consent from participant or parent/guardian to publish their details and provide a statement with regards to consent in the manuscript. Authors should submit the signed consent if required by the Editor. For case series that involves more than three individual cases, authors also need to submit a confirmation that the research has been approved by a named institutional review board or ethics committee along with the informed consent. For manuscripts publishing images that are completely unidentifiable and there are no details on individuals, consent may not be required, based on the editor’s decision.
For all research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants or their parent/guardian, as appropriate. A statement to this effect should be provided in the manuscript. For manuscripts describing human transplantation studies, authors must include a statement declaring that no organs/tissues were obtained from prisoners and must also name the institution(s)/clinic(s)/department(s) via which organs/tissues were obtained. For any research involving vulnerable groups (for example unconscious patients), where there is the potential for coercion (for example prisoners) or where consent may not have been fully informed, manuscripts will be considered at the editor’s consideration.
Clinical datasets
For research involving clinical datasets, authors are legally and ethically responsible for protecting participants’ identity. Further, authors are recommended to seek informed consent from the study subjects, if they wish to publish the dataset at point of recruitment. In circumstances, where it is not possible to obtain informed consent, authors should be able to establish that the anonymity and confidentiality of the participants as well as the local protection laws are not compromised or breached for the dataset to be considered for publication. The reason for not obtaining informed consent should be explicitly mentioned in the manuscript.
Cell lines
Authors must disclose the information related to cell lines used, including sources of cell lines. For de novo cell lines derived from human tissue, authors must provide the confirmation of approval from an institutional review board or equivalent ethics committee as well as informed consent from the donor or parent/guardian.
Registration of clinical trials
In line with ICMJE guidelines, all clinical trials submitted to Egeria Publishing should be registered in a publicly accessible registry at or before the time of first patient enrollment. For clinical trials not publicly registered before participant enrollment, authors should register the trial retrospectively before submitting their manuscript. Trial protocols and registration details should be carefully reviewed by the editors and reviewers. Authors are encouraged to follow Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials guidelines for reporting clinical trials.
For all Egeria Publishing journals, authors are strongly encouraged to include “Data availability statement” about where the data can be found and about data sharing, providing links to the publicly archive datasets, wherever applicable. Authors are strongly encouraged to make available to readers all datasets supporting their results, who wish to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching participant confidentiality. Authors are also encouraged to deposit their dataset(s) in a data repository (eg, Dryad). Further, Egeria Publishing mandates data deposition where there is a community established norm for data sharing. A list of communities or organizations that mandate data sharing can be accessed here. Appropriate methods of data sharing are described as follows:
Data provided in supporting information files: Authors may upload supporting information files accompanying the manuscript for small datasets in a file format that can be efficiently extracted, such as spreadsheets, wherever possible.
Data deposition in research repositories: All data related to the results reported in a submitted article and not provided as part of the submitted article, should be deposited in an appropriate public repository. The Data Availability Statement must specify that data are deposited publicly along with the name of the repositories and digital object identifiers or accession numbers for the data deposited. Repositories may be either subject-specific or generalist repositories that accept multiple data types. A comprehensive list of repositories for research data is available here.
In circumstances, where provision of data in supporting files or data deposition may pose ethical, legal or privacy concerns, alternative acceptable methods can be used for data provision, subject to case-by-case evaluation. The data availability statement must specify that data is available on request, provide reasons for restrictions on public data deposition, and provide information about the committee or group to which requests to be submitted. For data obtained from the third-party, authors are encouraged to share any data specific to their analysis and results that they can legally share. In the data availability statement, authors should provide required contact information for a researcher who may wish to gain access to the relevant data.
Egeria Publishing adheres to COPE guidelines for any appeals to the editorial decisions. Any appeals or complaints should be submitted by email to editorial@egeriapublishing.com.
In certain circumstances, it may be necessary for authors or the editor to publish corrections to, or retractions of articles published in the journals of Egeria Publishing, so as to maintain the integrity of the academic record. Corrections to, or retractions of, published articles will be made by publishing an Erratum or a Retraction article and adding a prominent link to the Erratum or Retraction article. In either case, the original article will not be altered in any way. In the rare case, that content is considered to infringe certain rights or violations of any ethical or editorial policies, article and its associated content will be removed from our and archive sites.
Corrections
Corrections of typographical errors or errors on part of Egeria Publication will not incur any cost. However, Egeria Publication will charge $35 per correction that he author requests. Additionally, the author will be required to submit an “author approval” form with the changes requested.
Egeria Publication highly recommends all authors to check the proofs, especially author names and affiliations.
Retractions
The retraction of an article by its authors or the Editor happens when COPE guidelines reach the following conclusion:
- A retraction titled “(article title) Retraction” signed by the authors and/or the Editor is published in a subsequent entry
- A link on the retraction is supplied to the original article (and vice versa)
- The original article is marked “Retracted”
- The original HTML version is removed
Egeria Publishing requires all authors to comply with reporting guidelines for the specific study designs. For details on reporting research, authors, editors, and peer-reviewers should read information on the EQUATOR Network.