Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

The Al-Turath Journal of Physiology (AJP) is committed to maintaining the highest standards of integrity, transparency, accountability, and ethical conduct in scholarly publishing. The journal's publication ethics are guided by internationally recognized principles of responsible research and publication practice, particularly the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

These policies apply to all parties involved in the publication process, including the publisher, Editor-in-Chief, associate editors, editorial board members, reviewers, authors, and readers. All manuscripts submitted to AJP are expected to comply with accepted standards of research integrity, originality, authorship, data accuracy, ethical approval, disclosure of conflicts of interest, and responsible reporting.

Responsibilities and Duties of the Publisher

The publisher of the Al-Turath Journal of Physiology is committed to safeguarding the independence and integrity of the editorial process. Editorial decisions regarding submitted manuscripts are based exclusively on scholarly merit, originality, scientific quality, methodological rigor, relevance to the journal's scope, and ethical compliance, without influence from commercial, financial, institutional, or personal interests.

The publisher supports the preservation of the academic record and works with the editorial team to address concerns related to plagiarism, data fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, inappropriate authorship, citation manipulation, conflicts of interest, and other forms of research misconduct.

When necessary, AJP will publish corrections, clarifications, expressions of concern, or retractions in order to maintain the accuracy and integrity of the scientific record.

Responsibilities and Duties of Editors

Editors are responsible for ensuring a fair, independent, confidential, and academically rigorous editorial process. The Editor-in-Chief and designated editors have the authority to accept, request revision of, or reject manuscripts according to their scientific merit and suitability for the journal.

Editors must maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and must not disclose manuscript information to individuals other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, editorial advisers, and the publisher when such disclosure is necessary for the editorial process.

Editorial decisions must not be influenced by the authors' nationality, institutional affiliation, gender, personal relationships, political views, or other characteristics unrelated to scientific quality.

Editors must identify, disclose, and appropriately manage any actual or potential conflict of interest. An editor with a conflict of interest involving a manuscript must withdraw from handling that submission.

Unpublished information, data, methods, or ideas obtained through a submitted manuscript must not be used for an editor's own research or personal benefit without the explicit written permission of the authors.

Editors are also responsible for investigating credible concerns regarding plagiarism, fabricated or falsified data, unethical research, inappropriate authorship, or other violations of publication ethics and for taking appropriate corrective action when required.

Responsibilities and Duties of Reviewers

Peer reviewers play an essential role in assisting editors in assessing the scientific quality, originality, methodological validity, interpretation, and relevance of submitted manuscripts.

Reviewers must treat all manuscripts received for review as confidential documents. Manuscripts, data, results, and unpublished information obtained through the peer-review process must not be shared, reproduced, or used for personal, professional, or competitive advantage.

Reviews should be objective, constructive, scientifically justified, and expressed in professional language. Personal criticism of authors is inappropriate.

Reviewers should complete their assessments within the requested timeframe. If a reviewer is unable to provide a timely or competent evaluation, the reviewer should notify the editorial office promptly.

Reviewers must disclose any financial, professional, institutional, academic, or personal conflict of interest that could affect their impartiality. A reviewer who has a significant conflict of interest should decline the invitation to review.

Reviewers should also alert editors to relevant published work that has not been appropriately cited and should report any substantial similarity between the submitted manuscript and other published or unpublished work of which they are aware.

Responsibilities and Duties of Authors

Authors submitting manuscripts to the Al-Turath Journal of Physiology are responsible for ensuring that their work is original, scientifically valid, ethically conducted, accurately reported, and appropriately referenced.

Manuscripts should be written in clear academic English and prepared according to the journal's author guidelines.

Submission of a manuscript implies that the work has not been previously published in substantially the same form and is not simultaneously under consideration by another journal.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all listed authors have reviewed and approved the manuscript, agreed to its submission, and meet appropriate authorship criteria.

All individuals listed as authors must have made a meaningful scholarly contribution to the conception, design, execution, analysis, interpretation, or preparation of the work and must accept responsibility for the integrity of the publication.

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

Authors must accurately report their research methods, data, analyses, and results. Fabrication, falsification, selective manipulation, inappropriate image alteration, or deliberate omission of relevant findings constitutes serious research misconduct.

Sources of financial support, institutional funding, grants, sponsorship, equipment, or other material support must be clearly disclosed. Authors should also explain the role of sponsors or funders when relevant.

Authors must disclose any financial, professional, personal, or institutional conflict of interest that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research or its interpretation.

When authors discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work, they are required to notify the journal promptly and cooperate with the editors in issuing a correction, clarification, or retraction where appropriate.

All manuscripts may be screened using appropriate similarity-detection and research-integrity tools. Plagiarism, including unattributed use of previously published text, ideas, data, figures, or other intellectual material, is considered a serious breach of publication ethics.

Ethical Requirements for Human, Animal, and Plant Research

Because the Al-Turath Journal of Physiology publishes research across human, animal, comparative, and plant physiology, authors must comply with the ethical and regulatory requirements relevant to the type of research conducted.

Studies involving human participants must have received approval from an appropriate institutional or national research ethics committee before the study begins. Where applicable, informed consent must be obtained from participants or their legally authorized representatives, and authors must protect confidentiality and privacy.

Research involving animals must be conducted in accordance with accepted institutional, national, and international standards for animal welfare. Authors must provide the name of the approving ethics committee or institutional animal care body and the relevant approval number where applicable. Experimental procedures should be designed to minimize unnecessary pain, distress, and animal use.

Plant studies, particularly those involving protected, endangered, genetically modified, or field-collected species, must comply with applicable institutional, national, biodiversity, and environmental regulations. The scientific identity and source of biological materials should be clearly reported when relevant.

The journal reserves the right to request supporting ethical approval documentation at any stage of editorial evaluation.

Peer-Review Process

The Al-Turath Journal of Physiology operates a rigorous peer-review process designed to ensure the scientific quality, originality, validity, and relevance of published work.

Submitted manuscripts are initially evaluated by the editorial office for compliance with the journal's scope, formatting requirements, originality standards, and ethical policies. Manuscripts considered suitable for further evaluation are sent to qualified independent reviewers with relevant subject expertise.

Editorial decisions are based on the reviewers' assessments together with the academic judgment of the handling editor and Editor-in-Chief.

Reviewers' identities and manuscript information are handled confidentially in accordance with the journal's peer-review policy.

Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are independent of advertising, commercial arrangements, publication charges, sponsorship, institutional relationships, or other financial considerations.

Payment of publication fees, where applicable, does not guarantee acceptance and does not influence editorial or peer-review decisions.

Open Access and Copyright

The journal is committed to the responsible dissemination of scientific knowledge through its stated open-access and copyright policies.

The applicable copyright, licensing, reuse, and distribution conditions are clearly communicated to authors and readers through the journal website and publication agreement.

Authors must ensure that any copyrighted material reproduced in their manuscripts is used with appropriate permission when such permission is required.

Conflicts of Interest

All authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose relationships or circumstances that could create an actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest.

Conflicts may include financial relationships, employment, consultancies, intellectual property interests, institutional relationships, academic competition, personal relationships, or other circumstances that could influence professional judgment.

The existence of a conflict of interest does not necessarily prevent publication; however, transparent disclosure and appropriate management are required.

Principles of Transparency

The Al-Turath Journal of Physiology is committed to transparency in its editorial governance, peer-review procedures, authorship policies, publication fees, copyright and licensing conditions, research ethics requirements, conflicts of interest, corrections, retractions, and procedures for handling allegations of misconduct.

The journal clearly identifies its editorial board and provides appropriate contact information for editorial correspondence.

The journal's title, scope, policies, and website content are maintained in a manner intended to avoid misleading authors, reviewers, readers, institutions, or indexing organizations.

Research Misconduct and Publication Ethics Violations

Data Fabrication and Falsification

Data fabrication refers to inventing data or research results that were never obtained through genuine research procedures. Data falsification includes manipulating research materials, equipment, procedures, images, data, or results in a manner that misrepresents the actual findings.

Both fabrication and falsification constitute serious violations of research integrity.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism includes presenting another person's words, ideas, data, images, methods, results, or intellectual contributions without appropriate acknowledgment.

The reuse of substantial portions of an author's own previously published work without proper citation or disclosure may also constitute inappropriate text recycling or self-plagiarism.

All submitted manuscripts may be evaluated using plagiarism-detection software and other research-integrity tools.

Simultaneous Submission

Authors must not submit the same manuscript, or a substantially similar manuscript, to more than one journal at the same time.

A manuscript currently under consideration by another journal must not be submitted to AJP until the previous submission has been formally withdrawn or a final decision has been issued.

Duplicate Publication

Duplicate publication occurs when substantially the same research findings, data, analyses, or conclusions are published in more than one journal without appropriate disclosure, justification, or cross-reference.

Such publication may constitute a violation of research and publication ethics.

Redundant Publication

Authors should not unnecessarily divide the findings of a single study into multiple publications when doing so results in substantial overlap or artificial fragmentation of the scientific record.

Related manuscripts arising from the same dataset should be transparently identified and appropriately cross-referenced.

Improper Authorship

All listed authors must satisfy appropriate authorship criteria and must have made a genuine scholarly contribution to the work.

Guest authorship, honorary authorship, ghost authorship, purchased authorship, and omission of individuals who made substantial intellectual contributions are inconsistent with the journal's publication ethics.

All authors must approve the final version of the manuscript and accept responsibility for their contributions.

Citation Manipulation

References must be selected on the basis of scientific relevance.

The deliberate inclusion of unnecessary citations for the primary purpose of increasing citation counts of a particular author, journal, institution, or publication is considered citation manipulation and may constitute publication misconduct.

Editors and reviewers must not pressure authors to add citations that are irrelevant to the scholarly content of the manuscript.

Image and Data Manipulation

Images, graphs, electrophysiological recordings, microscopy images, western blots, histological images, and other research outputs must accurately represent the original experimental findings.

Adjustments to images must not selectively enhance, obscure, remove, move, or introduce features in a manner that could misrepresent the underlying data.

The journal may request original data or unprocessed images when concerns regarding data integrity arise.

Handling Allegations of Misconduct

All credible allegations of publication or research misconduct will be examined carefully, confidentially, and impartially.

When concerns are raised, the editorial office may request an explanation and supporting documentation from the corresponding author or other relevant parties.

Authors will normally be given an opportunity to respond to allegations before a final editorial determination is made.

Where necessary, the journal may consult members of the editorial board, independent experts, the publisher, the authors' institutions, ethics committees, funding agencies, or other relevant bodies.

Depending on the nature and severity of the issue, appropriate actions may include manuscript rejection, correction, publication of an expression of concern, retraction, notification of relevant institutions, or restrictions on future editorial participation or manuscript submission.

Any action taken will be proportionate to the evidence available and the seriousness of the violation.

Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions

The journal is committed to preserving an accurate and trustworthy scientific record.

A correction may be issued when an error affects part of a publication but does not invalidate its principal findings.

An expression of concern may be published when serious questions exist about a publication but an investigation has not yet produced sufficient evidence for a definitive conclusion.

A retraction may be considered when there is reliable evidence that findings are seriously unreliable as a result of misconduct or major error, when publication is redundant or plagiarized, or when significant ethical violations have occurred.

Retraction notices will identify the publication concerned and clearly state the reason for the retraction while preserving the transparency of the scholarly record.

Complaints and Appeals

Authors may submit reasonable appeals regarding editorial decisions when they believe that a significant factual, procedural, or scientific misunderstanding has affected the decision.

Appeals should provide clear academic justification and should not consist solely of disagreement with reviewer recommendations.

Complaints regarding editorial procedures, peer review, ethical concerns, or journal conduct will be considered objectively by the appropriate editorial or publishing authority.

Commitment to Publication Integrity

The Al-Turath Journal of Physiology (AJP) is committed to promoting responsible scientific communication and maintaining the credibility of the published literature.

Authors, editors, reviewers, and publishers share responsibility for protecting the integrity, transparency, reproducibility, and reliability of physiological research. The journal will continually review and improve its editorial and ethical policies in accordance with internationally recognized standards of scholarly publishing.