Abstract
The Members of the Editorial Board of Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation (CHM) decided to write the first version of this article during the Meeting of the Board of Editors of this Journal on the occasion of the 15th Conference of the European Society for Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation in Pontresina, Switzerland. The text was prepared by Tommaso Gori, revised by the Editors-in-Chief Sandro Forconi and Friedrich Jung and approved by the Editorial Board. The text has thereafter been revised on the occasion of the 34th Conference of the German Society for Clinical Microcirculation and Hemorheology in Regensburg, Germany.
The identification and prosecution of scientific misconduct in research and publishing is a problem and a priority for every Journal. Issues related to financial conflicts, “paper splitting”, simultaneous submission to more than one journal, the assignment of authorship ranks, and, more importantly, scientific fraud and plagiarism need to be fully addressed. Reviewers, editors and readers are the first victims of any misbehaviour or sloppiness, and although fraudulent science is most often identified and disproved, in many case we have few possibilities to detect or correct it. Such fraud damages the reputation of the journals, may cause danger to patients, and misuses career opportunities and grant money connected to it.
The Editors of Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation (CHM) firmly believe that the identification, investigation and prosecution of scientific misconduct are moral requirements and a necessary commitment to readers and patients. From this perspective, a new policy was introduced by the Editorial Board in 2010, and updated in the present document. CHM requires that authors comply with the principles of ethical publishing in Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation and provide a formal statement of acceptance of this code of scientific conduct, based on the following: All individuals who have actively contributed to the planning of the study, to the collection, interpretation and analysis of the data and/or to the writing of the manuscript have been included in the authors list. All authors must have read and approved the final version of the manuscript, including the list and order of authors. The corresponding author has the approval of all other listed authors (and any person mentioned in the acknowledgment section) for the submission and publication of the manuscript, and he/she takes full responsibility for its content, including all data and text. All authors must have access to the original data and accept responsibility for their scientific integrity. If asked, the corresponding author must be willing to provide all data presented in the manuscript, along with informed consents and ethical approval so that the editors can examine and validate them. Data, text, figures and tables submitted must be original and unpublished, and cannot have been reproduced from other authors’ publications or submitted for publication elsewhere unless clearly stated and with permission of the copyright holder. The oral or poster presentation of parts of the work and its publishing as a single page abstract does not count as prior publication for this purpose. All material which derives from prior work, including from the same authors, is properly attributed to the prior publication by proper citation. All contributions must be recognized, either by authorship or, as appropriate, in the acknowledgment section of the paper. The corresponding author is responsible that all co-authors and acknowledged contributors are familiar with the rules for ethical publishing of CHM, and that they have approved the content of the manuscript, the content of any subsequent revision, and all correspondence accompanying the paper. As well, the corresponding author represents all other authors in the correspondence with the editorial office, including the submission of revisions and rebuttal letters, the correction of page proofs, and in any decisions about the release of manuscript information to media. Approval of relevant organizations, panels, and/or review committees must have been obtained, including an ethics board for animal and/or human studies when appropriate. Further, all animal and human procedures must comply with the International Declaration of Helsinki and the national laws of the country in which the study was performed. All authors must declare all financial or personal conflict of interest, past or present, especially when it may be perceived to impact the collection, interpretation or presentation of the data. While it is fully acceptable that research (or researchers) may be financed by for-profit organizations, the Editors believe that the source of any funding needs to be declared and acknowledged in any publication. For the submission of the manuscript, the electronic submission system of the journal (see http://www.iospress.nl/journal/clinical-hemorheology-and-microcirculation/) has to be used.
Rules of ethical behaviour shall also apply after publication: The author(s) will notify IOS Press and obtain copyright permission should he/she/they wish to re-use the work for other publications, including publications in languages other than English. If authors wish to re-use only part of work published in CHM (e.g., a table or figure), they may do so as long as the original publication is quoted. Since, upon printing, the copyright of all material submitted for publications becomes property of IOS Press, the publisher holds the right to edit, publish, reproduce and distribute, include in indexes or search databases or through any media all parts of the manuscript. The Editors of Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation must be informed immediately, before or after publication, if any of the above statements are found to be, or to have become, untrue. The Editors hold all rights to investigate and correct every aspect of a publication when it is felt to be associated with any form of scientific misconduct, including the right to retract the paper when already published. The manuscript will be maintained on the servers of the Journal and held to be a valid publication by the Journal only as long as all statements in these principles remain true. To document the acceptance of these rules of conduct, the following sentence must be reported in the Acknowledgment section of every article submitted for publication in Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation: “The authors comply with the Ethical Guidelines for Publication in Clinical Hemorheology and Microcirculation as published on the IOS Press website” and the authors may then reference the present paper or quote “Volume 63, 2016, pp. 1–2”.
The publication of any manuscript submitted to CHM can only proceed after the explicit acknowledgment that the authors comply with the above terms (in the manuscript or in the cover letter).