Publication Ethics at JCDMS
The Journal of Clinical Dentistry and Medical Sciences (JCDMS) is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics, scientific integrity, editorial transparency, responsible research conduct, and professional accountability.
The journal expects authors, reviewers, editors, and the publisher to act honestly, fairly, confidentially, and responsibly throughout the submission, peer-review, editorial, and publication processes.
JCDMS is guided by internationally recognised principles of responsible scholarly publishing, including recommendations relating to publication ethics, research integrity, authorship, peer review, corrections, and retractions.
Our Ethical Principles
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Scientific Integrity
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Editorial Transparency
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Fair Peer Review
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Confidentiality
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Responsible Authorship
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Data Integrity
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Responsibilities of Authors
Authors are responsible for ensuring that submitted manuscripts are original, scientifically accurate, ethically conducted, and prepared
according to the journal’s policies.
- Submit only original and unpublished scholarly work.
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Ensure the accuracy and integrity of data, results, tables,
figures, images, and statistical analyses. - Avoid plagiarism, self-plagiarism, simultaneous submission, duplicate publication, and redundant publication.
- Obtain appropriate ethics approval and informed consent where required.
- Accurately acknowledge all contributors, funding sources, and relevant previous work.
- Disclose all financial and non-financial conflicts of interest.
- Retain original research data and supporting documentation for verification when reasonably requested.
- Notify the Editorial Office promptly if a significant error is discovered after submission or publication.
- Cooperate with editorial enquiries and investigations concerning the submitted or published work.
Responsibilities of Reviewers
Peer reviewers contribute to the scientific quality, integrity, and credibility of the journal. Reviews should be objective, constructive, confidential, and based on the scientific content of the manuscript.
- Evaluate manuscripts objectively and without discrimination.
- Maintain strict confidentiality throughout the review process.
- Declare any financial, professional, institutional, academic, or personal conflict of interest.
- Decline the review when the manuscript falls outside the reviewer’s expertise.
- Provide clear, respectful, evidence-based, and constructive comments.
- Identify potential plagiarism, duplicate publication, citation concerns, or ethical problems.
- Complete the review within the requested timeframe.
- Avoid using unpublished information, methods, data, or ideas for personal or professional advantage.
Responsibilities of Editors
Editors are responsible for ensuring a fair, independent, confidential, and transparent editorial process. Editorial decisions should be based on scientific merit, relevance, originality, ethical compliance, and peer-review evidence.
- Evaluate manuscripts without discrimination based on nationality, gender, religion, institution, seniority, or personal beliefs.
- Preserve author and reviewer confidentiality.
- Select reviewers with appropriate expertise.
- Declare and appropriately manage conflicts of interest.
- Ensure that editorial decisions are made independently of commercial, financial, political, or institutional influence.
- Investigate ethical concerns, complaints, and allegations of misconduct fairly and confidentially.
- Arrange independent editorial handling when an editor or Editorial Board member is an author or has a conflict.
- Take appropriate action when corrections, expressions of concern, or retractions are required.
Responsibilities of the Publisher
The publisher supports editorial independence, ethical publication accurate record keeping, accessibility of published content, and responsible handling of corrections and research-integrity concerns.
- Protect the independence of editorial decisions.
- Ensure that commercial interests do not influence manuscript acceptance or rejection.
- Maintain published content and related publication records.
- Support investigations of publication misconduct and ethical concerns.
- Publish corrections, retractions, or notices when editorial action is required.
- Clearly communicate journal ownership, policies, fees, and contact information.
Editorial Independence
Editorial decisions are made independently of advertisers, sponsors, funding bodies, commercial partners, institutions, and other external influences. Payment of an Article Processing Charge or publication fee, where applicable, does not guarantee acceptance. Manuscripts are accepted or rejected solely on the basis of scientific quality, originality, relevance, ethical compliance, peer-review findings, and suitability for JCDMS.
Publication Misconduct
JCDMS does not tolerate intentional or serious breaches of research and publication ethics. Suspected misconduct may be investigated before or after publication.
- Plagiarism and self-plagiarism
- Data fabrication or falsification
- Inappropriate image manipulation
- Simultaneous or duplicate submission
- Redundant or overlapping publication
- Citation manipulation
- Gift, guest, honorary, or ghost authorship
- Undisclosed conflicts of interest
- Misrepresentation of ethics approval or informed consent
- Manipulation of the peer-review process
- Unauthorized use of confidential information
- Intentional misrepresentation of research findings
Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism
Submitted manuscripts may be screened using suitable similarity-checking software. Editorial evaluation considers the nature, source, context, and extent of overlapping material rather than relying only on a similarity percentage.
Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, data, images, tables, or other material without appropriate acknowledgement. Self-plagiarism includes substantial reuse of an author’s previously published content without proper citation, quotation, disclosure, or justification.
Depending on the seriousness of the overlap, a manuscript may be returned for correction, rejected, investigated further, or subject to post-publication editorial action.
Data Fabrication and Falsification
Fabrication refers to inventing data, participants, observations, experiments, or results that did not exist. Falsification refers to manipulating research materials, processes, analyses, images, or data in a manner that misrepresents the research record.
Authors must retain complete and accurate research records. The Editorial Office may request anonymized raw data, analysis files, original images, laboratory records, ethics documentation, or other supporting evidence when questions arise regarding the validity of the findings.
Image Manipulation
Adjustments to brightness, contrast, or colour balance may be acceptable when they are applied consistently to the entire image and do not obscure, remove, add, or misrepresent scientific information.
The following practices are unacceptable unless scientifically justified, transparently disclosed, and approved:
- Adding or removing features within an image
- Selective enhancement of part of an image
- Combining images without clearly indicating the boundaries
- Duplicating image regions to create misleading results
- Altering clinical images in a way that changes interpretation
- Using generated or synthetic images without disclosure
Duplicate and Redundant Publication
Manuscripts must not be submitted simultaneously to more than one journal. Authors must disclose closely related manuscripts, previous publications, conference abstracts, theses, preprints, protocols, or overlapping datasets where relevant.
Fragmenting one study into several minimally different manuscripts, commonly described as salami publication, is discouraged when the division lacks scientific justification.
Authorship Misconduct
Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions, approved the final manuscript, and accepted accountability for the work.
- Gift or honorary authorship: listing an individual who did not make a qualifying contribution.
- Guest authorship: adding a prominent name to increase credibility or acceptance prospects.
- Ghost authorship: omitting an individual who made a qualifying contribution.
- Authorship manipulation: adding, removing, or rearranging authors without valid justification and agreement.
Conflicts of Interest
Authors, reviewers, and editors must disclose financial and non-financial interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing research, interpretation, peer review, or editorial decision-making.
- Employment or consultancy
- Research grants or sponsorship
- Honoraria or paid expert testimony
- Stock or share ownership
- Patents or intellectual-property interests
- Advisory-board or leadership roles
- Personal, academic, institutional, or professional relationships
- Editorial positions connected with the submission
When no relevant conflict exists, authors may state:
“The authors declare that they have no relevant financial or non-financial conflicts of interest.”
Human and Animal Research Ethics
Studies involving human participants, identifiable data, biological materials, animals, or experimental procedures must receive approval from an appropriate Institutional Ethics Committee, Institutional Review Board, or equivalent authority before the study begins.
Human research should comply with applicable laws and recognised ethical principles, including the Declaration of Helsinki. Animal studies should follow applicable institutional and national standards and relevant reporting guidance such as ARRIVE.
The manuscript should include:
- Name of the approving ethics committee
- Approval or reference number
- Date of approval, where available
- Consent-to-participate statement, where applicable
- Consent-for-publication statement, where applicable
- Clinical-trial registration details, where applicable
Informed Consent and Patient Privacy
Informed consent must be obtained from participants whenever required. Separate consent for publication is necessary when an article contains identifiable clinical details, photographs, videos, radiographs, genetic information, or other personal data.
Removing a participant’s name may not guarantee anonymity. Authors should remove unnecessary identifying details and retain written consent records. Evidence of consent may be requested by the Editorial Office.
Confidentiality
Manuscripts submitted to JCDMS are treated as confidential documents. Editors, reviewers, editorial staff, and other individuals involved in the publication process must not disclose manuscript contents, unpublished data, reviewer reports, editorial discussions, or personal information except where required for legitimate editorial or ethical purposes.
Confidential information obtained through peer review must not be used for personal research, publication, commercial activity, professional advantage, or the disadvantage of another person.
Handling Suspected Misconduct
Allegations of research or publication misconduct will be assessed carefully, confidentially, and fairly. JCDMS may follow recognised publication-ethics guidance and seek independent advice when appropriate.
- Conduct a preliminary editorial assessment.
- Preserve relevant manuscripts, reports, correspondence, and supporting records.
- Inform the corresponding author of the concern and request an explanation.
- Request supporting documents or original data if necessary.
- Consult editors, reviewers, ethics advisers, or independent experts where appropriate.
- Contact the authors’ institution, research-integrity office, or ethics committee when warranted.
- Decide whether rejection, correction, expression of concern, retraction, or another action is required.
Authors will ordinarily be given an opportunity to respond to concerns. Editorial action will be proportionate to the evidence, seriousness, and effect of the matter on the reliability of the scholarly record.
Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern
JCDMS is committed to maintaining an accurate and trustworthy scholarly record. Post-publication notices will remain clearly linked to the affected article.
Correction, corrigendum, or erratum: may be published when an error affects part of an article but does not invalidate the principal findings.
Expression of concern: may be issued when serious concerns exist but an investigation remains incomplete or inconclusive.
Retraction: may be required when findings are unreliable because of serious error or misconduct, when plagiarism or duplicate publication is established, or when the research was conducted unethically.
Complaints and Appeals
Authors, reviewers, readers, or other stakeholders may submit complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, publication ethics, journal procedures, or published content.
Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a significant scientific misunderstanding, factual error, conflict of interest, or procedural problem affected the decision.
- Provide the manuscript number and title.
- Identify the decision or procedure being challenged.
- Explain the scientific, ethical, or procedural basis.
- Provide relevant evidence or supporting documentation.
- Use professional and respectful language.
Complaints and appeals will be evaluated objectively and, where appropriate, by an editor who was not directly involved in the original matter.
Our Commitment
JCDMS is committed to fostering an ethical publishing environment founded on integrity, accountability, transparency, editorial independence, respect for research participants, and protection of the scholarly record. The journal will review and update its policies as recognised standards in research integrity and scholarly publishing continue to evolve.
Report an Ethical Concern
Contact the Editorial Office regarding publication ethics, research integrity, complaints, appeals, or suspected misconduct.