Principles of Transparency

1. Peer review process: YAFTEH is a double-blind peer reviewed electronic quarterly publication concerned with all aspects valuable research from diverse areas of biosciences. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, is clearly described on the journal’s Web site (http://yafte.lums.ac.ir/page/76/Review-Process)
2. Governing Body: YAFTEH has very strong editorial board, whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors is provided on the journal’s Web site (http://yafte.lums.ac.ir/persons.php?slc_lang=en&sid=1)
3. Contact information: Journal is provided the contact information for the editorial office of YAFTEH (http://yafte.lums.ac.ir/page/28/Contact-Information)
4. Author fees / Access: The Journal database is fully open access and full text of published articles are available for everyone who can get access to the Journal website free of charge. Besides, the authors never pay any charges for submission, article processing and publication.
5. Copyright: The authors retain the copyright for their papers published in YAFTEH Publisher is licensed under CC BY 4.0
6. Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct: Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.
7. Web site: A journal’s Web site (http://yafte.lums.ac.ir/index.php?&slct_pg_id=10&sid=1&slc_lang=en) contains that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.
8. Name of journal: The Journal name of Yafteh has unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal
9. Conflicts of interest: Authors are requested to evident whether impending conflicts do or do not exist while submitting their articles to YAFTEH through Conflict of Interest Disclosure form.
10. Publishing schedule: The periodicity at which a journal publishes is clearly indicated (http://yafte.lums.ac.ir/page/84/About-the-Journal)
11. Archiving: A journal’s plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content is clearly indicated (http://yafte.lums.ac.ir/page/16/Articles-archive)

(http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Principles_of_Transparency_and_Best_Practice_in_Scholarly_Publishing.pdf)


Violation of Publication Ethics

1. Plagiarism: Plagiarism is intentionally using someone else’s ideas or other original material as if they are one's own. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation is considered by YAFTEH as plagiarism. All manuscripts under review or published with YAFTEH are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software. Thus, plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. The development of CrossCheck is a service that helps editors to verify the originality of papers.
2. Data Fabrication and Falsification: Data fabrication and falsification means the researcher did not really carry out the study, but made up data or results and had recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.
3. Simultaneous Submission: Simultaneous submission occurs when a manuscript (or substantial sections from a manuscript) is submitted to a journal when it is already under consideration by another journal.
4. Duplicate Publication: Duplicate publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions.
5. Redundant Publications: Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, most often consequent to the desire to plump academic vitae.
6. Improper Author Contribution or Attribution: All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. Don’t forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.
7. Citation Manipulation: Citation Manipulation is including excessive citations, in the submitted manuscript, that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely for the purpose of increasing citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal. This leads to misrepresenting the importance of the specific work and journal in which it appears and is thus a form of scientific misconduct.
8. Sanctions: In the event that there are documented violations of any of the above mentioned policies in any journal, regardless of whether or not the violations occurred in a journal, the following sanctions will be applied: (i) Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript, (ii)Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submitted to any journal published by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript, (iii) Prohibition will be imposed for a minimum of 36 months against all of the authors for any new submissions to any journal, either individually or in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript, and (iv) Prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the Editorial Board of any journal.

(http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Full%20set%20of%20flowcharts.pdf)


Handling Cases of Misconduct
Once YAFTEH confirms a violation against YAFTEH’s publication ethics, YAFTEH addresses ethical concerns diligently following an issue-specific standard practice as summarized below.

1. The first action of the journal Editor is to inform the Editorial Office of YAFTEH by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner.
2. If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and it seems that serious unethical conduct has taken place, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via Editorial Office. After deliberation, the Committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions.
3. If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Publication Committee, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the author of YAFTEH publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the Editor may request the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.
4. Notification will be sent to corresponding author and any work by the author responsible for the violation or any work these persons coauthored that is under review by YAFTEH journal will be rejected immediately.
5. The authors are prohibited from serving on YAFTEH editorial board and serving as a reviewer for YAFTEH. YAFTEH reserves the right to take more actions.
6. In extreme cases, notifications will be sent to the affiliations of the authors and the authors are prohibited from submitting their work to YAFTEH for 5 years.
7. In serious cases of fraud that result in retraction of the article, a retraction notice will be published in the journal and will be linked to the article in the online version. The online version will also be marked “retracted” with the retraction date.

(http://publicationethics.org/files/Sharing%20_of_Information_Among_EiCs_guidelines_web_version.pdf)



 This journal is in the process of becoming a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
https://publicationethics.org/members/.................
When faced with cases of suspected misconduct, Journal follows the instructions mentioned in this flowchart:
ENGLISH [COPE flowcharts, PDF, 546KB]
 These ethical standards were obtained and developed after investigation and review of "The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)".