editorial policies (A-Z)

Article Withdrawal | Publishable Corrections | Retraction Policy

Article Withdrawal means that the article files are removed and replaced with a PDF stating that the article has been withdrawn from the journal. Article in press but not officially launched Online on website with DOI. (If) articles are found with fake authorship, fraudulent data use and plagiarism then it may be withdrawn from the journal.

Publishable Corrections that affect the publication record and/or the scientific accuracy of published information receive a DOI and are published online in the journal. Four categories of amendments are relevant for peer-reviewed material: Erratum, Corrigendum, Retraction or Addendum. All four correction types are bidirectionally linked to the original published paper. Detailed information on each amendment category follows below:

Erratum: All those corrections made by the publisher,affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper; or the reputation of the authors or of the journal.

Corrigendum: All those corrections made by the author that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper; or the reputation of the authors or the journal.

Retraction: Mentioning the invalid results that affect the reliability of a previously published article. The original article is marked as retracted but remains available to readers, and the retraction statement notifying readers of the invalidity of the published paper is bi-directionally linked to the original published paper.

Addendum: Notification of additional information about a paper. Addenda are published when the editors decide that the addendum is crucial to the reader’s understanding of a significant part of the published contribution. Addenda include Editorial Expression of Concern, which is an editorial statement alerting our readership to serious concerns with the published paper. Editorial Expression of Concern is typically updated with another amendment once further information is available.

Editor’s Note:  An editor’s note is a statement from editors notifying readers of issues related to the published paper. It is an online update made only to the HTML version of record of the published article. Editor’s notes’ are typically updated with another amendment once further information is available.

Conflict of Interest

Financial or non financial contributions to the work being reported should be clearly acknowledged in the manuscript. The corresponding author is responsible for submitting a conflict of interests’ statement on behalf of all the authors of the paper.

Data and Materials Availability

Data sets and material must be understandable, assessed, and widen the conclusions of the manuscript after publication and must be available for the readers of Mesford Publishers Inc. Computer codes involved in the creation or analysis of data must also be mentioned. Unreasonable restrictions on data or material availability may preclude publication. Following aspects must be considered at the time of manuscript submission:

  • Any restrictions on the availability of data, codes, or materials, including fees and restrictions on original data obtained from other sources must be disclosed to the editors as  any Material Transfer Agreements (MTAs) pertaining to data or materials used or produced in this research, that place constraints on providing these data or materials.
  • Patents (whether applications or awards to the authors or home institutions) related to the work should also be declared.
  • Remnant or other rare specimens must be deposited in a public museum or repository and must be available for research.
  • Authors must provide a Data Availability Statement, if the article is accepted for publication; the data availability statement will be published as part of the final article.
  • If author used another source for data collections; it must be appropriately acknowledge.

We persuade authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, in machine-readable format (such as spreadsheets rather than PDFs) whenever possible.

Readers who have difficulty accessing data, are encouraged to contact the editorial office at the following email address contactus@mesfordpublisher.com

Peer Review System

Double-blind Peer Review System: Meaning that the authors and Reviewers are blinded to the identity of each other. Although there are exceptions, the reviewers are also blinded to each other. All submitted articles are subjected to an extensive peer review in consultation with members of the journal’s editorial board and independent external reviewers (usually three reviewers). All reviewers and editors are asked to report any potential conflicts of interest and when those exist, the manuscript is reassigned to a different editor or reviewer.

COPE’s Guideline: Mesford Publishers adheres to COPE’s Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Reviewers are therefore required to respect the confidentiality of the peer review process and not reveal any details of a manuscript or its review during or after the peer-review process, beyond the information released by the journal. If reviewers wish to involve a colleague in the review process, they should first obtain permission from the journal. The Editor should be informed of the names of any individuals who assisted in the review process when the report is returned.

Timely Review: We believe that an efficient editorial process is a valuable service both to our authors and to the scientific community as a whole. We therefore ask reviewers to respond promptly within the number of days agreed. If reviewers anticipate a longer delay than previously expected, we ask them to let us know so that we can keep the authors informed and where necessary, find alternatives.

All manuscripts are assessed rapidly and the decision based on all the peer reviewers’ comments, taken by the journal’s Editor-in-Chief is then conveyed to the author(s). Contributions from Editor-in-Chief are referred to another editor for Suggestions and Review.

Plagiarism

All submitted manuscript are routinely checked via Crossref Similarity Check powered by iThenticate. Where a paper is suspected or discovered to be based on plagiarism. The paper will be corrected or retracted depending on the severity of the case. From high text to low text similarity, individually every article also subjected thoroughly to check with Verbatim, poor paraphrasing, text recycling and reproduction of other words.

A manuscript may have less than 20% overall similarity but there may be 15% similar text taken from a single article. The similarity index in such cases is higher than the approved limit for a single source. Authors are advised to thoroughly rephrase the similar text and properly cite the original source to avoid plagiarism and copyright violation.  Authors must mentioned all details in reference section.

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