Quick Tips on How to Avoid Misconduct in your Submission

Want to avoid misconduct allegations in your submission?

Many authors submit their manuscripts without being aware of the publication ethics which involve them in misconduct allegations and investigations with the editorial office of the journal. This may delay the review process of the manuscript, terminate it, and sometimes the authors get banned and sanctioned.

That’s why we are sharing very simple and quick tips on how to stay away from any misconduct allegations:

1- Prior to submitting your paper, check the plagiarism percentage using professional software and reduce the plagiarism by writing your own words, using quotations, and adding the proper citations.

2- Ensure that your manuscript has not been published or under review in another journal and state it clearly in a cover letter along with your submission.

3- You should receive a formal notification from the journal that your manuscript was rejected/withdrawn before you decide to resubmit it to another journal.

4- Never cite irrelevant publications whether they are yours or a certain journal’s publications. This will be interpreted that you are manipulating in order to increase the number of citations.

5- Do not ever introduce fabricated/falsified data. https://rasayely.com/data-fabrication-falsification-do-not-ever-do/

6- Add all contributors to your author list as coauthors and never add them due to financial contributions or gift authorship.

7- Get all coauthors’ approval before submitting the manuscript.

8- It is better not to change the author list during the submission or publication of your paper unless there is a solid and concrete new contribution added to the manuscript by a new contributor.

9- It is better to add a section in the manuscript clarifying the authors’ contributions.

10- Clearly reveal any potential conflicts of interest.

11- Do not divide one research into several manuscripts to increase the number of your publications.

12- Do not use figures that have been published before or manipulate them. Instead, you must use your own figures. If it is necessary to use a published figure, you will need to get permission from the copyright holder.

13- Ensure that ethical approval from your institution is presented in the manuscript if there were animal or human subjects involved.

14- Obtain informed consent from the patient and submit it along with your submission if any of the patient’s details will be revealed.

So, these were some helpful tips. What do you think about them? Also, if you have previous experience, it will be great to share it in a comment.

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Further Readings and Resources:

• https://www.biomedcentral.com/getpublished/writing-resources/publication-ethics
• https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/publishing-ethics
• https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/editors/publishing-ethics-for-journals/4176
• https://editorresources.taylorandfrancis.com/publishing-ethics-for-editors/
• https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/ethical-publishing-practice
• http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html
• https://publicationethics.org/core-practices