Scientific Misconduct
We take all possible measures to avoid misconduct. Articles submitted to the journal are first internally evaluated by the editorial team and if any such article appears for which the editors have a concern, that the submitted paper has material that is indicative of misconduct in research, publication and that may affect the journal policies on ethical grounds. The assigned editor is recommended to discuss the case with the board members and other associates of the ethical committee upon the Chief Editor’s recommendation. Even after discussion within the team and also with the author, if the issue is not resolved and the author fails to justify it. It may result in the rejection of the specific manuscript.
At any instance, during the review process, if the reviewer finds out regarding data fabrication, duplicate publication or ethical concerns regarding a manuscript may it be regarding the ethical approval or patient consent, etc., will be directed by the reviewer to the handling Editor. The case will be investigated by the handling Editor. If the claim proved appropriate and no satisfactory explanation received from the authors, the manuscript will be rejected immediately without any further notice and strict actions will be taken against the authors.
Data Fabrication, Falsification & Retraction
It includes data fabrication; data falsification, including deceptive manipulation of images; and plagiarism. When scientific misconduct is suspected, or concerns are raised about the integrity of work described in submitted or published papers, the editor initiates appropriate procedures according to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. The procedure involves investigation at the authors. If then scientific misconduct is proved through the investigation, the retraction process is followed. Expressions of concern and retracted articles would prominently be labeled in all its forms (abstract, full text, PDF). Retracted articles would remain in the public domain. The validity of previous work by the author of a fraudulent paper cannot be assumed.
Citation Manipulation
Submitted manuscripts that are found to include citations whose primary purpose is to increase the number of citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal, will incur citation manipulation penalty.
Improper Author Contribution or Attribution
We expect that the corresponding author mentions the names of all other authors and contributors in the manuscript and if not so by the time of acceptance the final copy-proof is circulated between all the co-authors. So, those who made a contribution to the study are listed appropriately, and also the authorship sequence is re-checked to avoid all sorts of errors.
Redundant Publications
In the case of publication, the Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan has been strictly monitoring the studies and their outcomes and discourage redundant publications. Just to increase the publication number authors usually divide the study outcomes into several small chunks and use it in different studies. However, if the data is vast and several parameters have been used that cannot be summarized in one paper only then such activity can be justifiable but the study demographics remain plagiarized and such results cannot be published.
Penalty
For any of the proven misconducts, Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan follows the below-mentioned rules:
- Immediate rejection of the manuscript with misconduct.
- Immediate rejection of any manuscript by any of the authors of the rejected manuscript.
- Minimum 2 years of prohibition against all of the authors. Same measures will be taken against the members of the editorial board (if found involved in such submission to Journal of Nurses and Midwives Pakistan).
- The publisher reserves the right to impose additional restrictions beyond those described above
