Open Access Policy

To make public accessibility free to research with the aim of a greater global exchange of knowledge, all MUMS journals provide open access to their published articles.

Fee

Some of MUMS journals levy a fee for submitting or accepting an article.

Copyright Notice

Authors of the published articles in all MUMS journals retain the copyright of their articles and will be able to archive pre-print, post-print, and publisher's versions.

All Articles published in MUMS journals are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which allows users including authors of articles to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, in addition to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, as long as the author and original source are properly cited or credited.

Archiving

Digital Archiving: In addition to the indexing database journals utilize digital archive via the Eprint Repository to guarantee long-term digital preservation and restoration.

Ethical Policy (Compliance with ICMJE Recommendations)

All MUMS journals follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)‘s Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. Therefore it is recommended on their websites that authors should read these recommendations before their manuscript submission.

If research misconduct, fraud, or plagiarism is suspected, editors will follow the COPE guidelines and reserve the rights to inform authors or their institutions.

Conflicts-of-Interest Statement

According to ICMJE, conflicts of interest occurs when a financial or personal relationship exists between any participant in the peer review and publication process – authors, reviewers, editors, or editorial board members of journals – and might bias or be seen to bias fulfilling their role.

At first, any conflict of interest in a given manuscript should be reported by submitting the ICMJE form for Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest on the Journal website. Then the journal utilizes the COPE workflow to transparently handle it.

Authorship

We stick to the ICMJE definition of author and contributor based on its four criteria as follow:

“Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND “

“Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND”

 “Final approval of the version to be published; AND”

 “Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.”

We required the authors to understand and accept the ethical policy especially:

Declaration of interests—it is important to declare the funding that made the research possible.

Registering clinical trials—clinical trials should be registered in publicly accessible registries.

Respecting confidentiality—protecting patients from being recognized if used in research and publication.

Protecting research subjects, patients, and experimental animals.

Regulations for Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Section A: Publication and authorship 

All submitted papers are subject to a strict peer-review process by at least two reviewers that are experts in the area of the particular paper. Deputy Editors and Editor-in-Chief select the reviewers.

The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, originality, readability, statistical validity, and language.

The possible decisions include acceptance, minor revisions, major revision, or rejection.

If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.

Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.

The paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism.

No research can be included in more than one publication, whether within the same journal or in another journal.

Section B: Authors' responsibilities

Authors must certify that their manuscript is their original work.

Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere, or even submitted and been reviewed in another journal.

The authors must participate in the peer-review process and follow the comments.

Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.

All Authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research. The level of their contribution also must be defined in the "Authors' Contributions" section of the article.

The authors must state that all data in the paper are real and authentic. The authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest.

The authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript.

Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.

The authors must state that informed consent was obtained from all human adult participants and the parents or legal guardians of minors and include the name of the appropriate institutional review board that approved the project.

Authors are recommended to conform to the Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines for reporting animal studies.

Section C: Peer review/responsibility for the reviewers

Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.

Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author. No self-knowledge of the author(s) must affect their comments and decision.

Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in 500 to 1000 words.

Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.

Reviewers should also call to the Editor-in-Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Section D: Editorial responsibilities

Editors (Deputy Editors or Editor-in-Chief) have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.

Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.

Editors should always consider the needs of the authors and the readers when attempting to improve the publication.

Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.

Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.

Editors should have a clear picture of research funding sources.

Editors should base their decisions solely one the papers' importance, originality, clarity, and relevance to the publication's scope.

Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.

Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers

Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to international accepted ethical guidelines.

Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.

Editors should act if they suspect misconduct, whether a paper is published or unpublished, and make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem.

Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions; they should have proof of misconduct.

Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers, and board members.

Editors must not change their decision after submitting a decision (especially after reject or accept) unless they have a serious reason. 

Section E: Publishing Ethics Issues

All editorial members, reviewers, and authors must confirm and obey rules defined by ICMJE.

The corresponding author is the main owner of the article so she/he can withdraw the article when it is incomplete (before entering the review process or when a revision is asked for).

Authors cannot make major changes in the article after acceptance without a serious reason.

All editorial members and authors must publish any kind of corrections honestly and completely.

Based on Iran Ministry of Health & Medical Education regulation and rules, all submitted manuscripts to the journals should be registered with Iran National Committee for Ethics in Biomedical Research and have an Ethics Committee Approval Code which should be submitted along with the manuscript and mentioned in the  manuscript materials and methods section.

Advertising Policies

As a matter of policy, MUMS will sell advertising space in its publications when there is no interference with the mission or objectives of MUMS or its publications. All advertisements must be clearly relevant to the practice of medicine.

All advertisements are subject to approval of the Department of Scientific Resources of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences (MUMS) as publisher, which reserves the right to reject or cancel any advertisement at any time. Advertisement in MUMS publications does not imply a guarantee nor an endorsement by MUMS or MUMS publications of the advertised product or the claims made in such advertising.

The trademark, logo, and name of the advertiser must be displayed in all advertisements in MUMS publications. All pharmaceutical products and information in advertisements must comply with all applicable laws and regulations in Iran.