Policies, Ethics and Malpractice Statement

JAEPP is committed to upholding the highest editorial ethical standards and best practices in the area of academic publishing.

The Journal will take all possible measures to prevent publication malpractice and will adhere to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and its Core Practices. JAEPP will follow COPE recommendations for investigating violations of publication ethics.

The editorial office asks that all authors submitting their works for publication attest that the submitted works are original and that contributions have not been copied or plagiarized in whole or in part from other works.

The JAEPP asks authors to disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest with their work. Similarly, the JAEPP is committed to the objective and fair peer-review of submitted works. It is committed to preventing actual or potential conflict of interests during the peer review process.

Ethical policies

JAEPP will adhere to processes of COPE to investigate potential ethical violations during the publication process:

JAEPP is vigilant in upholding high ethical standards for research and publishing and will take appropriate actions on forms of misconduct such as (but not limited to):

  • Authorship:Submitting multi-author drafts without the consent of all authors, improper attribution of author credits such as the exclusion of contributing authors, or inclusion of authors making an insufficient contribution.
  • Data fabrication and falsification:Manipulative, deceptive, or willful suppression and misrepresentation of data or omitting confounding or contradictory data.
  • Plagiarism and misuse of intellectual property:Using the expression, language, ideas, and thoughts of existing or previously published research and materials without appropriate reference to the original source and willful misrepresentation of the work of others as one's original work.
  • Non-compliance with common research practices:Failure to comply with established, accepted, and ethical practices in the design and performance of methodological research processes; manipulating procedures or outcomes to obtain pre-determined or desired results, the willful use of inappropriate statistical or analytical methods to distort or misrepresent results and the improper reporting of data.
  • Non-conformity to research guidelines:All research must conform to appropriate institutional, national, and recognized guidelines, standards, and laws. The Journal will not tolerate violations of applicable local regulations and law involving funds, care of animals, human subjects, drugs, biological or chemical materials.

Suspected cases of misconduct should be reported to the JAEPP Editorial office. All cases will be carefully considered in strict confidence. In handling allegations, JAEPP adheres to the guidelines and flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Concerns of any form of publication misconduct, as described here or in other standards and guidelines, such as authorship issues, plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, citation manipulation, figure manipulation, or any other forms of misconduct, should be reported to the JAEPPEditorial Office immediately at [email protected]

Research Involving Animals

Investigators who utilize animals in their research shall provide a statement that research was performed in compliance with applicable institutional, state, national, and international rules, guidelines, and regulations for the humane use of animals in research.

Research Involving Human Subjects

Investigators who utilize human subjects in their research shall provide a statement that research was performed in compliance with the Helsinki accords for Ethical Principles For Medical Research Involving Human Subjects. In addition, investigators shall seek approval for research from their local Institutional Review Board (or equivalent) and utilize informed consent as governed by that IRB.

Corrections and Retractions

JAEPP publishes corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern as appropriately and quickly as possible. We follow the ICMJE and COPE guidelines where applicable.

JAEPP will issue a notice of correction to document and correct substantial errors that appear in online articles when these errors significantly affect the content or understanding of the work reported (e.g., error in data presentation or analysis) or when the error affects the publication's metadata (e.g., misspelling of an author's name). In these cases, JAEPP will publish a correction linked to the original article.

In very rare cases, we may choose to correct the article itself and re-post it online. If that course is taken, a correction notice will also be created to document the changes to the original article.

Authors who wish to alert JAEPP to a situation where a correction may be warranted are requested to contact us with the relevant details (Journal, full citation of the article, and description of the error) at [email protected]

Authorship

JAEPP requires all named authors to have contributed to an article in at least one of the following ways:

  • Made substantial contributions to the design of the work or the analysis or interpretation of data.
  • Made substantial contribution to the written draft as submitted and agreed to the final submitted version, OR completed a substantial contribution to revising it.
  • Can agree to be accountable for all aspects of accuracy or integrity of the work and will be willing and able to answer questions related to any part of the work.

Conflicts of Interest

The JAEPP requests authors provide a conflict of interest statement for each author to warrant no such conflicts exist.

All authors must declare funding sources, whether a study was funded, and the role of funders in any aspects of the work (e.g., research design, data analysis, writing of the submitted work, or influence over publication decisions).

All reviewers must declare any conflicts of interest before agreeing to review a manuscript.

All members of the JAEPP Editorial Board must declare any conflicts of interest before joining the Board. When members of the editorial board submit papers to JAEPP, the peer review procedure is double-blind.

Ethics of the peer-review process

JAEPP is a fully peer-reviewed journal. All papers undergo initial screening by the members of the Editorial Office. Papers that are considered for publication are subjected to a single-blind peer-review process. Most of the papers are reviewed by two or more independent reviewers.

The single-blind peer-review process means that the author is unaware of the reviewers' identity during the review process. Still, the Journal supports open reviewing and gives authors and reviewers the option to make their names and reports publicly available alongside the published paper.

The Journal does not guarantee manuscript acceptance under any circumstances.

The Journal always strives to perform a fast and efficient review process for every paper but cannot guarantee a specific time in which a decision can be made.

Peer reviewers are selected based on subject area expertise and can be drawn from our existing pool of contributors or identified by a search of the Editor. Author-suggested reviewers are also acceptable. However, the specialty chief editors and the members of the editorial office are instructed of being cautious when relying their decisions on these review reports.

All peer reviewers warrant that they have no conflict of interests, provide unbiased opinions on the scientific soundness of the work, and treat the contents of the article with the utmost confidentiality.

The JAEPP encourages all our reviewers to follow the Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Our goal is to enhance research and peer review standards globally.

Part of our mission is to ensure that our reviewing community is equipped with the knowledge to spot potential publication ethical concerns and the tools to report and deal with these concerns. In support of this mission, we encourage peer reviewers and Journal Editors to participate in the free Introduction to Publication Ethics eLearning module offered by COPE.

Copyright and Access

All articles accepted for publication are made available immediately with free access on the JAEPP website without any submission or publication charges.

All JAEPP articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). With this license, authors retain copyright to their manuscript but allow others to share and redistribute the material in any medium or format. However, the license does not permit commercial reuse. First publication rights are granted to the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for subsequent usage of the work. The author' is responsible for bringing an infringement action if so desired.

Advertising Policy

The journal does not accept paid advertising on its website.