PUBLICATION ETHICS

Journal Orthopaedi and Traumatology Surabaya (JOINTS) is following the International Committee for Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The aims of JOINTS is to publish articles on various topic of musculoskeletal basic science and translational research, microvascular and soft tissue reconstruction, upper limb condition and management, lower limb condition and management, joint reconstruction and replacements, biomaterial and orthopedic tissue engineering, musculoskeletal oncology, pediatric musculoskeletal, sports medicine, rehabilitation, traumatology, and spine.

Universitas Airlangga as the publisher of Journal Orthopaedi and Traumatology Surabaya (JOINTS) takes its duties of guardianship over all publishing stages exceptionally seriously, and we recognize our ethical and other responsibilities. We are committed to ensuring that advertising, reprint, or additional commercial revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions. Editorial Board will assist in communications with other journals and/or publishers where this is useful and necessary.

The following statement is based on COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and clarifies the ethical behavior of all parties involved in the act of publishing an article in this journal, including the author, the editor, and the reviewer. 

Duties of Authors

1. Submission :

Authors must submit all elements of their manuscripts online at JOINTS Submission. Hard-copy submissions will NOT be considered or returned.

Manuscripts should follow the submission guidelines of the journal. Authors are also encouraged to apply acceptable checklists in this journal, i.e. equator network.

2. Human and Animal Subjects: 

The research being reported should have been conducted ethically and responsibly and should comply with all relevant legislation. For manuscripts reporting medical studies involving human participants, authors must provide a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study, and that the study conforms to recognized standards (for example, the Declaration of Helsinki). Research involving animals should be conducted with the same rigor as research on humans. The authors should implement the 3Rs principles (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement). The authors must describe the detailed journals regarding study design and statistical analysis, experimental procedures, experimental animals, housing, and husbandry. Authors must inform that ethical and legal approval was obtained before the start of the study and state the name of the body approving. The authors should also state whether experiments were performed following relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations.

3. Reporting Manuscript’s Standards : 

The authors must present an accurate account of the original article (research, review, or case report) performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Authors should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate data manipulation. Authors should strive to describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed by others. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and will be unacceptable.

4. Originality and Plagiarism: 

Authors must ensure that they have written manuscripts that adhere to publication requirements and that the submitted work is original, is not plagiarized, and has not been published elsewhere. The manuscript should not be submitted concurrently to more than one publication unless the editors have agreed to co-publication. Relevant previous work and publications, both by other researchers and the authors’ own, should be properly acknowledged and referenced. The primary literature should be cited where possible. Original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations.

5. Duplicate and Redundant Publications: 

Authors must avoid duplicate publication, which is reproducing verbatim content from their other publications. Authors should not submit and are also expected will not publish redundant manuscripts or manuscripts describing the same research in more than one journal. Multiple publications arising from a single research project should be clearly identified as such, and the primary publication should be referenced

6. Acknowledgment of Sources: 

All sources of data used in the research and cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should be properly identified. The authors must present a proper acknowledgment of the work of others.

7. Authorship of the Paper: 

The authorship of research publications should accurately reflect individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting. Authors ensure that all the authors have seen and agreed to the submitted version of the manuscript and their inclusion of names as co-authors. Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. Others who have made significant contributions must be listed as co-authors. In cases where major contributors are listed as authors, those who made less substantial or purely technical contributions to the research or publication are listed in an acknowledgment section.

8. Fundamental Errors in Published Works:

In case the author discovers an error or inaccuracy in their submitted manuscript, the author should promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to correct the paper.

9. Data Access and Retention

Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable.

10. Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest

Authors have to clearly disclose any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be supposed to influence the results or interpretation of manuscripts. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Duties of Editor

1. Publication Decisions: 

Editors are accountable and should take responsibility for everything they publish. Editors should apply consistent standards in their processes so that they have procedures and policies in place to ensure the quality of the material they publish and maintain the integrity of the published record. Based on the review report of the editorial board, the editor can accept, reject, or request modifications to the manuscript. Editors should ensure timely peer review and publication and avoid unnecessary delays. The editors may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism that encourage maximum transparency and complete, honest reporting.

2. Review of Manuscripts: 

The editor must ensure that each manuscript is initially evaluated by the editor for originality. Editors should critically assess the ethical conduct of studies in humans and animals. The editor should organize and use peer review fairly and wisely. Editors should explain their peer review processes in the information for authors and also indicate which parts of the journal are peer-reviewed. The editor should use appropriate peer reviewers for papers that are considered for publication by selecting people with sufficient expertise and avoiding those with conflicts of interest.

3. Fair Play: 

Editors should make fair and unbiased decisions independent of commercial considerations and ensure a fair and appropriate peer-review process. The editor must ensure that each manuscript received by the journal is reviewed for its intellectual content without regard to the sex, gender, race, religion, citizenship, etc., of the authors. Editors are in a powerful position to make decisions on publications, which makes it very important that this process is as fair and unbiased as possible.

4. Confidentiality: 

Editors should ensure confidential handling of manuscripts, with no details being disclosed to anyone except the peer reviewers without the permission of the author. If discussions between an author, editor, and peer reviewer have taken place in confidence, they should remain in confidence unless explicit consent has been given by all parties or unless there are exceptional circumstances (eg, when they might help substantiate claims of intellectual property theft during peer review). 

5. Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest

The editor of the Journal will not use unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript for his own research without the written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained by editors as a result of handling the manuscript will be kept confidential and not used for their personal advantage. 

Duties of Reviewers

Manuscripts submitted for publication in the JOINTS journals are subjected to double-blind peer review. Double-blind reviewing maintains the authors' and the reviewers' identities, not disclosing their names to each other. The anonymity of authors and reviewers ensures an objective and unbiased assessment of the manuscript.

1. Confidentiality: 

Information regarding manuscripts submitted by authors should be kept confidential and treated as privileged information. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.

2. Standards of Objectivity: 

Review of submitted manuscripts must be done objectively, and the reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. The results reported in the manuscript must be original and authentic work of the authors. They should be devoid of any plagiarism, and the material should not have been published earlier. Experiments and other analyses should meet the recognized technical standards and must be described systematically. The manuscript must provide a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study, and that the study conforms to recognized standards. The research presented in a manuscript should facilitate reaching accurate conclusions from the statistics. Methods, experiments, and reagents should be documented in detail. Authors should present and interpret the results and conclusions appropriately and comprehensively, clearly explaining the results and outcomes of their study. An incomplete interpretation of the results may result in the rejection of the manuscript. Furthermore, the manuscript should be written in English in a clear, direct, and active style, free from grammatical errors and other linguistic inconsistencies. All pages should be numbered sequentially, facilitating the reviewing and editing of the manuscript (see duties of Authors).

3. Promptness: 

The reviewers should respond in a reasonable time frame. If they cannot return a review within the proposed time, they should inform the journal promptly and explain they require an extension. In the event that a reviewer feels it is not possible for him/her to complete a review of the manuscript within a stipulated time, then this information must be communicated to the editor so that the manuscript can be sent to another reviewer.

4. Contribution to Editorial Decisions

Peer review assists editors in making editorial decisions and, through editorial communications with authors, may assist authors in improving the manuscripts. Peer review is a heart of a scientific endeavor.

5.  Acknowledgement of Sources

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that is an observation, derivation, or argument that has been reported in previous publications should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also notify the editors of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other manuscript (published or unpublished) of which they have personal knowledge.

6. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest

Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider 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.