Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

AKSONA is an open access, peer-reviewed, and scientific journal published by the Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Airlangga, Indonesia. AKSONA journal publishes original research articles, review articles, and case reports focused on neurology and neuroscience: epilepsy, headache, movement disorder, neurobehavior, neurodegenerative, neuroepidemiology, neuroimmunology, neuroinfection, neurooncology, neuroophthalmology, neurophysiology, neurorehabilitation, neurovascular, peripheral nerve, pain, and pain intervention.

Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Airlangga, as publisher of the AKSONA, takes its duties of guardianship over all publishing stages exceptionally seriously, and we recognize our ethical and other responsibilities. The university committed to ensuring that advertising, reprint, or additional commercial revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions. In addition, the Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Airlangga and the Editorial Board will assist in communications with other journals and/or publishers where this proves useful and necessary. This statement is adopted under Committe on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Duties of Authors:

Reporting Standards: Authors must present an accurate account of the original article (research, review, or case report) performed and objectively discuss its significance. Authors should honestly present their results without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate data manipulation. A manuscript contains sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Review articles should be accurate, objective, and comprehensive, while editorial 'opinion' or perspective pieces should be identified. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Manuscripts should follow the submission guidelines of the journal.
Original and Plagiarism: Authors must ensure that submitted work is original 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. 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.
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.
Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publications: Authors should not generally submit the same manuscripts to more than one journal. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Multiple publications from a single research project should be clearly identified, with the primary publication cited.
Acknowledgment of Sources: Authors should acknowledge all data sources used in the research and cite publications that have influenced the nature of the reported work. Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given.
Authorship of The Paper: The authorship of research publications should accurately reflect individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting. Authorship should be limited to those who have contributed significantly to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. Others who have made significant contributions must be listed as co-authors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the manuscript and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission for publication.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
Fundamental Errors in Published Works: Suppose the author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work. In that case, the author must promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
Hazards and Human or Animal Subjects: The author should clearly identify in the manuscript if the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use.

Duties of Editor

Publication Decisions: The editor should take responsibility for everything they publish and have procedures and policies in place to ensure the equality 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. The validation of the work in question and its importance to researchers and readers must always drive such decisions. The editor 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. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.
Review of Manuscript: The editor must ensure that they editor for originality. The editor should organize and use peer review fairly and wisely. Editors should explain their peer review processes in the information for authors and indicate which journal parts are peer-reviewed. The editor should use appropriate peer reviewers for manuscript considered for publication by selecting people with sufficient expertise and avoiding those with conflicts of interest.
Fair Play: The editor should make fair, unbiased decisions and ensure a fair, appropriate peer-review process. The editor must ensure that each manuscript the journal receives is reviewed for its intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, political philosophy, etc. 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.
Confidentiality: The editor must ensure that information regarding manuscripts submitted by the authors is kept confidential. Editors should critically assess any potential breaches of data protection and patient confidentiality. Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher.
Disclosure and Conflict of Interest: Editors should guard the integrity of the published record by issuing corrections and retractions when needed and pursuing suspected or alleged research and publication misconduct. The editor of the Journal will not use unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript for his research without author’s written consent. And also, editors should not be involved in decisions about papers in which they have a conflict of interest.

Duties of Reviewers

Contribution to editorial decisions: Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions, and the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper. Peer review is essential component to formal scholarly communication, and lies at the heart of the scientific method.
Promptness: The reviewers should respond in a reasonable time frame. Any invited reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should immediately notify the editors and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.
Confidentiality: Information regarding manuscripts submitted by authors should be kept confidential and be treated as privileged information. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
Standards of objectivity: Review submitted manuscripts must be done objectively, and the reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. The reviewers should follow journals’ instructions on the specific feedback required unless there are good reasons not to. The reviewers should be constructive in their reviews and provide feedback that will help the authors to improve their manuscript. The reviewer should make clear which suggested additional investigations are essential to support claims made in the manuscript under consideration and which will strengthen or extend the work.
Acknowledgement of sources: Reviewers must ensure that authors have acknowledged all data sources used in the research. Reviewers should identify relevant published work that the author’s have not cited. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported 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.
Disclosure and conflict of interest: Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without author's express written consent. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts with conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers. In the case of double-blind review, if they suspect the identity of the author(s) notify the journal if this knowledge raises any potential conflict of interest.