Ethics and Policies

Ethical standards exist to ensure high-quality scientific research and publications, public trust in scientific findings, and that people receive credit for their work. Hapres follows Core Practices Guidelines recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Authors, editors, and reviewers are expected to be aware of, and comply with, best practices in research and publication ethics.

Research Involving Human Subjects Ethics Approval

All experiments involving human subjects, including the harvesting of tissues, use of medical records and/or personal biological data, must comply with the Declaration of Helsinki and regulations established by the author’s government and research institution. An approval from the institution’s Review Board or an Ethics Committee should have been obtained before performing the research. A statement detailing the approval, including the name of Review Board or Ethics Committee, the project identification code, and the date of approval should be made available in the manuscript.

Informed Consent

Written informed consent for the research and its related publications must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardian in case of children) for all research involving human subjects. A statement to this effect should be contained in the manuscript.

Personal privacy should be protected and for manuscripts in which a research participant’s identity details, images or videos must be included for scientific purposes, written informed consent for the publication of these details must be obtained from that person (or parent or guardian if the person is incapable). The consent must be for publication of their details under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). In the manuscript a statement of the publication consent should be included.

Clinical Trials Registration

We strongly encourage authors to pre-register clinical trials and add the trial registration number and date of registration in the manuscript abstract. We recommend authors use registries listed on ICMJE website and WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

Research Involving Animals

All research involving vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must have been approved by the author’s institution or by an appropriate ethics committee, and must have been performed in line with the applicable guidelines or standards. Approval must have been received prior to the beginning of the animal research. Details of the approval (including name of ethics committee, project identification code and date of approval) and animal welfare considerations must be included in the manuscript upon submission.

Where unregulated animals are used or ethics approval is not required by a specific institute or committee, authors should make this fact clear in submitted articles and should state reasons why ethical approval was not required. Editors reserve the right to reject any work that they believe has not been performed to a high ethical standard. We encourage authors to comply with ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines when reporting of research using animals.

Research Involving Plants

Experimental research on plants (either cultivated or wild), including collection of plant material, must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. We encourage authors to comply with Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

Data Availability

We encourage authors to make raw data and materials (including but not limited to software, code, models, algorithms, protocols, methods) related to the submitted manuscript available to readers through publicly available registries or supplementary materials. Data uploaded to a register should be referenced in the manuscript. Authors should pay particular attention to patient confidentiality when sharing data.

Reporting Guidelines

We recommend authors refer to the reporting guidelines listed at EQUATOR Network when reporting health research, and check FAIRsharing Portal for prescriptive checklists for reporting biological and biomedical research, where applicable. If the manuscript contains statistical analysis, please refer to SAMPL guidelines. We will ask reviewers to check the statistical methods during peer review.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors are required to declare all conflicts of interest in relation to their work. All manuscripts submitted to Hapres journals should include a “Conflicts of Interest” section detailing conflicts of interest from all authors. Conflicts of Interest can be financial or non-financial, professional, or personal. It can arise in relationship to an institution, organization, or another person. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other fundings. Where authors have no conflicts of interest, the statement should read “The author(s) declare(s) that they have no conflicts of interest”. Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any conflicts of interest and may be excluded from the peer-review process if a conflict of interest exists.

Authorship Criteria

According to ICMJE Recommendations, authorship should be based on following criteria:

Acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading alone, do not qualify for authorship. Those contributors should not be listed as authors but they should be acknowledged.

Authors’ contributions should be specified in the manuscript in “Author Contributions” Section. Changes to authorship cannot be made after a paper is accepted for publication.

Misconduct

All Hapres journals will follow the COPE guidelines outlining how to deal with cases of suspected misconduct. In cases of suspected research or publication misconduct, it may be necessary for the Editor to contact and share manuscripts with third parties, for example, author(s)’ institution(s) and ethics committee(s). Hapres may also seek advice from COPE and discuss anonymized cases in the COPE Forum. All researches involving humans (including human data and human material), animals and plants must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. In cases of proven research misconduct involving published articles, or where the scientific integrity of the article is significantly undermined, articles may be retracted.

Plagiarism

All journals published by Hapres are committed to publishing only original material, i.e., material that has neither been published elsewhere, nor is under review elsewhere. Hapres as a participant of CrossCheck uses the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and text recycling in submitted manuscripts. Manuscripts that are suspected to contain plagiarism will be dealt in line with COPE flowcharts.

Duplicate or Concurrent Submissions

Manuscripts found to have been previously published in peer-reviewed journals or to be under review elsewhere when submitted to Hapres journals, will be immediately returned to the authors. If authors have used text or data from their own previously published work, for example in a review article, this must be clearly indicated in the manuscript with written permissions obtained from the copyright owners.

Data Fabrication and Falsification

Data fabrication and falsification, including manipulation of images, are serious violations of scientific ethics. Manuscript suspected of containing fraudulent results will be immediately returned to the authors, with a description of the suspected fabrications. In the cases where extensive or systematic fabrication of data is suspected, additional actions may be taken according to the guidelines of COPE.

Authorship Disputes

It is authors’ responsibility to determine who is qualified as authorship based on ICMJE Recommendations. Any disputes for authorship should be solved among authors. Changes of authorship before paper acceptance should be submitted to editorial office detailing reasons for the changes, and in company with all authors’ signatures indicating that they agree with the changes. Authorship changes cannot be made after a paper is accepted.

Citation Manipulation

Manuscript should include only citations necessary to document their research and not include gratuitous citations aimed primarily at increasing the number of citations for their previously published papers or papers published in a specific journal.

Corrections and Retractions

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

A notice of correction will be issued 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). In these cases, Hapres will publish a correction that will be linked to the original article. Authors who wish to correct a published article are requested to send relevant details (full citation of the article, and description of the error) to each journal’s editorial office for consideration.

Errors serious enough to invalidate a paper’s results and conclusions may require retraction. Articles that are found to contain unethical behavior may also be retracted. Readers who suspect misconduct regarding published papers should contact journal editorial office with relevant details. In rare cases, if concern about the conduct or integrity of the work reported in a published paper is raised, an Expression of Concern may be published pending the outcomes of a formal investigation by author’s institution. Hapres will follow COPE guidelines in such cases.

Complaints and Appeals

Hapres follows COPE guidelines in dealing with complaints and appeals. Please contact each journal editorial office for such cases.

Peer Review

Hapres journals operate single-blinded peer-review process. All submissions will be initially assessed for compatibility with the aims and scope of the journals. Manuscripts judged to be suitable will be sent to at least two independent expert reviewers to assess scientific quality. The identities of the reviewers will remain anonymous to the authors. All published articles are expected to meet high academic standards.

Archiving

Hapres will deposit the articles that it publishes in Portico to guarantee long-term digital preservation.

Disclaimer

Responsibility for the content published by Hapres in any of its journals, including any opinions expressed therein, rests exclusively with the author(s) of such content. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Hapres (on its own behalf, and on behalf of its staff and members of its editorial board) disclaims responsibility for any and all injury and/or damage (whether financial or otherwise) to persons or property, resulting directly or indirectly from any ideas, methods, instructions or products (including errors in the same) referred to in the content of any of Hapres journals. Readers are encouraged to confirm the information contained herein with other sources.