Publication Ethics

For a peer-reviewed journal, the publication of articles plays an essential role in the development of a coherent network of knowledge. It is, therefore, essential that all publishers, editors, authors, and reviewers, in the process of publishing the journals, conduct themselves in accordance with the highest level of professional ethics and standards.

Authorship

- Acknowledging contributors: All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance or a department chair who provided only general support. Financial and material support should also be acknowledged. Please ensure that anyone acknowledged has granted permission to be listed. 
- Contributorship statement: A contributor ship statement is required for every manuscript submitted and should outline who has contributed what to the planning, conduct, and reporting of the work described in the article. This should include both authors and contributors. 
- Alteration to authorship: Any change in authors after initial submission must be approved by all authors. This applies to additions, deletions, a change of order to the authors’ names or a change to the attribution of contributions. Any alterations must be explained to the Editor. The Editor may contact any of the authors and/or contributors to ascertain whether they have agreed to any alteration.

The author has the following responsibilities:

- Choose a journal that is appropriate.
- All manuscripts should be written in good English. Read and follow the ‘Instructions for Authors’ carefully and prepare manuscripts according to the format given in Guidelines.
- Keep the editor and publisher informed of any change in contact details.
- Respond to the editor and publisher promptly (including returning the copyright agreement and proofs when asked to do so).
- Declare any conflicts of interest.
- Do not submit the same or similar articles to any other journal.
- Submit original work and avoid fragmenting your research to maximize the number of articles submitted.
- Present an accurate account of the research you have performed and give Sufficient details and references to public sources of information to permit your peers to repeat the work.
- Give credit to other people who have helped or influenced your work.
- Obtain permission to reproduce figures, tables or extensive extracts from the text of a source that is copyrighted or owned by someone else.
- Declare sources of research funding, including any grant ID numbers.
- Make sure that co-authors review the manuscript before you submit it and that all authors agree on the order in which authors will be listed.
- Do not list people as co-authors unless they have made a significant contribution to the work and will share responsibility and accountability for the results.
- Do not make significant changes to your manuscript after it has been accepted without informing the journal editor. Significant changes would include new data, new content or a change in the list of authors. Make sure that you notify the journal if an error is found after publication that would require a correction to be printed.

The reviewer has the following responsibilities:

- Our peer review process is confidential and identities of reviewers cannot be revealed.
- All publication decisions are made by the journal's Editors-in-Chief on the basis of the referees' reports.
- Manuscripts with contents outside the scope will not be considered for review.
- The reviewer should not use for his or her own research any part of any data or work reported in submitted and as yet unpublished articles.
- The reviewer should treat the manuscript in a confidential manner. The manuscript should not be disclosed to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.

The editor has the following responsibilities:

-The editor should acknowledge receipt of submitted manuscripts within two working days of receipt and ensure an efficient, fair, and timely review process.
- Manuscripts submitted are first screened by the editors; only those on subject matters within the scope of the Journal are sent to expert referees for evaluation. This two-tier screening process helps to ensure an appropriate focus as well as high scientific quality of the Journal.
- The editor should ensure that submitted manuscripts are processed in a confidential manner, and that no content of the manuscripts will be disclosed to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
- The editor should not disclose the names and other details of the reviewers to a third party without the permission of the reviewers.

Publishing ethics issues

- Avoid plagiarism: Paraphrasing is rewriting other people’s ideas in different words and referencing them. This is better than quoting because too many quotations will lead to a poorly written assignment. To use an author’s exact words, quote (cite) the author by using quotation marks and referencing the quotation. This would be either in the text or in a footnote at the bottom of the page.

- COPE principle: If any duplication, fabrication, plagiarism and other misconduct is identified, COPE guideline will be followed. The RMM uses the COPE flowchart. All changes in authorships should be done according to COPE principles.

Clinical trial registration

Neither the editors nor the publisher are responsible for the opinions expressed by contributors. We reserve the right to copy-edit accepted manuscripts and put them onto our website. Authors should follow the relevant guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals of their institution or national animal welfare committee. For the sake of transparency in regard to the performance and reporting of clinical trials, we endorse the policy of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors to refuse to publish papers on clinical trial results if the trial was not recorded in a publicly-accessible registry at its outset. The register now available is http://www.clinicaltrials.govsponsored by the United States National Library of Medicine, we encourage all potential contributors to register with it. However, in the event that other registers become available, such as http://www.irct.ir, you will be duly notified. A letter of recommendation from each author’s organization should be provided with the contributed article to ensure the privacy and secrecy of research is protected. It is solely recommended that the authors should retain one copy of the text, tables, photographs and illustrations because rejected manuscripts will not be returned to the corresponding author(s) and the editors will not be responsible for loss or damage to photographs and illustrations sustained during mailing. Online submissions Manuscripts should be submitted through the Online Submission System at:http://rmm.mazums.ac.ir. For assistance, authors encountering problems with the Online Submission System may send an email describing the problem to rmm@mazums.ac.ir, rmm.journal@gmail.com, or by telephone: +98-11-33543614. If you submit your manuscript online, do not make a postal contribution. Repeated online submission for the same manuscript is strictly prohibited.

Complaints procedure

Complaints may be made by phone, email, or letter. Informing us in writing by email is advised as it provides the most reliable audit trail. Complaints should ideally be made to the person the complainant is already in contact with over the matter being complained about. Whenever possible complaints will be dealt with by the relevant member of the editorial staff. If that person cannot deal with the complaint he or she will refer it to a section editor or the executive editor.

All complaints will be acknowledged within 10 working days. If possible a full response will be made within four weeks. If this is not possible an interim response will be given within 3 months. Further interim responses will be provided until the complaint is resolved.

Ethical approval of research

We welcome detailed explanations of how investigators and authors have considered and justified the ethical and moral basis of their work. If such detail does not easily fit into the manuscript please provide it in the covering letter or upload it as a supplemental file when submitting the article. We will also be pleased to see copies of explanatory information given to participants. Even if we do not include such detailed information in a final published version, we may make it available to peer reviewers and editorial committees. We already ask peer reviewers to consider and comment on the ethics of submitted work.

Ethics; when reporting studies on human indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (available at http://www.wma.net/e/policy/17-c_e.html). Evidence for approval by a local Ethics Committee (for both human as well as animal studies) must be supplied by the authors on demand. Animal experimental procedures should be as humane as possible and the details o anesthetics and analgesics used should be clearly stated. The journal will not consider any paper which is ethically unacceptable. A statement on ethics committee permission and ethical practices must be included in all research articles under the ‘Materials and Methods’ section.

Online First publication

Most articles accepted for publication in RMM journal are published Online First within 3-4 weeks, often months ahead of publication in a printed journal issue. Online First articles are copy edited, typeset and approved by the author before being published as both typeset PDFs and searchable full text.

Peer reviewers

All articles received are subject to peer review. Double blind reviews are conducted and normally, three to five reviewers are invited for each article including highly qualified professional biostatisticians. The contributor could also provide names of three qualified reviewers who have had experience in the subject of the submitted manuscript, but who are not affiliated with the same institutes as the contributor/s. However, the selection of these reviewers is at the sole discretion of the editor.