Publication Ethics

Journal of Public Health and Pharmacy

Journal of Public Health and Pharmacy (JPHP) is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics, research integrity, transparency, accountability, and editorial independence. The journal follows the principles and guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics when assessing suspected research or publication misconduct.

Manuscripts are evaluated according to their relevance to the JPHP Focus and Scope, originality, scientific contribution, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and validity of analysis and interpretation. Editorial decisions are made independently of commercial, financial, institutional, political, professional, or personal influence.

1. Research Involving Human Participants

Research involving human participants, identifiable human materials, biological specimens, personal information, medical records, pharmacy records, or identifiable data must comply with applicable institutional and national requirements and internationally recognized ethical principles.

• The approving ethics committee or institutional review board must be identified.
• The ethics approval or reference number and approval date must be reported where applicable.
• Authors must explain how informed consent was obtained.
• An approved waiver of consent must be identified and justified.
• Participant privacy, confidentiality, and data protection must be maintained.
• Consent for publication is required when an individual may be identified from text, images, recordings, quotations, clinical details, medication histories, or case information.
• Research involving vulnerable populations must describe the additional protections applied.

2. Research Involving Animals

Research involving animals must comply with applicable institutional, national, and international animal-welfare standards.

• The approving animal ethics committee must be identified.
• The approval or reference number and approval date must be reported where applicable.
• Authors must describe measures used to minimize pain, distress, and suffering.
• Appropriate animal care, anesthesia, analgesia, and humane endpoints must be reported.
• Replacement, reduction, and refinement principles should be applied whenever scientifically and ethically feasible.
• Animal species, strain, sex, age, housing, intervention, dosage, and relevant welfare procedures should be reported transparently.

3. Clinical Trials, Interventions, and Study Registration

Clinical trials and other prospectively assigned health interventions should be registered in a publicly accessible trial registry before participant enrollment whenever required by applicable standards.

• The registry name, registration number, and registration date must be reported.
• Prospective registration is expected for randomized clinical trials.
• Retrospective registration must be explained and does not guarantee editorial acceptance.
• Primary and secondary outcomes should be consistent with the registered protocol.
• Protocol deviations and changes to outcomes or analyses must be disclosed and justified.
• Drug names, dosage forms, doses, routes, treatment duration, comparators, and relevant safety monitoring should be reported where applicable.

4. Reporting Standards

Authors must use the reporting guideline appropriate to the study design. Complete and transparent reporting is necessary for scientific evaluation, replication, evidence synthesis, and responsible application in public health and pharmacy practice.

• CONSORT for randomized controlled trials
• STROBE for observational studies
• PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses
• PRISMA-ScR for scoping reviews
• COREQ or SRQR for qualitative research
• CHEERS for health-economic evaluations
• ARRIVE for animal research
• STARD for diagnostic-accuracy studies
• TIDieR for intervention descriptions
• Other applicable EQUATOR Network guidelines or extensions

The journal may request a completed reporting checklist and flow diagram during initial screening, peer review, or revision.

5. Responsibilities of Editors

Editors are responsible for maintaining fair, confidential, independent, and evidence-based editorial procedures.

• Base decisions on scientific quality, relevance to scope, originality, methodological rigor, reporting quality, and ethical compliance.
• Evaluate manuscripts without discrimination based on personal characteristics, nationality, institution, professional position, or commercial status.
• Maintain confidentiality of manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, ethical documents, and editorial records.
• Protect reviewer identities under the journal's double-blind review model.
• Declare conflicts of interest and recuse themselves when impartiality may be compromised.
• Select reviewers with appropriate scientific, clinical, public-health, pharmacy, statistical, or methodological expertise.
• Prevent coercive citation, peer-review manipulation, authorship manipulation, and inappropriate editorial influence.
• Address complaints, appeals, and integrity concerns fairly and consistently.
• Take proportionate corrective action when reliable evidence indicates a problem in the scholarly record.
• Ensure that Article Processing Charge considerations do not influence editorial decisions.

6. Responsibilities of Reviewers

• Provide objective, constructive, respectful, independent, and timely assessments.
• Accept review assignments only when they have appropriate expertise and sufficient time.
• Treat manuscripts, supplementary files, data, reports, and correspondence as confidential.
• Declare financial, professional, institutional, academic, collaborative, commercial, or personal conflicts of interest.
• Decline an assignment when impartiality may be compromised.
• Report suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabrication, falsification, unethical research, image manipulation, or other integrity concerns confidentially to the editor.
• Avoid personal criticism, discriminatory statements, hostile language, and unsupported allegations.
• Recommend citations only when directly relevant and scientifically necessary.
• Not use unpublished information for personal research, professional advantage, commercial benefit, or academic competition.
• Not upload confidential manuscripts or unpublished data to public artificial-intelligence systems.

7. Responsibilities of Authors

• Submit original work that has not been published and is not under consideration elsewhere.
• Report methods, data, analyses, results, limitations, adverse events, and conclusions accurately.
• Retain and provide supporting data, records, ethics documentation, or analytical files when reasonably requested.
• Provide appropriate attribution and accurate, verifiable references.
• Obtain and report all required ethical approvals, registrations, permissions, and consent.
• Disclose funding sources, grant numbers, funder roles, and financial or nonfinancial conflicts of interest.
• Ensure that every listed author meets the journal's authorship criteria.
• Obtain approval from all authors for the submitted version and author order.
• Disclose relevant use of generative artificial intelligence.
• Inform the journal promptly when a significant error, safety issue, or ethical concern is identified.
• Participate honestly and constructively in peer review, revision, proof correction, and post-publication correspondence.

8. Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship must reflect substantial scholarly contribution and accountability for the work. All listed authors must approve the manuscript and accept responsibility for their contributions.

• Authors should satisfy accepted authorship criteria based on substantial contribution, drafting or critical revision, final approval, and accountability.
• Author contributions should be described using appropriate CRediT roles.
• Guest, honorary, gift, purchased, coercive, ghost, omitted, or unauthorized authorship is prohibited.
• Individuals who contributed but do not meet authorship criteria should be recognized in the acknowledgments with their permission.
• Changes to authorship after submission require written justification and approval from all affected authors.
• Artificial-intelligence tools must not be listed as authors.

9. Conflicts of Interest and Funding

Authors, reviewers, editors, and Editorial Board members must disclose relationships or interests that could influence, or reasonably appear to influence, their judgment or conduct.

Relevant interests may include:

• Financial relationships, grants, employment, consultancy, honoraria, patents, royalties, or stock ownership
• Institutional or collaborative relationships
• Personal or family relationships
• Academic or professional competition
• Intellectual-property interests
• Commercial relationships involving medicines, devices, diagnostic tools, healthcare services, or pharmaceutical products
• Political, religious, professional, or ideological commitments relevant to the work

Authors must state the funding source, grant number, and the role of the funder in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, and publication decisions. When no specific funding was received, this must be stated clearly.

10. Data Availability, Transparency, and Reproducibility

JPHP promotes transparent, reproducible, and responsible research practices. Authors should provide sufficient methodological and analytical detail for scientific evaluation and replication.

• A Data Availability Statement must be included.
• Data availability, access conditions, restrictions, and repository identifiers should be reported.
• De-identified datasets, analytical code, instruments, protocols, and supplementary materials should be shared when ethically, legally, and contractually permissible.
• Restrictions based on participant consent, confidentiality, privacy, commercial agreements, or institutional requirements must be explained.
• Data fabrication, selective deletion, concealed exclusions, inappropriate imputation, or misleading data presentation is prohibited.

11. Plagiarism and Similarity Screening

Submitted manuscripts are subject to similarity screening. Authors must provide the required similarity report, and the similarity index must comply with the limit specified in the JPHP Author Guidelines.

A similarity percentage alone does not establish plagiarism or originality. Editors assess the nature, source, location, extent, attribution, and context of matched material.

Plagiarism, including unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, translation plagiarism, self-plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, and reuse of previously published material without proper disclosure, is prohibited.

12. Artificial Intelligence

Generative artificial intelligence must not replace human scholarly judgment, authorship responsibility, editorial decision-making, or independent peer review.

• Authors must disclose applicable AI-assisted activities according to journal policy.
• Authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, references, confidentiality, interpretation, and integrity of submitted content.
• AI tools must not be listed as authors.
• AI-generated references, data, analyses, images, or interpretations must not be presented without verification.
• Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts or unpublished data to public AI systems.
• AI-generated or AI-assisted content must be checked for factual error, fabricated references, bias, inappropriate reuse, and misleading interpretation.

13. Research and Publication Misconduct

JPHP does not tolerate conduct that undermines the reliability, integrity, transparency, or fairness of scholarly publishing.

14. Handling Ethical and Integrity Concerns

The journal reviews credible concerns confidentially, fairly, consistently, and without presuming misconduct before relevant evidence has been assessed.

1. Initial assessment: the journal evaluates whether the concern is specific, credible, relevant, and within its responsibility.
2. Clarification: authors or other relevant parties may be asked to provide explanations, original data, ethics approvals, protocols, records, reports, or supporting evidence.
3. Independent advice: the journal may seek methodological, statistical, ethical, clinical, pharmaceutical, legal, or subject expertise.
4. Institutional coordination: where appropriate, the journal may contact an institution, ethics committee, research-integrity office, funder, repository, regulator, publisher, or other responsible body.
5. Editorial action: proportionate action is taken according to the evidence, seriousness, and stage of publication.

15. Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions

When a problem is identified after publication, JPHP will determine the appropriate action according to the nature, seriousness, evidence, and effect of the problem on the reliability, validity, safety, and interpretation of the article.

• Correction: used when an error does not invalidate the principal findings but requires a transparent amendment.
• Expression of Concern: used when serious concerns exist but available evidence is incomplete or an investigation remains unresolved.
• Retraction: used when findings are unreliable, publication is redundant, misconduct is established, or serious ethical, safety, legal, or methodological problems invalidate the article.
• Removal: considered only in exceptional circumstances involving legal requirements, serious privacy concerns, defamation, significant safety risks, or unlawful content.

Retraction and correction notices will identify the affected article, explain the reason for the action, state who initiated the action where appropriate, remain freely accessible, and be permanently linked to the published record.

16. Manuscript Withdrawal

A manuscript is not considered withdrawn until the JPHP Editorial Office has reviewed the formal request and issued written confirmation. Suspected misconduct, duplicate submission, authorship dispute, or another integrity concern may continue to be assessed after withdrawal where necessary.

17. Complaints and Appeals

Authors and other parties may raise a complaint regarding editorial procedure, reviewer conduct, confidentiality, discrimination, conflicts of interest, citation coercion, authorship handling, publication charges, or research-integrity procedures.

Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe it resulted from a material factual error, substantial misunderstanding, procedural irregularity, inappropriate application of journal policy, or overlooked evidence. Disagreement with reviewer judgment alone is not sufficient.

Complaints and appeals will be assessed by an editor or qualified person who was not materially involved in the matter when independent review is necessary.

18. Confidentiality and Records

Manuscripts, reviewer reports, author responses, ethical documents, personal information, allegations, investigations, data files, and editorial correspondence are treated as confidential and accessed only by persons with an appropriate editorial, institutional, regulatory, or legal role.

JPHP retains appropriate editorial records to document decisions, revisions, reviewer activity, ethics assessments, correspondence, complaints, appeals, corrections, and integrity investigations in accordance with applicable institutional and legal requirements.