Authorship Policy

According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the credit for authorship should be based on the following:

 •Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;
 • Drafting the work or revising it critically for the development of important intellectual content;
 • Final approval of the revision to be published;
 • Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work by ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In addition to this, an author should also be able to identify the co-authors contributing to other specific parts of the manuscript. Therefore, the authors should have the confidence of their co-authors in maintaining the integrity of their contribution to the study.

Those who meet the above 4 requisite criteria are designated as the authors and the ones who do not meet the requirements of the above criteria but indirectly assist the authors in the production of the study should be recognized in the acknowledgments section of the manuscript.

Ethical and Legal Considerations

A manuscript intended for submission should adhere to and follow the ethical and legal regulations if required. A cover letter as a declaration of information related to prior or duplicate publication/submission, as well as the originality of the manuscript, and any other information that the authors want to convey to the editor is considered mandatory to complete the submission process. The principal investigator or the corresponding author must confirm that he or she has complete access to the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity and accuracy of the data analysis, as well as the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. The authors should declare that the manuscript has not been published previously, or is under consideration for publication elsewhere, in whole or in part. Apart from the above, ethical considerations, agreement/permission, if any patient or animal is included in the study, should be clearly mentioned in the manuscript.

Conflicts of Interest (COI) Statement

Please fill out the ICMJE Conflicts of Interest form which is available at http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest and send it to us along with the submission. Also, please ensure that a Conflicts of Interest (COI) statement has been added soon after the conclusion and/or acknowledgment section.

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgment of contributions to a research project that does not merit authorship is encouraged for all our journals as per the ICMJE guidelines that state: ‘All others who contributed to the work who are not authors should be named in the acknowledgment, and what they did should be described. However, it is important that all those who are listed this way, be aware of it.

Contributorship

It is recommended that authors mention their contribution to the project, indicating clearly how each author has contributed to the paper.

Order of Authors

The ICMJE guidelines state that the order of authorship should be a joint decision of the co-authors. Authors must be able to explain the reason why they have been listed in a particular order.

*Although there is no limit on the number of authors for most types of manuscripts, for the short type of articles, we prefer a maximum of three authors.

Copyright Policy

Openventio Publishers follows a non-exclusive copyright license as created by Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License term which permits the author to publish, reproduce, distribute, display, translate, and reprint the article in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

The authors are requested to enclose a copyright transfer statement that they “transfer, assign, or otherwise convey all copyright ownership, including any, and all rights incidental exclusively to the journal, in the event that such work is published by the journal along with their submission”.

Patient(s)/Participant(s) Consent Statement

Please ensure that the consent statement is provided at the end of the manuscript. Authors are requested to kindly retain the signed consent form(s) (if applicable) and shall produce it upon request by our review board/editorial board members.

*Note: Patient consent (for images and photographs in a case study) must not be confused with participant’s consent (approval for involvement in a study, e.g. statistical/observational)

Research Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board (IRB) Approval

Authors must ensure that only ethical or IRB-approved (if applicable) research work is submitted. If concerns regarding the credibility of the article are raised, authors may be required to produce evidence of ethical research approval by the editors and must be answerable to questions concerning the ethical aspects (such as the concerns of research participants or which methods were employed to minimize the patients or animal sufferings).

Animal Ethics and Welfare Guidelines

Manuscripts will be considered for publication only if the work detailed therein:

• Follows international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for humane animal treatment and complies with relevant legislation
• Has been approved by the ethics review committee at the institution or practice at which the studies were conducted where such a committee exists;
• For studies using client-owned animals, demonstrates a high standard (best practice) of veterinary care and involve informed client consent;
• Sign a letter certifying that legal and ethical requirements have been met with regard to the humane treatment of animals described in the study;
• Specify in materials and methods the ethical review committee approval process and the international, national, and/or institutional guidelines followed.

Animal ethics-based criteria for manuscript rejection

1. Manuscripts and authors that fail to meet the aforementioned requirements;
2. Studies that involve unnecessary pain, distress, suffering, or lasting harm to animals;
3. The editor retains the right to reject manuscripts on the basis of ethical or welfare concerns.

Scientific Misconduct Policy

Openventio strongly opposes any scientific misconduct from the authors such as misrepresentations: fabrication, falsification, omission; misappropriations: plagiarism and breaches of confidentiality; manipulation, etc.

To strictly avoid such malpractices we follow an editorial pre-quality analysis procedure before the article is stepped into the peer-review assessment stage. In the editorial pre-quality analysis stage we analyze the submitted articles in two stages:

1. Plagiarism checks using online software;
2. Ethical and legal statements check such as copyright statement, ethical institutional review board approval statement, informed consent statement, conflicts of interest statement, animal ethics board approval statement, authorship statement, funding source statement, unique data statement, etc.

We encourage the authors to follow the internationally accepted standard guidelines such as the Declaration of Helsinki for clinical research types of manuscripts, and the AERA and BERA guidelines for academic research. Ensure that reports of clinical trials cite compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki, Good Clinical Practice, and other relevant guidelines to safeguard the participants. Also, the reports of experiments on, or studies of, animals must cite compliance with the US department of health and human services guide for the care and use of laboratory animals or other relevant guidelines. Any article which does not fulfill the above requirements will be immediately rejected and ceased from further processing by the editorial staff.

*Note: Institutions, grant funders, or governing bodies wanting to investigate a suspected research or publication misconduct can contact us at contact@openventio.org

Withdrawal & Retraction Policy

For articles withdrawn after the pre-quality editorial assessment (PQA), $179 USD will be imposed as a compensatory charge.

The decision of retraction of a manuscript from an issue or archive is to be decided by an author, corresponding author and coauthors, authors’ institution, and any other agency.

The decision to mediate retraction is usually attributed to falsification, fabrication, or plagiarism. This notification should be immediately communicated to our journals’ staff or editors by submitting a written and signed the formal letter.

If none of the authors agree to publish a signed retraction then the editor may issue a retraction notice on behalf of the journal. Once the article has undergone the requisite formalities, the article will be referred to as a “Retracted article” or be prominently labeled as “This Article has been Retracted” which would be mentioned clearly at the top of the online link and on each page of the article.

Retraction should never be used in case of typical unintentional errors; instead, they should be corrected appropriately. In some cases, due to errors in calibration or poor instrumentation during the experimentation, the data may result in serious and pervasive errors. In such cases, we suggest that the corresponding author publish a retraction notice and thus, an article to replace the retracted manuscript.
*Please note that the APC paid is non-refundable in case of retraction.