Publication Ethics and Malpractice Policy

The Editor-in-Chief, members of the Editorial Board, and Reinan Publishing Pty Ltd express strong support for COPE's Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, COPE's Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, WAME's Publication Ethics Policies for Medical Journals, and WAME's Recommendations on Chatbots, Generative AI, and Scholarly Manuscripts. Consequently, it is mandatory for all contributing authors, editorial board members, peer reviewers, and Reinan Publishing Pty Ltd to comply with the ethical standards established by these organizations.

Authors are encouraged to employ the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to delineate each contributor's distinct role in the research outcome. We adhere to the authorship guidelines set forth by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and WAME's Publication Ethics Policies for Medical Journals. Therefore, all contributing authors involved in a publication must fulfill the outlined criteria.

The Editor-in-Chief, members of the Editorial Board, and Reinan Publishing Pty Ltd bear the responsibility of maintaining the journal's integrity by adhering to COPE's Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. Should any of them become aware of an allegation of research misconduct concerning a published manuscript, they are obliged to follow the prescribed procedures to resolve the matter. If an investigation substantiates an ethical issue, a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or any other appropriate notice may be issued.

We comply with ICMJE's guidelines regarding the disclosure of financial and non-financial relationships, activities, and conflicts of interest. A deliberate failure to disclose affiliations or activities as outlined on the journal's disclosure form is regarded as misconduct by the contributing author(s). Furthermore, authors are required to explicitly outline the use of Chatbots and Generative AI in their submitted work in accordance with WAME's Recommendations.

 Authors may make their research data publicly available following the outlined principles and the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases. They must retain the research data for a reasonable period after publication and can share their raw data on platforms like Harvard Dataverse and preprint servers.

The Editor-in-Chief, Editorial Board members, and Reinan Publishing Pty Ltd must take necessary actions to identify and prevent the publication of misconduct, such as plagiarism, citation manipulation, or data fabrication.

Contributing authors retain their rights, except for third-party content added by Reinan Publishing Pty Ltd, which is subject to copyright from their respective owners. Authors must obtain copyright release permissions for any copyrighted materials included in the text before submission. They must grant Reinan Publishing Pty Ltd permission to publish, display, store, duplicate, and reuse their content.

If authors discover a significant error in their published manuscript, they may issue a retraction. The Editor-in-Chief or Reinan Publishing Pty Ltd may also decide on a retraction following the COPE Guidelines and ethical recommendations. Minor errors that do not compromise the integrity of the research data or reader comprehension will be corrected, with the original article being replaced by the revised version, noting the correction date. Articles can only be replaced within a year of initial publication, with corrections for older articles documented with a Note of Correction.

Policy on Artificial Intelligence and Automated Tools