Health Sciences Australia: Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
ISSN: 2982-2181 (Online)
Acknowledgements:
Health Sciences Australia (HSA) only considers original content that has not been published or submitted elsewhere. Any manuscript that has been fabricated or falsified may result in retraction after submission or publication.
HSA follows the ICMJE’s Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. All authors, reviewers, and editors must adhere to these best-practice guidelines on ethical behaviour.
Author Contributions and Authorship
All listed authors must have made significant scientific contributions to the manuscript and approved its claims. It is crucial to list all contributors who have played a significant role in the research. The journal refers to the ICMJE Guidelines on authorship. Any changes in authorship must be declared to the journal and agreed upon by all authors.
- Authorship Numbers and Sequence: There is no limit on the number of authors, but their contribution must justify their inclusion. The order of authorship should reflect the significance of their contributions and should be mutually agreed upon.
- Principal and Corresponding Author: The lead author, typically the principal investigator, should have made the most significant contribution. With the consent of all contributors, the principal author may either designate themselves or another author as the corresponding author.
Informed Consent Policy
Health Sciences Australia mandates obtaining informed consent from all research study participants. The process must include the following elements:
- Ethical approval from the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or Ethical Review Committee (ERC) must be secured before manuscript submission. Approval must be documented on official letterhead and signed by the committee chairperson.
- For case reports, authors must obtain departmental head approval on institutional letterhead and confirm that informed consent was obtained from participants.
Conflicts of Interest
All conflicts of interest or competing interests must be transparently declared. Undeclared conflicts discovered after publication may lead to sanctions, including article rejection, retraction, and publication of a corrigendum. Authors failing to disclose conflicts of interest may face reputational consequences.
Research on Human Subjects
Authors must confirm that any research involving human subjects adheres to the ethical standards set forth in the Helsinki Declaration. Approval from an ethics committee must be documented, including the project identification code, approval date, and the name of the ethics board. Private information that identifies participants should only be included when essential to the research.
Authors are required to obtain written or verbal informed consent before publication for case reports or any work involving identifiable participant information. If informed consent was not obtained, a detailed justification must be provided. It will be rectified in corrigendum, following the COPE Retraction Guidelines.
Research on Animals
When reporting experiments involving animals, authors must confirm that institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were adhered to. Guidance on ethical research involving animals is available from the International Association of Veterinary Editors’ Consensus Author Guidelines.
Publication Misconduct
Health Sciences Australia handles cases of publication misconduct according to the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Misconduct includes fabrication, falsification, duplicate submissions, and selective or misleading reporting.
- Corrective Actions: If misconduct is detected, corrective actions such as corrections, retractions, or removal of submissions may be implemented. If the misconduct is severe, the journal reserves the right to ban the offending authors from future submissions and inform their institutions.
Plagiarism Policy
The editorial team of Health Sciences Australia is committed to maintaining the integrity of published scientific content. Turnitin software is used to screen all manuscripts, with a maximum similarity index (SI) of less than 16%. The journal does not tolerate any form of plagiarism, including unacknowledged copying, self-plagiarism (text recycling), or the misrepresentation of others' work without proper attribution.
Instances of plagiarism can include:
- Direct plagiarism: Copying another's work verbatim without attribution.
- Self-plagiarism: Recycling parts of an author's previous work without proper citation.
Exclusions during plagiarism checks:
- Quotations
- Bibliographic references
- Mathematical or statistical formulas
- Institutional names
If plagiarism is detected at any stage, authors are required to rework or properly cite the content. Manuscripts exceeding the 16% similarity index risk rejection. In the case of post-publication plagiarism detection, the journal may issue corrections, retract the paper, and notify institutions or funding bodies.
Appeal to Authors
Health Sciences Australia calls upon all scholars to ensure that their manuscripts are free from plagiarism and other ethical violations, upholding the highest standards of research integrity.
HSA by Health Sciences Australia is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
