EDITORIAL POLICIES
Competency Criteria
The journal’s editorial board consists of research scientists and medical specialists with rich research experiences. Editors play a key role in our journal. We usually follow the guidelines stated at "ONET" based on the knowledge, skills, and ability of candidates. Our strategy is to select editors who can manage the growth of the journal. Usually, we prefer those with an impressive academic career. Excellent communication skills, the capability to teamwork, and prominence in the community are the complimentary principles. The editors and editorial board are working as volunteers at our center.
Peer Review
The single most important criterion for accepting a paper is the novelty and scientific rigor. The peer-review and editorial processes are the main mechanisms for ensuring the quality of published articles. To this end, the submitted articles are rigorously peer-reviewed to ensure that high-quality submissions are published. These published articles reflect the up-to-date research findings, with reliable and sound results, objective and unbiased discussion of the results. For further information about our peer review process please refer to the special page provided at the top of this page.
Author Contributions
The authors are those who have made significant and substantial contributions to the manuscript, including conception, design, execution, and interpretation of the publications. All named authors must meet the ICMJE criteria for authorship, take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, and have given final approval for the version to be published. Finally, the corresponding author signs the copyright agreement on behalf of co-authors. An “author” is generally considered to be someone who simultaneously meets the following conditions in authorship criteria include: "1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work, AND 2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content, AND 3. Final approval of the version to be published, AND 4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.”
All authors should declare that their submission is their own original research. However, they must warranty the reality and authenticity of their data. Also, they must declare that their manuscript has not been published elsewhere before, or even submitted and under review in another journal. They are not allowed to use the verbatim text of formerly published papers or manuscripts submitted elsewhere. The same research project must not be published in more than one journal. The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal office during all steps. Furthermore, the corresponding author should respond to the editorial office and should cooperate with any requests from the journal after publication and actively participate in the peer review process as well as provide an erratum. Our affiliated Journal does not allow to add or delete authors or changing the orders of authors following the final acceptance. Acknowledgment should be clearly declared in all submissions. References should be stated numerically based on the order of citation in the Vancouver style. Besides, all the resources that helped to perform their research work should be added clearly.
Study Designs
All animal studies should follow the Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines. Protecting patient or animal rights under investigation is of great importance. The welfare of animals used for research must be respected. Reporting guidelines for some specific studies are recommended as follows. Randomized trials (CONSORT), Systematic reviews (PRISMA), Diagnostic studies (STARD), Study protocols (SPRIT), Clinical practice guidelines (AGREE), and Qualitative research (SRQR). Authors should adhere to the Declaration of Helsinki in medical research involving human subjects, human material, or human data. Independent local, regional or national review body should approve the study by receiving ethical approval from an ethics committee. Authors should guarantee the integrity of reported data and answer all comments raised by peer-reviewers during the production process. If the author fails to provide a satisfactory answer to the comments of peer-reviewers, the paper would be rejected. Ethical issues should be completely observed by the authors. All participants in a research project should be thoroughly informed about the aims of the study and any possible side effects.
The authors should mention a clinical trial registration number of trials in their methods. Reports of randomized clinical trials should present information on all major study elements, including the protocol, assignment of interventions (methods of randomization, concealment of allocation to treatment groups), and the method of masking (blinding), based on the CONSORT guideline. Permission should be obtained by authors for using all copyrighted material including figures or tables from another journal. The Journal keeps the right to ask for raw data even after publication.
Informed Consent
Informed written consent should be obtained from all participants or their legal parties, if applicable. Patients’ information should be kept secret and anonymous. Besides, the Journal reserves its right to request the related documents.
Publication Fees
The “Medical Hypothesis, Discovery & Innovation in Optometry” has no article processing fee.
Conflict of Interest
Any conflict of interest related to the manuscript should be declared by authors. These include but not limited to commercial, personal, political, and intellectual aspects. All editors, editorial staff, and reviewers should also report potential conflicts related to the submissions they are working with. Authors are preferably asked to fill the uniform disclosure form available through http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/.
Corrections and Retractions
We respect the research integrity therefore, a research integrity officer and committee have been assigned at our center. If serious scientific misconduct is found, the article will be retracted during any step of production or after post-publication. If fraudulent behavior is suspected, further investigations might include the author's higher authorities. Corrections or retractions of published articles will be made by publishing a correction or retraction note. In this way, the original article remains in the public and the subsequent note will be published. The decision to publish the correction or retraction is based on the COPE guidelines. However, if the error is minor, a correction statement will be published soon. Moreover, we will take responsibility if errors were caused by our side. If errors were caused by the authors, a Correction will be published in the next earliest possible issue.
Disclaimer
All statements expressed herein in our publications are merely those of the author(s) and do not reflect the publisher or editorial board. The publisher and the board members do not endorse any service or product presented in our publications and disclaims any accountability or liability for such materials.
Copyright
Published articles are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International License which permits copy and redistributes the material just in noncommercial usages if the original work is properly cited.
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