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Editorial Policies

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Affiliations

You and your co-authors must list all relevant affiliations to attribute where the research or scholarly work was approved and/or supported and/or conducted.

  • For non-research articles, you must list your current institutional affiliation.
  • If you moved to a different institution before the article has been published, you should list the affiliation where the work was conducted and include a note to state your current affiliation.
  • If you do not have a current relevant institutional affiliation, you should state your independent status.

Appeals

We welcome genuine appeals to editor decisions. However, you will need to provide strong evidence or new data/information in response to the editor’s and reviewers’ comments. This is important given a majority of the journal scholarly articles are reviews and original research, reliant on accurate scientific data.

For scholarly articles of an opinion nature, an appeal is less likely to overturn an editor's decision. These can include viewpoints and opinion pieces where editorial judgment about readability and relevance weighs most heavily. In any case, all opinion-led articles should be evidence-based and fully referenced. For opinion-led articles, you should always present your evidence and explain how it led you to form your opinion.

Editors don’t expect frequent appeals and they rarely reverse their original decisions. Therefore, if you receive a decision to reject your manuscript, you are strongly advised to submit it to another journal. The decision to reject a manuscript for publication will often involve the editor’s judgment of priority/importance. These are things that authors usually cannot address through an appeal. However, if you believe that there is a case to be made for a genuine appeal please follow the instructions below.

Acknowledgment

Individuals who participated in the development of a manuscript but do not qualify as an author should be acknowledged. Organizations that provided support in terms of funding and/or other resources should also be acknowledged.

Authorship

Listing authors’ names on an article is an important mechanism to give credit to those who have significantly contributed to the work. It also ensures transparency for those who are responsible for the integrity of the content.

Authors listed in an article must meet all of the following criteria:

  1. Made a significant contribution to the work reported, whether that’s in the conception, study design, execution, acquisition of data, analysis, and interpretation, or in all these areas.
  2. Have drafted or written, substantially revised, or critically reviewed the article.
  3. Have agreed on the journal to which the article will be submitted.
  4. Reviewed and agreed on all versions of the article before submission, during revision, the final version accepted for publication, and any significant changes introduced at the proofing stage.
  5. Agree to take responsibility and be accountable for the contents of the article and to share the responsibility to resolve any questions raised about the accuracy or integrity of the published work.

Any changes in authorship before or after publication must be agreed upon by all authors, including those being added or removed. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to obtain confirmation from all co-authors and to provide a full explanation about why the change was necessary. If a change in authorship is necessary after the publication of the article, this will be amended via a post-publication notice. Any changes in authorship must comply with our criteria for authorship, and requests for significant changes to the authorship list after the article has been accepted may be rejected if clear reasons and evidence of author contributions cannot be provided.

Authorship Criteria

Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below:

  1. Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
  2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
  3. Final approval of the version to be published.

Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without the written consent of all the contributors. The journal prescribes a maximum number of authors for manuscripts depending upon the type of manuscript, its scope, and the number of institutions involved (vide infra). The authors should provide a justification if the number of authors exceeds these limits.

Contribution Details

Contributors should provide a description of contributions made by each of them toward the manuscript. The description should be divided into the following categories, as applicable: concept, design, definition of intellectual content, literature search, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing, and manuscript review. The authors' contributions will be printed along with the article. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole from inception to published article and should be designated as 'guarantors'.

Citations

Research and non-research articles must cite relevant, timely, and verified literature (peer-reviewed, where appropriate) to support any claims made in the article.

You must avoid excessive and inappropriate self-citation or prearrangements among author groups to inappropriately cite each other’s work, as this can be considered a form of misconduct called citation manipulation. Read the COPE guidance on citation manipulation.

If you’re the author of a non-research article (e.g. a Review or Opinion) you should ensure the references you cite are relevant and provide a fair and balanced overview of the current state of research or scholarly work on the topic. Your references should not be unfairly biased toward a particular research group, organization, or journal.

If you are unsure about whether to cite a source you should contact the journal editorial office for advice.

Conflicts of Interest / Competing Interests

You and all of your co-authors must declare any competing interests relevant to, or which can be perceived to be relevant to the article.

  • A competing interest can occur where you (or your employer, sponsor or family/friends) have a financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organizations, or with the people working with them which could influence the research or interpretation of the results.
  • Competing interests can be financial or non-financial in nature. To ensure transparency, you must also declare any associations which can be perceived by others as a competing interest.

Examples of financial competing interests include (but are not limited to):

  • Employment or voluntary involvement
  • Collaborations with advocacy groups relating to the content of the article
  • Grants from an entity paid to the author or organization
  • Personal fees received by the author/s as honoraria, royalties, consulting fees, lecture fees, testimonies, etc
  • Patents held or pending by the authors, their institutions or funding organizations, or licensed to an entity whether earning royalties or not
  • Royalties being received by the authors or their institutions
  • Stock or share ownership
  • Benefits related to the development of products as an outcome of the work

Examples of non-financial competing interests include (but are not limited to):

  • Receipt of drugs, equipment, or access to data by an entity that might benefit or be at an advantage financially or reputationally from the published findings.
  • Holding a position on the boards of industry bodies or private companies that might benefit or be at an advantage financially or reputationally from the published findings.
  • Writing assistance or administrative support from a person or organization that might benefit or be at an advantage from the published findings.
  • Personal, political, religious, ideological, academic, and intellectual competing interests are perceived to be relevant to the published content.
  • Involvement in legal action related to the work.

All authors of a manuscript submitted to the journal will be required to complete a competing interest declaration which will be listed in the Disclosure section at the end of the article. If an author is in doubt over whether they need to disclose a competing interest, they should consult with their institution or the journal Editor, who can guide them on the right course of action.

If there are no competing interests to declare, the following statement will be added to the article: “The authors declare that they have no competing interests.”

Sponsorship of Clinical Trials

Corrections, Expressions of Concern, and Retractions

Corrections may be made to a published article with the authorization of the editor of the journal. Editors will decide the magnitude of the corrections. Minor corrections are made directly to the original article. However, in cases of major corrections, the original article will remain unchanged, while the corrected version will also be published. Both the original and corrected version will be linked to each other. A statement indicating the reason for the major change to the article will also be published. When necessary, the retraction of articles will be done according to COPE retraction guidelines.

  • The retraction and original article are linked in both directions
  • The retracted article is clearly identified
  • The original HTML version will remain, with both the HTML and PDF of the original article digitally watermarked ‘Retracted’
  • A clear explanation giving the reason for the retraction is provided
  • The person(s), for example, the authors and/or the Editor, who requested the retraction is clearly stated

The journal recognizes the purpose of a retraction is to correct the literature and ensure the integrity of the publication record. They are not intended as a means of punishment for authors.

Retractions will not normally be issued to resolve authorship disputes. The preferred option in this situation is to issue a corrigendum. This is provided the authors can justify the change in authorship, and this usually requires the support of their respective institutions.

To help minimize the impact of incorrect or misleading publications, all efforts will be made to issue retractions as soon as possible.

In some cases, an Expression of Concern notice may be considered where concerns of a major nature have been raised (e.g. serious research or publication misconduct), but where the outcome of the investigation is inconclusive or where due to various complexities the investigation will not be complete for a considerable time. When the investigation has been completed a Retraction or Correction notice may follow the Expression of Concern, and alongside the original article, all will remain part of the permanent published record.

A Removal notice will be issued in very rare circumstances where the problems cannot be addressed by a Retraction or Correction notice. Examples include where the content in the article is defamatory or infringes on other legal rights or is subject to a court order. In the rare case of an article being removed from the journal Online, a removal notice will be issued in its place.

Consent for Publication

For all manuscripts that include details or images relating to an individual person, written informed consent for the publication of these details must be obtained from that person (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 18). The consent must be for publication of their details under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (such that they will be freely available on the internet). If the person has died, consent for publication must be obtained from their next of kin. The manuscript must include a statement that written informed consent for publication was obtained.

Authors can use the consent form to obtain consent for publication, or a consent form from their own institution or region if appropriate. The consent form must state that the details/images will be freely available on the internet and may be seen by the general public. The consent form must be made available to the Editor if requested and will be treated confidentially.

Confidentiality

A submitted manuscript is a confidential material. Academic Journals will not disclose submitted manuscripts to anyone except individuals who partake in the processing and preparation of the manuscript for publication (if accepted). These individuals include editorial staff, corresponding authors, potential reviewers, actual reviewers, and editors. However, in suspected cases of misconduct, a manuscript may be revealed to members of the Academic Journals’ ethics committees and institutions/organizations that may require it for the resolution of the misconduct. Academic Journals shall follow the appropriate COPE flowcharts wherever necessary.

Copyright Policy

Authors retain all copyright without any restrictions. All published articles in HBRC Journal are licensed under CC BY Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International.

Authors can use a copy of their article in their research activities, own websites, institutional and/or funder’s web sites by providing full citation to version published in HBRC Journal. Author(s) have the right to transmit, print and share the first submitted copies with colleagues, professional positions, and career with citing to HBRC Journal publication.

Data Falsification/Fabrication

Where deliberate action has been taken to inappropriately manipulate or fabricate data. This is considered a serious form of misconduct and is designed to mislead others and damage the integrity of the scholarly record with wide-reaching and long-term consequences.

When submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors must ensure all data contained within their manuscript is accurate and correctly represents their work. To help assist the journal with manuscript evaluation, authors are expected to retain all raw data represented in their manuscripts.

If the original data cannot be produced on request, acceptance of a manuscript or published paper may be declined or retracted.

Data Sharing Policy

  • Encourage and support researchers to share research data where appropriate and at the earliest opportunity, for example, by enhancing our submission processes to make this easier
  • Standardize and align our author data guidelines where this is possible to make it easier for authors to understand how and where they can store and share their data, enabling optimal access and reuse
  • Make it easier for researchers to comply with data management requirements, for example, by supporting data availability statements to enhance transparency
  • Develop tools and services to support researchers to discover, use and reuse data to further their research, for example, by encouraging and enabling two-way linking of relevant datasets and publications using permanent standard identifiers
  • Ensure researchers can gain credit — and credit others — for sharing research data, by encouraging and supporting proper data citation practices
  • Work closely with the scientific community to establish data review practices to ensure that published research data is valid, properly documented and can be re-used
  • Support the publication of research data as a separate, peer-reviewed output, to support reusability and provide additional ways for authors to gain credit for their work
  • Support researchers, research institutions and funders by providing the structure, workflows and technology needed to manage data effectively and make researcher and institutional workflows more efficient, for example:
    • Providing Mendeley Data as a storage and preservation option for research data
    • Integrating HiveBench into the research workflow
    • Enabling the integration of these tools with other open standards and platforms
  • Continue to participate in industry initiatives and standards and policy bodies to support more effective discovery, use and reuse of research data, for example, through our co-chairmanship of, and participation in, Research Data Alliance working groups, our engagement with the Scholix initiative, our membership of WDS and Codata, and through our partnerships with DANS, Force11 and others

The data sharing policy of our journal aims to foster and facilitate the sharing of research data among researchers. We encourage and support researchers to share their data promptly and appropriately, enhancing our submission processes to streamline this procedure. We strive to standardize our author data guidelines to provide clarity on data storage and sharing options, thus promoting optimal access and reuse. We advocate for proper data citation practices to ensure due credit for data sharing efforts. Collaborating closely with the scientific community, we seek to establish robust data review practices to validate, document, and facilitate reuse of published research data. Furthermore, we advocate for the publication of research data as separate, peer-reviewed outputs to enhance reusability and provide additional recognition for authors.

Research Data Policy and Data Availability Guidelines for Authors

Research Data Policy

HBRC Journal encourages the sharing of research data to promote transparency, reproducibility, and the advancement of knowledge within the academic community. We recognize the importance of making data accessible to other researchers while respecting ethical and legal considerations. To this end, we have established the following guidelines for the inclusion of research data statements in submitted manuscripts:

Data Sharing Expectations:

Authors are encouraged to make their data available to the public whenever possible, except where privacy, confidentiality, or legal constraints apply. Data should be shared in a manner that allows verification of results and the reuse of data for further research.

Data Availability Statements

Authors are required to include a Data Availability Statement in their manuscripts. This statement should clearly outline where the data supporting the findings of the study can be accessed, or explain why the data cannot be shared. Below are examples of acceptable Data Availability Statements:

  1. Data Available in a Public Repository:
    The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available in the [NAME] repository, [PERSISTENT LINK TO DATASETS].
  2. Data Available on Request:
    The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
  3. No Data Available:
    No datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

Desk Rejection Policy

  1. The topic / scope of the study is not relevant to the field of the Journal.
  2. There are publication ethics problems, non-adherence to international standard guidelines, and plagiarism (set at a similarity index of higher than 30 percent).
  3. The topic does not have a sufficient impact, nor does it sufficiently contribute new knowledge to the field.
  4. There are flaws in the study design.
  5. The objective of the study is not clearly stated.
  6. The study of the organization is problematic and/or certain components are missing.
  7. There are problems in writing or series infelicities of in the style of grammar.
  8. The manuscript does not follow the submission guideline of the Journal.

Duplicate Submission/Publication

Authors are required to declare upon submission that the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere, and as such the detection of a duplicate submission or publication is typically considered to be a deliberate act. This includes articles previously published in another language. For acceptable forms of secondary submissions or publications (e.g. an article translated into English), in accordance with ICMJE guidance, authors must seek permission from the publisher and copyright holder of the original article and must inform the Editor of the receiving journal about the history of the original article. It must also be made clear to readers that the article is a translated version, with a citation provided to the original article.

Funding

The journal requires that authors declare all the sources of funding including financial support in their manuscript. The authors should describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in any of the stages from study design to submission of the manuscript for publication. They should also state if the sponsor(s) had no such involvement. Please ensure that this information is accurate and in accordance with your funder’s requirements.

Images and Figures

You should only use images and figures in your article if they are relevant and valuable to the work reported. Please refrain from adding content of this type which is purely illustrative and does not add value to the scholarly work.

As a warranty in the Journal Author Publishing Agreement, you make with us, you must obtain the necessary written permission to include material in your article that is owned and held in copyright by a third party, including – but not limited to – any proprietary text, illustration, table, or other material, including data, audio, video, film stills, screenshots, musical notation, and any supplemental material.

Experimental photographic images including microscopy should accurately reflect the original image. Where images have been modified or enhanced in any way this must be stated with a full explanation within the manuscript as well as in the figure legend so as not to mislead readers about what the images show. Authors should be prepared to share the original, uncropped, unannotated, and unprocessed images with the journal editorial office upon request.

Please note that any modifications are only acceptable if these are minor in nature and have been applied to the whole image. Authors are required to include details of image-gathering methods and details of processes for any modifications made to images, including the name of the software (with version number) used. Any modifications which can alter the scientific interpretation of the image are not allowed.

Any images or figures which have been obtained from another published source can only be re-used if the authors have obtained the appropriate permissions for re-use from the copyright owner. A statement to confirm this must be included within the figure legend. The original source of the image must be cited, even in cases where the image or figure is not under copyright, or if re-use is allowed under a license that permits unrestricted re-use.

Misconduct

The journal takes all forms of misconduct seriously and will take all necessary action, in accordance with COPE guidelines, to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.

Examples of misconduct include (but are not limited to):

  • Affiliation misrepresentation
  • Breaches in copyright/use of third-party material without appropriate permissions
  • Citation manipulation
  • Duplicate submission/publication
  • “Ethics dumping”
  • Image or data manipulation/fabrication
  • Peer review manipulation
  • Plagiarism
  • Text-recycling/self-plagiarism
  • Undisclosed competing interests
  • Unethical research

Duplicate Submission

Manuscripts that are found to have been published elsewhere, or to be under review elsewhere, will incur duplicate submission/publication sanctions. If authors have used their own previously published work, or work that is currently under review, as the basis for a submitted manuscript, they are required to cite the previous work and indicate how their submitted manuscript offers novel contributions beyond those of the previous work.

Citation Manipulation

Submitted manuscripts that are found to include citations whose primary purpose is to increase the number of citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal, will incur citation manipulation sanctions.

Data Fabrication and Falsification

Submitted manuscripts that are found to have either fabricated or falsified experimental results, including the manipulation of images, will incur data fabrication and falsification sanctions.

Improper Author Contribution or Attribution

All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. It is important to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.

Redundant Publications

Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles.

Image Manipulation

Where deliberate action has been taken to inappropriately manipulate or fabricate an image. This is a serious form of misconduct as is designed to mislead others and damage the integrity of the scholarly record with wide-reaching and long-term consequences.

The journal expects all images contained within manuscripts to be accurate and free from manipulation. Specific features within an image may not be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced without adequate notification of what the alteration is. Adjustments to the brightness, contrast, or color balance of an image are acceptable if they do not obscure, eliminate or misrepresent information present in the original. Grouping images from different parts of gels, western blots or microscope images must be made explicit in the arrangement of the figure or the text of the figure legend.

If the original, unedited images cannot be produced on request, acceptance of a manuscript or paper may be declined or retracted.

Open Access Policy

HBRC Journal is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from publisher or the author. The journal is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Deed - Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International - Creative Commons.