The Journal of Mechanical Ventilation is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics. All parties involved in the publication process—authors, editors, peer reviewers, and publishers—are expected to adhere to the following ethical guidelines to ensure the integrity of the research and publication process.
Duties of Authors
- Originality and Plagiarism: Authors must ensure that their work is entirely original, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, this must be appropriately cited or quoted. Plagiarism in any form constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
- Data Access and Retention: Authors may be asked to provide the raw data related to their manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to provide public access to such data if feasible. Authors must retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.
- Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication: Authors should not submit manuscripts describing essentially the same research to more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior.
- Acknowledgment of Sources: Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have influenced the nature of the reported work.
- Authorship of the Paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.
- Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
- Fundamental Errors in Published Works: When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
Duties of Editors
- Fair Play: The editor must evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
- Confidentiality: The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
- Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Editors should recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
- Publication Decisions: The editor-in-chief is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal’s editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.
Duties of Reviewers
- Contribution to Editorial Decisions: Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.
- Promptness: Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse themselves from the review process.
- Confidentiality: Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
- Standards of Objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
- Acknowledgment of Sources: Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor’s attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
- Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the papers.
Duties of the Publisher
- Handling of Unethical Publishing Behavior: In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, clarification, or, in the most severe case, the retraction of the affected work.
- Access to Journal Content: The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility by partnering with organizations and maintaining our own digital archive.