All articles dealing with original human or animal data must include a statement on ethics approval at the beginning of the Methods section. This paragraph must contain the following information: the name and address of the ethics committee responsible; the protocol number that was attributed by this ethics committee; and the date of approval by the ethics committee.

The paragraph could read, for example:
This study was approved by the Ethical Committee of Guilan University of Medical Sciences, Rasht, Iran (IR.GUMS.REC.2023.145) on 23 February 2023.

Work on human beings that is submitted to Journal of Nursing Reports in Clinical Practice should comply with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Helsinki. The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the appropriate ethical committees related to the institution(s) in which it was performed and that you obtained written informed consent from the study participants. Similarly, for experiments involving animals you must state the care of animal and licensing guidelines under which the study was performed and report these in accordance with the ARRIVE (Animals in Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments) statement. If ethics clearance was not necessary, or if there was any deviation from these standard ethical requests, please state why it was not required. Please note that the editors may ask you to provide evidence of ethical approval. If you have approval from a National Drug Agency (or similar) please state this and provide details, this can be particularly useful when discussing the use of unlicensed drugs.

The Journal of Nursing Reports in Clinical Practice responded following the recommendations made by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The Journal also complies with the recommendations made by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals.

The COPE and the ICMJE recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals, where the highest ethical standards in the conduct of research and other scholarly activities are expected, are being supported by Journal of Nursing Reports in Clinical Practice. The Editorial Board may take disciplinary action against anyone found responsible for the types of intentional misbehavior described below.

 

Definition of research misconduct
The following terms are defined in connection to research misconduct by the US Office of Research Integrity.
A. Fabrication is the act of creating information and then recording or disclosing it.
B. Falsification involves modifying or omitting data or outcomes such that the research is not accurately reflected in the research record. It often involves manipulating research supplies, equipment, or methods.
C. Plagiarism is the unjustified appropriation of another person thoughts, methods, output, or words.
D. Honest mistakes or differences of opinion are not considered research misconduct.

 

Malpractice statements

JNRCP conforms to the international regulations against scientific misconduct including fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and etc. JNRCP assess any cases of suspected misconduct (such as redundant publication) during the peer-review and publication process based on COPE guidelines. In addition, all pre- or post-publication issues will be managed based on COPE’s code of conduct and flowcharts.

 

Publication and authorship

1. All persons listed as authors are assumed to have been actively involved in one or more key aspects of the reported study according to the ICMJE.
2. The submitted manuscript should be solely considered by the journal and should not be previously published or submitted simultaneously to another journal.
3. The authors are not allowed to utilize verbatim text of previously published papers or manuscripts submitted elsewhere.
4. Authors should sign a copyright form stating that the article is an original work, has not been published before and is not being considered for publication elsewhere in its final form either in printed or electronic form. The same research must not be published in more than one journal.
5. A statement should be included in the title page indicating acknowledgment, financial support, and conflict of interest.
6. References should be complied numerically according to the order of citation in the text in Vancouver style. For the references credited to more than 6 authors please provide the name of the first six authors and represent the remaining authors by the phrase “et al.”.

 

Author's responsibilities

1. Authors should actively participate in the peer review process and provide suitable responses to the comments raised by peer reviewers on time.
2. All authors must have significantly contributed to the research and fulfill the authorship criteria. Authors should have substantial contributions to the conception and design, and/or acquisition of data, and/or analysis and interpretation of data according to the ICMJE.
3. Authors must state that all data in the article are real and authentic.
4. All authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
5. Copyright: If a manuscript contains any previous published image or text, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain authorization from copyright holders. The author is required to obtain and submit the written original permission letters for all copyrighted material used in his/her manuscripts.
6. Authors should participate in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
7. Authors should provide the final approval of the manuscript before publication.
8. The corresponding author should actively contribute to the journal editorial office for any queries regarding the submitted manuscript and should respond to the journal’s emails as soon as possible.
9. The authors should confirm the authenticity of the provided data.
10. Author(s) should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article.
11. Author(s) should guarantee that data are available and will be provided if anyone needs them.
12. If the study involves human beings, the author(s) must include a statement that the study was approved by the local ethical committee and that written informed consent was obtained from the study participants. For those who do not have formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed. Also, the compliance of maintenance and care of experimental animals with National Institutes of Health guidelines for the human use of laboratory animals, should be declared in text.
13. All relevant permissions to use unpublished observations of others must be obtained by the manuscript author(s) and stated in the text. The names of the original author(s) should be declared. Also, permission must be obtained to reproduce or adapt any figures or tables that have been published previously and declared in the legend/footnote.
14. Author(s) should certify that their research study is in agreement with the regulations of their institution(s) and generally accepted guidelines governing such work; contains no violation of any existing copyright or other third party right; and is free of any obscene, indecent, libelous, or otherwise unlawful material.
15. Based on the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) recommendations, AI tools cannot be listed as authors since they do not meet the authorship criteria as they cannot take responsibility for the integrity of the work, approve the manuscript’s final version, understand conflict of interest, or hold copyright. Yet, authors who have used these tools for preparing their manuscript should clearly introduce the tool they have used and how they have used it in the methods section of the manuscript. The authors should note that they are responsible for the content of their manuscript, including the parts produced by the AI tools. They should make sure that publication ethics are observed throughout the manuscript.

 

Peer review/responsibility for the reviewers

1. Judgments should be objective.
2. Reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.
3. Reviewers should advise editors and the final decision on an article is made by the Editors-in-Chief.
4. Reviewers should assess the originality, scientific merit, and design of the study including statistical analysis, professional interest and the overall quality of the manuscript.
5. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in 500 to 1000 words.
6. Reviewers should provide constructive comments to improve the quality of the article.
7. Reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors, and/or the research funders.
8. All reviews should be performed confidentially.
9. Reviewers are required to keep manuscripts and their information confidential.
10. They must not use knowledge of the manuscript before its publication for their personal interests.
11. The reviewers' comments should be constructive, honest, and polite.

 

Editorial responsibilities

1. The Editor-in-Chief has complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
2. Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.
3. Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
4. Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
5. Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines.
6. Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions; they should have proof of misconduct.
7. Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers and board members.
8. Editors should have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept.
9. The existence of a submitted manuscript is not revealed to anyone other than the reviewers and editorial staff.
10. When errors are found in a manuscript, the editors promote publication of correction or retraction.

 

Publishing ethics issues

1. JNRCP complies with the terms of the COPE and thus all submitted articles should be written according to the COPE guidelines.
2. JNRCP uses the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE’s) flowcharts and guidelines for confronting any ethical misbehavior. (http://publicationethics.org//resources/guidelines)
3. JNRCP uses the COPE flowchart for retraction of a published article.
4. All patients and participants of the research should be thoroughly informed about the aims of the study and any possible side effects of the drugs and intervention. Written informed consent from the participants or their legal guardians is necessary for any such studies. The Journal reserves the right to request the related documents.
5. JNRCP precludes business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.
6. The Editor-in-Chief is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications.
7. Publication of ethical violations including duplication, fabrication, falsification and plagiarism are strictly prohibited.
8. Plagiarism: Use of verbatim texts from other sources without acknowledgement is prohibited. The content of all articles must be the original work of authors and must not be plagiarized from other articles. COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines are approached in cases in which plagiarism is detected.
9. Papers are checked for plagiarism (including self-plagiarism). If any of these publication ethics violations are detected, action will be taken following the COPE guidelines.
10. Manuscripts must comply with the ethical standards recommended by the Helsinki Declaration.
11. In studies with human subjects, indicate in the Methods section whether the procedures, including obtaining informed consent, were conducted in accord with the ethical standards of the Committee on Human Experimentation of the institution in which the experiments were done or in accord with the ethical standards of the Helsinki Declaration of 1975.
12. The corresponding author must affirm that all co-investigators have been duly credited in the manuscript either as co-authors or in the acknowledgment section.
13. It is necessary to have taken a significant part in the overall conception and design of the research or to have participated in the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of data as well as having written initial drafts of the manuscript, revised and contributed to the final manuscript.
14. Simply having been a part of the research group or having contributed to data collection or provided patients or analysis of tests is not sufficient in and of itself to satisfy the criteria for authorship.
15. Data falsification/fabrication: Falsification is the practice of omitting or altering research materials, data, or processes so that the results of the research are no longer accurately reflected. Fabrication is the practice of inventing data or results and reporting them in the research. Both of these misconducts are fraudulent and seriously alter the integrity of research. Therefore, articles must be written based on original data and use of falsified or fabricated data is strongly prohibited.
16. Image manipulation: JNRCP encourages authors to send their original images. All digital images in manuscripts accepted for publication will be checked for inappropriate manipulation. No specific feature within an image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable as long as they are applied to the entire image and do not misrepresent any information present in the original, including the background. The editors will request the original data from the authors to compare the manipulated figures in cases suspected of inappropriate manipulation.

 

Artificial intelligence & Authorship

With advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and development of tools that can perform human-like tasks such as summarizing articles, writing essays, creating images, and preparing presentation drafts, authors of scholarly articles may find these tools helpful and plan to use them for preparing their manuscripts. However, they should note that these tools have important limitations. They may use phrases from previously distributed material verbatim and/or without proper referencing, thus generating plagiarized material. They may also make statements that are not true or dismiss views opposing the one expressed in the output.

Based on the WAME recommendations, AI tools cannot be listed as authors since they do not meet the authorship criteria as they cannot take responsibility for the integrity of the work, approve the manuscript’s final version, understand conflict of interest, or hold copyright. Yet, authors who have used these tools for preparing their manuscript should clearly introduce the tool they have used and how they have used it in the methods section of the manuscript. The authors should note that they are responsible for the content of their manuscript, including the parts produced by the AI tools. They should make sure that publication ethics are observed throughout the manuscript.

 

Authorship conflicts

Based on the ICMJE recommendations "all those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged".

Any change in authorship (i.e. order, addition, and deletion of authors) after initial submission must be approved by all authors via written confirmation, in line with COPE guidelines. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all authors confirm they agree with the proposed changes. If there is disagreement amongst the authors concerning authorship and a satisfactory agreement cannot be reached, the authors must contact their institution(s) for a resolution. It is not the journal editor’s responsibility to resolve authorship disputes. A change in authorship after publication of an article can only be amended via publication of an Erratum.