Allegations of Misconduct Policy

ASNJ is committed to upholding the highest standards of integrity and transparency in scholarly publishing. The journal follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

The following are considered misconduct under this policy:

• Data fabrication or falsification
• Image/figure manipulation
• Plagiarism — all submitted manuscripts are screened with similarity-detection software; the maximum acceptable similarity rate is 20%
• Authorship disputes or unjustified authorship attribution
• Duplicate or redundant publication, or concurrent submission
• Undisclosed conflicts of interest
• Abuse of the peer review process

When an allegation of misconduct is raised by an editor, reviewer, or reader, the Editor-in-Chief conducts a preliminary assessment. If warranted, the relevant author(s) are asked to respond. The editorial team follows COPE's flowcharts for misconduct to reach a decision, which may include manuscript rejection, requested revision, correction, retraction, or notification to the author's institution.

Allegations are handled confidentially, and all parties involved are given a fair opportunity to respond.

To report an allegation of misconduct, please contact: [email protected]