Publication Ethics Statement

Asian Medical Journal and Alternative Medicine (AMJAM) is committed to maintaining the highest level ethical standards in academic publication. Therefore, all parties involved must strictly follow the principles and standards of ethics in publication. Our editorial policies and publication ethics conform to the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Appeals and Complaints

All complaints, concerns, or appeals regarding authorship issues or the peer-review process, including concerns raised post-publication, should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief, who shall investigate the claims by first, requesting information from all parties involved and second, proposing a course of action in line with academic ethical principles as outlined by the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE). Submissions can be halted in the review or publication process until the issues are resolved. In situations, when the editors-in-chief is involved in the complaint, the Editorial Board members, led by the most senior member, investigate the claims and propose a course of action.

Authorship

Author qualifications

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:

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.
Have drafted or written, substantially revised, or critically reviewed the article.
Have agreed on the journal to which the article will be submitted.
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.
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.

Author contribution

AMJAM encourages authors to specify the contributions of each individual who participated in the submitted work.

Authorship changes

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.

Conflict of Interest

In the interests of transparency, AMJAM requires authors to declare any competing financial and/or non-financial interests in relation to the work described. The corresponding author is responsible for submitting a conflict of interests' statement on behalf of all authors of the paper. The definitions of competing interests are as follow:

Financial competing interests: Funding/Research support (salaries, equipment, supplies, and other expenses by organizations that may gain financially from this publication), Employment (present or anticipated employment in any organizations that may gain or lose financially through this publication).

Non-financial competing interests: Personal or professional relations with organizations in political, academic, ideological, or religious manner.

Authors must disclose and specify any conflicts of interest during the submission process, via declarations in manuscript submission system. A potential conflict of interest should indicate in the manuscript where a declaration should be made in a separate section of the text and placed before the references. Describe the role of the study sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the paper for publication. We do not require authors to state the monetary value of their financial interests. Reviewers must also disclose any conflicts that could bias their opinions of the manuscript.

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 a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0). 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.

Confidentiality

A submitted manuscript is a confidential material. AMJAM 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 AMJAM's ethics committees and institutions/organizations that may require it for the resolution of the misconduct.

Data integrity

AMJAM is committed to the responsible conduct of research to ensure scientific data integrity. Authors' responsibilities for data integrity include ensuring the reliability, accuracy, completeness, consistency, and validity of the research data, reporting misconduct, and appropriately retaining and accessing the data.

Data falsification/fabrication

When submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors must ensure all data in their manuscript is accurate and correctly represents their work. To help assist the journal with manuscript evaluation, authors are expected to retain all raw and original data represented in their manuscripts. If such data cannot be produced on request, acceptance of a manuscript or published paper may be declined or a manuscript may be retracted.

Duplicate submission/publication

Authors are required to declare upon submission that the manuscript is not under consideration submitted or published elsewhere. 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 AMJAM editors 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.

Ethical oversight

To ensure that the ethical standards of the journal are achieved, AMJAM editors provide ethical oversight for the publication process. The ethical oversight includes policies on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, handling confidential data and ethical business/marketing practices. Suspicion of violations of the ethical oversight policies should be communicated to the Editor-in-Chief of AMJAM.

Ethical approval

For studies involving human or animal subjects, AMJAM requires that information about appropriate institutional review board/ethics committee approval be included with the submission or described within the article. For research involving human subjects, authors should explain how informed consent was obtained from all participants. Identifying information should be excluded from the study data unless the information is essential for the study purposes and the subjects (or their legal representatives) have given prior written informed consent. However, subject information should never be falsified or modified.

Ethical consideration

Duties of Editors

Be responsible for considering and examining every submitted manuscript, by considering the content of manuscripts that are consistent with the aims and scope of the journal and examining the peer review process and quality of articles before the final publication
Publish guidelines for manuscript preparation and any other necessary steps which authors must follow
Check manuscripts in redundancy or in plagiarism by using an Anti-Plagiarism Software. If the editor finds duplication or plagiarism of others in the article evaluation process, the editor must stop the evaluation process and contact the corresponding author immediately for clarification
Consider manuscripts with academic's principles without bias in race, gender, religious beliefs, cultural, political and institute of authors
Must not have any conflict of interest with any of the author(s) or reviewer(s)
Must not seek business benefits from the article(s) and not use as an academic work of their own
Ensure that the peer review process is fair, unbiased and timely and the selected reviewers shall be qualified experts in the relevant field
Must not request the author to include any references with the intention to increase the journal's citation count or impact factor or to increase the citation count of their work or that of their associates
Must not modify or change the content of manuscripts or the assessment results of the reviewer(s), not obstruct or interfere the information exchanged between the reviewer(s) and the author(s)
Must not reject articles due to mere suspicion of research misconduct, but shall seek evidence and give the author an opportunity to respond before rejecting the article
Strictly follow the procedures and processes of the journal
Maintain the standards and quality of the journal
Deal with allegations appropriately in the event that editors are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct
Must not disclose the information of the authors and the reviewers to third parties during the review process nor disclose the content of or any information contained in the manuscript while it has not been published
Establish a mechanism to rectify serious errors in published articles and retract those found in violation of research ethics

Duties of Authors

Ensure the submitted manuscripts to be original contributions not previously published in any academic proceedings, books, or journals elsewhere
Appropriately cite or quote and have accurate and complete list of references in case the author(s) have used the work and/or words of others, respective sources
Must not fabricate or falsify data in research report
Disclose all financial support and any conflicts of interest for the manuscripts in the acknowledgments section
Must obtain consent or permission from human participants in human-related research and ensure the manuscripts were performed in compliance with relevant laws and under international standards of the protection of human subjects
Ensure that the author's name that appears in the article must be a participant in the actual work
Must consent to transfer the copyright to the journal before publication and ensure that the published paper must not be published elsewhere after being published in the journal
Ensure that all authors have significantly contributed to the research
Promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper if the author discovers a significant error in their own published work and if the editor or the publisher learn from a third party that a published work contains an error

Duties of Reviewers

Conduct the review objectively, express their views clearly with supporting arguments and references as necessary and submit the review results on time
Declare any conflicts of interest they may have with the authors or the research project to the editorial team
Consult the editor before agreeing to review a paper where they have potential conflicts of interest
Must not seek to benefit from peer review process for personal advantages
Realize that they have knowledge and understanding of the academic's content truly
Acknowledge the editor immediately if the reviewer(s) found that the article misconduct is associated with plagiarism, data fabrication and/or falsification and duplicate submission
Must treat any manuscripts as confidential documents
Must not share the review or information about the paper with anyone or contact the authors directly without permission from the editor.

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. This information is needed to be accurate and in accordance with the funder's requirements.

Images and figures

The authors should only use images and figures in their article if they are relevant and valuable to the work reported. The authors should refrain from adding content of this type which is purely illustrative and does not add value to the scholarly work. The authors must obtain the necessary written permission to include material in their 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.

Intellectual Property

AMJAM is committed to upholding the principles of intellectual property rights. The journal's policies outline the journal's stance on the ownership, use, and protection of intellectual property to safeguard the rights of authors, contributors, and other stakeholders while fostering a culture of academic integrity and innovation. Authors retain the copyright of their published work unless otherwise agreed upon in a written and signed contract. By submitting their work, authors grant AMJAM a non-exclusive license to publish, distribute, and archive the content. Authors are free to reuse their work (e.g., in books, presentations, or institutional repositories) provided that the original publication in AMJAM is properly cited. AMJAM operates under an open-access framework, ensuring that all published articles are freely accessible to readers. Articles are published under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0). This license allows others to download aticles and share them with others as long as they provide credit, but they can't change them in any way or use them commercially. AMJAM takes steps to protect the integrity of the intellectual property it publishes. Articles are archived in trusted repositories and indexing platforms to prevent unauthorized modification or misuse. Allegations of intellectual property infringement or misuse by AMJAM, its authors, or third parties will be thoroughly investigated. Remedies may include issuing corrections, retractions, or legal action, depending on the severity of the infringement.

Research ethics and consent

Studies in humans and animals
If the work involves the use of human subjects, the authors should ensure that the work described has been carried out in accordance with The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki) for experiments involving humans. The manuscript should be in line with the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journalsand aim for the inclusion of representative human populations (sex, age, and ethnicity) as per those recommendations. The terms, sex and gender, should be used correctly. Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.

All animal experiments should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines and should be carried out in accordance with the U.K. Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, 1986 and associated guidelines, EU Directive 2010/63/EU for animal experiments , or the National Research Council's Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals and the authors should clearly indicate in the manuscript that such guidelines have been followed. The sex of animals must be indicated, and where appropriate, the influence (or association) of sex on the results of the study.

Informed consent

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Identifying information, including names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that an identifiable patient be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should disclose to these patients whether any potentially identifiable material might be available via the Internet as well as in print after publication. Patient consent should be written and archived either with the journal, the authors, or both, as dictated by local regulations or laws. Nonessential identifying details should be omitted. Informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt that anonymity can be maintained. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance, and editors should so note, that such alterations do not distort scientific meaning. When informed consent has been obtained, it should be indicated in the published article.

Research misconduct

AMJAM is committed to detecting and preventing publication misconduct through its peer review and editing process. Peer reviews are instructed to perform routine checks for the following:

Plagiarism (i.e. using the ideas or work of others): If plagiarism is detected or suspected during the screening or reviewing process, the manuscript will be rejected or returned to the authors without further consideration. In cases of post-publication detection of plagiarism, AMJAM will communicate with the authors, assess the situation, and take appropriate action, including issuing corrections or retracting the paper if necessary. AMJAM utilizes Turnitin, supported by Thammasat University, to screen submitted manuscripts for originality. Plagiarism may be suspected if the percentage of similarity is higher than 25%.
Fabrication (i.e. making up data) and Falsification (i.e. manipulating research or modifying data): Reviewers and editors should be cautious of “impressive” research results, unusual research or analysis methods and be aware of potential conflicts of interest. Investigation and communication with authors will be taken once fabrication and/or falsification are suspected
Citation manipulation: Reviewers and editors will check for excessive self-citation, excessive citation of a single journal, and citations that do not support the research topic
Peer review manipulation: Peer reviewers' qualification and performance and selection process are monitored by AMJAM editors
Authorship misconduct: AMJAM editors will take necessary actions according to the AMJAM Authorship Policy above
Duplicate submission: Manuscripts that are found to have been published elsewhere, or to be under review elsewhere, will incur duplicate submission/publication sanctions
Redundant publications: Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles
Image manipulation: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. If the original, unedited images cannot be produced on request, acceptance of a manuscript may be declined or retracted

Misconduct constitutes a violation of this editorial policy, journal policies, publication ethics, or any applicable guidelines/policies specified by COPE, WAME, ICMJE, and STM. Any other activities that threaten/compromise the integrity of the research/publication process are potential misconduct. Suspected cases of misconduct will be investigated according to COPE guidelines.

Plagiarism

This applies to data, images, words or ideas taken from any materials in electronic or print formats without sufficient attribution. This can include abstracts, seminar presentations, laboratory reports, thesis or dissertation, research proposals, computer programs, online posts, grey literature, and unpublished or published manuscripts. The use of any such material either directly or indirectly should be properly acknowledged in all instances and the source of content must always be cited. The journal uses the plagiarism-checking software, Turnitin to screen all submitted manuscripts and will deal with cases of plagiarism according to COPE guidelines. Any manuscript found to contain plagiarized material of more than 25% will not be considered for publication.

Protection of Patients' Rights to Privacy

Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, sonograms, CT scans, etc., and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian, wherever applicable) gives informed consent for publication. Authors should remove patients' names from figures unless they have obtained informed consent from the patients. The journal abides by ICMJE guidelines:

Authors, not the journals nor the publisher, need to obtain the patient consent form before the publication and have the form properly archived. The consent forms are not to be uploaded with the cover letter or sent through email to editorial or publisher offices.
If the manuscript contains patient images that preclude anonymity or a description that has an obvious indication of the identity of the patient, a statement about obtaining informed patient consent should be indicated in the manuscript.

Post-Publication Corrections, Expression of Concern and Retractions

Sometimes after an article has been published it may be necessary to make a change to its final edited version. This will be done after careful consideration by the editor who is also supported by the journal staff to ensure any necessary changes are done in accordance with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Any necessary changes will be accompanied by a permanent post-publication notice which will be permanently linked to the original article. This can be in the form of a Correction notice (Corrigendum or Erratum), an Expression of Concern, a Retraction, or in rare circumstances, a Removal. The purpose of this mechanism of making changes that are permanent and transparent is to ensure the integrity of the scholarly record.

A Correction notice will be issued when it is necessary to correct an error or omission which can impact the interpretation of the article, but where the scholarly integrity of the article remains intact. Examples include mislabeling of a figure, missing information on funding or competing interests of the authors. The journal utilizes two types of correction notice; a Corrigendum will typically be issued for errors introduced by the authors, whereas an Erratum is typically issued for errors introduced by the publisher.

A Retraction notice will be issued where a major error (e.g. in the analysis or methods) invalidates the conclusions in the article, or where research misconduct or publication misconduct has taken place (e.g. research without required ethical approvals, fabricated data, manipulated images, plagiarism, duplicate publication etc.). The decision to issue a retraction for an article will be done in accordance with COPE guidelines. Authors and institutions may also request the retraction of their articles if their reasons meet the criteria for retraction.

All retractions issued at the journal will ensure:

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.

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.

Standards of reporting

Research should be communicated in a way that supports verification and reproducibility, and as such, we encourage authors to provide comprehensive descriptions of their research rationale, protocol, methodology, and analysis.

Use of third-party material

The authors must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material in their article. These materials may include – but are not limited to – text, illustration, photographs, tables, data, audio, video, film stills, screenshots, or musical notation. The use of short extracts of text and some other types of material is usually permitted, on a limited basis, for the purposes of criticism and review without securing formal permission. If the authors wish to include any material in their paper for which they do not hold copyright, the authors will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission.