Author Guidelines
1. Journal aim:
Journal of Islamic and Iranian Traditional Medicine is published by the Academy of Medical Sciences of the Islamic Republic of Iran under the supervision of the Hikmat (Wisdom), Islamic and Traditional Medicine Department. The purpose of this journal is to publish the findings and research results of the review and evidence-based studies of faculty members, researchers and students in various fields of Islamic and Iranian Traditional Medicine and Pharmacy, Iranian Medical History as well as wisdom, philosophy and logic.
2. Scope of articles:
The journal invites all of the researchers, professors, and students to submit their original research papers, review articles, and letter to editors in the fields related to the science of traditional medicine and pharmacy. Scope of papers include: healthy lifestyle, development of various medical sciences, biography and introduction of scientific works of sages and past scholars, wisdom, philosophy or logic, ethnopharmacology, explanatory studies, qualitative studies, preparation and standardization of traditional and natural medicines, and evidence-based medicine (such as basic science, in vitro, in vivo, and various clinical studies), medical history studies as well as the fields of culture and ethics, etc.
3. Editorial Independency:
Although the Journal of Islamic and Iranian Traditional Medicine is sponsored financially by the Academy of Medical Sciences, it benefits from editorial freedom. The editors evaluate and accept articles based only on significance, originality, validity, and adherence to the aims and scope of the journal.
Our editorial policy is consistent with the principles of editorial independence presented by WAME.
http://wame.org/editorial-independence
4. Submission of Manuscripts:
Corresponding author should first register on journal website (www.jiitm.ir) and submit the manuscript in the format of Word 2003 and PDF files through a 3-step submission process. Once a manuscript submitted, a reference code will be dedicated to it for future correspondences of the author with the journal.
As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
- Authors must confirm that the manuscript is their original work and each manuscript must be accompanied by a statement that has not previously been published or submitted elsewhere and has not simultaneously been reviewed in another journal. This statement must be signed by all authors. The author must notify this issue writing to the journal's office by e-mail: traditionaljournal ams.ac.ir.
- All the authors should be aware of the submission and publication of the article. In order to allow the submission, it is necessary for the respected authors to commit to these items by signing the mentioned letter.
- Submitted articles must be prepared and sent according to the journal format; otherwise they will not be included in the review process unless the author of the article corrects the article based on the format of the journal.
- The possible decisions include acceptance, minor revisions, major revision or rejection. If a manuscript is accepted to publish; authors must submit permissions to reproduce copyrighted material and must sign an agreement for the transfer of copyright to the Journal. All accepted manuscripts, artwork, and photographs become the publisher's property. All rejected manuscripts will be archived on our journal management system.
5. Language of the Journal:
All types of articles in Persian language are accepted by the journal, but articles such as original research articles, review studies, short communications, case reports, etc., need an English abstract in addition to the Persian abstract.
6. Manuscript types:
Various types of articles are accepted for publication in the Journal of Islamic and Iranian Traditional Medicine as described and explained in the following table:
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Tables and figures limitation
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References limitation
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Word count limitation (including abstract, text and references)
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Abstract (words)
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Article type
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10 tables or figures
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40 references
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5000 words
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Structural
150-300
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Original research
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6 tables or figures
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50 references
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7000 words
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Non Structural
150-300
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Original research (History/ Philosophy of medicine)
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6 tables or figures
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No Limited
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10000 words
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Non Structural
150-300
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Review article (narrative)
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10 tables or figures
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No Limited
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10000 words
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Structural
150-300
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Review article (Systematic and meta-analysis)
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2 tables or figures
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30 references
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3000 words
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Structural or Non Structural
150-300
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Short communication
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4 tables or figures
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40 references
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4000 words
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Non Structural
150-300
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Culture and Traditional medicine
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1 tables or figures
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7 references
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500 words
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-
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Letter to editor
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3 tables or figures
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10 references
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2000 words
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Non Structural
150-300
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Book review article
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3 tables or figures
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10 references
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2000 words
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Non Structural
150-300
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Commentary article
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2 tables or figures
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10 references
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2000 words
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-
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Editorial article
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3 tables or figures
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10 references
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3000 words
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Non Structural
150-300
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Case study
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1 tables or figures
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2 references
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1000 words
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-
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Events article
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| 3 tables or figures |
5 references |
4000 words |
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Interview article |
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2 tables or figures
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2 references
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1000 words
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-
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Memorial
article
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*Word limit includes abstract, article text and tables. Authors’ names and affiliations, and references are not part of it.
7. Manuscript formatting:
Each manuscript must be included cover letter, Title Page, abstract, text, Acknowledgment, references, and if necessary, tables, figures, and illustrations.
7-1. Cover Letter (for all submissions):
The corresponding author should send a cover letter to the journal along with the article through the journal's website. Authors must explain the importance of publishing the article through this letter and confirm that the submitted article has not been previously published in any other journal, inside or outside the country, and it is not being reviewed in other journal at the same time. This letter must be signed by all authors.
7-2. Title Page (for all submissions):
The title page should be contain the title of the article (avoid using abbreviations in the title of the article), a short running head (concise, useful and less than 5 words, with space), full name, affiliations and address of all authors in Farsi and English.
Name, academic degree (professor, associate professor, assistant professor, etc.) and educational qualification (Ph.D, MD, M.Sc, B.Sc), employment, affiliations and place of the authors of the manuscript should be completely mentioned in order i.e. (group/center, faculty or college /organization/institute, university, city, country), not including the word doctor or other degrees before the authors’ names. The authors' addresses, if are different, should be sequenced in consecutive numbers (see published articles).
Also, the full address, e-mail, phone number and ORCID ID of the authors should be included (for more information to get the ORCID ID, refer to files/site1/files/manual_ORCID.pdf). Name, degree, educational qualification and place of employment of all the authors should also be written in English and the scientific degree of the authors should be written in the form of an abbreviation (Ph.D, MD, M.Sc, B.Sc) after their name. Corresponding author must be marked with an asterisk (*).
Note: The role of all authors in writing the article must be mentioned in the Title page.
Note: The e-mail of the corresponding author should be institutional one as much as possible.
7-3. Abstract:
The manuscripts such as original research, systematic review, short communication) should have a structural abstract with headings (background and purpose, materials and methods, results, conclusion). Others including original research on medical history/wisdom and philosophy, Narrative review, short communication, culture and ethics, book review, Commentary article and case report should have a unstructured abstract and maximum of 300 words (both Farsi and English). At the end of the abstract, between 3 and 7 keywords should be mentioned. The English keywords should identical to the medical subject headings (MeSH) and the Persian keywords should identical to the Persian medical thesaurus.
7-4. Text:
Original articles, reviews and short communications must include parts such as Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion and Conclusion.
Manuscript text should be prepared according to specific research reporting guidelines including STROBE for observational studies, CONSORT for clinical trials, and PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
• The introduction should be written in a concise, clear, purposeful, coherent and orderly manner. Authors should pay attention to the type, sequence and logical order of the information presented in the introduction.
• In the materials and methods section, all parts including study design, time and place of study, studied population, sampling method, sample size formula, inclusion and exclusion criteria, data collection, details of implementing the work or intervention steps, the tools of collecting information and their validity and reliability, ethical considerations, and the method of statistical analysis (if used) should be written in detail so that it can be understood and repeated objectively by other researchers.
• In the results section, the findings included in the tables should not be repeated in the text, except for very important items.
• In the discussion section, the obtained results should be compared and discussed with the results of other similar studies conducted (for and against) in Iran and other parts of the world (with citation to the source).
7-5. Conflict of Interest:
We request all the authors to inform us about any kinds of "Conflict of Interest" (such as financial, personal, political, or academic) that would potentially affect their judgment. If the authors do not have a conflict of interest, it should be mentioned under this section: "There is no conflict of interest to report in this article".
7-6. Funding:
In case of receiving financial support from a source outside of the institution that authors are affiliated; which does not cause a conflict of interest (such as receiving a national or international grant from governmental institutions, associations, etc.), the source and number of the received grant should be mentioned. For this, add a section to the article after the “conflict of interest” section.
7-7. Acknowledgments:
Authors can thank from any persons who help them to prepare manuscript and also any organizations which financially support the study. This section must be located before references. “Ethics approval code” and “Trial Registration Code (IRCT)” for clinical trial studies are also given in this section.
Note: When submitting your article, please mention the IRCT clinical trial registration code in the main file of the article and delete it in the file without authors' names.
7-8. Postscripts:
Subjects that need to be annotated and cannot be incorporated into the text should be written in sequence, with explanations for that annotation in this section of the article.
7-9. References:
All of the references should be cited in English, Vancouver style, and at the end of the article.
The Vancouver citation style is based on the citation sequence. Therefore, references in the text must be in consecutive numbers and in parentheses. Each source is assigned a number in the first place cited in the text. The same number is used in repeated citations to that source, regardless of the next citation location. When multiple sources are cited in sequence in a specific section of text, the dash is used to connect between the first and the last source.
Note: The mentioned references should match the numbers of the text and should be inserted in the order of use in the text.
Note: At least one-third of the references should be related to the last 5 years and indexed in reliable sites such as Scopus, PubMed, etc.
- For references with more than 6 authors, write 6 authors and use "et al" for others. Examples of citations are as follows.
- Non-English references are to be written in Italic form, and if the source has an English title, it also should be written in brackets.
Note: In order to write Persian references in English, if the original source contains the English translation of the name of the book or journal in its back cover, and the title of the article in the English abstract, use the same English translation. If the English translation for the Persian source is not mentioned in the original source, it is necessary to transcribe the name of the book or journal and the title of the article. Examples of citing sources are given below:
Book citation:
Note: If the original of the book is in a non-English language (Persian, Arabic, ...), the phrase [In Persian/Arabic/...] should be mentioned at the end of the reference.
Journal citation:
Thesis citation:
Citation of an article in an online journal:
Web site citation:
- Available at: URL: http://www.healthinfo.com/doc1999.htm.Accessed June 12, 2001.
7-10. Tables and Figures:
All tables and figures should be putted in appropriate places in the text with a short descriptive title at the top of each table and underneath of each figure followed by a proper description given below. Decimal numbers should be written in Persian.
Illustrations must be 300 dpi or higher resolution (The figures can be submitted with jpeg format). The figures which were obtained from other sources and not original are needed to permission from original source.
8. General writing tips:
As a part of the submission process, authors will need to comply with all of the followings for the acceptance. If the submission is not in accordance with these guidelines, it will be sent back to the author for correction.
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The article should be submitted in Microsoft Word 2003 and PDF format.
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All sections of the file should have a margin of 2.5cm, with B Nazanin font for Persian script, 2Badr font for Arabic script (font size 12), and Times New Roman font for English script (font size 11), by line spacing 1cm and in the format of A4. Manuscript should be numbered on all pages.
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All abbreviations must be spelled out the first time used, followed by the abbreviated form in parentheses.
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Units of measurement must be complied with the International System of Units (SI).
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The titles of sections and subheadings should be specified with bold text which can be numbered.
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Separate any title or sub-heading from the previous header or sub-headings with an Enter.
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Before the parentheses, place a space between the words before and after the parentheses but the braces should be attached to the words or numbers inside them.
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Dots and commas are to be attached to the words ahead of them and separated form the next words through a space.
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Full scientific names of plants including the genus and species name should be written in italic and the name of their author(s) in non-italic form.
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Insert Latin equivalents of the words inside the text and refrain from bringing them in footnote (Obviously, the non-Persian equivalent of a certain word is written only once and in the first case of using the Persian word).
Appendix:
9. Reviewing:
Editor will read the submission and, if it is suitable, will send it to reviewers. Feedback is usually within two months of receipt, includes a decision letter of rejection or acceptance and also can be sent back for revision.
10. Peer Review Process:
All submissions are primarily evaluated by master of journal office who checks the articles for any methodological flaws, format, and their compliance with the journal’s guidelines. Through a double-blind review, the submissions will be reviewed by two external (peer) reviewers during maximum 2-3 weeks according to specific research reporting guidelines. Their comments will be passed to the corresponding author. After receiving the comments of the reviewers, the corresponding author should send his highlighted corrected items in the file of his refereed article and the uncorrected items in a separate letter to the journal office within 2 weeks. If the revised version is not sent after one month, the article will be removed from the reviewing process. Their responses to the comments along with the reviewers’ comments will then be evaluated by the Editorial Board, and a final reviewer who can be a member of the Editorial Board. The final review process will be discussed in regular editorial board sessions and on the basis of the comments, and the journal’s scope, the Editorial Board will decide which articles should be published. Finally, the final approval for publication or rejection of the article or its written and literary correction is subject to the decision of the editor. The author is responsible for the correspondence and publishing the article does not mean confirming its contents.
11. Proofs and Reprints:
When a manuscript is accepted and ready to publish, a final proof will be send to correspondence to approve it or correct errors which must be reported to the journal office within 48 hours. After approving the proof, it will be published in the Journal as soon as possible.
12. Ethical Considerations:
The journal follows the guideline of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE's flowcharts and guidelines are approached in confronting any ethical misbehavior. The Journal also follows the guidelines mentioned in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscript Submitted to Biomedical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/#privacy). The research that involves human beings (or animals) must adhere to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. (https://www.wma.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DoH-Oct2008.pdf).
Authors must fill the "Ethical Approval Code" During Submission of manuscript "Ethical Approval Code" is required for all studies and experiences on people, medical records, animal samples. The said approval must be obtained before conducting the study. Authors should send the "Ethics Committee Approval Code" of the university or the relevant organization along with the article.
Researchers who would like to publish their clinical trial reports in Journal of Islamic and Iranian Traditional Medicine are strongly encouraged to register their studies in a registry of clinical trials proposed by the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (IRCT) is a registry suggested by WHO.
Therefore, having "Ethical Approval Code" and code of "IRCT" are required for clinical trial manuscripts. Otherwise, we have to "Fast Reject" those submissions in the early screening step.
13. Informed consent:
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.
14. Authorship:
- Originality and Duplicate Publication
Manuscripts under review or published by other journals will not be accepted for publication in this journal, and articles published in this journal are not allowed to be reproduced in whole or in part in any type of publication without permission of the Editorial Board in English, Persian or any other language.
- Authorship and Author’s Responsibilities:
The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest statements, are properly completed. The corresponding author should respond to editorial queries throughout the submission and peer review process in a timely manner, and should cooperate with any requests from the journal after publication.
Based on the newly released recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of scholarly work in medical journals, by the ICMJE, “an author” is generally considered to be someone who meets the following conditions:
1- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2- Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3- Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4- Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
All authors mentioned in the manuscript must play a significant role in the research. Also, level of their contribution must be defined that who has contributed to the planning, conduct, and reporting of the work described in the article.
This journal does not allow adding authors or changing the first or the corresponding authors after the final acceptance of the article.
Any changes to the authorship (i.e., order, addition and remove authors) after initial submission must be confirmed by a letter signed by all authors.
15. Plagiarism:
Authors are not allowed to use verbatim previously published articles or manuscripts that have been sent elsewhere, and this is subject to "duplicate publication" or "scientific-literary plagiarism", which should also be emphasized and included in the cover letter.
In referring to other sources, the same text should not be used and should be quoted to the content. Any use of text, data and analysis of other sources that creates the suspicion of tampering without making enough changes is subject to plagiarism and this issue also includes other articles of the authors. Even if several articles have been extracted from single research, the text and references cannot be exactly the same. If the authors are found by the editor to have plagiarized, they will be dealt with according to the guidelines of the "Publication Ethics Committee". The penalty for this act ranges from a verbal warning to informing the relevant organization of authors and decision-making bodies of scientific research publications.
16. 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.
17. Retraction Policy:
The Journal of Islamic and Iranian Traditional Medicine use the COPE flowchart for retraction of a published article (https://publicationethics.org/files/u661/Retractions_COPE_gline_final_3_Sept_09__2_.pdf) to determine whether a published article should be retracted.
18. Article Processing Charge (APC):
As the responsible organization has supported all of the publishing costs of this journal, article submission, processing charge (Acceptance Fee) and publication in this journal are free of charge for authors.
19. Open Access Policy:
This journal is an open access journal, with free access for each visitor.
Authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions.
20. Indexing and Database:
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