Editorial Policies
Our Editorial Policies draw on the following sources that have become available to editors and the various initiatives that have been developed at a global level in recent years:
- Manual for Editors of Health Science Journals by the World Health Organization;
- Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE is a forum for publishers and editors of peer-reviewed journals to discuss issues related to the integrity of work submitted to or published in their journals. It supports and encourages editors to report, catalog, and instigate investigations into ethical problems in the publication process. It provides services to members to allow them to resolve ethical publishing issues;
- European Association of Science Editors (EASE) handbook. EASE is an internationally oriented community of individuals from diverse backgrounds, linguistic traditions, and professional experience who share an interest in science communication and editing. Based in the UK, it has members from 55 countries around the world, holds a regular conference, and provides a quarterly newsletter;
- International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals;
- World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) syllabus for prospective and newly appointed editors. Established in 1995, WAME is a voluntary association of editors from countries worldwide who seek to foster international cooperation among editors of peer-reviewed medical journals.
The Role of Authors and Contributors
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:
- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
- Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
- Final approval of the version to be published; AND
- 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.
In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors. All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors.
The corresponding author is the one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer-review, and publication process. The corresponding author typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and disclosures of relationships and activities are properly completed and reported, although these duties may be delegated to one or more co-authors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer-review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way, and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication. Although the corresponding author has primary responsibility for correspondence with the journal, the ICMJE recommends that editors send copies of all correspondence to all listed authors.
When a large multi-author group has conducted the work, the group ideally should decide who will be an author before the work is started and confirm who is an author before submitting the manuscript for publication. All members of the group named as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, including approval of the final manuscript, and they should be able to take public responsibility for the work and should have full confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the work of other group authors. They will also be expected as individuals to complete disclosure forms.
Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading.
Conflicts of Interest and Disclosure
All participants in the peer-review and publication process — not only authors but also peer reviewers, editors, and editorial board members of journals — must consider and disclose their relationships and activities when fulfilling their roles in the process of article review and publication.
When authors submit a manuscript of any type or format they are responsible for disclosing all relationships and activities that might bias or be seen to bias their work. The ICMJE has developed a Disclosure Form to facilitate and standardize authors’ disclosures. ICMJE member journals require that authors use this form, and ICMJE encourages other journals to adopt it.
Reviewers should be asked at the time they are asked to critique a manuscript if they have relationships or activities that could complicate their review. Reviewers must disclose to editors any relationships or activities that could bias their opinions of the manuscript, and should recuse themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if the potential for bias exists. Reviewers must not use knowledge of the work they are reviewing before its publication to further their own interests.
Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts should recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have relationships or activities that pose potential conflicts related to articles under consideration. Other editorial staff members who participate in editorial decisions must provide editors with a current description of their relationships or activities (as they might relate to editorial judgments) and recuse themselves from any decisions in which an interest that poses a potential conflict exists. Editorial staff must not use information gained through working with manuscripts for private gain. Editors should regularly publish their own disclosure statements and those of their journal staff. Guest editors should follow these same procedures.
Corrections, Retractions, Republications and Version Control
Honest errors are a part of science and publishing and require publication of a correction when they are detected. Corrections are needed for errors of fact. Matters of debate are best handled as letters to the editor, as print or electronic correspondence, or as posts in a journal-sponsored online forum. Updates of previous publications (e.g., an updated systematic review or clinical guideline) are considered a new publication rather than a version of a previously published article.
If a correction is needed, GBMN will follow these minimum standards:
- A correction notice will be published as soon as possible detailing changes from and citing the original publication; the correction will be on an electronic page that is included in an electronic Table of Contents to ensure proper indexing.
- GBMN will post a new article version with details of the changes from the original version and the date(s) on which the changes were made.
- GBMN will archive all prior versions of the article. This archive can be either directly accessible to readers or can be made available to the reader on request.
- Previous electronic versions will prominently note that there are more recent versions of the article.
- The citation should be to the most recent version.
Pervasive errors can result from a coding problem or a miscalculation and may result in extensive inaccuracies throughout an article. If such errors do not change the direction or significance of the results, interpretations, and conclusions of the article, a correction should be published that follows the minimum standards noted above.
Errors serious enough to invalidate a paper’s results and conclusions may require retraction. However, retraction with republication (also referred to as “replacement”) can be considered in cases where honest error (e.g., a misclassification or miscalculation) leads to a major change in the direction or significance of the results, interpretations, and conclusions. If the error is judged to be unintentional, the underlying science appears valid, and the changed version of the paper survives further review and editorial scrutiny, then retraction with republication of the changed paper, with an explanation, allows full correction of the scientific literature. In such cases, it is helpful to show the extent of the changes in supplementary material or in an appendix, for complete transparency.
Copyright
GBMN will ask authors to transfer copyright to the journal. The copyright status of articles in GBMN can vary: some content cannot be copyrighted (for example, articles written by employees of some governments in the course of their work). Editors may waive copyright on other content, and some content may be protected under other agreements.
Overlapping Publications
Duplicate Submission. Authors should not submit the same manuscript, in the same or different languages, simultaneously to more than one journal. The rationale for this standard is the potential for disagreement when two (or more) journals claim the right to publish a manuscript that has been submitted simultaneously to more than one journal, and the possibility that two or more journals will unknowingly and unnecessarily undertake the work of peer review, edit the same manuscript, and publish the same article.
Duplicate and Prior Publication. Duplicate publication is publication of a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published, without clear, visible reference to the previous publication. Prior publication may include release of information in the public domain. Duplicate publication of original research is particularly problematic because it can result in inadvertent double-counting of data or inappropriate weighting of the results of a single study, which distorts the available evidence.
When authors submit a manuscript reporting work that has already been reported in large part in a published article or is contained in or closely related to another paper that has been submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere, the letter of submission should clearly say so and the authors should provide copies of the related material to help the editor decide how to handle the submission.
In the event of a public health emergency (as defined by public health officials), information with immediate implications for public health should be disseminated without concern that this will preclude subsequent consideration for publication in a journal. We encourage editors to give priority to authors who have made crucial data publicly available without delay.
Authors who attempt duplicate publication without such notification should expect at least prompt rejection of the submitted manuscript. If the editor was not aware of the violations and the article has already been published, then the article might warrant retraction with or without the author’s explanation or approval.
Acceptable Secondary Publication. Secondary publication of material published in other journals or online may be justifiable and beneficial, especially when intended to disseminate important information to the widest possible audience (e.g., guidelines produced by government agencies and professional organizations in the same or a different language).
Manuscripts Based on the Same Database. If GBMN receives manuscripts from separate research groups or from the same group analyzing the same data set (for example, from a public database, or systematic reviews or meta-analyses of the same evidence), the manuscripts will be considered independently because they may differ in their analytic methods, conclusions, or both. If the data interpretation and conclusions are similar, GBMN will give preference to the manuscript submitted first.
Sometimes for large trials it is planned from the beginning to produce numerous separate publications regarding separate research questions but using the same original participant sample. In this case authors may use the original single trial registration number, if all the outcome parameters were defined in the original registration. If the authors registered several substudies as separate entries in, for example, ClinicalTrials.gov, then the unique trial identifier should be given for the study in question. The main issue is transparency, so no matter what model is used it should be obvious for the reader.
Advertising
GBMN carries advertising according to existing regulatory and industry standards for advertisements specific to Georgia, but our policies are not dominated by advertisements, and advertising is not allowed to influence GBMN editorial decisions. GBMN does not carry advertisements for products proven to be seriously harmful.
Unauthorized Use of Trademark
The Georgian Biomedical News, the Georgian Biomedical News logo design, and GBMN are trademarks. Any use of these trademarks in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution, or advertising of any goods or services, which is likely to cause confusion, to cause mistake, or to deceive, is strictly prohibited.
