Publication ethics and malpractice statement

General Declaration

Advanced Pharmaceutical Bulletin (APB) strongly considers the "ethical standards for publication" to ensure upon the "high-quality scientific publications", which grants the public trust for the scientific findings as the proof-of-concept and the proof-of-transformative technology. APB follows Helsinki Declaration. Click to read the Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects.

APB restrictedly adheres to the “Code of Conduct” and the “Best Practice Guidelines” and "Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing".

Click to visit the “Code of Conduct and the Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors” provided by COPE.

Click to visit the “Core Practices for Journal Publishers”.

Plagiarism, Duplicated Publication, Data Fabrication and Falsification

APB is committed to publishing the original studies and timely reviews that have neither been published nor is under review elsewhere. APB is powered by CrossCheck™, iThenticate™ and CrossMark™, and all the submitted manuscripts (MSs) are subjected to the CrossCheck. Taken all, all plagiarized materials will incur the “Plagiarism Sanctions”.

Submitted MSs, which are found to be published or under review elsewhere, will be sustained and experience the “Duplicated Publication Sanctions”.

Submitted MSs, which are found to include either fabricated or falsified data including the manipulation of images, will confront with the “Data Fabrication/Falsification Sanctions”.

Redundant Publications

All the redundant publications, which are involved in an inappropriate dividing of study outcomes into several articles, will face the “Redundant Publication Sanctions”.

Citation Manipulation

All the submitted MSs found to have manipulated citations primarily for just increasing the number of citations to a given author(s) or article(s) will incur the “Citation Manipulation Sanctions”.

Gift Authorship

All listed authors are required to have significant scientific contributions to the research of the submitted MS and also approved the claimed findings. Gift Authorship, an author without any significant scientific contribution, will meet with the “Gift Authorship Sanctions”.

According to the ICMJE, the authorship should be based on the following criteria:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data.
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
• Final approval of the version published.
• 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.

Retraction

Based on the COPE guidelines on the retraction, APB will consider retracting a publication if:

• It has clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error).
• The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication).
• It constitutes plagiarism.
• It reports unethical research.

Sanctions

In the case of occurrence documented violations of the aforementioned policies of the journal, it is the APB’s right to apply the following sanctions:

• APB keeps all the rights to retract the infringing published works at any time found based on the COPE guideline for retracting articles.
• A prohibition against all the authors for any new submissions to APB for a minimum of 24 months.
• A prohibition against all the infringed authors from serving as a reviewer of acting as a member of the Editorial Board of APB for a minimum of 36 months.
• In cases of occurrence of violations found to be particularly ostensible, APB reserves the right to apply additional sanctions beyond the aforementioned actions.

Click to see the "Editorial Policies" of the Advanced Pharmaceutical Bulletin.

Note: In elaboration of this document, ideas from similar statements of other publishers have been used.