RPHM strictly adheres to the publication ethics, and would likewise initiate lawful audit if required on a case by case basis. The journal guarantees in reflecting the research outcome of the authors without any fear or favour and the decisions of the editors remain final.
The peer review process remains as the heart of journal publishing. Below are certain roles and responsibilities the reviewer must follow in order to maintain the high publication standards of the journal.
Confidentiality: Reviewers must maintain strict confidentiality related to the information shared with them in the manuscripts, which may contain data, text, images and videos, Revisers should not share any information from an assigned manuscript with outsiders without the prior permission of the Editor. Reviewer should not retain the data from an assigned manuscript.
Competence: Reviewer with fair expertise should complete the review. Assigned Reviewer with inadequate expertise should feel responsible and may decline if the reviewer presumes that He/she lacks the expertise in the respective field.
Constructive assessment: Reviewer’s comments should appreciate positive aspects of the work, identify the weak areas constructively, and indicate the same to improve the quality of the manuscript. Reviewer should explain and support his or her judgment clearly so that editors and authors can understand the basis of the comments. The reviewer should ensure that the authors are strictly adhering to the citation of the source of the information. The reviewer should alert the editor if he/she finds the study is already in existence to avoid any duplicate publication. A reviewer should not use any kind of abusive language while commenting on an article. Judgment of each article should be done without any bias and personal interest by the assigned reviewer.
Impartiality and Integrity: Reviewer’s decision should be made based on the scientific merit and relevance of the study and should be able to examine whether or not it fits into the scope of the journal rather than the financial, racial, ethnic origin etc., of the authors.
Disclosure of conflict of interest: To the extent feasible, the reviewer should minimize the conflict of interest. In such situation, reviewer should notify the editor describing the conflict of interest. Conduct the review objectively and avoid any personal criticism of the author. Express views clearly with supporting arguments. Inform the Editor of any substantial similarity between the manuscript and any other paper of which they have personal knowledge, whether published or concurrently under review elsewhere. Inform the editor of suspected research misconduct (e.g. data fabrication).
Timeliness and responsiveness: Reviewers should morally abide by the time mentioned to provide the review comments by honouring the deadlines and should respond quickly to the queries raised by the editor if any.
Editor must comply with the policy guidelines provided by the publisher and fulfil the responsibilities bestowed upon them. They have the responsibility to maintain the integrity of the published literature by publishing the errata or corrections, if any when any significant retractions or expressions of concern are identified.
Review process: Editors are responsible for monitoring and ensuring the fairness, timeliness, thoroughness, and civility of the review process. They are responsible for the management of the entire editorial team that comprises panel of experts as reviewers and associate editors. Editors provide timely suggestion to the respective journals for covering the relevant and significant topic essential for the growth of the journal.
Towards Readers and Research Community
Journals published by RPHM are following timely rigorous peer review process to bring the recent and novel academic information at its best possible mode. As a publisher the following policies are being considered:
An author is accountable for the data and information presented in their respective article. Hence, authors are expected to present genuine and the original outcome of their research, by providing appropriate and relevant citation while representing the data and documenting the discussion. Authors must provide information which is comprehensible and reproducible. Supporting information such as figures and tables provided by the authors should be legible and must be reproducible technically.
An author should not repeat any previous research data of their own or from others while submitting the original manuscript for the primary publication in any of the journals. Before submitting any article, authors should check the scope of the journal and in case of any query they should contact the Editorial office.
Authors should strictly adhere to the authorship criteria. All listed authors must have made a significant contribution to the research presented in the manuscript and approved all its claims. In order to be considered as an author of an original research, the author (s) must have contributed in any of the following ways: designed the study, executed the study or conducted the experiments, have taken part in analysing the data, supported in documenting the article and drawing the conclusion, spearheaded the project as a principal investigator. It is mandatory to include everyone that contributes towards the completion of the research work.
Authors must ensure that they have written and produced entirely original work and have not breached the research norms by duplicating the work accomplished by the others, They should make accurate and appropriate attributions while quoting the other researchers referred in the study. Avoid self-plagiarism. Avoid fragmenting research to maximize the number of articles for publication.
All Content is Open Access and Free for Readers. This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.
If author (s) are found guilty of breaching this code of ethics or guilty of research misconduct, the journal reserves the right to reject/retract or withdraw the paper and declines further submissions from the offending authors for a period of up to five years by informing all the interested parties, including journal editors and authors, the author's department head and/or institutional office of Publication misconduct.
RPHM Journals take the responsibility to maintain the integrity and completeness of the scholarly record of the content for the end users spanning the length and the breadth of the globe. The journal place great importance on the authority of articles after they have been published and our policy is based on the best practice followed in the academic publishing community.
Editor of a learned journal is solely and solely responsible for accepting or rejecting any manuscript for publication. The journal's Editorial board and the legal experts extend their support to the editor regarding copyright infringement and plagiarism. The final outcome will be archived for the readers and the entire scholarly world in digital form. This would remain permanent, as a historical record for the development of future scholarship in any given field. Articles that have been published shall remain unaltered as far as possible. However, occasionally, if any unavoidable circumstances arise after the publication, the article will be retracted or even removed from a particular journal. Such actions must not be undertaken lightly and can only occur under exceptional circumstances, such as: severe breach of research and publication ethics like violation of copyrights and repetition or republication of the manuscript by manipulating the facts and figures.
Article withdrawal: This is applicable for manuscripts in the stage of “Article in Press” which represents the early versions of the accepted articles. If any article at this stage infringes the professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, and the article may be withdrawn depending on the Editor’s discretion. In this regard, editors assess and analyze the entire situations, on a case by case basis.
Article retraction: Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, sham claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data and similar claims will lead to the retraction of an article. Occasionally, a retraction may be considered to correct errors in submission or publication.
Article removal and replacement: Subjected to legal limitations of the publisher may withdraw any article faces issues related to copyright holder or author(s). Identification of false or inaccurate data representation, as it may pose a serious risk and involves academic data tampering or other fraudulent and unfair practice; hence it should be handled firmly.
The core objective of these measures is necessary to maintain the integrity of the academic record.
