The editor team in Anser Press works hard to prevent any academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication. Those activities that damage academic integrity include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submitting same manuscript to different publishers at the same time, and violations of intellectual property rights. We are committed to high standards for professional conduct and ethical behavior in all published material.
Anser Press will be a member (in process) of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and strictly follow Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. We also refer to its Core Practice to handle complaints and appeals, post-publication discussions and corrections, as well as its policies on data sharing and reproducibility, ethical oversight, intellectual property, etc.
Principles:
Academic misconducts and violations
To protect academic integrity, duplication checker iThenticate will be used to verify the originality of submissions. A submission will be desk-declined (during submissions stage) or rejected for consideration (during peer review stage) if the research paper contains 20% or more of plagiarized content or 2% or more of plagarism from the same reference. In this way, authors must adhere to the contemporary rules in academic writing and publishing ethics.
In cases of suspected misconduct and violation, the editor team will be responsible for investigation. If the suspected submission is supported by evidence, it will be declined in the journal and all authors will be informed on this matter. In case of already published paper, un-publication will be initiated immediately. Authors of the paper will receive Editor’s Decision via email and all complaints and appeals need to be made within 1 month of the decision date. Anser Press is committed to upholding the academic integrity and publishes Errata, Expressions of Concerns or Retraction Notices dependent on the situation and in accordance with the COPE Retraction Guidelines.
Article Removal
In an extremely limited number of cases, it may be necessary to remove an article from the online database. This will only occur where the article is clearly defamatory, or infringes others’ legal rights, or where the article is, or we have good reason to expect it will be, the subject of a court order, or where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk. In these circumstances, while the metadata (Title and Authors) will be retained, the text will be replaced with a screen indicating the article has been removed for legal reasons.
Article Replacement
In cases where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk, the authors of the original article may wish to retract the flawed original and replace it with a corrected version. In these circumstances the procedures for retraction will be followed with the difference that the database retraction notice will publish a link to the corrected re-published article and a history of the document.
Erratum & Corrigendum
In the instance where errors are introduced to the article by the publisher an erratum will be published to the original article. All publisher-introduced changes are highlighted to the author at the proof stage and any errors are ideally identified by the author and corrected by the publisher before final publication.
Should the author wish to publish to a change to their article that at any time after acceptance a corrigendum will be published. Authors should contact the Editors-in-Chief of the journal, who will determine the impact of the change and decide on the appropriate course of action.
Authors of the paper are obliged to declare conflicts of interest or state “All the authors claim that the manuscript is completely original. The authors also declare no conflict of interest”. Authors are required to disclose any actual and potential conflicts or competing interests with any institutions, organizations or agencies that may damage the integrity of research results at submission. Personal, financial, and professional affiliations or relationships can be regarded as conflicts of interest.
Financial competing interests include but are not limited to:
Non-financial competing interests include but are not limited to:
Informed consent
All participants in studies have the right to know and decide what happens to the personal data gathered, to what they have said during a study or an interview. In many instances authors will need to get written informed consent before publication. A statement confirming that informed consent to publish identifying information/images was obtained must be included in the methods section.
Research involving human participants
For research involving animal or human subjects, authors must identify the committee that approved the research, confirm that all research was performed in accordance with relevant guidelines, and include in their manuscript a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all participants and/or their legal guardians. In the case of articles describing human transplantation studies, authors must include a statement declaring that no organs/tissues were obtained from prisoners and must also name the institution(s)/clinic(s)/department(s) via which organs/tissues were obtained. Example of an ethical statement: "All subjects gave their informed consent for inclusion before they participated in the study. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code)." Anser Press may request documentation related to informed consent, ethics approval and donor organ/tissue source, including approved translations when original documents are in a language other than English. Failure to provide verifiable documentation may result in withdrawal of a manuscript. Research involving human research participants must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.
For non-interventional studies (e.g. surveys, questionnaires, social media research), all participants must be fully informed if the anonymity is assured, why the research is being conducted, how their data will be used and if there are any risks associated. As with all research involving humans, ethical approval from an appropriate ethics committee must be obtained prior to conducting the study. If ethical approval is not required, authors must either provide an exemption from the ethics committee or are encouraged to cite the local or national legislation that indicates ethics approval is not required for this type of study. Where a study has been granted exemption, the name of the ethics committee which provided this should be stated in Section ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ with a full explanation regarding why ethical approval was not required.
If the study reports research involving vulnerable groups, an additional check may be performed. The submitted manuscript will be scrutinized by the editorial office and upon request, documentary evidence (blank consent forms and any related discussion documents from the ethics board) must be supplied. Additionally, when studies describe groups by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, disease, etc., explanation regarding why such categorization was needed must be clearly stated in the article.
Authors must include details on housing, husbandry and pain management in their manuscript.
For further guidance authors should refer to the Code of Practice for the Housing and Care of Animals Used in Scientific Procedures [2], American Association for Laboratory Animal Science [3] or European Animal Research Association [4].
If national legislation requires it, studies involving vertebrates or higher invertebrates must only be carried out after obtaining approval from the appropriate ethics committee. As a minimum, the project identification code, date of approval and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board should be stated in Section ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’. Research procedures must be carried out in accordance with national and institutional regulations. Statements on animal welfare should confirm that the study complied with all relevant legislation. Clinical studies involving animals and interventions outside of routine care require ethics committee oversight as per the American Veterinary Medical Association. If the study involved client-owned animals, informed client consent must be obtained and certified in the manuscript report of the research. Owners must be fully informed if there are any risks associated with the procedures and that the research will be published. If available, a high standard of veterinary care must be provided. Authors are responsible for correctness of the statements provided in the manuscript.
If ethical approval is not required by national laws, authors must provide an exemption from the ethics committee, if one is available. Where a study has been granted exemption, the name of the ethics committee that provided this should be stated in Section ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ with a full explanation on why the ethical approval was not required.
If no animal ethics committee is available to review applications, authors should be aware that the ethics of their research will be evaluated by reviewers and editors. Authors should provide a statement justifying the work from an ethical perspective, using the same utilitarian framework that is used by ethics committees. Authors may be asked to provide this even if they have received ethical approval.
Authors and reviewers must use the ARRIVE guidelines as a checklist, which can be found at https://arriveguidelines.org/sites/arrive/files/documents/Author%20Checklist%20-%20Full.pdf. Editors reserve the right to ask for the checklist and to reject submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines, to reject submissions based on ethical or animal welfare concerns or if the procedure described does not appear to be justified by the value of the work presented.
Methods sections for submissions reporting on research with cell lines should state the origin of any cell lines. For established cell lines, the provenance should be stated and references must also be given to either a published paper or to a commercial source. If previously unpublished de novo cell lines were used, including those gifted from another laboratory, details of institutional review board or ethics committee approval must be given, and confirmation of written informed consent must be provided if the line is of human origin. Editors reserve the rights to reject any submission that does not meet these requirements.
Experimental research on plants (either cultivated or wild) including collection of plant material, must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. We recommend that authors comply with the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
For each submitted manuscript supporting genetic information and origin must be provided. For research manuscripts involving rare and non-model plants (other than, e.g., Arabidopsis thaliana, Nicotiana benthamiana, Oriza sativa, or many other typical model plants), voucher specimens must be deposited in an accessible herbarium or museum. Vouchers may be requested for review by future investigators to verify the identity of the material used in the study (especially if taxonomic rearrangements occur in the future). They should include details of the populations sampled on the site of collection (GPS coordinates), date of collection, and document the part(s) used in the study where appropriate. For rare, threatened or endangered species this can be waived but it is necessary for the author to describe this in the cover letter.
Editors reserve the rights to reject any submission that does not meet these requirements.
Anser Press follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines which require and recommend registration of clinical trials in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrollment as a condition of consideration for publication.
Purely observational studies do not require registration. A clinical trial not only refers to studies that take place in a hospital or involve pharmaceuticals, but also refer to all studies which involve participant randomization and group classification in the context of the intervention under assessment.
Authors are strongly encouraged to pre-register clinical trials with international clinical trials register and cite a reference to the registration in the Methods section. Suitable databases include clinicaltrials.gov, the EU Clinical Trials Register and those listed by the World Health Organisation International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.
Approval to conduct a study from an independent local, regional, or national review body is not equivalent to prospective clinical trial registration. ASNER reserves the right to decline any paper without trial registration for further peer-review. However, if the study protocol has been published before the enrolment, the registration can be waived with correct citation of the published protocol.
Sex and Gender in Research
Anser Press encourages authors to follow the Sex and Gender Equity in Research – SAGER – guidelines and to include sex and gender considerations. Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (social and cultural circumstances) carefully to avoid confusion. These guidelines apply to studies involving humans, vertebrate animal and cell lines.
Anonymity
Identifying images/video/details which authors do not have specific permission to use must be removed from the manuscript. Please note that the use of coloured bars/shapes to obscure the eyes/facial region of study participants is NOT an acceptable means of anonymisation.
Consent to publish
Individuals may consent to participate in a study, but object to having their data published in a journal article. Authors should make sure to also get consent from individuals to publish their data before submission. This is in particular true to case studies.
Authorship
Anser Press recommends that authorship be based on the following four criteria to avoid authorship disputes:
Anser Press requires that all those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work.
Corresponding authors
The corresponding authors take primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and ensure that all the journal’s requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements, are properly satisfied.
Contributorship
Anser Press lists contributors in two ways. Firstly, we publish a list of authors' names at the beginning of the paper and, secondly, we list contributors (some of whom may not be included as authors) at the end of the paper in Acknowledgments section.
Anser Press adopts Contributor Roles Taxonomy CReDiT. The model allows contributors to share a description of their input to the project, using 14 pre-defined contributor roles: conceptualization; data curation; formal analysis; funding acquisition; investigation; methodology; project administration; resources; software; supervision; validation; visualization; writing–original draft; writing–review & editing.
Alteration to authorship or contributorship
Anser Press requires that any change in authors and/or contributors after initial submission must be approved by all authors. This applies to additions, deletions, change of order to the authors, or contributions being attributed differently. Any alterations must be explained to the editor. The editor may contact any of the authors and/or contributors to confirm whether they have agreed to any alteration.
Use of AI or AI-Assisted Writing
When it comes to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technology in manuscript preparation, Anser Press follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) position statement. Tools such as ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) do not meet authorship criteria and thus cannot be listed as authors on manuscripts.
In situations where AI or AI-assisted tools have been used in the preparation of a manuscript, this must be appropriately declared with sufficient details at submission via the cover letter. Furthermore, authors are required to be transparent about the use of these tools and disclose details of how the AI tool was used within the “Materials and Methods” section, in addition to providing the AI tool’s product details within the “Acknowledgments” section.
Authors are fully responsible for the originality, validity, and integrity of the content of their manuscript, including any material contributed by AI or AI-assisted tools, and must ensure, through carefully review, that this content complies with ANSER’s publication ethics policies.
Authors should ensure that where material is taken from other sources (including their own published writing), the source is clearly cited and that where appropriate permission is obtained.
Authors should not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work.
Authors should not copy references from other publications if they have not read the cited work.
Authors should not preferentially cite their own or their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications.
Authors should not cite advertisements or advertorial material.
In accordance with COPE guidelines, we expect that “original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations”. This condition also applies to an author’s own work.