Evidence Based Health Policy,

Ethical Considerations

EBHPME still is not a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), but we are committed to implementing its principles. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit COPE.

Please note that any submission including data collected from human participants requires ethics approval, which is clear statement of the informed consent of the participants. If the manuscript does not include ethics approval, it will not be sent for the peer-review process. For qualitative articles, the following general principles must be considered in submitting the manuscript.

Details of formal ethical approval should be stated at the end of the Methods. If authors were not required to obtain ethical approval (as is the case in some countries) or unable to obtain ethical approval (as sometimes occurs in resource-poor settings), they should explain this. Please note that such information should be anonymized in the manuscript and the required information should be provided during submission if asked. Procedures for securing informed consent should be provided.

Authorship Criteria and Contributions

This Journal also follows the guidelines mentioned in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals issued by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)(http://www.icmje.org). Each author should meet all criteria (1- 4) recommended by the ICMJE, as following conditions:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of  the data; 

2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 

3. Final approval of the manuscript to be published; 

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.

Each author should be accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done. In addition, each author should be able to identify which coauthors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. All authors should have confidence in integrity of the contributions of any coauthors.

The authors must certify that the manuscript represents valid data, was not published in any form, and was not submitted in scientific presentations for publication elsewhere.

If requested, authors should be prepared to provide the data and must cooperate fully in obtaining and providing the data on which the manuscript is based for examination by the editors or their assignees.

* The Authorship Statement, Conflict of Interests and Financial Disclosure, and Copyright Transfer Form is designed for EBHPME form must be uploaded with the manuscript and other required materials at the time of online submission.

Changes to authorship

Authors are expected to carefully consider the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of  original submission. Any addition, deletion, or rearrangement of the authors' names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript is accepted and only if approved by the journal's Editor. To request such a change, the Editor must receive the following from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change in the authors' list and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, letter) from all authors, so that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, confirmation is required from the author being added or removed. Only in exceptional circumstances, the Editor considers the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of authors after a manuscript is accepted. While the Editor considers the request, publication of the manuscript will be suspended. If the manuscript has already been published in an online issue, any requests approved by the Editor will result in a corrigendum.

Misconduct
Retraction and expression of concern: Retraction will be published by Evidence Based Health policy, Management & Economics, if errors affect the interpretation of the results or serious ethical misconducts, including duplication, redundant publication (publishing the data elsewhere without cross-referencing, permission or justification), disagreement of all authors for publication, plagiarism, miscalculation, and experimental error are proved. Expression of concern will be published by Evidence Based Health policy, Management & Economics if editors receive inconclusive evidences about the research or publication misconduct by the authors, unreliability of the findings. In this regard an investigation would be underway but a judgment will not be available for a considerable time.
Withdrawal of articles: If legal infringements, defamation, and inaccurate data occur, especially those that may pose a serious health risk, the Evidence Based Health policy, Management & Economics has the right to remove or withdraw the article. In this circumstance, a retraction statement will be published by this journal and an explanation will be given about the circumstances of removal or withdrawal.

Plagiarism

JEBHPME uses the relevant plagiarism detector softwares to screen the submitted manuscripts for originality. Using this service, we can detect if a manuscript contains passages of text that appear in other publications or resources.

Conflict of interests

According to ICMJE guidelines, a conflict of interest may exist when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has personal or financial relationships that influence (bias) inappropriately his/her action (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). These relationships vary from those with negligible potential to those with great potential to influence judgment, and not all relationships represent true conflict of interest. The potential for conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.
Authors, reviewers, and editors must make sure that they have declared any actual or potential conflicts of interest in their manuscript when submitting their work (if any). The corresponding author is responsible for confirming with the co-authors whether they have any conflicts to be declared or not.

Complaints Procedures
This procedure applies to complaints about the policies, procedures, or actions of the EBHPME’s editorial staff. We welcome complaints as they provide an opportunity and a spur for improvement, and we aim to respond quickly, courteously, and constructively. The procedure outlined below aims to be fair to those making complaints and those complained about.
Definition:
Our definition of a complaint is as follows:
a. The complainant defines his or her expression of unhappiness as a complaint.
b. We infer that the complainant is not simply disagreeing with a decision we have made or something we have published (which happens every day). That is to say, a complaint should be a failure of process—for example, an unacceptably long delay or a rude response—or a severe misjudgment.
c. The complaint must be about something that is within the responsibility of EBHPME editorial department – i.e., content or process.
How to make a complaint:
a. Complaints may be made by phone, email, or letter, ideally to the person the complainant is already in contact with. If that is not appropriate please email:
ebhp.ssugmail.com, EBHPJssu.ac.ir
b. Whenever possible, complaints will be dealt with by the person to whom they are made. If that person cannot deal with the complaint, he or she will refer it to the Editor-in Chief.
c. Complaints about editorial matters sent to the chairman of the EBHPME Board, or to EBHPME officers and officials will usually be referred in the first instance to the Editor.
d. All complaints will be acknowledged (immediately on the phone, within seven working days  by email or post).
e. If possible, a definitive response will be made within two weeks. If this is not possible an interim response will be given within two weeks. Interim responses will be provided until the complaint is finally resolved.
f. If the complainant remains unhappy, complaints should be escalated to the editor, whose decision is final.
g. If the complainant has exhausted the internal processes and is still unhappy, the complainant can complain to:
The Committee on Publication Ethics.
COPE publishes a code of practice for editors of scientific, technical, and medical journals http://www.publicationethics.org.uk/. It will consider complaints against editors but only once a journal’s own complaints procedures have been exhausted
 
 Archiving Policy
The articles Published by EBHPME are archived on our website and also in multiple international databases around the world  to increase the visibility and long-term digital preservation.
These archives include:
-Index Copernicus
- CABI
- ISC
- DOAJ
- Google scholar
& others.

*All journal issues are archived in the School of Public Health library in Yazd Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences.