Editorial Policies

Horizon Publisher India (HPI) provides immediate free open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. The major emphasis is laid on inter-disciplinary nature of the work. The main criteria for acceptance of the articles are novelty, clarity, and significance as relevant to a better understanding of the experimental biology and agricultural sciences. The entire Journal published by HPI complies with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ uniform requirements for manuscripts.


Conflicts of interest and financial disclosures

Conflicts may be financial, academic, commercial, political or personal. Financial interests may include employment; research funding (received or pending), stock or share ownership, patents, payment for lectures or travel, consultancies, non financial support, or any fiduciary interest in a company. When any author(s) has such type of financial or personal obligation, it is required to mention such potential conflict of interest along with financial interests and related affiliations (other than those affiliations listed in the title page of the manuscript) relevant to the subject of their manuscript. For all accepted manuscripts, author must declare such conflicts of interest at the end of the manuscript before the manuscript publish. Author without a conflict of interest should include a statement that no such conflicts exist.

COPE Recommendation for Conflict of Interest


Funding / Support and Role of sponsor

All the author(s) who have received financial assistance for carried out research work and publication should be described clearly in an Acknowledgment section of the manuscript.


Data Sharing Policy

The Horizon Publisher India adheres to the Data Management and Sharing (DMS) policy issued by the National Institutes of Health (Data Management and Sharing (DMS) policy). This policy ensures that scientific data accompanying published articles are shared in an equitable manner with users, thus promoting the acceleration of biomedical research discovery. The validation of research results, accessibility to high-value datasets, and promotion of data reuse for future research studies are all facilitated by the sharing of published research article data. HPI strictly follows the NIH Policy for Data Management & Sharing to share the published article data. JEBAS strictly follows the guidelines of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Policy for Data Management and Sharing. Our commitment to this policy ensures that any data associated with our published articles will be made available for sharing and dissemination in accordance with the NIH’s regulations.


Acknowledgment section

The acknowledge section should be at the end of the manuscript text but before the reference section. It should includes the list of contributor(s), information on author access to data, conflicts of interest including financial interests and relationships, sources of funding and support like information’s. Authors should obtain written permission from all individuals whose names included in the Acknowledgment section and the corresponding author must confirm that such permission has been obtained in the Authorship Form.


Plagiarism

Author should make clear that manuscripts submitted to the journal for consideration of publication should not be previously publish anywhere either in print or electronic format. Submitted manuscript should not be under consideration by another publication or electronic medium. Copies of related or possibly duplicate materials (i.e. those containing substantially similar content or using the similar data) that have been previously published or are under consideration elsewhere are coming in the plagiarism and such manuscript will be rejected on the first step of publication.

COPE Recommendation for Plagiarism  


Ethical approval of studies

For all manuscripts reporting data from studies involving human participants or animals, formal review and approval, or formal review and waiver, by an appropriate institutional review board or ethics committee is required. For investigations involving humans, state in the Methods section whatever oral or written informed consent was obtained from the study participants. Editors may request that authors provide documentation of the formal review and recommendation from the institutional review board or ethics committee responsible for oversight of the study.

COPE Recommendation for Ethical issues 

Participant/patient privacy and informed consent

All individuals have their basic rights which cannot and must not be violated. The author is solely responsible for taking care of the same. Individuals taking part in the study have absolute right and authority to decide what happens to the (identifiable) personal data collected through their interview or other means including photography. Particular attention is to be paid concerning the images of assailable people such as minors, patients, or refugees or the use of images from a sensitive perspective. In case any respondents intend to secure their information, the author should refrain from publishing personal identifying details like names, dates of birth, biometrical characteristics, or other distinguishing attributes of the participants that were studied unless the information is warranted for scholarly purposes and the respondents have given explicit written informed consent for the publication. Authors are required to obtain informed consent if there is any doubt. For instance, merely masking the eye region in photographs of participants is not adequate protection against obscurity. If identifying attributes are modified to protect anonymity, for instance in genetic data, the authors must substantiate that the changes done have not altered the intended meaning. In the case of medical/diagnostic images such as X-rays, brain scans, ultrasound, laparoscopic, and pathology slides images, consent from the participant is not necessary. However, if there is a possibility of distinctive information with images, authors are required to obtain the consent of participants. If published images are being reused from prior publications, authors must obtain the permission of the original source. Without prejudice, the publisher assumes that prior publication obtained the necessary and relevant information regarding the consent of participants. However, authors should provide the appropriate attribution in case of the images taken from the published sources.

In the case of children, adolescents, or incapacitated study participants written informed consent must be obtained from their respective parents or guardian. In a situation where verbal informed consent was obtained instead of written informed consent, this must be highlighted within the manuscript along with the appropriate reasons.

As per the principles outlined in the Nuremberg Code and the Belmont Report, informed consent must have been given with a free will, without any force or influence, and under no coercion or bribery of any kind. Editorial office also scrutinized the submitted manuscript to protect the vulnerable group and upon request, the editorial office will provide supported documentary evidence (blank consent forms and any related discussion documents from the ethics board). In addition, in the studies which highlight categories by race, disability, gender, ethnicity, disease, etc., a suitable explanation regarding why such categorization was needed must be clearly stated in the article.

The protection of vulnerable groups and individuals


Human and Animal Rights

All research studies on humans (individuals, samples, or data) must have been carried out following the principles of the WMA Declaration of Helsinki. In case of human participants, or any data related to their biological material, authors should provide an appropriate institutional and/or national research ethics committee statement confirming that the study was approved (or granted exemption) by the committee. Furthermore, author should certify that the study was performed in agreement with the ethical standards provided in the WMA Declaration of Helsinki (1964) (WMA Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects – WMA – The World Medical Association) and its latest amendments or comparable ethical standards. If any doubt exists whether the research was performed following the 1964 Helsinki Declaration or equivalent standards (WMA Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects – WMA – The World Medical Association), the authors must elaborate the rationale for their approach and indicate that an independent institutional ethics committee/review board explicitly approved the ambiguous components of the research work. In case the work was provided relaxation from obtaining ethics approval, the same should also be highlighted in the manuscript citing the ground on which relaxation was accorded.

Clinical trials

Apart from the informed written consent as needed (as stated above), Authors should ensure that the protocols for clinical trials are registered in a publicly accessible registry before the recruitment of participants. The public registry must be accessible to all prospective registrants and handled by a non-profit entity. For reference, a list of eligible registries can be seen at the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP). Moreover, such trials may also be enrolled at Clinical Trials.gov or the EU Clinical Trials Register and the trial registration number and registration date must be included in the Abstract and Methods section of the manuscript. In addition, any departure from the initial trial protocol must be highlighted along with its rationale. 

Data Fabrication/Data Falsification

In case of Data fabrication/data falsification, Horizon Publisher India (HPI) strive to follow the guideline recommended by COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION ETHICS (COPE). Any allegations of violation to these guidelines are thoroughly investigated by a team of executive board of JEBAS with a logical conclusion.
Recommended action by COPE for Data fabrication / data falsification:
• Suspected fabricated data in a submitted manuscript
• Suspected fabricated data in a published article

Mechanisms for ensuring the quality of published articles

To ensuring the scientific quality of published articles, all the submitted articles are scrupulously peer reviewed by high quality researchers, editorial and advisory team to accept the high quality submissions and the quality is controlled by the Editor(s)-in-Chief or subject editors. All the members of editorial are experts in their field from various countries and regions around the world. These members are well qualified and have high level publication experience expert. The published articles reflect the up-to-date research findings, with reliable results, objective and un-biased discussion of the results. The highest quality standards are achieved by following the guide line of DOAJ Transparency & best practice and COPE CORE PRACTISE.


Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing

Before submitting an article to the any journal of Horizon Publisher of India, authors should visit NLM’s important policies to improve the quality of their work. Authors can enhance the quality of their articles by following these policies.

All the journal published by HPI strictly following the guide line of PRINCIPLES OF TRANSPARENCY AND BEST PRACTICE IN SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING describe by Directory of Open Access Journal available on https://doaj.org/bestpractice.

The process for handling cases requiring corrections, retractions, and editorial expressions of concern

The goal of HPI is to maintain the accuracy of academic publications. If an error or misleading information is discovered, it must be corrected promptly and prominently. Should an investigation reveal fraudulent activity, the publication in question will be retracted and clearly marked for readers and indexing systems.

Corrections

Sometimes mistakes are found in published papers and the Editor-in-Chief may choose to inform the readership of the error by publishing a corrigendum or erratum. This will be a new article in the journal that corrects the mistake and references the original article.

Retractions

Retractions may be published if an article has significant errors that weaken the conclusions or if unethical practices such as plagiarism or duplicate publication are found.

At HPI, we follow industry best practices and adhere to COPE guidelines when confirming a retraction:

  1. When an article needs to be retracted, a note titled “Retraction: [article title]” is published in a later issue of the journal and included in the contents list. The note is signed by either the authors or the editor.
  2. The electronic version includes a link to the original article.
  3. Before accessing the online article, readers will first encounter a screen with a retraction note. This is where the provided link will lead them, and from there they may proceed to the article itself.
  4. The original article remains the same, except for the addition of a watermark on the HTML and PDF indicating that it has been retracted on each page.

Informed consent policy

Obtaining informed consent before medical treatment is crucial in both ethical and legal terms. HPI ensure the process of informed consent adheres to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) NCBI-NLM guidelines, as outlined in Shah et al. 2022