The Journal of Sulaimani Medical College (JSMC) is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics and research integrity. Publication in a medical journal can influence clinical care, education, health policy, and further research. JSMC therefore expects authors, reviewers, editors, editorial staff, and the publisher to act honestly, transparently, fairly, and respectfully throughout the publication process.
JSMC's publication-ethics policies are informed by applicable institutional and national requirements, the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations, and relevant Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles and guidance.
JSMC expects research to be scientifically sound and conducted responsibly, with respect for:
Ethical approval does not by itself remove the responsibility of authors and editors to ensure that research was conducted and reported responsibly.
Authors are responsible for:
Authors must not fabricate, falsify, manipulate, or deliberately misrepresent research findings.
Reviewers must:
Reviewers must not appropriate ideas, data, methods, or findings from manuscripts under review.
Editors must:
Editorial decisions must not be influenced by an author's nationality, institutional affiliation, gender, religion, political views, or ability to pay publication charges.
Editors should not suppress legitimate scientific criticism merely because it is inconvenient to the journal, authors, or other parties.
The publisher and the College of Medicine, University of Sulaimani, should support:
JSMC follows the ICMJE authorship framework.
Each listed author should:
Individuals who do not meet all authorship criteria should not be listed as authors. Appropriate non-author contributors may be acknowledged with their permission.
Honorary, guest, gift, and ghost authorship are unacceptable.
JSMC may use the CRediT taxonomy to describe individual contributions. Contributor roles do not replace the journal's authorship criteria, and all listed authors must independently meet the applicable authorship requirements.
Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must include a clear explanation and written agreement from all affected authors.
Changes after acceptance are exceptional and may require institutional confirmation. The journal may suspend publication while an authorship dispute is investigated.
Authors, reviewers, editors, and editorial-board members must disclose relationships or activities that could influence, or reasonably be perceived to influence, their work or judgment.
Conflicts may include financial interests such as grants, employment, consultancy, honoraria, stocks, patents, or royalties, as well as relevant non-financial, professional, personal, or academic relationships.
Disclosure of a conflict does not necessarily constitute misconduct or prevent participation. The purpose of disclosure is transparency and appropriate management.
Published articles should contain an accessible conflict-of-interest statement.
Research involving human participants, identifiable personal data, human biological material, or animals must comply with applicable ethical and institutional requirements.
Where required, authors must provide information about approval by an appropriate ethics committee, Institutional Review Board, or animal-care and ethics body.
Relevant requirements concerning informed consent, participant privacy, vulnerable populations, animal welfare, clinical trials, biosafety, and biosecurity are addressed in JSMC's Research Ethics, Biosafety and Biosecurity Policy.
Informed consent should be obtained whenever required by the nature of the research and applicable ethical requirements.
Authors must protect participant privacy and confidentiality and should collect and disclose only information necessary for legitimate scientific purposes.
For case reports, photographs, videos, clinical details, or other material from which an individual could reasonably be identified, appropriate written consent for publication must be obtained.
Consent for clinical treatment or participation in research does not automatically constitute consent for publication.
Prospective interventional clinical trials should be registered in a publicly accessible clinical-trial registry before enrolment of the first participant, in accordance with applicable international standards.
The registration identifier should be reported clearly in the manuscript.
Authors should report primary and secondary outcomes transparently and explain material deviations from the registered protocol.
Research involving animals must comply with applicable institutional, national, and international standards.
Authors should provide appropriate ethics approval information and describe measures taken to minimise pain, distress, and suffering.
The principles of Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement (the 3Rs) should be applied where relevant.
Appropriate reporting guidelines, including the ARRIVE guidelines, should be followed for animal research.
Research data must accurately represent what was observed.
The following are considered serious breaches of research integrity:
Authors should retain appropriate research records, raw data, original image files, and relevant documentation for a reasonable period and should cooperate with legitimate requests concerning the reliability of published work.
JSMC encourages appropriate data-sharing and reporting practices while recognising ethical, legal, confidentiality, and privacy restrictions.
Submitted manuscripts must be original and must appropriately acknowledge the words, ideas, data, figures, methods, and other contributions of others.
Plagiarism includes presenting another person's work as one's own, including substantial verbatim copying or close paraphrasing without appropriate attribution.
Undisclosed substantial reuse of an author's own previously published material may constitute inappropriate text recycling or redundant publication.
JSMC may use similarity-detection software as part of its editorial screening. Similarity scores are not, by themselves, evidence of plagiarism. Editors assess the source, extent, location, attribution, and scientific significance of any identified overlap.
Authors must not submit the same manuscript simultaneously to more than one journal.
Authors who use the same cohort, registry, clinical trial, or database for multiple publications must clearly disclose related publications and explain the distinct research question and contribution of each report.
Secondary analyses may be acceptable when scientifically justified and transparently reported.
References must be selected because they are scientifically relevant and support the scholarly context of the manuscript.
Authors, reviewers, and editors must not manipulate citations to increase personal, institutional, journal, or other citation metrics.
Editors and reviewers must not pressure authors to add irrelevant citations.
Scientific images must accurately represent the underlying data.
Image processing must not add, remove, move, or obscure features in a way that could alter scientific interpretation.
Where relevant, authors should retain original uncropped images and provide them to the journal upon legitimate request.
The journal may request original image files or additional documentation when image-integrity concerns arise.
JSMC considers the following, among others, to be potential forms of research or publication misconduct:
Honest error and legitimate scientific disagreement are not automatically considered misconduct.
Concerns regarding a submitted or published manuscript may be raised by authors, reviewers, editors, readers, institutions, or other parties.
Concerns should identify the manuscript or published article and provide sufficient information or evidence for the journal to conduct an initial assessment.
Anonymous concerns may be considered when they contain specific and verifiable information.
The journal will assess whether the concern appears to represent an honest error, misunderstanding, policy violation, or matter requiring further investigation.
JSMC may request clarification, original data, documentation, ethics approvals, authorship information, or other relevant evidence.
When a serious allegation requires investigation beyond the journal's authority, JSMC may contact the relevant institution, research-integrity office, funder, regulator, or other appropriate authority.
The journal will cooperate with legitimate investigations while respecting confidentiality, privacy, and applicable legal requirements.
The journal retains responsibility for determining what editorial action is necessary to protect the integrity of the published record.
Authors and other stakeholders may raise complaints concerning editorial procedures, peer review, publication ethics, or journal administration.
Complaints should be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief or the JSMC Editorial Office and should include sufficient information to permit appropriate assessment.
Authors may appeal an editorial decision when they believe that a significant factual, methodological, procedural, or interpretive error affected the decision.
Appeals should provide specific and evidence-based reasons for reconsideration.
The journal will review complaints and appeals fairly and proportionately and may seek independent advice when appropriate.
JSMC recognises the importance of post-publication discussion and correction of the scientific record.
Readers and researchers may raise concerns about published articles with the editorial office.
Where appropriate, the journal may publish a:
The journal may also refer serious concerns to the relevant institution or other appropriate authority.
JSMC will correct the published record when an identified error affects the accuracy, interpretation, or integrity of an article.
A correction may be appropriate for an error that does not invalidate the main findings or conclusions.
A retraction may be considered when an article is sufficiently unreliable because of major error, misconduct, unethical research, substantial plagiarism, redundant publication, or other serious concerns affecting the reliability of the published work.
Retraction is intended primarily to correct the scientific record and alert readers to unreliable content, rather than to punish authors.
When a serious concern remains unresolved while an investigation is ongoing, JSMC may publish an Expression of Concern where appropriate.
Depending on the evidence, seriousness, and stage of the publication process, JSMC may:
All editorial actions will be based on the available evidence and applied consistently and proportionately.