Journal Policies and Ethics

Policies and Ethics

The Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University is a Sustainable Publisher – we encourages Digital Publishing, have adopted Green Open Access and are also an Eco-friendly publisher

The Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University follows the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policy to promote Open Publishing.

• Our Editorial Boards are Diverse in composition.
• Authors can include identity markers in the demographic studies for a more inclusive research.
• Article Processing Charge waivers are provided as per journal policy to Low-income Researchers.

We encourage public engagement in the scientific findings and also to boost the impact of research.

We have mandated our Authors to deposit the raw data in trusted repositories such as Figshare, Dryad or Institutional Repositories. The standardized metadata in these repositories will help other researchers’ access and reuse data when needed.

Reuse of such data by other researchers helps to replicate findings, conduct secondary analyses and by doing this, the accountability is built and scientific research is verifiable.

Research work which impacts or influences policy, technology etc, has a high impact and encourages applied research with practical benefits. Authors are encouraged to update the journal about any recognition to their research that has influenced

• Policies
• Technology
• Practice
• Practical Benefits from Applied Research

JOURNAL POLICIES

Journal of Health and Technology recommends that authors follow the Recommendations by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

I Open Access Policy

• All the articles published in Journal of Health and Technology is available freely and can be accessed online immediately after publication in an easily readable format, without any subscription or registration barrier. Unrestricted Access and Unrestricted Reuse.
• All the published articles are licensed under a Creative Commons license. Articles can be shared and adapted, provided the attribution for the work is given.

II Submission Policy

There is no Charge/Fee for submitting manuscripts to Journal of Natural Remedies. It is completely FREE.

III Article Processing Charge (APC)

Currently Not Applicable

IV Peer-review Policy

All the manuscripts submitted to Journal of Health and Technology will be subjected to Double Blind Peer Review process. The Double Blind Peer Review is practiced with the intention that there is a fair review to help improve the research submission.

• Double Blind Peer Review--- Authors are kept anonymous. Reviewers will not know who the author is for the manuscript assigned to them. Likewise the author will not be aware of who the reviewer is for their manuscript.
• The manuscript will be reviewed by two suitable experts in the subject area of the submission.
• The review reports from both the reviewers will be considered while deciding on acceptance/revision or rejection of a manuscript.
• Editor-In-Chief (EIC) will make the final decision, based on reviewer’s comments.
• EIC can ask one or more editorial board members for their suggestions upon a manuscript, before making the final decision.
• Associate editors and review editors provide the administrative support to maintain the integrity of peer review process.
• Authors need to make the necessary changes based on review comments before it is considered for acceptance.
• Canvassing in any form, at any stage of the article will lead to rejection of the manuscript.
• Duration of review process from the time the manuscript is assigned to a reviewer, would be close to 45 working days.
• The article accepted for publication will be queued for the next issue of publication.

V Licensing Policy

To fully realise the potential of open access to research literature, barriers to reuse need to be removed. The Creative Commons (CC) licenses have emerged as an effective legal instrument to achieve this. Instead of transferring rights exclusively to publishers (the approach usually followed in subscription publishing), authors grant a non-exclusive license to the publisher to distribute the work, and all users and readers are granted rights to reuse the work. CC-BY allows for unrestricted reuse of content, subject only to the requirement that the source work is appropriately attributed. The CC-BY license thereby requires that authors are given appropriate credit for their work, as explained in a recent post from Creative Commons

VI Archiving Policy

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.

VII Advertisement Policy

Currently there is no policy to accept advertisements. However, if the publishers along with the editorial team decide to accept commercial advertisements, a policy would be drafted appropriately.

PUBLICATION ETHICS

The Journal of Health and Technology is an electronic Double Blind peer reviewed journal upholding the highest standards. MGR Journals, as a publisher adopts COPE’s best practice guidelines for dealing with ethical issues. The Journal Members (Editors, Editorial Board Members and the Editorial Manager) have consented to adopt the COPE as it meets the purpose and objective of the Journal.

The following is a summary of COPE’s international standards for authors of scholarly research publications and describes responsible research reporting practice.

• The research being reported should have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and should comply with all relevant legislation.
• Researchers should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation.
• Researchers should strive to describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed by others.
• Researchers should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarised, and has not been published elsewhere.
• Authors should take collective responsibility for submitted and published work.
• The authorship of research publications should accurately reflect individuals' contributions to the work and its reporting.
• Funding sources and relevant conflicts of interest should be disclosed.

Articles not in accordance with publication ethics will be removed from publication if detected at any time. Plagiarism and research fabrication such as making up of data, manipulation of existing data, tables etc. and ethical clearance on the use of humans or animals for the study will also be checked. The journal reserves the right to use plagiarism detecting software to screen submitted papers at any time and suspected plagiarism or duplicate publishing will be reported immediately.

I Authors Responsibility

• Their work is original
• Must not have been published elsewhere
• Other authors, contributors or sources should be appropriately credited
• They are responsible for language editing before submission
• Their work has not been copied or plagiarized in whole or part from any other work
• The financial support and conflict of interest for the project / research work if any should be disclosed
• They are obliged to notify the editor if any error or inaccuracy is discovered and cooperate with the editor to correct the same

Articles should be submitted using online procedures. Simultaneous publication in more than one publication is a breach of publication ethics.

II Editor's Responsibility

• The submitted manuscript undergoes Double-blind peer review before publishing
• They will strive to prevent any conflict of interest between the author and editorial and review personnel
• All the information related to the submitted manuscript is kept confidential prior to publishing

III Publisher Responsibilities

• Published content is not manipulated or changed.
• Authors, Editors and Reviewers adhere to their responsibilities and work flow.
• Appropriate consent is sought from authors prior to publishing the content.
• There is no Copyright or License violations.
• All content is published in accordance to the Policy and Ethics statement of the Journal.

IV Reviewers Responsibility

• Reviews the manuscript and provides suitable comments for improvement
• Promptness in notifying the editor about his inability to review the manuscript
• Maintains confidentiality about the manuscript obtained for review, by not discussing with others
• Standards of Objectivity preserved by reviewing the manuscripts objectively with clear views and supporting arguments and without any personal criticism
• Acknowledgement of Sources
• All References not cited by author should be removed. All citations should be accompanied with any previously reported observation, derivation or argument.
• The editors should be intimated for any overlap of the reviewed manuscript with any other published paper.
• Disclosures and Conflict of Interest – manuscripts having conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative or any other relationships or connections with institutions connected to the paper will not be considered.

V Manuscript Withdrawal Policy

Authors must abide by these policies after submission of their manuscript.

• Authors must provide their consent to publish their manuscript prior to peer-review process. Withdrawing an already confirmed manuscript after it has been accepted would attract a minimal article handling charge.

VI Waiver Policy

Currently Not Applicable

VII Copyright Policies

All the articles published are distributed under a Creative Commons license. The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright of their work. For The Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University to Publish and Disseminate research articles, we only require the Publishing Rights. This can be done by a Transfer of Publishing Rights only to The Tamil Nadu Dr. M.G.R. Medical University, authors retain the rights to share and use their work.

VIII Disclaimer

The author(s) of each article appearing in this Journal is/are solely responsible for the content thereof; neither the Journal of Health and Technology nor its editors or publisher or anyone else involved in creating, producing or distribution assumes any liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information provided in the Journal, nor shall they be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages arising out of the use of Journal of Health and Technology.

IX Plagiarism

For every Journal, the peer review process is at the heart of the success of publishing. As part of our commitment to the protection and enhancement of the peer review process, The Journal of Health and Technology would like to ensure that all published articles are within the accepted level of plagiarism. The Journal uses the very well and widely accepted Plagiarism Detection tool, iThenticate. All submitted Manuscripts are first subjected to Plagiarism check and then the Publishing cycle begins.

In case, plagiarism is detected during review/editorial process, such manuscript(s) will be rejected immediately and we can also consider other steps depending upon the seriousness of the case. If the plagiarism is proven after publication, such manuscript(s) will be removed from our website and appropriate announcement will be placed in this regards. Further, "Journal of Health and Technology" can bring such instances in notice of author's funding agencies, author's institutes (where they work) and to the original authors whose work has been plagiarized. Please report the plagiarism to mala.kg@informaticsglobal.ai

X Animal & Human Rights

While reporting experiments on human subjects, you should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional). While reporting experiments on animals, indicate whether you adhered to the guidelines of an institution, national research council governing the care and use of laboratory animals.

XI Generative AI author policies

With the rise in Generative AI and AI assisted technologies, a few policies have been developed to provide transparency and guidance to authors, reviewers, editors as well as to the readers.

For authors

• Scientific or Research writing using Generative AI or AI assisted tools
• The analytical insights drawn using AI tools from the Research Data does not form a part of this policy
• Generative AI or AI assisted tools should be used only to further improve the language and readability of the work.
• While using such tools, there has to be Human intervention to assess and decide the suggested changes etc. This is essential as AI can at times provide changes or information which can be incorrect or maybe biased too. The author/s will be responsible ultimately for the content of the work.
• Authors should disclose the use of AI and AI-assisted tools in their work, A statement to that effect has to be mentioned in the Manuscript. This is essential as it ensures transparency and creates a trust amongst all.
• Ai and AI- assisted tools cannot be declared as an author or co-author for a manuscript. This cannot be cited too. Authorship, creates an ownership and responsibility for the content that is being published. Each author is responsible to answer any questions raised about the work.
• Figures, images and any other art work – use of AI or assisted AI is not permitted. Even altering or Image manipulation is strictly disallowed. If however, the AI or AI-assisted tool has been used for any imaging and even interpretation, the same has to be described in the methodology section and attributed in the associated figure, image etc.

For reviewers

• Peer Review using AI and AI-assisted tools.
• The manuscript assigned for reviewing is confidential. So, the reviewers cannot upload a portion of this document or whole of it into any AI tools as this is in violation of the authors’ confidentiality and also proprietary rights. Additionally I the manuscript contains any personal information, it is a breach of data privacy.
• The report generated by a peer reviewer is equally confidential. As, it may contain confidential information about the manuscript. So, reviewers have to refrain from uploading the document into any AI tools, even to improve language and readability.
• Reviewers are responsible for the scientific review they provide and this can be attributed to a human being. AI or AI-assisted tools cannot be used to review a scientific paper, since the critical thinking, assessment are all out of scope for a tool. There also could be incorrect technology generated. Reviewer is responsible and accountable for the review report and review of the content.

For editors

• Editorial process using AI and AI-assisted tools.
• Every Manuscript submitted to the journal is a confidential proprietary document. Editors should not upload the whole or part of the manuscript into any AI or AI-assisted tool and thus violate the confidentiality and Proprietary right of the Author.

XII. Retraction Policy

Purpose:
In order to preserve the integrity of the scholarly record, this policy describes the conditions and steps under which published content may be retracted.

Retraction Grounds:
Retractions can happen in the following situations, among others:

• Proof of untrustworthy results brought on by dishonesty (such as data fabrication or falsification) or honest error..
• Plagiarism or unethical publication.
• Redundant publication, or submissions in duplicate.
• Unethical research methods (such as not obtaining ethical approval or informed consent).
• Legal concerns (such as defamation or copyright infringement).
• Conflicts of interest of the authors were not declared at the time of publication.

The Retraction Procedure:

• The publisher, journal editor, or author may request a retraction in writing. .
• The editorial board will carry out an impartial assessment, frequently seeking input from the COPE or institutional bodies.
• If grounds are confirmed, a Retraction Notice will be published, clearly stating the reason and who is initiating the retraction.
• The original article will remain online, marked as “Retracted” in both PDF and HTML versions

Publisher Responsibility:
The publisher ensures transparent handling of retractions, provides clear communication to all stakeholders, and archives the retracted articles responsibly while retaining the historical scholarly record.

XIII. Correction Policy (Errata & Corrigenda)

Purpose:
By defining the processes for making corrections to published articles, this policy guarantees the integrity and correctness of the scholarly record.

Terminologies

• Erratum: Fixing a mistake that the publisher made (such as typos in the author's name, formatting, or typesetting).
• Corrigendum: Fixing a mistake that was made by the author or authors (e.g., incorrect data, author affiliation, figure label).

Range
Errors that:

• Materially impair the article's metadata, scientific integrity, or reader comprehension are subject to correction.
• Contains inaccurate institutional affiliations or author details.
• Don't merit a complete retraction.

The Process of Correction

• By sending an email to the editorial office, authors or readers can alert the journal to a possible error. After reviewing the reported error, the editorial board will decide.
• Upon notification or discovery of an error, the editorial team will assess its impact. A correction note will be published with a link to the original article. The article PDF and HTML will be updated with the correction clearly indicated, without altering the publication date or DOI.

Publisher Responsibility:
The publisher will facilitate prompt and transparent corrections, ensure updated content is accessible, and maintain a public record of changes.

XIV. Policy on Publishing Malpractice (Ethics & Misconduct)

Purpose
By describing the journal's position on publishing ethics and its protocols for dealing with misconduct, this policy seeks to preserve the integrity of the publication process.

Fundamental Ideas
The journal is dedicated to:

• Maintaining the highest ethical standards throughout the entire publication process.
• Making sure editorial choices are equitable, open, and accountable.
• Preventing and dealing with any misconduct related to research or publications.

Misconduct Types

• Plagiarism is the act of replicating someone else's work without giving due credit.
• Falsifying or fabricating data is known as data fabrication or falsification.
• Authorship misconduct includes omitting contributors, ghostwriting, and guest writing.
• Redundant publication is the practice of submitting previously published work covertly.
• Unreported conflicts of interest.
• Ethical transgressions: Noncompliance with animal ethics, patient consent, or IRB approval.

Author Responsibility

• Verify that their work is unique and devoid of plagiarism.
• Don't fabricate, falsify, or manipulate data; instead, properly credit all sources.
• All funding sources and conflicts of interest should be declared.
• Obtain the necessary ethical approvals for research projects that involve either humans or animals.
• Avoid sending the same work to more than one journal at once.

Reviewer & Editor Responsibility:

• Declare conflicts of interest.
• Maintain confidentiality.
• Provide objective, constructive reviews.

Editor Responsibility:

• All allegations are taken seriously and investigated by the editorial board.
• If confirmed, appropriate actions may include: manuscript rejection, retraction, notifying institutions, and banning future submissions.

Publisher Responsibility:

• The publisher provides oversight, ensures COPE-aligned practices, supports editorial investigations, and facilitates transparent communication of outcomes.
• Rejection, retraction, correction, or stakeholder notification are possible outcomes.