Publication Ethics

LPCMA ensures peer-review and respect ethical policies and standards to publishes high quality scientific papers. LPCMA  publisher uses Turnitin similarity check service and every submitted manuscript will be checked by the software. If we found and estimate that there is plagiarism, based on similarity with other published papers, the authors of the manuscripts will be sanctioned. They cannot publish their papers in our journal following 24 months.

Copyright

All Content is Open Access and Free for Readers. This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the papers, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. The published papers are open access papers distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Contact us

Publication malpractice is an unfortunate occurrence in the world of scholarly literature. It happens in all subject areas and in all jurisdictions; and few journals or books are immune. The prevention of publication malpractice is the responsibility of every author, editor, reviewer, publisher and institution.
Scopus requires that every journal we index has clear and publicly available statements of publication ethics and publication malpractice. Scopus will hold each publisher listed in the database accountable for the performance and compliance with these policies. Scopus does not mandate any specific wording of publication ethics and publication malpractice statements, but notes that:

• Major publishers already publish comprehensive statements of compliance on their websites. See Elsevier for an example.
• A number of industry organizations publish comprehensive guidelines and advice that can be readily adopted by any publisher. Such notable organizations include.

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

• World Association of Medical Editors (WAME)
• International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)
• Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT)
• Guidelines for what a Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement should adhere to (PEMS)

For more information on the importance of Ethics in Research and Publication, see:

http://www.ethics.elsevier.com or watch this webinar

As available in the following link:

https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/how-scopus-works/content/content-policy-and-selection#pems

Duties of Editors

• Fair play and editorial independence
  • Confidentiality
  • Disclosure and conflicts of interest
  • Publication decisions
  • Involvement and cooperation in investigations

Duties of Reviewers

• Contribution to editorial decisions
  • Promptness
  • Confidentiality
  • Standards of objectivity
  • Acknowledgement of sources
  • Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Duties of Authors

• Reporting standards
  • Data access and retention
  • Originality and no plagiarism
  • No Multiple, duplicate, redundant or concurrent submission/publication
  • Authorship of the manuscript
  • Disclosure and conflicts of interest
  • Acknowledgement of sources
  • Hazards and human or animal subjects addressed through ethical processes
  • Peer review
  • Fundamental errors in published works

Duties of the Publisher

• Handling of unethical publishing behavior
• Access to journal content

CRediT author statement

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) was introduced with the intention of recognizing individual author contributions, reducing authorship disputes and facilitating collaboration. CRediT offers authors the opportunity to share an accurate and detailed description of their diverse contributions to the published work.

• The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the descriptions are accurate and agreed by all authors
• The role(s) of all authors should be listed, using the relevant above categories
• Authors may have contributed in multiple roles
• CRediT in no way changes the journal’s criteria to qualify for authorship

CRediT statements should be provided during the submission process and will appear above the acknowledgment section of the published paper as shown further below.

Sample CRediT author statement
Zhang San: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software. Priya Singh: Data Curation, Writing - Original Draft. Wang Wu: Visualization, Investigation. Jan Jansen: Supervision. Ajay Kumar: Software, Validation. Sun Qi: Writing - Review & Editing.

Undisclosed conflicts of interest

Public trust in the peer review process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how well conflict of interest is handled during writing, peer review, and editorial decision making. Conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author’s institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (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 the research itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.

Disclosure

All participants in the peer review and publication process must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as presenting a potential conflict of interest. Disclosure of these relationships is important in connection with editorials and review articles, because it can be more difficult to detect bias in these types of publications than in reports of original research. Editors may use information disclosed in conflict of interest and financial interest statements as a basis for editorial decisions. Editors should publish this information if they believe it is important in judging the manuscript.

Sample Conflict of Interest
The authors have declared no conflict of interest.
Corresponding author

Article retraction

The retraction of an article by its authors or journal Editor under the advice of members of the scholarly community has long been an occasional feature of the learned world. Articles and Articles-in-Press may be retracted to correct errors that are too extensive in the view of the editors to publish a correction, or due to infringements of ETN policies, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.

Editors or designated representative(s) will consider retracting an article or Article-in-Press where:

• They have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of major error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error), or as a result of fabrication (e.g., of data) or falsification (e.g., image manipulation).
• It constitutes plagiarism, which includes substantial overlap in the view of the Editor.
• The findings have previously been published elsewhere and the authors have failed to provide proper attribution to previous sources or disclosure to the editor, permission to republish, or justification (i.e. redundant publication).
• It contains material or data that the authors were not authorized to publish.
• Copyright has been infringed or there is some other serious legal issue (e.g., libel, breach of privacy).
• It reports unethical research and/or breaches LPCMA’s publishing ethics policies regarding the conduct of research involving human participants and/or animals.
• There is evidence of compromised peer-review or systematic manipulation of the editorial process.
• There is evidence or material concerns of authorship being sold.
• There is evidence of identity theft or fictitious authorship.
• The authorship of the publication cannot be verified.
• There is evidence of citation manipulation, for example adding irrelevant citations to their paper.
• The author(s) failed to disclose a major competing interest (a conflict of interest) that, in the view of the editor, would have materially affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and/or peer reviewers.
• The article is a review or meta-analysis where the results and conclusions rely on articles that have since been retracted.
• There is evidence of any other breach of ETN publishing policies, including without limitation Elsevier’s policies on the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies, and the editor has therefore lost confidence in the results and conclusions of the article.
• A retraction notice titled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the editor and, if appropriate, by the authors is published in a subsequent issue of the journal, is paginated and is listed in the table of contents.
• In the electronic version, a link is made between the retraction notice and the original article.
• The online article is preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.
• The original article is retained unchanged except for a watermark on .pdf indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”
• The HTML version of the article is removed.

Article correction

A Corrigendum will be published where it is required to correct an error or omission, but the results and conclusions of the article are not impacted by the error.

The Corrigendum should be drafted by the authors but will be subject to the review and approval of ETN Editor or appropriate member of the Editorial Team. All authors must agree to publication. The Corrigendum will be linked to the article that it corrects.

On rare occasions the Publisher may need to correct an error made during the publication of an article. Where this is the case, the journal will issue an Erratum to correct the error. The Erratum will be linked to the article that it corrects.

A correction to the author or contributor list may be posted if the Editor determines that a change is justified when presented with documentation that supports the request.

Publishing malpractices (Plagiarism) complaints

Plagiarism is committed when one author uses another work (typically the work of another author) without permission, credit, or acknowledgment. Plagiarism takes different forms, from literal copying to paraphrasing the work of another.

Literal copying

Literal copying is reproducing a work word for word, in whole or in part, without permission and acknowledgment of the original source. Literal copying is obvious plagiarism and is easy to detect by comparing the papers in question.

Substantial copying

Substantial copying is reproducing a substantial part of a work, without permission and acknowledgment of the original source. In determining what is "substantial", both the quantity and the quality of the copied content are relevant. Quality refers to the relative value of the copied text in proportion to the work as a whole. Where the essence of a work has been reproduced, even if only a small part of the original work, plagiarism may have occurred. For example, a relatively short extract from a piece of music may be instantly recognizable and may constitute a substantial part.

In addition to judging the quantity and quality of the copied content, you should consider the following question: Has the author benefited from the skill and judgment of the original author? The degree to which the answer to this question is "yes" will indicate whether substantial copying has taken place.

Paraphrasing

Copying may take place without reproducing the exact words used in the original work, i.e. without literal or substantial copying. This type of copying is known as paraphrasing, and it can be the most difficult type of plagiarism to detect.

To determine whether unacceptable paraphrasing has occurred, you should apply a test similar to that for substantial copying: Look at the quantity and quality of what has been taken and also at whether the second author has benefited from the skill and judgment of the first author. If it seems clear, on a balance of probabilities, that the second author has taken without permission or acknowledgment all or a substantial part of the original work and used it to create a second work, albeit expressed in different words, then such use amount to plagiarism.