Ethics and Publication Policy

1. Introduction

The policies and guidelines provided in this document are in place to protect the    quality and integrity of all forms of scholarly practice and research, as well as the         reputation of the publications produced by Ayumed.
Ayumed, as a publisher of scholarly journals and books, is committed to meeting   high standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process.
This “Ethics and Publication Policy” adopted by Ayumed is in line with the most   modern standards in this regard and aims to hold both the company and the   publishers/authors/editors/peer-reviewers to a higher standard of ethics and to    formulate a set standard of publication policy.

1. Article Assessment
1. All manuscripts are subject to peer review and are expected to meet standards of academic excellence. If approved by the editor, submissions will be considered by peer reviewers, whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors.
2. Ayumed’s team will occasionally seek advice outside standard peer review, for example, on submissions with serious ethical, security, medical, biosecurity, or societal implications. We may consult experts and the academic editor before deciding on appropriate actions, including but not limited to recruiting reviewers with specific expertise, assessment by additional editors, and declining to further consider a submission.

1. Plagiarism and Duplicate Submission
1. Authors must not use the words, figures, or ideas of others without attribution. All sources must be cited at the point they are used, and reuse of wording must be limited and be attributed or quoted in the text.
2. Manuscripts that are found to have been plagiarized from a manuscript by other authors, whether published or unpublished, will be rejected and the authors may incur sanctions. Any published articles may need to be corrected or retracted.
3. Ayumed journals consider only original content, i.e. articles that have not been previously published, including in a language other than English. Articles based on content previously made public only on a preprint server, institutional repository, or in a thesis will be considered. In such cases, the preprint or thesis must be cited and discussed within the article.
4. Authors whose submitted manuscripts are found to include citations whose primary purpose is to increase the number of citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal, may incur sanctions.
5. Editors and reviewers must not ask authors to include references merely to increase citations to their own or an associate’s work, to the journal, or to another journal they are associated with.
6. Manuscripts submitted to Ayumed journals must not be submitted elsewhere while under consideration and must be withdrawn before being submitted elsewhere. Authors whose articles are found to have been simultaneously submitted elsewhere may incur sanctions.
7. If authors have used their own previously published work, or work that is currently under review, as the basis for a submitted manuscript, they must cite the previous articles and indicate how their submitted manuscript differs from their previous work. Reuse of the authors’ own words outside the methods should be attributed or quoted in the text. Reuse of the authors’ own figures or substantial amounts of wording may require permission from the copyright holder and the authors are responsible for obtaining this.
8. Ayumed journals will consider extended versions of articles published at conferences provided this is declared in the cover letter, the previous version is clearly cited and discussed, there is significant new content, and any necessary permissions are obtained.
9. Redundant publication, the inappropriate division of study outcomes into more than one article (also known as salami slicing), may result in rejection or a request to merge submitted manuscripts, and the correction of published articles. Duplicate publication of the same, or a very similar, article may result in the retraction of the later article and the authors may incur sanctions.
10. The authors of submitted manuscripts or published articles that are found to have fabricated or falsified the results, including the manipulation of images, may incur sanctions, and published articles may be retracted.

1. Copyright
1. Anyone who contributed to the research or manuscript preparation, but is not an author, should be acknowledged with their permission.
2. Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be considered.
3. All Ayumed articles are published with open access. This means that the author(s) retains copyright, but the content is free to download, distribute, and adapt for commercial or non-commercial purposes, given appropriate attribution to the original article. 
4. The copyright terms of the article are separate and distinct from the copyright of the website.

1. Licensing
1. License to Publish: The author(s) hereby grants to the Ayumed journal a royalty-free, worldwide non-exclusive license to publish, reproduce, display, distribute, and use the article in any form, either separately or as part of a collective work, including but not limited to a non-exclusive license to publish the article in an issue of the Ayumed journal, copy and distribute individual reprints of the article, authorize reproduction of the entire article in another publication, and authorize reproduction and distribution of the article or an abstract thereof by means of computerized retrieval systems.

1. Conflict of Interest
1. Articles should be submitted with statements or supporting documents of conflicts of interest, declaring:
1. Authors’ conflicts of interest.
2. Sources of support for the work, including sponsor names, along with explanations of the role of those sources, if any, in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the article; the decision to submit the article for publication; or a statement declaring that the supporting source had no such involvement.
3. Whether the authors had access to the study data, with an explanation of the nature and extent of access, including whether access is ongoing
4. To certify the above, authors should sign a statement stating “I had full access to all of the data in this study, and I take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the content within the article.”

1. Corrections and Retractions
1. Ayumed recognizes their responsibility to correct scientifically relevant errors in previously published articles. Corrections can be submitted if:
1. a small portion of an otherwise reliable publication proves to be misleading; OR
2. there is an error in a figure that does not alter the conclusions; OR
3. there is an error in statistical data not altering conclusions; OR
4. there are mislabeled figures; OR
5. the author / contributor list is incorrect when a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included.

1. A correction must be submitted to Ayumed on [●] . The contribution to the field statement should be used to clearly state the reason for the correction and the title of the submission should have the following format: “Corrigendum: [Title of original article].”
2. If the error was introduced during the publishing process, Ayumed should be contacted on the abovementioned email address.

1. Dishonesty and Libel 
1. Authors must use their best endeavours to ensure the material that they submit contains no fictitious data, reference omissions, or false statements. 
2. Authors should avoid the use of personal, critical, or disparaging remarks and accusations against fellow researchers, colleagues, or other individuals.
3. Critical analysis of the work of other researchers may be justified, but defamatory or actionable material must not be included.

1. How to raise a concern
1. Anyone who believes that research published by (Company Name) has not been carried out in line with these principles should raise their concerns with the relevant editor, or email [●] .