Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement
NSC Nursing journal is committed to promoting the highest ethical publication practices. These guidelines are fully consistent with the COPE Principles of Transparency and Best Practice Guidelines and the COPE Code of Conduct. More details can be found here: https://publicationethics.org
NSC Nursing takes its duties of guardianship over all stages of publishing extremely seriously and our Editors are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero tolerance policy. To verify the originality of content submitted to our journal, the Editorial Team use Dupli Checker software.
Duties and responsibilities of editors
Fair play
Editor should evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. Editors´ decision to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based only on the paper´s importance, originality and clarity, and the study´s relevance to the aim of journal.
Confidentiality
Editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher. Editors will ensure that material submitted remains confidential while under review.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Editors and editorial board members will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent.
Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor’s own research without the express written consent of the author.
Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.
Editors will recuse themselves from managing manuscripts in which they have any type of conflicts of interest.
Publication decisions
The editors ensure that all submitted manuscripts being considered for publication undergo peer-review by at least two reviewers who are expert in the field.
Independent researchers in the relevant research area evaluate submitted manuscripts, for originality, validity and significance so as to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in our journal.
Editors will take responsive measures when ethical concerns are raised with regard to a submitted manuscript or published paper. If, on investigation, the ethical concern is well-founded, a correction, retraction, expression of concern or other note as may be relevant, will be published in the journal.
Duties of Reviewers
Contribution to editorial decisions
Peer review assists editors in making editorial decisions and, through editorial communications with authors, may assist authors in improving their manuscripts. Peer review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area evaluate submitted manuscripts, for originality, validity and significance so as to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in our journal.
Confidentiality
Peer reviewed manuscripts must be kept strictly confidential. Reviewers must not share manuscripts or discuss their contents with anyone outside the peer-review process. Reviewers may, upon request to the Editor-in-Chief of NSC Nursing, consult with colleagues in their research group trusting that the confidentiality of the manuscript will be maintained by disclosing to the Editor-in-Chief the name(s) of their colleagues in their report.
Standards of objectivity
Reviews should be conducted objectively and observations formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can use them for improving the manuscript. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate.
Acknowledgement of sources
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor’s attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Reviewers should refuse to review an article, communicating the reason to the Editor-in-Chief, when they have:
1) a recent publication or current submission with any author
2) a shared affiliation with any author
3) collaborated with any author
4) a financial interest in the subject of the work
5) difficulty in remaining objective in their judgment
Duties of Authors
Publication and Submission fee
The NSC Nursing promotes and disseminates the progress of scientific research in nursing, with the aim of being able to integrate the results of research into the daily activities of nurses, for this reason no fees or charges are required from authors for manuscript processing. Authors pay neither submission nor publication fee.
Ethical/legal considerations
The submitted manuscript must be an original contribution that has not been previously published (except as an abstract or preliminary report) or submitted for publication to another journal at the same time. Furthermore, in the event that an article is published in NSC Nursing, it may not be published elsewhere in a similar form, in any language, without the express consent of the Scientific Committee. Although the Editorial Board and reviewers make every effort to ensure the validity of published manuscripts, the authors are held responsible for any behaviour that is ethically unsound, such as manipulation of data, plagiarism or duplication of results, and possible conflict of interest. For this reason, the corresponding author must, on behalf of all authors, sign the NSC Nursing cover letter, which must be submitted together with the manuscript in PDF format and which can be downloaded at the following link:
Data access and retention
Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data available. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility to data on reasonable request, and should retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.
Patient consent and permission to publish
Studies involving experiments on human subjects require the approval of their local ethics committee as well as informed consent signed by the patients. In this case, the manuscript must include the protocol number of the study approval and explicit mention of the consent of the subjects involved in the study. An example, to be stated in the Materials and Methods section, is as follows:
“Informed consent was signed by all study participants. Anonymity was guaranteed for all participants. No financial incentives were offered for participation in the study. This study was approved by the Local Ethics Committee (name of the Ethics Committee, protocol number and permission date)“.
In addition where there is an unavoidable risk of breach of privacy, for example in a clinical photograph or case details, the authors will need to obtain signed consent from patients or relatives. In such cases, authors will need to send the signed consent form to NSC Nursing prior to publication.
Originality and plagiarism
The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.
Plagiarism takes many forms, from „passing off‟ another´s paper as the author´s own paper, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another´s paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
NSC Nursing’s Editorial Board will assess the type of plagiarism committed by the authors. Action taken will be based on the severity of the attempted plagiarism but may include correction or withdrawal of the published article. NSC Nursing will not accept subsequent articles from authors who have engaged in serious plagiarism.
Multiple, duplicate, redundant or concurrent submission/publication
Authors should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour. In general, an author should not submit for consideration in another journal a previously published paper. The copyright remains with the authors (CC-BY), thus they can decide about eventual republication of their text. The primary reference must be cited in the secondary publication.
Authorship of the manuscript
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
Peer review
Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, and proof of ethics approval, patient consents and copyright permissions. In the case of a first decision of “revisions necessary”, authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal by the deadline given.
Fundamental errors in published works
When authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal’s editors or publisher and cooperate with them to either correct the paper in the form of an erratum or to retract the paper. If the editors or publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the authors’ obligation to promptly correct or retract the paper or provide evidence to the journal editors of the correctness of the paper. About the procedure on retracting or correcting articles, please contact the Editor in Chief.
Digital content preservation policy
NSC Nursing is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility by partnering with organizations and maintaining our own digital archive.
NSC Nursing is digitally preserved by LEGALGED (an authorized Italian company).
Email: legalged@gmail.com
Web page: www.legalged.it