Following the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), SQUMJ defines scientific misconduct as:
- Falsifying data: inventing data, selective reporting, or omission, suppression or distortion of data.
- Authorship issues: exclusion of involved researchers, or inclusion of researchers who have not contributed to the work, or publication without permission from all authors.
- Disregard for generally accepted research practice: including manipulating experiments/statistics to get biased results, or improper reporting of results.
- Failure to follow legal requirements: violating local regulations and laws involving the use of funds, copyright, care of animals, human subjects, investigational drugs, recombinant products, new devices, or radioactive, biological, or chemical materials.
- Inappropriate behaviour in cases of misconduct: including false accusations of misconduct; failure to report misconduct; not providing information relevant to a misconduct claim, and retaliation against people claiming or investigating misconduct.
- Plagiarism: using the published or unpublished language, ideas, or thoughts of another writer without reference or permission, and presenting them as one’s own. (more about our plagiarism policy HERE)
SQUMJ takes all these forms of misconduct extremely seriously. It follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) & International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines. The final decision on the action is taken by the Editor-in-Chief.
For post-publication correction(s):
- An Erratum Notice will be published as soon as possible with details regarding the discovered error(s) as long as they do not change the direction or significance of the results, interpretations and conclusions of the article. The Erratum Notice will be published with a new version of the article after correction, highlighting the corrected section(s), and will have a unique DOI for indexing purposes.
- A Retraction Notice will be published if any errors serious enough to invalidate a paper's results and conclusions were discovered. However, retraction with republication can be considered in cases where honest error (e.g. a misclassification or miscalculation) leads to a major change in the direction or significance of the results, interpretations and conclusions. The published retraction notice will provide details regarding the cause for the retraction and will have a unique DOI for indexing purposes.
For more information about post-publication corrections please click HERE.
For any complaints please contact the SQUMJ Editorial Team at mjournal@squ.edu.om. All complaints will be discussed by the Editorial Team and appropriate actions will be taken.
For more information about ethical misconduct please refer to the following articles:
- Al Lamki L. Ethics in Scientific Publication: Plagiarism and other Scientific Misconduct. Oman Med J 2013; 28(6):379-81. VIEW ARTICLE
- Al-Adawi S, Ali BH, Al-Zakwani I. Research Misconduct: The Peril of Publish or Perish. Oman Med J 2016; 31(1):5-11. VIEW ARTICLE