Publication Ethics

  • Publication Ethics

    Publication ethics of Natural Product Research and Development

    Ethical Issues

    Natural products research and development advocates the fairness and seriousness of academic publishing, strictly implements the peer review, and adopts double anonymized review. After receiving the manuscript, the manuscript proceeds to pre-review status (usually within 2 working days). Firstly, manuscript misconduct detection is performed and the scientificity and originality of the manuscript is determined by searching in authoritative databases using keywords related to the content of the manuscript as the search content. After the manuscript has passed the preliminary examination, an email will be sent to the author to notify him/her of the manuscript reviewing fee, and after receiving the reviewing fee, the manuscript will be sent to peer reviewers (if the author has submitted manuscripts to the journal before, the peer review and reviewing fee will be charged at the same time). Before submitting for peer reviewers, the author’s name, institution, and other relevant information will be hidden, and the peer reviewers are researchers who are not in the same region and the same institution as the author, to ensure that the peer reviewers evaluate the manuscript fairly and objectively. In addition, Natural products research and development has a more comprehensive pool of reviewers in the field of natural products and related research field, and reviewers will be supplemented according to the needs. All manuscripts shall be submitted to at least two experts for peer review, mainly to evaluate the scientificity, innovation and practicability. After the experts give the review opinions, the deputy editor in chief will make a decision on whether to publish after the comprehensive evaluation, and the editor in chief will make the final review. For the submitted papers, accepted papers and papers to be published, the editors will conduct academic misconduct detection in the “Academic Misconduct Detection System for Science and Technology Journals” on CNKI. Repetition rates below 30% pass the test, and those equal to or above 30% are considered as possible academic misconduct. Articles that are subject to academic misconduct are handled as follows:

    1.   The journal treats the papers finally identified as academic misconduct with a prudent attitude, and will notify the author in time and allow them to explain and redress this issue.

    2.   If the paper has not yet been accepted, the journal will immediately terminate its processing, make a rejection process, and give a warning to the author.

    3.   If the paper has been accepted but not officially published, the journal will do the withdrawal process and give the author an archive and warning.

    4.   If the paper has been officially published, the journal will publish the announcement of officially canceling the publication of the paper on the official website, notify the cooperative database to delete the online version, terminate the dissemination, and notify the author’s institution of this event.

    5.   The journal will never accept papers written by the first and corresponding authors of papers with serious plagiarism or multiple submissions in one manuscript.

    Author Ethics

    1.   Authors are responsible for the authenticity of their papers and have the responsibility to cooperate with editorial requests for supporting materials such as original images, original data, fund establishment assignment letters and project titles.

    2.   Authors should carefully refer to the submission instructions, integrity statement and copyright transfer agreement of this journal, and write the paper according to the manuscript template.

    3.   The signed author must be the substantive contributor of the paper. We must resolutely resist the signature of non-substantive academic contributors on the paper and ensure that the signature order has been confirmed by all authors. Generally, there are no more than 2 co-first authors and co-corresponding authors.

    4.   Authors should include the name and affiliation at the time of submission. The affiliation of the author(s) shall be relevant to the research, or if not, the author(s) should indicate their contribution to the research or provide a certificate from the author(s)' affiliation that the author(s) actually conducted the research.

    5.   Author and unit signatures should not be changed in general, but if a change is necessary (before the first online publication), the main author (first author and corresponding author) should submit a written request for change to the editorial board, stating the reasons and signed by all signatory authors, and should not be changed in the revised manuscript without permission.

    6.   The manuscript is original and has not been published in other publications or in any other way. There are no problems of plagiarism, forgery and multiple submissions of one manuscript, and there are no confidentiality and other copyright related infringement issues.

    7.   If the works and/or words are used in the text, they should be cited in the form of references. The editorial board checks all the manuscript by using the scientific and technological journal academic misconduct document detection system (AMLC) of CNKI.

    8.   For clinical trials on humans and experiments on animal, authors are required to provide documentation of the ethical review of the research protocol and, where patients (subjects) are involved, to sign an informed consent form.

    9.   When an author discovers a material error or inaccuracy in his/her own published paper, especially a non-intentional error, the author is obligated to promptly notify the editorial board and to cooperate with the editorial board by withdrawing the paper or issuing an appropriate “correction” statement.

    Editor Ethics

    1.   Editors should deal with each manuscript in a fair, impartial and timely manner and make a decision to accept or reject a paper on the basis of its importance, originality, scientific merit, readability, authenticity of the research and its relevance to the journal.

    2.   Editors should not be biased against the author's work unit, gender, professional title, academic honor, etc.

    3.   Editors should observe the principle of confidentiality by keeping the authors' research confidential and the personal information of the reviewers confidential.

    4.   Editors must not be motivated by interest to interfere with the peer review process of external reviewers to ensure that peer experts are independent in giving their review recommendations.

    5.   When selecting experts to review papers, editors should try to avoid being in the same region as the author, have no less than two peer reviewers, and try not to select them in the same region, and should not select a bylined author as a reviewer.

    6.   For review experts recommended by the author, editors should carefully review whether their basic information is accurate, whether their academic background is consistent with the research context of the article, and whether there is a conflict of interest with the author, and carefully decide whether they need to be sent to the recommended expert for review; for experts who recuse themselves, if the author gives good reasons, the author's choice should be respected as much as possible.

    7.   Editors are responsible for avoiding academic misconduct, such as multiple submissions and duplicate publications, and should do three checks and reviews on papers that are initially submitted, those that are confirmed for acceptance, and those that are about to be published.

    8.   Editors should consider publishing negative results obtained from scientific and rigorous research, so as to avoid unnecessary research repeated by other scholars.

    9.   Editors should respect the author's point of view and style of writing, and any key modifications involving academic views should be approved by the author.

    Reviewer Ethics

    1.   When receiving the invitation, reviewer should first understand the positioning and review requirements of the journal. Examine whether your professional knowledge and research direction match the reviewed manuscripts. If not, inform editors in time and clearly, and suggest changing the review experts.

    2.   Reviewers should examine their own time allocation and whether they can submit review opinions within the specified time. If not, inform the editors in time or negotiate with the editors on an acceptable review time to avoid deliberately delaying the review.

    3.   Reviewers should adhere to the principles of fairness, impartiality, confidentiality and timeliness in making responsible reviews of manuscripts, making honest, objective and fair assessments of the strengths and weaknesses of manuscripts and their content, giving reasonable and constructive reviews in a timely manner, and not divulging the authors' research content.

    4.   Reviewers should not use their review facilities to suppress or disparage an author's paper when they find that the author is engaged in research similar to their own; Reviewers should consciously recuse themselves when they find that they are reviewing a manuscript with which they have a conflict of interest (e.g., project team member, colleague relationship, teacher brother relationship, kinship, etc.).

    5.   Reviewers should observe the principle of confidentiality in peer review and avoid disclosing the content of the manuscript and related information to any uninvolved person during the review process and after the review is completed.

    6.   Reviewers may not delegate the review to others (colleagues, students, etc.) without the permission of the journal's editorial board.

    Determination of Academic Misconduct and Handling

    In order to purify the public academic platform, strengthen the construction of academic ethics in science and technology journals, promote scientific integrity, advocate good academic style, protect the rights and interests of readers and authors, and maintain the academic quality and reputation of the journal, Natural Products Research and Development will detect papers through the "Scientific and Technical Journal Academic Misconduct Literature Detection System" of China Knowledge Network and related database search system, and use the "Chinese Academic Literature Network Publishing Database" as the full-text comparison database to detect academic misconduct of papers in all aspects of editing and publishing, and execute the corresponding treatment depending on the circumstances of the papers identified as academic misconduct.

    1.   Scope of test paper

    l    All submitted papers, accepted papers and published papers.

    l    Papers that raise questions about academic misconduct during peer review.

    l    Papers reported for alleged academic misconduct.

    2.   Criteria for determining academic misconduct

    The journal carries out duplicate checking and detection through the "academic misconduct document detection system of scientific and Technological Journals" of CNKI. For papers with high repetition rate or obvious doubts in the detection report, the editorial department will submit the papers and related papers and detection reports to the editorial committee or reviewers to determine whether the papers are suspected of academic misconduct. The criteria for identifying academic misconduct papers are as follows:

    l    Plagiarism: Directly publish other people's or existing ideas, opinions, data, images, research methods, written expressions, etc. in their own name without citation or explanation; Excessive citation of other published literature.

    l    Falsification: Fabricating or fabricating data or facts.

    l    Tampering: Deliberately changing data and facts to make them lose authenticity.

    l    Improper signature: Signature is inconsistent with the actual contribution of the paper.

    l    Multiple submissions for one manuscript: The same paper or multiple papers with only minor differences (such as different title, keywords, abstract, author ranking, author unit, or a small amount of content in the main body of the paper) are submitted to multiple journals, or transferred to other issues within the agreed or legal time limit.

    l    Repeated publication: Without proper explanation, a large number of contents in his published works are repeated in the paper.

    l    Split publication: The research results based on the same subject, data and materials can be split into several publishable units for publication as multiple papers.

    3.   Treatment of papers identified as academic misconduct

    l    The journal treats the papers finally identified as academic misconduct with a prudent attitude, and will notify the author in time and allow them to explain and redress this issue.

    l    If the paper has not yet been accepted, the journal will immediately terminate its processing, make a rejection process, and give a warning to the author.

    l    If the paper has been accepted but not officially published, the journal will do the withdrawal process and give the author an archive and warning.

    l    If the paper has been officially published, the journal will publish the announcement of officially canceling the publication of the paper on the official website, notify the cooperative database to delete the online version, terminate the dissemination, and notify the author’s institution of this event.

    l    The journal will never accept papers written by the first and corresponding authors of papers with serious plagiarism or multiple submissions in one manuscript.

    4.   Handling of author's objection

    If author of the paper disagrees with the identification and handling results, he/she can submit a written application for review to the journal within the specified time after receiving the notice (the journal will not accept it if it is overdue). The journal is responsible for inviting experts to review the paper, making final handling opinions, and notifying the author of the review results.


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