Publication Ethics of Stress and Brain
Stress and Brain (SAB), sponsored by Tsinghua University and published by Tsinghua University Press, has the responsibility to maintain the rigor of scientific research and protect the researchers’ intellectual property rights. In order to comply with the Publishing Ethics Committee of journal publishing ethics rules, SAB Publication Ethics have been formulated as the guideline for the editing and publication of SAB.
Ethical guidelines for journal publication
Each peer-reviewed article published in SAB is an approval of the scientific progress dealing with basic, translational, and clinical research on all aspects of stress neurobiology, with particular focus on the impact of stress on brain at levels ranging from genetics, molecular biology to brain imaging and behavior. It directly reflects the quality of the authors’ work and the institutions that support them. Peer-review is designed to support and embody scientific methods. Therefore, it is very important that all parties involved in the act of the publication, including the author, journal editors, peer reviewers, publishers, and social organization, should all perform the Publication Ethics as the moral behavior standards. SAB recognizes the Publication Ethics as our moral behavior, and takes our duties of guardianship over all stages of publishing extremely seriously.
1. Guideline of the paper
1.1 The paper published in SAB should be scientific paper or relevant with the SAB’s scope.
1.2 A paper should contain sufficient detail, such as the research work and the experimental method, and data must be guaranteed to be true. If there are references and open literature resources quoted in the paper, they should be listed in detail for peer evaluation.
1.3 One research result should be avoided to split into fragmented papers to submit.
1.4 Contention issues and the words in the paper should be clear and concise. Photographs and graphs in the paper should be of high quality. The work and/or words of used in the paper should be appropriately cited or quoted.
1.5 Research funding sources should be clearly stated, if there are any.
1.6 All papers submitted to SAB will be screened for plagiarism by Crosscheck software.
1.7 After the publication of the paper, the copyright will belong to the authors.
2. Duties of authors
2.1 Authors should take the opportunity of publishing on SAB seriously and help maintain the reputation of SAB.
2.2 Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. When submitting the manuscript, all authors should explicitly state that the manuscript is NOT published in or submitted to other journals.
2.3 Authorship should be limited to those who have made significant intellectual contributions to the theoretical development, system or experimental design, prototype development, execution, the analysis and interpretation of the data, and drafting, reviewing, and/or revising of the manuscript. Others, who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all authors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission for publication.
2.4 Please designate corresponding author(s) when submitting your manuscript. The corresponding author(s) will take the responsibility of communicating with the editorial office, overseeing the publication process, and ensuring the integrity of the final document.
2.5 Once the list and order of authors are established, they should not be altered without permission of all the living authors of that article. If anything is to be changed for good reasons, the corresponding author will have to collect the letters of consent from all the authors before the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) makes the final decision for the paper. They can be modified after EIC approval.
2.6 It is the author's obligation to correct the errors in the article that are recognized by authors or reviewers.
2.7 In the manuscript, all the authors should disclose financial or other substantive conflicts 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. Potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, grants, or other funding. Potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed at the earliest stage possible.
3. Duties of editors
3.1 For SAB, the EIC is ultimately accountable for acceptance or rejection of an article.
3.2 Articles submitted by the EIC or an associate editor (AE) shall be handled and reviewed by another EIC or AE of SAB.
3.3 Editors should treat all manuscripts fairly. An editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content regardless of ethnic, religion, nationality, gender, age, or affiliation of the authors. However, the editor may consider the relevance of the manuscript by the authors in their earlier or other manuscripts during the contemporaneous period. The editor can directly reject the manuscript if it does not accord with the requirements of SAB in its theme, breadth, depth, or English expression.
3.4 Editors should respect the independence of the author's ideas. For unpublished manuscripts, editors should not use the content without the consent of the authors. The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about the submitted manuscript to anyone other than the reviewers, potential reviewers, EIC, and the publisher, as appropriate.
3.5 Editors should exercise their responsibilities based on the EIC or AE's suggestion on whether the manuscript should be modified or published. No matter what the review is, reviewers’ comments and remarks will be returned to the author in any case.
3.6 It is essential that the editor assures that the anonymity of the reviewers is protected during the review process. The review process must be done transparently, but the reviewer anonymity policy can protect the review results from the interference of authors.
3.7 Editors should respect the opinions of EIC and AE. The editor must not arbitrarily refuse the reviewers’ comments, unless they clearly are irrelevant, incorrect, or inappropriate. In particular, editors should not arbitrarily ignore reviewers’ suggestions for modifications of the article without sufficient technical cause to do so.
3.8 If an article is returned for revision, it is important to make clear to the corresponding author whether the article will be accepted if the indicated changes are made or it will be resubmitted to the reviewers for further review.
3.9 Once the EIC confirms that the manuscript can be published, the editor should prepare for publication as soon as possible.
3.10 The submitted manuscript written by editor him/herself should be handled by other editors or AE who has no conflicting interest.
3.11 If there is sufficient evidence to show that the published article has mistake(s), editors should take corrective action whenever possible and the corrected text can be provided by the mistake finder or the author of the manuscript.
4. Duties of reviewers
4.1 Manuscript review is an essential step in the process of publishing and peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication. So, SAB shares the view of many people that all scholars who wish to contribute to publications have an obligation to do a fair share of reviewing.
4.2 Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify and return the manuscript to the editor immediately. Or they should remind the editor of the possibility of delaying the review and give a possible return time.
4.3 Based on the standards of maintaining a high level of scientific and textual expression, referees should be objectively evaluated the quality of the manuscript, the level of the experiments and the theory, the rationality of the interpretation and inference. Referees should respect the independence of the author's thought.
4.4 Selected referee shall not have a personal or business relationship with the authors or partner of the paper affecting the evaluation impartial.
4.5 Information contained in an article under review is confidential and shall not be shared with others, nor shall reviewers use non-public information contained in an article to advance their own research or financial interests.
4.6 Referee comments should be explained sufficiently with the basis of his (her) judgment in order to be understood by the editor and the author. The facts or opinions in the evaluation comments shall be attached to related literature to avoid lacking basis assertions.
4.7 Referees should identify whether the important relevant published work has been cited or not by the authors. It is absolutely forbidden guiding the author to cite the reviewer's own paper. The authors should be reminded of the substantive similarities between the author's manuscript content and published papers or manuscripts submitted to other journals
4.8 Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.
5. Punitive measures
5.1 Plagiarism in all forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
5.2 If the authors submit the paper under consideration to any other journal, the paper will be immediately rejected. SAB will inform the institute of the author and other journals within the field of neuroscience, and will reject to publish all the papers submitted by this author forever.
6. Post-publication
Authors will have a chance to double check symbols, formulae, and figure legends before final publication, for these may accidentally have been changed during typesetting. After final publication, substantial changes in content such as new results and corrected values are not allowed without the approval of the EIC. Erratum might be needed for further corrections.
7. Archive
The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of the published content in SAB.
