Journal of Global Radiology Editorial Policies

Contents

Publication Ethics

The Journal of Global Radiology (JGR) (ISSN 2372-8418) follows “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals" set forth by the ICMJE. Examples of ethical conduct include but are not limited to plagiarism, duplicate or redundant publication, scientific misconduct such as falsification or fabrication of data, and intentional image manipulation.

When a reviewer or editor has concerns about any form of scientific misconduct, they will alert the Editor-in-Chief and/or Deputy Editors, who then reserve the right to investigate and contact the authors if necessary. Such investigation will follow guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Duties of Editors, Authors, and Reviewers

The following duties are outlined for editors, authors, and peer reviewers.

DUTIES OF EDITORS

  1. Publication Decisions: All submissions are subject to review and publication at the discretion of the editors (the Editor-in-Chief and other editors). Each submission will undergo the journal's editorial decision process. Based on the peer reviews, the editor can accept, reject, or request modifications.
  2. Review of Submission: The editors must ensure that each submission is initially evaluated for originality, making use of appropriate software to do so. At this stage, the journal editorial staff performs an initial quality screening of the submission and decides whether or not to send it for full peer review. Only after clearing the initial screening is the submission forwarded to reviewers for anonymous peer review. Each reviewer will make a recommendation to accept, reject, or modify the submission.
  3. Fair Play: The editors must ensure that each submission received by the journal is reviewed for its intellectual content without regard to sex, gender, race, religion, citizenship, etc. of the authors.
  4. Confidentiality: The editors must ensure that information regarding submissions is kept confidential.
  5. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: The editors of the journal will not use unpublished materials disclosed in a submission for their own research without written consent of the authors.

DUTIES OF AUTHORS

  1. Reporting Standards: Authors should present an accurate account of their original research as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Submissions will follow the submission guidelines of the journal. (See Author Guidelines.)
  2. Originality: Authors must ensure that they have written entirely original work. If plagiarism (unacknowledged copying or an attempt to misattribute original authorship, whether of ideas, text or results) is determined to have occurred, such submissions will not be considered for publication.
  3. Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publications: Authors should not submit the same article to more than one journal concurrently. It is also expected that authors will not publish redundant articles or articles describing the same research in more than one journal. Material previously made available in a thesis, dissertation, preprint, meeting abstract, poster or other preliminary report must be disclosed in the cover letter accompanying the submission.
  4. Publication Guidelines: Authors must follow the submission guidelines of the journal. (See Author Guidelines.)
  5. Submitting Your Revisions: The revised article should be uploaded in the online system in a timely fashion. Authors must also include a separate document, uploaded as a supplementary file, outlining the changes that have been made and point-by-point replies to each of the reviewers’ comments. The Editor has the right to ask authors to submit a revised version as a new submission that will receive a new manuscript/submission number, and will undergo a new review process if a significant period (3-6 months or longer) of time has lapsed.
  6. Acknowledgement of Sources: Authors should acknowledge all sources of data used in the research and cite publications that have been influential in research work. Authors should follow the Author Guidelines for formatting and include DOIs when available.
  7. Authorship of the Paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to conception, design, execution or interpretation of the reported study. Others who have made significant contributions must be listed as co-authors. The corresponding author also ensures that all the authors have seen and agreed to the submitted version of the article and their inclusion of names as co-authors.
  8. Data Access and Retention: Authors should provide raw data related to their study for editorial review and must retain such data.
  9. Human Subjects Research: Research involving human participants must be approved by the authors’ Institutional Review Board, or equivalent committee. Authors must address this process in the submission. (See Human and Animal Studies.)
  10. Disclosure of Financial Support: Sources of financial support, if any, must be clearly disclosed.
  11. Fundamental Errors in Published Works: If at any point of time the authors discover a significant error or inaccuracy in a submission, the error or inaccuracy must be reported to the editor.

DUTIES OF REVIEWERS

  1. Confidentiality: Information regarding submissions should be kept confidential and be treated as privileged information.
  2. Acknowledgement of Sources: Reviewers must ensure that authors have acknowledged all sources of data used in the research. Any kind of similarity or overlap between the article under consideration or with any other published paper of which the reviewer has personal knowledge must be immediately brought to the editor's notice.
  3. Standards of Objectivity: Review of submissions must be done objectively and the reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
  4. Promptness: In the event that a reviewer feels it is not possible to complete the review of a submission within the stipulated time, then this information must be communicated to the editor, so that the submission could be sent to another reviewer.

Peer Review

JGR uses an anonymous peer review process where the identities of the authors and reviewers are hidden from each other. The editor(s) perform an initial review of all submissions and may reject submissions that are clearly outside the scope of the journal. Submissions within scope will be reviewed by at least two reviewers. On completion of this process, usually within 6-8 weeks, the editor(s) will notify authors of the decision and provide review guidance and additional editing if deemed necessary. Authors are encouraged to write in a style that is clear and concise, and use visuals and references as necessary to document statements.

See the Author Guidelines for more information about the peer review process and instructions for authors.

Human and Animal Studies

It is expected that all reports of research including human subjects will have followed the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki. Studies including human subjects, whether prospective or retrospective must have been performed with institutional review board approval. Documentation of Informed Consent must be reported. If institutional review board agreed to waive informed consent such as in some retrospective studies based on review of patients’ clinical record, this waiver must be stated.

All reports originating in the USA must include a statement of compliance with HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) guidelines. Reports of prospective studies without informed consent or institutional review board approval will not be considered.

Authors of reports including animal studies must acknowledge compliance with National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines for the humane treatment of laboratory animals, and/or approval by institutional review board or animal care committee approval.

Vulnerable Groups

Reports involving especially vulnerable groups such as children or minors, prisoners, or mentally impaired subjects, where consent may not be fully informed or questions of coercion may arise, will be examined extra carefully by the editors. Additional documentation of fair practice for obtaining consent may be requested.

Race and Ethnicity Reporting

If a study includes reporting of subjects’ race or ethnicity, the source of this information (such as self-reported, through a survey, direct observation by researcher, or collected from medical record) should be stated.

Personal Data

Study subjects’ personal identifying data should always be protected. No names, hospital identification numbers, or other identifying information should be included in any research reports. This should be carefully adhered to when using patient medical images in figures. All identifying information should be cropped from images. If this is not possible without losing pertinent portions of the image, such identifying information can be masked with a black box using easily accessible tools in image software applications like Powerpoint or Photoshop. However, if this is done, care must be taken to “compress” or “flatten” the image before submitting so that the information cannot be extracted by manipulation of the metadata.

Redundancy and Plagiarism

All authors submitting manuscripts must attest that this is the sole journal where their research is being submitted and that it has not been published previously except as an abstract in the proceedings of a scientific meeting and that it will not be submitted to another journal until JGR has made a decision or published the work. All submitted manuscripts will undergo screening for plagiarism and redundancy.

Appeals

For submissions that are rejected by peer review, the authors may submit an appeal to the Editor-in-Chief for reconsideration, listing clearly the reason they believe an appeal is justified. The Editor will determine whether further consideration is warranted, and will reach a decision considered final. The appeal must be submitted online within 30 days of the rejection notice. To appeal, contact the Editorial Team.

Retraction and Removal

JGR reserves the right to retract or remove any published works if the Editor(s) or Editorial Board find any instances of scientific misconduct, plagiarism, or unethical behavior.

Corrections

Despite best efforts, errors may occur. Corrections should be addressed in a timely and efficient way, and are the responsibility of authors and Editors. JGR will post an erratum to the article on the article landing page as well as the article cover page with an explanation of the correction.

Open Access

The Journal of Global Radiology provides immediate open access to its content. JGR Editors believe making research freely available to the public best benefits research, scholars, education, and society.

Copyright and Author Rights

  • Authors of original work accepted for publication in this journal grant first publication rights to the journal but retain ownership of the copyright of their content and all other rights.
  • Works published in this journal will be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Authors may request a different Creative Commons license during the submission process.
  • For attribution, the author(s), article title, publication source (the journal) and the DOI of the article must be cited. For example: Originally published in: Mendel JB. 2020. "COVID-19 Pandemic and Radiology: Facts, Resources, and Suggestions for Near-term Protocols. Journal of Global Radiology 6(1):1100. https://doi.org/10.7191/jgr.2020.1100
  • Authors retain the right to self-archive any version of their work (preprint, accepted manuscript, or final publisher version) on preprint servers, subject-specific repositories, institutional repositories, or their own website, as long as the work is properly cited and a link to the DOI of the published article is included.
  • Authors are responsible for obtaining the rights to use 3rd party materials prior to submission.

NIH-funded Research

The NIH Public Access Policy requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to PubMed Central (PMC) upon acceptance for publication. The Journal of Global Radiology does not deposit manuscripts on behalf of authors. NIH-funded authors should deposit the final peer-reviewed manuscript in PubMed Central themselves via the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS). Step-by-Step Tutorials are available to navigate the NIHMS system.

Reprints

All content in Journal of Global Radiology is Open Access. You can download the pdf file and print or distribute as many copies of articles as you like for any purpose for free. As a journal which does not charge subscription, submission, or author fees, JGR does not provide professionally produced reprints.