The Code of Publication Ethics for Journal of Apoplexy and Nervous Diseases is formulated based on the actual situation of the Journal, with reference to codes of publication ethics in China and abroad such as the Convention on the Code of Academic Publication Ethics of National Societies of China Association for Science and Technology, the Code of Ethics for Publication of Scientific and Technological Journals, and the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association. The formulation of the Code of Publication Ethics aims to strengthen the academic integrity of Journal of Apoplexy and Nervous Diseases, further upgrade the academic journal publication, and improve professional ethics literacy among academic journal publishers.

1. Code of Publication Ethics for Editors

(1) Editors should be responsible for all editorial aspects of the Journal, comply with national policies and regulations on journal publication and relevant specifications and guidelines, adhere to the “three-review and three-proofreading” system, and process all incoming manuscripts in strict accordance with the review process and in a timely and fair manner to ensure timely and high-quality publication of the Journal.

(2) Based on the preliminary reviewers’ comments, academic standards, and scope and purpose of the Journal, editors may preliminarily accept, reject, or require the revision of a manuscript.

(3) Editors should maintain the authenticity of review records and be obligated to archive and keep confidential the data generated during the review and revision.

(4) Editors should timely feed reviewers’ comments and revisions meeting the editorial criteria back to the author, encourage academic arguments, and be obligated to respond to the author’s views which may differ from reviewers’ comments.

(5) If any errors are found in the received manuscript, the authors should be urged to make corrections before publication or to withdraw it.

(6) Editors should ensure the fairness and impartiality of the review of manuscripts. In case of a conflict of interest or cooperation between a reviewer and an author or institution associated with the manuscript, the editors should propose replacing the reviewer with another member of the Editorial Board for the review of the manuscript.

2. Code of Publication Ethics for Reviewers

(1) Reviewers must be objective and impartial in their review of a manuscript and should base their comments on the scientific value, originality, and writing quality of the manuscript as well as its relevance to the scope and aims of the Journal.

(2) If viewpoint errors, factual errors, severe plagiarism, or suspicious data falsification are found, reviewers should feed these back to the Editorial Office of the Journal and should not deliberately delay the review or improperly affect the decision to publish.

(3) Reviewers should keep the reviewed contents strictly confidential and respect the author’s research findings by not circulating the manuscript to or discussing the manuscript with others and not using and publishing the data, viewpoints, or conclusions of the manuscript reviewed.

(4) Reviewers should evade manuscripts that have a conflict of interest. If a conflict of interest occurs, the Editorial Office must be timely informed and the reviewer should be replaced.

3. Code of Publication Ethics for Authors

(1) The manuscript submitted by an author must be original and free of plagiarism. Without seeking the original author’s consent, citing the original work in the literature, or acknowledging the original author, a person should not intentionally use the content of others’ work.

(2) The data in the manuscript must be authentic, reliable, and free of fraud.

(3) If any errors are found, the manuscript should be withdrawn or requested for correction promptly.

(4) Simultaneous submissions are prohibited. If the manuscript has been published in a different form (including in a different language) or if a similar manuscript has been published or translated, the author must indicate this at the time of submission.

(5) Ethical review requirements

According to the internationally accepted animal welfare and ethical guidelines, the International Ethical Guidelines for Health-related Research Involving Humans, and relevant regulations in China such as the Measures for Ethical Review of Biomedical Research Involving Humans, Regulations on Human Organ Transplant, Ethical Principles of Assisted Reproductive Technology and Human Sperm Banks, and Guidelines for Ethical Review of Drug Clinical Trials, the following criteria must be met for the Journal:

Any experimental animal research must conform to the relevant regulations on the management and use of laboratory animals in China and be approved by an ethics committee for animals; any biomedical research involving humans, whether it is prospective research, cross-sectional research, retrospective research, research performed in humans or using specimens taken from humans, or survey research on populations using psychological, epidemiological, or sociomedical methods, must seek informed consent from patients and be approved by the ethics committee. The author must indicate the name of the institutional committee conducting the ethics review and the approval number of the document reviewed. The ethical content must be placed after the main text and before the references.

The format is as follows:

Ethical Statement: The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee (or Laboratory Animal Ethics Committee) of *** Hospital (approval number: ABC1234) and registered with *** (clinical trial registry) (registration number: ABC1234), and all patients have signed an informed consent form (or met the guidelines for the management and use of laboratory animals).

(6) The authors listed must be substantial contributors to the manuscript.

(7) The Journal requires the authors to declare whether a conflict of interest exists when submitting a manuscript. If a conflict of interest exists, all financial interests that may have an impact on the research findings should be stated, and an author contribution statement should be made public. The statement text must be placed after the main text and before the references.

The format of a sample is as follows:

Conflict of Interest Statement: There is no conflict of interest in this article.

Author Contribution Statement: (1) responsible for designing the framework of the manuscript and drafting the manuscript; (2) responsible for the experimental operation and implementation of the research process; (3) responsible for data collection, statistical analysis, and graph plotting; (4) responsible for manuscript revision; (5) responsible for formulating the writing ideas, guiding the writing of manuscript, and finalizing the manuscript.

4. Academic Misconduct Resolution Process

In the editing and publishing process of a manuscript in a journal, the following academic misconduct issues may arise: simultaneous submissions, plagiarism, and data falsification.

Simultaneous submissions are the wrong behaviors taken by authors who are eager to publish their articles, which cause duplication of reviewers’ and editors’ efforts, waste of resources, and deterioration of a journal’s reputation. Once simultaneous submissions are found, the Journal has the right to recover the loss incurred by the authors.

Plagiarism and data falsification are unethical behaviors, for which the authors bear the responsibility. In the event of disputes and damages caused by such behaviors, the authors should respond to the lawsuit filed by the victim.

Editors have an obligation to act to ensure the integrity of research findings if they suspect academic misconduct in a manuscript. Once a published article is found to be materially incorrect, misleading, or distorted, it must be promptly corrected. If a published article is proven to have deceptive content after investigation, a manuscript withdrawal statement must be published for readers and retrieval systems to identify.

In case of academic misconduct caused by editors’ malfeasance and insufficient quality control, readers may complain to the Editorial Office, Editorial Board, sponsor, and supervisor of Journal of Apoplexy and Nervous Diseases. If the above issues prove to be true and the editors are indeed responsible, corresponding disciplinary action will be taken, and a public apology will be issued.