Editorial Policies

Publication ethics and malpractice standards

Salus Journal condemns all forms of research misconduct, including plagiarism, distortion or misattribution of evidence, fabrication, and unethical or illegal disclosures. We follow CSU’s Research Policy.

The journal further adheres to the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers.

In responding to possible publication misconduct or inappropriate behaviour, the Chief and Deputy editors will:

Deal with all such cases promptly, politely, fairly, and assertively;
Be cognizant of the requirements of due process when dealing with suspected cases;
Pursue suspect misconduct in both published and unpublished (submitted) papers;
Conduct a balanced inquiry (based on due process) into the issue to resolve the matter; and
Where a case of significant inaccuracy, data error/oversight, or publication misconduct/misrepresentation, plagiarism, factual distortion, or similar, is discovered in a published paper, work to publish a correction, retraction, apology, or other appropriate form of redress.

Ethical Publication Guidelines

Salus Journal is committed to maintaining best practice in publishing ethics. Before submitting your manuscript for review, please read the journal’s ethical guidelines on this page for submissions. By submitting your article you agree that your manuscript adheres to these standards.

The journal is dedicated to publishing research that is accurate and trustworthy, and follows the guidelines below. It seeks to:

Uphold high scholarly standards and free scholarly inquiry;
Be objective, transparent and fair in their dealings with authors;
Consider all submissions on scholarly merit; and
Reject any identified commercial influence or conflict of interest.

Editorial independence

The Editors-in-Chief assess submissions exclusively on the basis of academic merit and relevance to the journals scope. They reserve the right to reject submissions that do not meet the required standards and relevance. Decisions to publish are not influenced by government policies or agencies. The Editors-in-Chief have full authority over the editorial content and the publication of that content.

Conflict of Interest

Editors and the editorial board will not use unpublished information contained in a submission for their own research purposes. Privileged information received by the Editors-in-Chief obtained as a result of journal management processes will remain confidential. Peer reviewers are expected to disclose conflicts of interest and recuse themselves from peer reviewing activities related to that conflict.

Responsibilities

The Advisory Board expects the members of the Journal’s Editorial Board to:

Alert the Editor-in-Chief to any real or perceived conflicts of interest they may have with the authors, the area of research, or research funding source of the manuscript under review;
Blind review manuscripts so that the quality of the papers under review are of publishable quality;
Review manuscripts in the shortest possible time;
Recommend to the Editor-in-Chief their reasons and/or conditions for why a manuscript should be accepted or rejected;
Draw to the attention of the authors relevant published work if it has not been cited;
Maintain confidentiality of manuscripts while reviewing;
Maintain a professional standard of conduct while reviewing submissions;
Present objective judgments by making clear statements that are supported by an objective argument and references as necessary;
Destroy all copies of manuscripts once the reviewer’s report is filed with the Editor-in-Chief; and
Draw to the attention of the Editor-in-Chief any content that might be considered plagiarism, or where data might appear to be contrived or inappropriately manipulated.

The Advisory Board expects authors to:

Certify that their manuscript has not been submitted for consideration in another journal at the same time—i.e. no simultaneous submissions;
Certify that permission has been obtained for use of any copyrighted material from other sources, which includes the Web;
Certify that if other scholar’s works are used that correct referencing is used to avoid any suggestion of plagiarism;
Certify that the work they have submitted for review is their work and that no “ghost-writing” has been involved;
Make known to the Editor-in-Chief any real or perceived conflicts of interest that might be inherent in the study, or from the sponsors of the research, or from political interests;
Acknowledge in the text and cite publication sources if portions of author’s manuscript contents have been published before;
Understand that the peer reviewers will remain anonymous;
Certify the accuracy of the data and be willing to provide access to these data for verification purposes should a reviewer make a reasonable request; and
Advise the Editor-in-Chief if a substantial inaccuracy has been detected once the paper is published and to work with the Editor-in-Chief to rectify such an error through the publication of, for instance, clarification, an erratum, addendum, apology, or a retraction of the paper.