Statement of editorial policies
The Journal of the Irish Dental Association aims to publish high-quality papers in all areas of dental research. This journal facilitates the research and wishes to publish papers as long as they are technically correct and scientifically motivated. The journal also encourages the submission of useful reports of negative results. This is a quality controlled, peer-reviewed, international journal. Every volume of this journal will consist of six issues.
GENERAL EDITORIAL POLICY
Publication Criteria
- The paper has not been published (partly or as a whole) before or is not under consideration for publication elsewhere (except as an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis). We will consider manuscripts that have been deposited in preprint servers such as arXiv or published in institutional repositories. We will also consider work that has been presented at conferences (a significant amount of changes should be made before submission to the journal and proper citation of the conference paper is required). Submission of a manuscript clearly indicates that authors grant a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher. The submitting author (corresponding author) is responsible for ensuring that the article’s publication has been approved by all the other co-authors and after the publication of the paper author-dispute related issues will not be entertained. It is also the corresponding authors’ responsibility to ensure that the articles emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution.
- Its publication is permitted by all authors and after acceptance for publication, it will not be submitted for publication anywhere else, in English or in any other language, without the written approval of the copyright holder. The Journal may consider manuscripts that are translations of articles originally published in another language. In this case, the consent of the journal in which the article was originally published must be obtained and the fact that the article has already been published must be made clear on submission and stated in the abstract.
- It is compulsory for the authors to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights or the rights of a third party.
- The copyrights of all papers published in this journal are retained by the respective authors as per the ‘Creative Commons Attribution License’ (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The author(s) should be the sole author(s) of the article and should have full authority to enter into the agreement and in granting rights (if any) which are not in breach of any other obligation. The author(s) should ensure the integrity of the paper and related works. Authors should mandatorily ensure that submission of the manuscript to this journal would result in no breach of contract or of confidence or of commitment given to secrecy.
- If a submitted study replicates or is very similar to previous work, authors must provide a sound scientific rationale for the submitted work and clearly reference and discuss the existing literature. Submissions that replicate or are derivative of existing work will likely be rejected if authors do not provide adequate justification.
- English quality: the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. It is author’s responsibility to a improve the English quality (if required) by any other third-party service.
- The research must meet all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity.
- This publisher believes that no manuscript should be rejected only on the basis of ‘lack of novelty’, provided the manuscript is sufficiently robust and technically sound. The Journal will rigorously peer-review your submissions and publish papers that are judged to be technically sound.
Publishing ethics
Conflict of interest
All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial and personal relationships with other people or organisations that could be viewed as inappropriately influencing (bias) their work.
All sources of financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article should be disclosed,
Authorship
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made substantial contributions should be listed as co-authors.
Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the paper (e.g. language editing or medical writing), they should be recognised in the acknowledgements section.
Submission of a paper to this Journal indicates that the author(s) have agreed on the content of the paper. One author should be indicated as the corresponding author for all publication-related communications. All correspondence and proofs would be sent to the corresponding author, who will be treated as a final representative voice for all authors regarding any decision related to the manuscript unless otherwise requested during submission. This Journal would not be responsible for any dispute related to authorship of a submitted paper. Any change in the authorship (such as addition or deletion of author(s) or change in the sequence of author list) should be intimated to the editorial office through a letter signed by all authors before publication of the paper. Generally, any change in the authorship after final publication is not entertained.
Peer review mechanism
Reviewer selection
Reviewer selection is a critical parameter to maintain the high peer review standard of any journal. Many factors are considered during peer reviewer selection like: proof of expertise in terms of published papers in the same area in reputed journals, affiliation, and reputation, specific suggestion, etc. We try to avoid reviewers who are slow, careless or do not provide sufficient justification for their decision (positive or negative). We also, as much as possible, try to rule out those reviewers who may have an obvious competing interest.
The main force behind our efficient and quality peer-review system is the tremendous hard work of our peer reviewers, administration team and editors. We are extremely grateful to them for their great service.
Review process flow
The reviewers’ comments are generally sent to authors within three weeks after submission. With the help of the reviewers’ comments, final decision (accepted; revise and resubmit; or, rejected) will be sent to the corresponding author. Reviewers are asked if they would like to review a revised version of the manuscript. The editorial office may request a re-review regardless of a reviewer’s response in order to ensure a thorough and fair evaluation. Reviewers who may have offered an opinion not in accordance with the final decision should not feel that their recommendation was not duly considered and their service not properly appreciated. Experts often disagree, and it is the job of the editorial team to make a final decision.
Authors are encouraged to submit the revised manuscript within seven to 15 days of receipt of reviewer’s comments (in case of minor corrections). But at any case, the revised manuscript submission should not go beyond eight weeks (only for the cases of major revision, which involves additional experiment, analysis, etc.). The Editor of the Journal will have exclusive power to take the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of a manuscript during peer review process.
The Journal is determined to promote integrity in research publication. In case of any suspected misconduct, journal management will reserve the right to re-review any manuscript at any stage before final publication.
General guidelines for peer-review process
• This Journal strongly opposes the practice of duplicate publication or any type of plagiarism. If a reviewer suspects any unethical practice in a manuscript, they are encouraged to write it in the report with some proof/web links.
• Studies which are carried out to reconfirm/replicate the results of any previously published paper with new data may be considered for publication. But these types of studies should have a ‘clear declaration’ of this matter.
• This publisher believes that no manuscript should be rejected only on the basis of ‘lack of novelty’, provided the manuscript is sufficiently robust and technically sound.
• Materials and methods – comments are invited on the suitability and technical standards of the methods. Sufficient details of the methods/process should be provided so that another researcher is able to reproduce the experiments described.
• Results and discussion (comments are invited on: 1. are the data well controlled and robust?; 2. authors should provide relevant and current references during discussion; 3. discussion and conclusions should be based on actual facts and figures, and biased claims should be pointed out; and, 4. are statistical analyses a must for this paper? If yes, have sufficient and appropriate statistical analyses been carried out?)
• Conclusion – is the conclusion supported by the data discussed inside the manuscript? Conclusions should not be biased and should be based on the data presented inside the manuscript only. Authors should provide adequate proof for their claims without overselling them.
• Are all the references cited relevant and adequate? Are there any other suitable current references authors need to cite?
• This publisher believes in constructive criticism. Reviewers are encouraged to be honest but not offensive in their language (unnecessarily harsh words may be modified or removed at the editor’s discretion). It is expected that the reviewers should suggest to authors how they can strengthen their paper to make it acceptable. Comments of the reviewers should be sufficiently informative and helpful to reach an editorial decision. We strongly advise that a negative review should also explain the weaknesses of any manuscript, so that the concerned authors can understand the basis of rejection and he/she can improve the manuscript based on those comments. Authors also should not confuse straightforward and true comments with unfair criticism.
• We are very much reluctant to go against suggestions (particularly on technical areas) of the reviewers. Therefore, authors are requested to treat the suggestions of reviewers with utmost importance.
• Appeal – Appeal requests should be made in writing, not by telephone, and should be addressed to journaleditor@irishdentalassoc.ie with the word “appeal” in the subject line. In all these cases, it is likely that some time will elapse before the Journal can respond, and the paper must not be submitted for publication elsewhere during this time. Authors should provide detailed reasons for the appeal and point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ and/or Editor’s comments. Authors should also be aware that priority is given to new submissions to the journal and so the processing of the appeal may well take longer than the processing of the original submission. If an appeal is rejected, further appeals of the decision will not be considered and the paper may not be resubmitted.
Plagiarism Policy
This Journal strongly opposes the practice of duplicate publication or any type of plagiarism, and uses a Plagiarism software to assist with identification of plagiarised content.
This Journal aims to publish original high-quality research work. Submission of a manuscript to this Journal indicates that the study has not been published anywhere or not been submitted elsewhere for publication. If author(s) are using any part of a published paper (in English or any other language), they should give a proper reference or in any case, if required they should get permission from the previous publisher or copyright holder (whichever is suitable).
Plagiarised manuscripts will not be considered for publication. If plagiarism is found in any published paper after an internal investigation, a letter will be immediately sent to all the authors, their affiliated institutes and funding agencies, and subsequently the paper will be retracted.
The plagiarism policy of this Journal is mainly inspired by the plagiarism policy of Nature. The plagiarism policy of this Journal is described below:
- Plagiarism is when an author attempts to pass off someone else’s work as his or her own. This Journal also adopted IEEE definition of plagiarism to deal with such cases. It defines plagiarism as: "the reuse of someone else’s prior ideas, processes, results, or words without explicitly acknowledging the original author and source”.
- Plagiarism can be said to have clearly occurred when large chunks of text have been cut-and-pasted. Such manuscripts would not be considered for publication in this Journal. Papers with confirmed plagiarism are rejected immediately.
- Minor plagiarism without dishonest intent is relatively frequent, for example, when an author reuses parts of an introduction from an earlier paper.
- Duplicate publication, sometimes called self-plagiarism, occurs when an author reuses substantial parts of his or her own published work without providing the appropriate references. This can range from getting an identical paper published in multiple journals, to ‘salami-slicing’, where authors add small amounts of new data to a previous paper. Self-plagiarism, also referred to as ‘text recycling’, is a topical issue and is currently generating much discussion among editors. Opinions are divided as to how much text overlap with an author’s own previous publications is acceptable.
- In case of ‘suspected minor plagiarism’, authors are contacted for clarification. Depending on all these reports, reviewers and editors decide final fate of the manuscript.
- Editors have the final decision power for all such cases.
Correction and retraction policy
This Journal is determined to promote integrity in research publication. As soon as any error or omission is identified, the Journal corrects and/or retracts as appropriate at the earliest possible opportunity.
For any queries, authors are requested to contact by mail (journaleditor@irishdentalassoc.ie).
PROTOCOLS
The Editorial Board of the Journal has adopted two protocols which continue to be observed. They are:
10th April 2006
The Irish Dental Association will hold onto all information relating to articles submitted for a period of two years after the article is first submitted regardless of whether it is published or not.
5th February 2007
After articles have been published in the Journal, a pdf of the article may be put on the author’s own website provided that the Journal is accredited for it.