Research Ethics

LMO adheres to the guidelines and best practices published by professional organizations, including the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (joint statement by the Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE; the Directory of Open Access Journals, DOAJ; the World Association of Medical Editors, WAME; and the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, OASPA; https://doaj.org/bestpractice). Furthermore, all process of dealing research and publication misconduct shall be followed by Flow chart of COPE (http: //publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts).

1. Disclosure of conflicts of interest

Each author is responsible for disclosing to the Publisher all potential conflicts of interest regarding this manuscript (including sources of support, consulting fee or honorarium, stocks, etc.). Even in case the authors have no conflicts of interest, the authors should declare it: None declared. Each author also should sign a statement disclosing any conflicts of interest after acceptance of the manuscript.

2. Statement of informed consent and institutional review board approval

Experiments conducted on human subjects should be performed according to the World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/). Written informed consent should be obtained from all subjects. Identifying information including names, or hospital numbers should not be published in written description, or photographs. The authors must demonstrate that the Research Ethics Committee or the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author’s affiliated institution where the experiment was performed approved the study, if required by the editorial board.

3. Authorship

Authorship credit should be based on:
(1) substantial contributions to the conception and design of the study, acquisition of data, and/or analysis and interpretation of data;
(2) participation in drafting of the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
(3) the provision of final approval of the version to be published; and
(4) agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of it are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Every author should meet all four of these conditions appropriately investigated and resolved. Every author should meet all four of these conditions. The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during manuscript submission, peer review, and publication and typically ensures that all of the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more coauthors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions arise after publication. Authors are responsible for the whole content of each article. After initial submission of a manuscript, any changes in authorship (adding author(s), deleting author(s), or rearranging the order of author(s)) must be explained in a letter to the editor from the authors concerned. This letter must be signed by all authors of the paper. LMO does not correct authorship after acceptance for publication unless a mistake has been made by the editorial staff.

4. Misconduct in Research & Publication

Research misconduct occurs when a researcher fabricates or falsifies data, or plagiarizes information or ideas within a research report. The definition of misconduct can also extend to authorship/publication violations.

(1) Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them.
(2) Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.
(3) Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.
(4) Inappropriate authorship includes gift-, ghost-, and swap-author.
(5) Duplicate publication is publication of a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published in print or electronic media.

If the author(s) wishes a duplicate or a secondary publication, for example, for the readers of a different language, the author must obtain approval from the editors-in-chief of both the first and second journals. Further, the conditions specified in the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) should be met, such as insertion of a comment as a footnote in the title page of the second journal stating the primary reference and the duplicate nature of the paper.