Editorial and Ethical Standards

All the actors of Ann Dent UM, authors, reviewers and members of the editorial team are expected to fully adhere to our policy regarding publication ethics and malpractice, and respect the following statements:

EDITOR'S RESPONSIBILITIES

Editors should evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit. An editor must not use unpublished information in the editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.
Editors must ensure that each manuscript received by the journal is reviewed for its intellectual content without regard to sex, gender, race, religion, citizenship, etc. of the authors.
Editors should ensure the integrity of the publication review process. As such, editors should not reveal either the identity of authors of manuscripts to the reviewers, or the identity of reviewers to authors.
Editors must ensure that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept as confidential before publishing.

EDITORIAL BOARD RESPONSIBILITIES

The Executive Editor of Ann Dent UM is responsible for deciding which of the submitted articles should be published.
The Editorial Board must ensure that information regarding manuscripts submitted by the authors is kept confidential.
The content of the published manuscript would not represent the stand or opinion of the Editorial Board of Ann Dent UM, or the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Malaya.
The Editorial Board should take reasonably responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper. They shall conduct proper and fair investigation into ethical complaints.

REVIEWER'S RESPONSIBILITIES

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
Reviewers must not have conflicts of interest with respect to the research, the authors or the research funding reported in the manuscript under review with the respective reviewers.
Judgments by the reviewers should be as objective as possible. There shall be no personal criticism of the author. The professional views of the revieweers should be clearly expressed with supporting arguments.
In the event that a reviewer feels it is not possible for him/her to complete review of manuscript within stipulated time then this information must be communicated to the editor, so that the manuscript could be sent to another reviewer.

AUTHOR'S RESPONSIBILITIES

Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Authors are responsible to ensure that their manuscript is free of plagiarised contents of any kind. If found guilty of plagiarism, checked by the assigned Associate Editor who is handling a manuscript, s/he holds every right to reject the manuscript or send it back to the authors for necessary corrections.
They must ensure that the manuscript has not been submitted elsewhere. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant intelelctual contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.
If at any point of time, author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in submitted manuscript, then the error or inaccuracy must be reported to the editor. If the editor or the publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error, it is the obligation of the author to promptly retract or correct the paper or provide evidence to the editor of the correctness of the original paper.
Reviewers those are recommended by the authors should not be colleagues from the same isntitutions, published papers as coauthor in last five years.
Any individual listed as an author in the author list MUST fulfill the requirement of authorship of Internation Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME).
The Author(s) warrant and represent that the submitted manuscript:

does not infringe any intellectual property rights (including without limitation copyright, database rights or trade mark rights) or other third party rights and no license from or payments to a third party are required to publish the manuscript;
the manuscript or any part of it has not been previously published or licensed, or have obtained written permissions from the copyright holder(s), if any previously published or licensed components are used in the current current purpose;
none of the data presented in the manuscript are fabricated, manipulated, or otherwise known to be an act of scientific misconduct; and
nothing in the manuscript is obscene, defamatory, violates any right of privacy or publicity, infringes any other human, personal or other rights and confidentiality of any person or entity or is otherwise unlawful and that informed consent to publish has been obtained for all research participants.

The author(s) agree(s) that the Executive Editorial Borad of Ann Dent UM may retract the published manuscript, if accepted, or publish a correction or other notice in relation to the manuscript if found reasonable and appropriate from a legal, editorial or research integrity perspective.
Addition or deletion of any author(s), or the order of the authors listed during the initial submission will not be allowed after the acceptance of the manuscript will be sent to the author(s).
The submitting (or the corresponding) author has the permission and authority behalf of all of rest of the author(s) of the manuscript, (or any government entity, or any isntitutional entity, if applicable) to submit and subsequent correspondence with the Editorial Team of Ann Dent UM.
The author(s) confirms full cooperation with the Executive Editorial Board or any authorized person by the board in relation to any legal action that might arise from the publication of the manuscript.

The ethics statements for Ann Dent UM are based on the Ethical Code of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

TRANSFER OF COPYRIGHT

Ann Dent UM accepts manuscripts that have not been published elsewhere and are not under consideration for publication by other print or electronic media. The authors agree to transfer the copyright using the prescribed copyright form to Ann Dent UM editorial office.

Human and Animal Rights

When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000.

Statement of Informed Consent

Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should identify Individuals who provide writing assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance.

Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.