Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The Annals of Dentistry University of Malaya is committed to upholding the highest standards of publication ethics and maintaining the integrity of the scientific record. To that purpose, 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

  1. 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 An editor must not use unpublished information in the editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Editors must ensure that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept confidential before publishing.

Editorial Board Responsibilities

  1. The Executive Editor of Ann Dent UM is responsible for deciding which of the submitted articles should be published.
  2. The Editorial Board must ensure that information regarding manuscripts submitted by the authors is kept confidential.
  3. 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.

Author's responsibilities 

  1. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant intellectual 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Reviewers those are recommended by the authors should not be colleagues from the same institutions, published papers as co-author in last five years.
  6. Any individual listed as an author in the author list MUST fulfil the requirement of authorship of Internation Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME).
  7. 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.
  8. The author(s) agree(s) that the Executive Editorial Board 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.
  9. 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).
  10. 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 institutional entity, if applicable) to submit and subsequent correspondence with the Editorial Team of Ann Dent UM.
  11. 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.

 Reviewer's responsibilities 

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Judgments by the reviewers should be as objective as possible. There shall be no personal criticism of the author. The professional views of the reviewers should be clearly expressed with supporting arguments.
  4. In the event that a reviewer feels it is not possible for him/her to complete the review of a manuscript within stipulated time then this information must be communicated to the editor so that the manuscript could be sent to another reviewer.

Ethical Oversight

Ann Dent UM applies ethical oversight throughput the publication process

  1. Should there be any issue of scientific misconduct such as, plagiarism, abuse of authorship, falsification and fabrication of results, or duplicate publication, in any of the submitted or published manuscripts, a formal (written) complaint must be forwarded to the Executive Editor.
  2. The complaint must contain appropriate evidence and/or documents related to the alleged misconduct.
  3.  Executive Editor will make an investigation either confidentially or by releasing the identities of the persons involved -as s/he deem fits.  
  4. Executive Editor may also form a Misconduct Investigation Committee (MIC) among the Associate Editors to investigate the alleged misconduct.
  5. The MIC will take reasonably responsive measures and propose a recommendation to the Executive Editor to deal with the alleged misconduct within a given time-frame.