The journal is committed to maintaining the highest standards and level of integrity in the publication process and the content of the articles.

Publication Ethics

The journal adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) standards on publications ethics. Submission of an article implies that:

• The work described has not been published previously except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis.
• That it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
• The work is the Author’s own and there are no falsification or fabrication of data, plagiarism including duplicate publication of the authors’ own work without proper citation and misappropriation of.

The list of authors must be limited to those who have contributed significantly to the manuscript and research study. These include being involved substantially within any of the activities of the research such as the conception of the study, the design of the research, collection of data and analysis or interpretation of data, followed by the drafting of the manuscript and its final approval.

The corresponding author has the responsilibity of ensuring that the manuscript submission and publication in the journal is known and approved by all authors. This person will also sign the publishing agreement on behalf of all the authors. Submission to the journal indicates that the authors agree to be held accountable for the work.

Any cases of ethical misconduct are treated very seriously and will be dealt with using the guidelines issued by the COPE. Detection of such cases will result in the rejection of the manuscript, or if already published, will result in an erratum being placed with the article or retraction of the article.

For further details please visit:

• Code of Conduct for Journal Editors
• Core Practices

Research Ethics

Studies Involving Human Subjects

All manuscripts reporting research involving human subjects, human material, or human data must be performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki after obtaining approval from an appropriate ethics committee. This should be clearly stated in the manuscript, including the name of the ethics committee, the reference number where appropriate, and a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

Studies Involving Animal Subjects

MJPS recommends following the ARRIVE reporting guidelines when documenting animal studies. All experiments must be performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. This should be clearly stated in the manuscript, including the name of the institutional and/or licensing committee approving the experiments, the reference number where appropriate, as well as any relevant details regarding animal welfare, housing and husbandry.

Studies Involving Plants

Voucher specimens for all wild plants described in a manuscript must be deposited in a public herbarium or other public collection that provides access to deposited material. Information on the voucher specimen and who identified it must be included in the manuscript. Details of the supplier providing the plant parts used in the research must be clearly stated.

Manuscripts should include a statement specifying that the appropriate permissions and/or licences have been obtained for the collection of plant or seed specimens subjected to such permission and/or licence. MJPS recommends that authors comply with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction (https://portals.iucn.org/library/efiles/documents/PP-003-En.pdf) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES; https://cites.org/eng).

Clinical Trials

All clinical trials must be registered in a public registry prior to submission. The trial registry number must be included in the manuscript. The journal follows the trials registration policy of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE; https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html).

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The journal supports the World Association of Medical Editors’ recommendations on chatbots and scholarly manuscripts. If a chatbot or similar program is used in the development of the manuscript, authors listed on the paper must review the content generated by any AI tool and take full responsibility for it, and its use must be documented in the Acknowledgments section. A chatbot or similar program cannot be credited as an author. AI-assisted corrections to the text for grammar, spelling, punctuation and simple formatting such as capitalisation, do not need to be declared.