Corresponding Author Roles and Responsibilities

The corresponding author is the one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the Journal during the manuscript submission, peer-review, and publication process. The corresponding author typically ensures that all the Journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, disclosures of relationships and activities, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements are properly completed and reported. A corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all contributing authors have fulfilled their responsibilities. The corresponding author accepts responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of the work and for the journal’s policies and ethical standards being adhered to. This person will also sign the publishing agreement on behalf of all the authors. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all the authors’ contact details are correct and agree on the order that their names will appear in the article. 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 about the paper arise after publication.

Affiliations

Each author must list all relevant affiliations to attribute where the research or scholarly work was approved and/or supported and/or conducted. An author may hold more than one affiliation, but it must be properly stated. A complete institutional affiliation must be written in the Title Page during submission, together with the corresponding author’s e-mail address.

Current institutional affiliation may apply to non-research article . If an author has moved to a different institution before the article has been published, he/she should list the affiliation where the work was conducted and include a note to state his/her current affiliation. If an author does not have a current relevant institutional affiliation, he/she should state his/her independent status (independent researcher).

Authorship

Authorship provides credit for researcher’s contribution to the work. Each author is expected to have made substantial and significance contribution to the conception and design of the work. All authors are accountable to their own contribution to the work and mutually agree to submit the work to the Journal. The corresponding author is responsible for communication with the Journal and between co-authors. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that all authors that contributed to the work are fairly acknowledged and that the published author list accurately reflects individual contributions.

Any changes to the author list after submission must be accompanied by a letter signed by every author approving those changes. The Journal and Editor should be informed on such changes in authorship. Request should be dealt with fairly and in accordance with the relevant COPE guidelines. Changes in authorship will only be permitted where valid reasons are provided and all authors are in agreement with the change.

In the event of dispute among authors, the Journal will follow the recommendations set by COPE guidelines.

Authors retain rights of personal use of the material, such as in derivative works, thesis or dissertation, and educational purposes, provided that full acknowledgement is made to the original publication in the journal.

Authors may upload their accepted manuscript PDF to institutional repositories (including PubMed Central); however, the following clause should be included:

This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in Malaysian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version [insert complete citation information here] is available online at: xxxxxxx [insert URL that the author will receive upon publication here].

Contributorship

Contributors who have contributed materially to the paper but whose contributions do not justify authorship should be described clearly in the acknowledgement section; for example, “served as scientific advisors”, “critically reviewed the study proposal”, “collected data” or “provided and cared for study patients”. All individuals named must give permission to be included, as readers may infer their endorsement of the data and conclusions of the paper. It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure that permission is obtained and to be able to provide evidence of this if required.

Editor Roles and Responsibilities

The role of the Editor is to produce the best journal possible for readers in the field of pharmaceutical sciences. At the time of appointment, the Editor is supplied by the Publisher with a written agreement that clearly states the rights and duties, authority, the general terms of appointment, and mechanisms for resolving conflict. The Editor is supported by an independent editorial board who assist the Editor on editorial policy and content as well as help the editor establish and maintain editorial policy.

The Editor has editorial freedom, i.e., full authority over all editorial content and the timing of publication of the journal. The Publisher does not interfere in the evaluation, selection, scheduling, or editing of individual articles either directly or by creating an environment that strongly influences decisions.

The Editor will not share information about manuscripts, including whether they have been received and are under review, their content and status in the review process, criticism by reviewers, and their ultimate fate, to anyone other than the authors and reviewers. The Editor will also not discuss the content publicly prior to acceptance and publication.

The Editor will ensure that reviewer comments are properly assessed and interpreted in the context of their declared conflicts of interest. Besides, the Editor will work to ensure timely processing of manuscripts. If the Journal has no intention of proceeding with a manuscript, the Editor will endeavour to reject the manuscript as soon as possible to allow authors to submit to a different journal.

The Editor will ensure that all editorial decisions are based on the relevance of a manuscript to the Journal and on the manuscript’s originality, quality, and contribution to evidence and not be influenced by commercial interests or conflicts of interest.

Appeals

To ask the Editor to reconsider a rejection of a manuscript, please contact the editorial office at mjps.usm@gmail.com. These are considered appeals, which, by policy, must take second place to the normal workload. In practice, this means that decisions on appeals often take several weeks. Only one appeal is permitted for each manuscript. Final decisions on appeals will be made by the Editor.

In general, an appeal against a rejection decision on a manuscript will only be considered if:

• the authors can demonstrate that an error that determined the final decision has been made - by a referee or the Editors - during review
  
  or
  
  
• if important additional data can be provided
  
  or
  
  
• if a convincing case of bias in the process can be demonstrated.

Authors who wish to appeal an editorial decision should submit a formal letter of appeal to the journal by contacting the journal editorial office. Include the manuscript tracking number in the email subject line and the appeal letter.

If appeals are successful, then authors will be given instructions on how to proceed. If an appeal merits further consideration, the Editor may send the authors’ response and the revised paper out for further peer review.

Complaints

Complaints should be directly emailed to mjps.usm@gmail.com and will be dealt with confidentially. All complaints will be formally acknowledged within four working days. If possible, a full response will be made within two weeks. If this is not possible, an interim response will be given within two weeks. Further interim responses will be provided until the complaint is resolved.

Conflict of Interest

Conflicts of interest arise when authors, reviewers, or editors have interests that are not fully apparent and that may influence their judgements on what is published. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived.

i. Authors

All authors and co-authors are required to disclose any conflict of interest, either financial or personal, that could affect or influence their work, in their submitted manuscript or in the cover letter during submission. It is the responsibility of a manuscript’s corresponding author to confirm if co-authors hold any conflict of interest.

Financial competing interests include (but are not limited to):

• Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organisation that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the manuscript, either now or in the future.
• Holding stocks or shares in an organisation that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the manuscript, either now or in the future.
• Holding, or currently applying for, patents relating to the content of the manuscript.
• Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organisation that holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript.

Non-financial competing interests include (but are not limited to) political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, and intellectual competing interests.

Any relevant information - such as sources of research findings; the role or research funder(s), sponsor(s) (if any); and financial or non-financial interests and relationship that might affect the interpretation of findings - must be declared through the Acknowledgments section of the manuscripts or at the point of submission.

ii. Reviewers

To ensure that the review process is free of conflicts:

• Reviewers are required to disclose any potential conflict of interest when refereeing an article.
• Minor conflicts do not disqualify a reviewer from reporting on an article but will be taken into account when considering the referees’ recommendations.

iii. Editors

Editors will not make any editorial decisions or get involved in the editorial process if they have any conflict of interest (financial or otherwise) for a submitted manuscript. When editors submit their own work to their journal, a colleague in the editorial office will manage the manuscript and the editor/author must recuse himself or herself from discussion and decisions about it.

Data Sharing and Reproducibility

Research data can take many forms but is essentially the underlying evidence upon which the claims made in a publication rely.

Sharing these data publicly helps to maximise the discoverability and impact of any research. It also improves the robustness of the research process, supporting validation, research transparency, reproducibility and replicability of results. The journal follows the share upon reasonable request policy. Thus, authors agree to make data and materials supporting the results or analyses presented in their paper available upon reasonable request. It is, however, up to the authors to determine whether a request is reasonable. Please note that data should only be shared if it is ethically correct to do so, where this does not violate the protection of human subjects, or other valid ethical, privacy, or security concerns.

Authors should check whether their funder has a data sharing policy. If the policy of the funder and the journal differs, authors are encouraged to follow the more progressive policy, i.e., the policy that encourages a greater level of data sharing.

The journal recommends authors to deposit data in a recognised data repository before submission. This can facilitate the ease of sharing on receipt of requests (which could be months or years after publication). The journal recommends choosing a repository that can mint a persistent digital identifier, such as a digital object identifier (DOI). It should also recognise a long-term preservation plan.

The journal encourages researchers to consider the FAIR Data Principles when depositing data. The journal further advises researchers to use FAIRsharing and re3data.org to search for a suitable repository. These both provide a list of certified data repositories.

Correction and Retraction

Should there be any corrections to the published article, authors must immediately notify the journal and clearly specify the corrections. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure consensus has been reached between all listed co-authors prior to putting forward any requests for corrections or retractions to an article. Corrections may be made to a published article with the authorisation of the Editor. The Editor will determine the impact of the change and decide on the appropriate course of action. Minor corrections are made directly to the original article. Minor corrections do not impact the reliability of, or the reader’s understanding of, the scholarly content; a footnote will be added to the article detailing to the reader that the article has been corrected. In cases of major corrections, the original article will remain unchanged while the corrected version will be published as well. Major corrections are considered to be any changes which impacts the interpretation of the article, but where the scholarly integrity of the article remains intact. An erratum or corrigendum will also be published, indicating the reason for changes to the article. When necessary, retraction of article will be done according to COPE retraction guidelines. Retraction will be considered:

• If there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g., data fabrication or image manipulation) or honest error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error).
• If the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross referencing, permission or justification (e.g., cases of redundant publication or duplicate publication).
• If the research constitutes plagiarism.
• Where there is evidence of fraudulent authorship.
• Where there is evidence of compromised peer review.
• If there is evidence of unethical research.

Research Misconduct

The journal considers the following as research misconduct:

• Falsification of data: Ranges from fabrication to deceptive reporting of findings and omission of conflicting data, or wilful suppression and/or distortion of data.
• Plagiarism, redundant and duplicate publication: The appropriation of the language, ideas or thoughts of another without crediting their true source and representation of them as one’s own original work.
• Simultaneous submission: This occurs when a person submits a paper to different publications at the same time, which can result in more than one journal publishing that particular paper. Articles submitted for publication must be original and must not have been submitted to any other journal. Authors are required to disclose any details of related papers in press, including translations.
• Improprieties of authorship: Improper assignment of credit, such as excluding others, misrepresentation of the same material as original in more than one publication, inclusion of individuals as authors who have not made a definite contribution to the work published or submission of multi-authored publications without the concurrence of all authors.
• Misappropriation of the ideas of others: An important aspect of scholarly activity is the exchange of ideas among colleagues. Scholars can acquire novel ideas from others during the process of reviewing grant applications and manuscripts. However, improper use of such information can constitute fraud. Wholesale appropriation of such material constitutes misconduct.
• Violation of generally accepted research practices: Serious deviation from accepted practices in proposing or carrying out research, improper manipulation of experiments to obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, or improper reporting of results. A lack of declaration of competing interests and of funding/sponsorship, and other failures of transparency.
• Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting research: Including but not limited to serious or substantial, repeated, wilful violations of applicable local regulations and law involving the use of funds, care of animals, human subjects, investigational drugs, recombinant products, new devices, or radioactive, biological or chemical materials.
• Inappropriate behaviour in relation to misconduct: This includes unfounded or knowingly false accusations of misconduct, failure to report known or suspected misconduct, withholding of information relevant to a claim or misconduct and retaliation against persons involved in the allegation or investigation.
• Salami slicing (or salami publication): Is defined as the unnecessary splitting of findings from a single study across several publications. Salami slicing is considered a form of redundant publication. The journal does not accept publications suspected of salami slicing, as these publications have the potential to skew the scientific record and create biases in the results of meta-analyses. All submitted articles will be assessed for potential salami slicing by the editorial team as part of standard checks. Studies that share significant similarities in the hypotheses, population, and methods should usually be presented to the readers in a single paper. If authors believe that they have legitimate grounds to submit multiple publications based on the same study, inform the editorial office about any and all potentially overlapping papers (published or unpublished). For further information about best practice please refer to the ICMJE guidance (please check) on overlapping publications.

Submission to MJPS implies that the work described has not been accepted for publication elsewhere, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and does not duplicate material already published.

Dealing with allegations of misconduct

MJPS takes seriously all possible misconduct which will be dealt with using the guidelines issued by COPE. If a submitted article describes something that might be considered to constitute misconduct in research, publication or professional behaviour, the Editor will discuss the case with the Editorial Board Members and the Publisher.

If the case cannot be resolved by discussion with the author(s) and the Editor still has concerns, the case may be reported to the appropriate authorities. If, during the course of reviewing an article, an editor is alerted to possible problems (for example, fraudulent data) in another publication, the editor may contact the journal in which the previous publication appeared to raise concern.

Readers that suspect misconduct in a published article are encouraged to report this to the Editor and/or the Publisher.

For further details please visit:

• Code of Conduct for Journal Editors
• Core Practices

Content Originality and Plagiarism

Authors are responsible to submit contents which are original, and for other works which have been referred to in the research, proper citations must be made to the referred works.

Any allegations of plagiarism or self-plagiarism/text-recycling made to the Journal will be investigated by the Journal’s Editor, following COPE guidelines. If the allegations appear to be founded, the corresponding author of the manuscript will be asked to provide an explanation of the overlapping material. The Editorial Board members and the author’s institution may be requested to assist in the further evaluation of the manuscript and the allegations.

All the manuscripts submitted to the Journal are subject to plagiarism check using the plagiarism checker software and the similarity index should not exceed 30%. In the event it does, manuscripts may be returned to the authors with a request that they address the issues through appropriate citation, use of quote marks to identify direct quotes, or re-writing. If the similarity is too extensive for revision, the manuscript may be rejected.

Copyright Policy

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to transfer copyright. This transfer will ensure the widest possible dissemination of information. A notification will be sent to the corresponding author confirming receipt of the manuscript.

If excerpts from other copyrighted works are included, the author(s) must obtain written permission from the copyright owners and credit the source(s) in the article.

License

All articles published in the Malaysian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which under the following terms:

• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

You are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

Open Access Policy

The Malaysian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, published by Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia is an open access journal. All articles are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY). All articles are freely available to read, share and download. In accordance with publication ethics and best practices of scholarly publishing, authors and journals must be properly credited. All articles are accessible via the Journal’s website and selected indexing and abstracting databases. Authors must complete the Journal’s Licence to Publish agreement and return the completed form to the Publisher.

Funding

Authors must fully cite any relevant funding information in the manuscript, including specific grant numbers. Funding acknowledgements should be written in the following form, for example: “This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme [grant number xxx]”.

If the research was not funded by any specific project grant, please include the statement in the Acknowledgements section: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors”.

Publication Charges

There are no submission charges or article processing charges (APC).

Language Policy

The journal accepts manuscripts written in British English only. Authors are encouraged to employ professional English editing services at their cost to eliminate possible grammatical or spelling errors and to conform to correct scientific English.

Advertising Policy

The Journal does not endorse any product or service marked as an advertisement or promoted by a sponsor in publications. Editorial content is not compromised by commercial or financial interests, or by any specific arrangements with advertising clients or sponsors. The Editorial Board of the Journal does not accept for consideration and does not print advertising articles (both on a reimbursable and free basis). Authors of the articles cannot link to ads using keywords. The Publisher/Journal reserves the right to decline or cancel any advertisement at any time.