Reviewers' responsibilities

Reviewers are required to provide written, competent and unbiased feedback in a timely manner on the scholarly merits and the scientific value of the manuscript.

The reviewers assess manuscript for the compliance with the profile of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the originality and scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly apparatus.

Reviewers should alert the Editor to any well-founded suspicions or the knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Reviewers should recognize relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors and alert the Editor to substantial similarities between a reviewed manuscript and any manuscript published or under consideration for publication elsewhere, in the event they are aware of such. Reviewers should also alert the Editor to a parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal, in the event they are aware of such.

Reviewers must not have conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the funding sources for the research. If such conflicts exist, the reviewers must report them to the Editor without delay.

Any selected reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the Editor without delay.

Reviews must be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

PEER REVIEW

The submitted manuscripts are subject to a peer review process. The purpose of peer review is to assist the Editor and Editorial Board in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communication with the author it may also assist the author in improving the manuscript. Unbiased, independent, critical assessment is an intrinsic part of all scholarly work, including scientific investigation. Peer reviewers are experts in their field who are not part of the editorial staff and thus are an important extension of the scientific process. Manuscripts will be reviewed by at least 2-3 reviewers. Peer reviewers are asked to submit their review within two (2) weeks. All randomized controlled trials will be fast-tracked through the peer-review and editorial process and we will endeavor to publish accepted trials within 2 weeks of final acceptance. Type of peer review is double blind.

In the main review phase, the Editor sends submitted manuscripts to 2-3 reviewers experts in the field. The reviewers’ evaluation form contains a checklist in order to help reviewers cover all aspects that can decide the fate of a submission. In the final section of the evaluation form, the reviewers must include observations and suggestions aimed at improving the submitted manuscript; these are sent to authors, without the names of the reviewers.

Double-blind peer review: All of the reviewers of a manuscript remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.

The choice of reviewers is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board. The reviewers must be knowledgeable about the subject area of the manuscript; they must not be from the authors' own institution and they should not have recent joint publications with any of the authors.

All of the reviewers of a manuscript act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. If the decisions of the two reviewers are not the same (accept/reject), the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board may assign additional reviewers.

During the review process, the Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if they are necessary for the evaluation of the scholarly merit of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

The editorial team shall ensure reasonable quality control for the reviews. With respect to reviewers whose reviews are convincingly questioned by authors, special attention will be paid to ensure that the reviews are objective and high in academic standard. When there is any doubt with regard to the objectivity of the reviews or quality of the review, additional reviewers will be assigned.

Members of the editorial team/board/guest editors are permitted to submit their own papers to the journal. In cases where an author is associated with the journal, they will be removed from all editorial tasks for that paper and another member of the team will be assigned responsibility for overseeing peer review.

Authors' responsibilities

Authors warrant that their manuscripts their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal constitutes misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. We don’t accept preprints.

If a manuscript has previously been submitted elsewhere, authors should provide information about the previous reviewing process and its outcome. This provides an opportunity for authors to detail how subsequent revisions have taken into account previous reviews, and why certain reviewer comments were not taken into account. Information about the author's previous reviewing experience is to the author's advantage: it often helps the editors select more appropriate reviewers.

In case a submitted manuscript is a result of a research project, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc. shall be provided in the section Acknowledgements.

It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that manuscripts submitted to Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences are written with ethical standards in mind. Authors affirm that the manuscript contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Reporting standards

Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences is committed to serving the research community by ensuring that all articles include enough information to allow others to reproduce the work. A submitted manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit reviewers and, subsequently, readers to verify the claims presented in it - e.g. provide complete details of the methods used, including time frames, etc. Authors are required to review the standards available for many research applications from Equator Network and use those that are relevant for the reported research applications. The deliberate presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards.

Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions and must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the content public. Authors are also exclusively responsible for the contents of their data/supplementary files. Authors affirm that data protection regulations, ethical standards, third party copyright and other rights have been respected in the process of collecting, processing and sharing data.

Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Authorship

Authors must make sure that only contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors and, conversely, that all contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the Acknowledgments section.

As a guide, authors should refer to the criteria for authorship that have been developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). In order to be named on the author list one must have:

● made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

● contributed to the drafting the work, or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

● provided final approval of the version to be published; AND

● agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved; AND

● agreed to be named on the author list, and approved of the full author list.

Each author’s contribution must be detailed by selecting CRediT roles on the article submission form.

The addition or removal of authors during the editorial process will only be permitted only if a justifiable explanation is provided to the editorial team and publisher. Attempts to introduce 'ghost', 'gift' or ‘honorary’ authorship will be treated as cases of misconduct.

Acknowledgment of Sources

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Information received in a private conversation or correspondence with third parties, in reviewing project applications, manuscripts and similar materials, must not be used without the express written consent of the information source.

When citing or making claims based on data, authors should provide the reference to data in the same way as they cite publications. We recommend the format proposed by the FORCE11 Data Citation Principles.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

Plagiarism includes the following:

● Word for word, or almost word for word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks);

● Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

Please note that all submissions are thoroughly checked for plagiarism. JHRS uses Turnitin software for similarity checks.

Any manuscript that shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected.

In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described below under Retraction policy, and authors will be punished to have no another opportunity to submit an manuscript in JHRS.

Conflict of interest

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, the following standard statement should be added: ‘No competing interests were disclosed’.

A competing interest may be of non-financial or financial nature. Examples of competing interests include (but are not limited to):

● individuals receiving funding, salary or other forms of payment from an organization, or holding stocks or shares from a company, that might benefit (or lose) financially from the publication of the findings;

● individuals or their funding organization or employer holding (or applying for) related patents;

● official affiliations and memberships with interest groups relating to the content of the publication;

● political, religious, or ideological competing interests.

Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical or field trials or other research studies, should declare these as competing interests on submission. The relationship of each author to such an organization should be explained in the ‘Competing interests’ section. Publications in the journal must not contain content advertising any commercial products.

Fundamental errors in published works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal Editor or publisher and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper.

By submitting a manuscript the authors agree to abide by the Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences’s Editorial Policies.

ORCID

The journal asks that all authors submitting a paper register an account with Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID). ORCID identifiers for all authors and co-authors should be added to the author data upon submission and will be published alongside the submitted paper, should it be accepted.

ORCID registration provides a unique and persistent digital identifier for the account that enables accurate attribution and improves the discoverability of published papers, ensuring that the correct author receives the correct credit for their work.

Funding information

If a paper is a result of the funded project, authors are required to specify funding sources according to their contracts with the funder.

Editorial responsibilities

The Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences will be published. The Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board is guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board reserves the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts in case it is found that they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects. The Editorial Staff will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication within from the date of the manuscript submission.

Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the manuscript shall be made by the Editors and the Editorial Staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.

Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board shall evaluate manuscripts for their scientific content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.

The Editor and the Editorial Board must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.