Ethical standards for publication exist to ensure high-quality scientific publications, public trust in scientific findings, and that people receive credit for their work and ideas.

Human clinical trials and studies conducted in animals (or not) must have been approved by an Institutional Review Board (IRB). In the absence of such a formal ethics review committee, the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 and/or the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, as adopted and promulgated by the United States National Institutes of Health, must be followed. If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. In case of any study involving clinical trial, taking of informed consent of patients is mandatory.

Whenever editorial board of JCDS feels necessary, the research paper will be referred to the Research Ethic Committee of Qassim University for its evaluation and approval.

The journal and its editorial board are adhered to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) https://publicationethics.org/

 

Human Studies:

• The Journal requires compliance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki on medical research protocols and ethics
• The Journal requires Ethical committee approval of the study protocol of all prospective studies; retrospective studies which is assigned by all authors and granted by the Ethical committee, (Official Ethical committee approval Form)
• All prospective studies that involving patients must mention the following statement in the section of material and method: “All the patients are given a written informed consent to be included in the study”
• For retrospective studies, the authors should mention that the Ethical committee of (Name of the hospital) allows the access to the patients’ files in the section of the material and methods

 

Animal studies:

The ethical approval for the study by the animal care committee(s) have to be submitted

The authors must state that the animals care was in accordance with institution guidelines in the material and method section

Ethical committee approval is not needed for systematic review articles, article review, or articles that are not based on humans or animals

The Journal also requires that the statement of such approvals has to mention it’s the reference approval number which is given by the ethical committee to enroll the study

 

Permissions and Waivers

Formal patients consent and signatures are not required for the use of images from which the individual cannot be identified - for example, x-rays, ultrasound images, pathology slides, or intraoral photos, provided that these do not contain any identifying marks and are not accompanied by text that might identify the individual concerned

The patients’ consent must be submitted to the Journal if the images that identify the patients will be included in the manuscript, such as photos of patients’ face. It is generally not sufficient or accepted to anonymize the photographs simply by using eye bars or blurring the face of the concerned individuals

The patient’s agreement and sign must be submitted via the Patients’ Release Form

If the work includes images which are copied from other work, this work must be mentioned in the list of the work’s references and cited in the figures’ legend

 

Authorship

All authors should have made substantial contributions to all or one of the followings:

• The study design, or acquisition of data
• Analysis and interpretation of data
• Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content
• Final approval of the version to be submitted

The corresponding author must make sure that the submission has been agreed by all authors. All authors have to sign the “Authors’ agreement Form” “Authorship, Contribution and Copyright Agreement” which is also signed by the corresponding author.

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all authors are aware of their obligations

Authors should carefully consider the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the full list of authors at the time of the first submission

Any amendment to the author list (including re-arrangement, addition and deletion) should be made only prior to the acceptance of the manuscript

Any changes in the authors’ list (prior to the acceptance of the manuscript) must be accompanied by the reason for this action and the agreement of all authors. This must be mentioned in a letter to the editor in the process of the submission of the revised manuscript and must be signed by all authors.

If the manuscript has already been published, no requests for authorship amendment will be considered

Submissions by anyone other than one of the authors will not be considered.

 

Acknowledgement

All contributors who do not have authorship and provide unpaid assistance should be acknowledged, with their permission, at the end of the text before the references

 

 Declarations and Conflict of Interest

Conflicts of interest (COIs) occur when issues outside research could be reasonably perceived to affect the neutrality or objectivity of the work or its assessment.

All authors must mention any financial and personal relationship with organization or people may affect or bias their work

All sources of funding, sponsoring or COIs should be declared after the acknowledgement section under clear heading

If unsure, declare a potential interest or discuss with the editorial office. Undeclared interests may incur sanctions.

Submissions with undeclared conflicts that are later revealed may be rejected, or if published be retracted.

Upon submission you will be required to complete and upload the “Declaration Form” to declare funding and conflict of interest

If there are no interests to be declared, the authors will state this: “We hereby declare that none of the authors has any competing financial or conflict of interest”

COIs do not always stop work from being published or prevent someone from being involved in the review process. However, they must be declared. A clear declaration of all possible conflicts – whether they actually had an influence or not – allows others to make informed decisions about the work and its review process.

 

Conflicts include the following:

Financial: funding and other payments, goods and services received or expected by the authors relating to the subject of the work or from an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work

Affiliations: being employed by, on the advisory board for, or a member of an organization with an interest in the outcome of the work

Intellectual property: patents or trademarks owned by someone or their organization

Personal: friends, family, relationships, and other close personal connections

Ideology: beliefs or activism, for example, political or religious, relevant to the work

Academic: competitors or someone whose work is critiqued

For more information on COIs, see the guidance from the ICMJE and WAME

 

Used Language

The text must be written in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these)

Authors who feel their English language manuscript may require editing to eliminate possible grammatical or spelling errors and to conform to correct scientific English may wish to use a professional English Language Editing service

Inclusive language must be used throughout the whole manuscript to ensure diversity, conveys respect to all people, and promote equal opportunities 

The manuscript should:

• Not include any statement about the beliefs or commitments of any reader
• Not contain anything which imply that one individual is superior to another on the grounds of race, sex, culture or any other characteristic

 

 Copyright

Upon submission of an article, authors will be asked to complete the “Authorship, Contribution and Copyright Agreement” which will assign, convey and transfer all rights, interest and copyright ownership of said work for publication.

Permission of the Publisher is required for resale or distribution and for all other derivative works, including compilations and translations

 

Authors’ rights

Articles published in Journal of Contemporary Dental Sciences are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, unless otherwise agreed with Qassim University Publishers. When sharing or reusing any article, attribution must be given to the original source, using the statement "The final, published version of this article is available at https://jcds.qu.edu.sa/index.php/JCDS/index. Reuse for commercial purposes requires permission from the publisher.

 

Plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and representing them as one’s own original work. Authors must not use the words, figures, or ideas of others without attribution. Within the academia, it is considered dishonesty or fraud and offenders are subject to academic censure. All sources must be cited at the point they are used, and reuse of wording must be limited and be attributed or quoted in the text.

Plagiarism can be unintentional or intentional, reproducing academic material without appropriate credit to the original authors. Similarly, self-plagiarism is the re-use of significant, identical or near identical portions of one’s own work without citing the original work. This is also known as Recycling fraud. Worst form of plagiarism is to steal the whole article from some journal and publish it under one’s own name in another journal. The Editorial Board of JCDS will blacklist any author found to be guilty of plagiarism. The name of author(s) committing plagiarism will also be disseminated to editors of other medical journals

We at JCDS use Crossref Similarity Check (iThenticate) to detect submissions that overlap with published and submitted manuscripts. We check plagiarism for all the submitted articles before publishing. If the plagiarism is observed by editors or peer reviewers at any stage of publication process, it could be rejected based on the percentile of plagiarism occurred and it would be notified to author and may incur sanctions. JCDS tolerate up till 20% plagiarism Scoring (based on iThenticate software check)

We request our Authors to use a Plagiarism Checking software to check plagiarism prior to submission as a preliminary step, although they are not completely reliable.

However, for review papers the above may not directly applicable. Review papers are expected to give a summary of existing literature. Authors should use their own words with exception of properly quoted and/or cited texts and the work should include a new interpretation

 

Duplicate submission and redundant publication

JCDS consider only original content, i.e. articles that have not been previously published, including in a language other than English. Articles based on content previously made public only on a preprint server, institutional repository, or in a thesis will be considered.

Submitted manuscripts must not be submitted elsewhere while under consideration and must be withdrawn before being submitted elsewhere. Authors whose articles are found to have been simultaneously submitted elsewhere may incur sanctions.

If authors have used their own previously published work, or work that is currently under review, as the basis for a submitted manuscript, they must cite the previous articles and indicate how their submitted manuscript differs from their previous work. Reuse of the authors’ own words outside the Methods should be attributed or quoted in the text. Reuse of the authors’ own figures or substantial amounts of wording may require permission from the copyright holder and the authors are responsible for obtaining this.

We will consider extended versions of articles published at conferences provided this is declared in the cover letter, the previous version is clearly cited and discussed, there is significant new content, and any necessary permissions are obtained.

Redundant publication, the inappropriate division of study outcomes into more than one article (also known as salami slicing), may result in rejection or a request to merge submitted manuscripts, and the correction of published articles. Duplicate publication of the same, or a very similar, article may result in the retraction of the later article and the authors may incur sanctions.

 

Fabrication and falsification

The authors of submitted manuscripts or published articles that are found to have fabricated or falsified the results, including the manipulation of images, may incur sanctions, and published articles may be retracted.

 

Sanction

If JCDS becomes aware of breaches of our publication ethics policies, the following sanctions may be applied:

• Rejection of the manuscript and any other manuscripts submitted by the author(s).
• Not allowing submission for 1–3 years.
• Prohibition from acting as an editor or reviewer.