Editorial Policy

Peer Review

The submitted manuscripts are subject to a peer review process. The purpose of peer review is to assist the Editors in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communication with the author it may also assist the author in improving the manuscript.

The choice of reviewers is at the discretion of the Editors. 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.

EJOSSAH follows a double-blind peer review process. All submissions must pass through a preliminary review by the editors of the Journal before they are sent for a further review. Manuscripts that do not fall into the scope and the minimum requirements of the Journal will be rejected immediately. Manuscripts that pass into the second stage will be sent to at least two reviewers for further in-depth review. Up-on returning the review, reviewers are expected to make a recommendation (Acceptance/Minor Modification/Major Modification/Rejection) of the manuscript for publication. The suggestions and feedback provided by reviewers are communicated to the corresponding author as soon as they are received. Authors whose manuscripts have been recommended for publication are required to offer point by point feedback and resubmit the modified version of the manuscript. This process can be repeated until every comment has been amended. Afterwards, authors are asked to verify their manuscript before publication.

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 Editors may assign additional reviewers.During the review process, the Editorsmay 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.

EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

The Editor-in-Chief and Deputy Editor-in-Chief (Editors) are responsible for deciding which articles submitted to EJOSSAH will be published. While making this choice, the Editors may consult with associate editors. The Editors are guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Editors reserve 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 a minimum of six months from the date of the manuscript submission.

The Editors 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 associate editors.

The Editors shall evaluate manuscripts for their scientific content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.

The Editor and the Editorial Staff 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.

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.

Open Access Policy

EJOSSAH is an Open Access journal. All its content is available free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, as well as to establish HTML links to them, without having to seek the consent of the author or publisher.

The journal does not charge any fees at submission, reviewing, and production stages.

Publication Scheduling

The Journal is published bi-annually every June and December.

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

The journal required all contributors, authors, reviewers, editors, and associate editors to adhere to its best-practice standards for moral conduct. This is a list of essential points.

Duties of editors

Fair play and editorial independence

Without considering the author's background, including gender, ethnic origin, citizenship, religion, political philosophy, or institutional affiliation, editors evaluate submitted manuscripts solely based on academic merit and relevance to the journal's scope. Government policies or those of any other external organizations have no bearing on the decisions to edit and publish. The whole editorial content of the journal, as well as the date of its publication, are completely under the control of the Editor-in-Chief and Deputy-Editor-in-Chief.

Confidentiality

Other than the corresponding author, potential reviewers, reviewers, associate editors, and the publisher, editors and associate editors will not reveal any information about a submitted article to anyone else.

Discloser and conflict of interest

Without the authors' written approval, editors and associate editors will not use unpublished information revealed in a submitted manuscript for their own research. Editors will maintain the confidentiality of any privileged information or ideas they acquire while working on the manuscript, and they will not exploit them for their own benefit. Editors will ask associate editors to handle manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest stemming from collaborative, competitive, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, businesses, or institutions associated with the papers.

Publication decision

All submitted manuscripts that are being considered for publication go through peer review by at least two subject-matter experts. Based on the validity of the work, its significance to researchers and readers, the reviewers' comments, and any current legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism, the Editor-in-Chief and Deputy Editor-in-Chief determine which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal will be published. While making this choice, the Editor-in-Chief and Deputy Editor-in-Chief may consult with associate editors.

Involvement and cooperation in the investigation

When ethical issues with a submitted manuscript or published paper are brought up, editors (together with associate editors) will take appropriate action. Even if an act of unethical publishing behavior is found years after publication, it will still be investigated. If further inquiry reveals that the ethical concern is valid, the journal will publish a correction, retraction, expression of concern, or other remarks that may be pertinent.

Duties of reviewers

Contribution to editorial decisions

Peer review helps editors make editorial decisions and may help authors improve their submissions through editorial interactions with editors. The core of scientific endeavour is peer review, which is a crucial element of formal scholarly communication. All academics who want to contribute to the scientific method must undertake a reasonable amount of revision.

Promptness

If the selected and invited potential reviewer feels unqualified to review the research presented in a manuscript or realizes that it will be impossible to complete the review promptly should notify the editors right away and decline the invitation; hence, substitute reviewers can be recruited.

Confidentiality

Any manuscripts submitted for review are confidential and must be kept as such; they cannot be shared with or shown to anyone unless the Editor-in-Chief and/or Deputy Editor-in-Chief has given permission (only in specific circumstances). This is true for invited reviewers who choose not to participate in the review.

Standards of objectivity

Reviews should be undertaken impartially, remarks made with clarity and justification, and then used by the writers to enhance their articles. It is wrong to criticize the authors personally.

Acknowledgment of sources

Reviewers should point out pertinent published works that the authors have not cited. Any claim based on an observation, deduction, or argument already recorded in another publication needs to be supported by the appropriate citation. A reviewer should also let the editors know if they have any personal knowledge of any significant similarities or overlaps between the article being considered and any other material (published or unpublished).

Disclosure and 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.

Duties of authors

Reporting standards

EJOSSAH 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.

Originality and plagiarism

Writers must ensure that all works they write and submit are wholly original, and if they borrow someone else's ideas or words, they must properly credit them. Moreover, publications that significantly impacted the description of the work reported in the manuscript should be referenced. Plagiarism can take many different forms, such as "passing off" another author's paper as the author's own, copying or paraphrasing significant portions of another paper without giving due credit, or claiming the findings of other people's studies. All forms of plagiarism are forbidden and represent unethical publishing behavior.

Multiple, duplicate, redundant, or concurrent submission/publication

It is not advisable to publish papers reporting essentially the same study in more than one journal or principal publication. As a result, authors shouldn't submit work that has previously been accepted by or published in another publication. The simultaneous submission of a paper to multiple journals is unethical publishing practice and is not accepted.

If certain requirements are met, publishing some papers (such as clinical guidelines and translations) in more than one journal may be justified. Secondary publishing, which must represent the same information and interpretation of the source document, requires the approval of the authors and editors of the relevant journals. The secondary publication must include a citation to the initial reference.

Authorship of the manuscript

Only those people who are able to accept responsibility for the content publicly and who meet the following authorship criteria should be recognized as authors in the manuscript: (i) made substantial contributions to the idea, planning, carrying out, data collection, analysis, or interpretation of the study; (ii) wrote the manuscript or contributed in critical revision to assure its intellectual content; and (iii) had a chance to review and approve the final version of the paper before agreeing to submit it for publication. All people who contributed significantly to the work described in the article but did not meet the requirements for authorship (e.g., technical support, writing, editing aid, general support) should be acknowledged in the "Acknowledgements" section after receiving their written consent. The corresponding author is responsible for making sure that the author list includes all appropriate coauthors (as defined above) and excludes any ineligible ones. They should also confirm that all coauthors have viewed the final draft of the paper and agreed to its submission for publication.

Acknowledgment of sources

Writers must get the specific written consent of the author(s) of the workers engaged in these services before using any information they learn while performing confidential services, such as reviewing grant applications or manuscripts. Writers must make sure that they have appropriately recognized the work of others and must list any sources that had a significant impact on how the reported work was defined. Without the source's express, written consent, information collected informally (via conversation, correspondence, or discussions with third parties) cannot be utilized or reported.

Hazards and human or animal subjects

The authors must make it explicit in the manuscript whether the work uses any techniques, chemicals, or tools that have any special risks inherent in their usage. The article should contain a statement to the effect that all procedures were carried out following applicable laws and institutional rules and that the appropriate IRB has approved them if the work involves the use of animals or human volunteers. For experiments involving human subjects, authors must also declare in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained. Human participants' private rights must always be respected.

Peer review

Authors must actively engage in the peer review process and quickly respond to editors' requests for further information, raw data, clarifications, and documentation of ethics approval, patient consent, and copyright clearances. If a first decision of "revisions necessary" is made, authors should promptly, methodically, and point-by-point responses to the reviewers' remarks before editing and resubmitting their work to the journal within the specified deadline.

Fundamental errors in published works

The authors are responsible for swiftly telling the journal's editors or publisher of any material errors or inaccuracies in their own published work and working with them to either withdraw the manuscript or correct it in an erratum. The authors must promptly fix or retract the manuscript or offer proof to the journal editors that it is accurate if a third party informs the editors or publisher that the manuscript contains a serious error or inaccuracy.

Publishers’ duties

Handling of unethical publishing behavior

In order to find and prevent the publication of articles that contain research misconduct, the editors and associate editors must collaborate. The publisher and editors will take all necessary steps to clarify the situation and amend the article in cases of suspected or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism. This encompasses the prompt publication of a correction, an update, or, in the worst case, the retraction of the defective work. This wrongdoing must not ever be supported or knowingly allowed to happen.

Access to journal content

This is an open-access journal where all the published journal articles are freely accessible to readers. The journal digital archive guarantees accessibility. Authors are not expected to pay any fee in the entire process of the journal publication.

PRIVACY STATEMENT:

The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this Journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.

Copyright and licensing

Authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media. All articles in EJOSSAH are published open access with a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 user licence.

Authors can enter the separate, additional contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the published paper (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. The publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.