The research misconduct policy at North J Med Sci is a comprehensive framework that adheres to several national and international guidelines. These include the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan (HEC), ICMJE, WAME, and COPE. Our policy covers a wide range of misconduct forms and examples.
Fabrication or falsification of scientific data is a clear violation of our research misconduct policy. This includes misrepresentation of facts, ideas, and language used by others in prior work, and claiming authorship without genuine contribution. We also consider it misconduct to deny due recognition to other actual authors or to republish the same research work as different research in another journal.
Our research misconduct policy also extends to the inclusion of individuals who have not participated in the research or fraudulently using other researcher’s ideas as one’s own without informed consent. Any contradiction of general research principles, such as manipulating data to obtain preconceived results or using dubious statistical analyses, is strictly prohibited.
The policy rejects any research that fails to comply with local, national, or international regulations. Personal or professional misconduct, such as leveling false accusations of misconduct, not reporting a case of misconduct, or not sharing information about such cases, is also considered a breach of our research misconduct policy.
Furthermore, not complying with the prerequisites of publishing a manuscript in North J Med Sci, such as not declaring competing interests or the source of funding for the research, and not ensuring transparency, are also construed as misconduct. The journal will halt the processing of manuscripts and launch an investigation into allegations of misconduct if and when received. North J Med Sci maintains a zero-tolerance policy for professional and scientific misconduct.