Publishing Ethics

Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé is committed to applying and maintaining best practices in scholarly publishing as put forth in Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing and developed by the following four scholarly organizations: 1) the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the 2) Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the 3) Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the 4) World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). Our publishing ethics are based mainly on these guidelines as well as on the Canadian Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council [SSHRC], Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council [NSERC] of Canada, Canadian Institutes of Health Research [CIHR], December 2018) and on the "Conflict of Interest and Confidentiality Agreement for Review Committee Members, External Reviewers and Observers" of the Government of Canada. The journal also relies on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors for its authorship policy.

 

Ethics in publishing are principles and codes of conduct that set the grounding rules to ensure that editorial team members, reviewers, and authors have equal opportunities in publishing. The integrity of the review process, thus the reliability and the quality of published research, is another important aspect of ethics in publishing. Establishing those guidelines also favors the trust of the readership and users of the content of the journal's website regarding the journal's managerial and scientific credibility. Moreover, it permits giving credit to authors for their work and ideas. Ethical considerations also concern the ethics of the research presented in articles such as research involving humans, as stated by The Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association - Declaration of Helsinki.

 

To consult ethical considerations for authors: https://sips-snahp.ojs.umontreal.ca/index.php/sips-snahp/authorsethics

 

To consult the code of conduct and guidelines for reviewers: https://sips-snahp.ojs.umontreal.ca/index.php/sips-snahp/reviewers

 

To read about the role and responsibilities of the Publisher and Editorial Team: https://sips-snahp.ojs.umontreal.ca/index.php/sips-snahp/rolesandrespons 

 

Here, we present the journal's Publication Ethics.

 

Impartiality and Conflict of Interest

The Editorial Team of Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé is committed to offering, without exception, a fair and objective critical review of submissions received. That is, examining manuscripts without assumptions concerning authors' intellectual background, political views, professional or academic affiliations, age, gender, sex, origin, religious beliefs or other difference markers. Quality assessment, therefore, relies exclusively on scientific criteria based on the content of the material submitted by authors.

Any editorial team member can submit and publish an article in the journal. In this case, the submission will be reviewed by anonymous external peer reviewers. Manuscripts submitted by an editorial team member will benefit from the same rigorous double-blind peer review as other manuscripts to the highest quality standards. If the manuscript is accepted, the person's editorial affiliation with the journal will be clearly indicated on the PDF of the published article as well as in the statement of conflict of interest.
 
In the event of a potential conflict of interest concerning the co-editors-in-chief (e.g., supervision of a student/author), an anonymous voluntary expert will be recruited to supervise the review process and make decisions regarding this submission.
 
Any editorial team member should remain prudent not to accept multiple editorial duties for various journals in the same domain of research, for this could result in one person making decisions that could place journals in competition, thus resulting in unequal opportunities between these journals. In this sense, anyone who wishes to join the editorial team of Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en santé must declare any potential conflict of interest that could result from competing roles or commitments for more than one journal with similar aims and scope.

 

Research Misconduct Allegations

When a member of the editorial team or an external reviewer detects potential research ethics issues in a manuscript (such as lack of informed consent or insufficient institutional approval), they should alert snahp-sips@umontreal.ca. The Managing Editor, in consultation with the co-editors-in-chief of the journal, implements the decision-making procedures of COPE for suspected ethical problems in a submitted manuscript. When an article published in the journal is the subject of an allegation, the COPE guidelines for retraction are applied.

 

Confidentiality

Any editorial team member must not share information nor the manuscript of submitting authors outside the editorial team and only for editorial reasons. The anonymous manuscript shall be sent to the anonymous reviewers in strict compliance with the ethics of confidentiality and permissions presented in the guidelines for reviewers.

 

Retraction

Science of Nursing and Health Practices / Science infirmière et pratiques en Santé  follows the ethical standards established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE recommendations).

A retraction is a type of editorial correction that informs readers about falsified data, incorrect findings, or misleading conclusions. The reasons justifying this retraction will be explicitly mentioned in the PDF of the article in question. This can be used in cases of plagiarism, redundant publication, unethical research conduct, legal issues (such as defamation or illegality), and failure to disclose a major conflict of interest. It is not intended to penalize the authors but to maintain the integrity of the publication.

For more information, please consult the COPE guidelines: https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines

 

Correction

A correction notice will be published if one or more minor errors are found that do not affect the scientific integrity of the article or the ethical conduct of the authors. These errors can include incorrect data in a table or a wrong cited reference. The correction will be clearly marked in the PDF version of the published article where the correction has been applied. Grammatical errors or information errors about the authors will not be published.