Publishing Ethics Standard

Maintaining a good ethical standard of academic publishing at all times is crucial for every participant in academic research and publishing activities. This journal has formulated the following ethical standards for authors, reviewers, editors, and publisher of Chinese Journal of Hospital Pharmacy in accordance with relevant provisions of the Copyright Law, domestic and foreign publishing ethics, and the actual situation of this journal.

1. In this standard, "publishing ethics" refers to the ethical norms and codes of conduct that professionals should follow in academic publication.

2. Academic misconduct is defined as the behavior that violates academic norms and ethics. It generally refers to three behaviors: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. (1) fabrication refers to making up data with no basis; (2) falsification refers to using fraudulent means to alter or distort data; (3) plagiarism refers to the act of stealing or modifying other’s work as one's own, completely or partially copying other’s work or changing its form or content, including viewpoint plagiarism, paragraph plagiarism, and full-text plagiarism. Specifically, the following actions are considered academic misconduct: forgery, tampering, improper authorship, multiple submission, duplicate publication, salami publication, violation of ethics principles, etc.

3. This journal shall reject manuscripts with repetition rate exceeding 20%. For manuscripts with a replication ratio below 20%, it is also necessary to consider whether the duplicated parts are the main results and viewpoints. If so, it will also be rejected.

4. Conflict of interest is defined as the conflict between the secondary interests (such as economic interests, friendship, relatives, etc.) and the primary interests (such as ensuring the objectivity of research results, etc.) of individuals or groups in scientific activities.

Section 1 Authors

1. Authors are responsible for authenticity of their paper and are responsible for cooperating with the editorial office to provide supporting materials such as original images, raw data, funding project proposal, and full title of funding project.

2. Upon submission, authors are required to submit "Recommendation Letter and Copyright Agreement" signed by all authors, not only supporting the authenticity of the content (data, author information) of the manuscript, but also proving that the manuscript has not been submitted multiple times, does not involve confidentiality breach, and has no disputes over authorship.

3. Authors must adhere to the principle of “Five Prohibitions”: the paper must not be written by a third party; the paper must not be submitted by a third party; the content of the paper must not be revised by a third party; false peer reviewer information is not allowed; improper authorship is not allowed (item 4-7). Non-substantial academic contributors should never be listed as co-authors.

4. Authors should be those who made substantial contribution to the paper, including: (1) those who have made significant contributions to the conception or design of the research work, or obtaining, analyzing, or interpreting research data; (2) drafters of research papers or those who modify papers on important intellectual content; (3) those who can finalized the paper for publishing; (4) agree to take responsibility for all aspects of the research work to ensure that any issues related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the paper are properly investigated and resolved. Those who do not meet all four criteria (such as those who only provide technical assistance to the paper or provide financial and material support) should not be listed as authors but can be mentioned in acknowledgement.

5. In principle, the authors should be ranked according to their contribution, and it should be collective agreed upon and determined before submission. Authors and affiliations are generally not allowed to be changed. If truly necessary to make changes, the person in charge (the first author or the corresponding author) shall submit a written application to the editorial office, stating the reasons, and signed by all authors. Unauthorized changes are not allowed.

6. In general, only one corresponding author is indicated. If it is a standardized multi-center or multidisciplinary collaborative research, and there is more than one corresponding authors, it could be accepted case by case. The different corresponding authors should be academic leaders from different research institutions or research groups involved in collaborative research.

7. Authors who have made equal contributions should be indicated during submission. Generally, there are no more than 2 equivalent contributors. If it is a standardized multi-center or multidisciplinary collaborative research and there are more than 2 equivalent contributors, it could be accepted case by case. The equivalent contributors should come from different research institutions or groups involved in collaborative research.

8. Authors should indicate their names and affiliations when submitting the manuscript. Authors’ affiliations should be relevant to the research content. If it is not relevant, authors should explain their contributions in the research or have a certificate issued by the affiliation to prove that the author has engaged in this research work.

9. If the institution to which the author belongs is different from the institution where the topic selection, research plan design, research work is completed and research conditions are provided (for example, graduate students leaving the enrolled college, continuing education students, visiting scholars, collaborative research, etc.), the institution which provided research conditions for research work shall be the first institute.

10. Clinical trial should follow the "favorable principle" and "non-harm principle". For clinical trials involving humans and animal experiments, authors are required to provide proof of ethical review of the research proposal. If patients (subjects) involved, informed consent letters should be signed. Clinical trials must include the Universal Trial Number (UTN) obtained from one of the Primary Registries in the WHO Registry Network. If applicable, the UTN should be included in the paper.

11. Authors should declare whether there is a conflict of interest when submitting the manuscript. If there is a conflict of interest, all economic interests that may affect the research results should be explained (whether there is a commercial interest relationship between the research and the pharmaceutical company; whether the pharmaceutical company provides any financial sponsorship in experimental design and implementation, data processing, article writing and publication, etc.).

12. Authors should submit the Author Statement Form, describing their contributions and disclosing the conflicts of interest. If authors have any objections to the review comments or results, they can submit a written statement to the editorial office, providing detailed explanations and clarifications for each review comment.

Section 2 Reviewers

1. Reviewers should adhere to the principles of fairness, impartiality, confidentiality, and timeliness to provide responsible review opinions on manuscripts. There shall be no prejudice or discrimination against the authors’ research institution, region, qualification, ethnicity, etc., and the authors’ research content shall not be disclosed

2. When there is a conflict of interest between the reviewer and the authors (such as family teacher-student, alumni, colleague, competitive relationships), in order to ensure fairness of review, the reviewers should promptly declare the conflict of interest to the editorial office, who may require reviewers to avoid handling the manuscript in question.

3. When reviewers discover that the paper is similar to their own research direction, they shall not abuse their right and give an injustice comment on the paper in question.

4. Reviewers should complete the review in a timely manner. If they cannot complete the job on time, they should inform the editorial office and withdraw the review. They can also recommend others to go on reviewing the paper.

5. When reviewers encounter previously reviewed manuscripts, they are obliged to report the situation to the editorial office.

Section 3 Editors

1. Editors should handle each manuscript fairly, impartially, and in a timely manner, and make acceptance or rejection decisions based on the importance, originality, scientificity, readability, authenticity of research, and its relevance to the journal.

2. Editors should abide by the principle of confidentiality. They should strictly keep the information of both reviewers and authors confidential.

3. Editors shall not interfere with peer review driven by interests, and shall strive to ensure independent evaluation by peer experts for fairness and impartiality.

4. For reviewers recommended by an author, editors should verify the authenticity of their information and decide whether to recruit the recommended reviewer based on their research field and expertise, as well as whether there is a conflict of interest with the author. If an author requests to avoid an expert's review of the manuscript and this request is reasonable, the editor should accept it.

5. When selecting reviewers, editors should avoid choosing reviewers from the same affiliation as the authors and should not appoint any author as a reviewer.

6. When there is a conflict of interest between editors and authors (such as family, teacher-student, alumni, colleague, and competitive relationships), they should avoid handling the manuscript in question.

7. Editors should handle appeals from authors with caution and organize collective discussions or initiate a second-review.

8. Editors should consider publishing negative results obtained from scientifically rigorous research to avoid unnecessary duplication of research by other scholars.

9. Editors are responsible for eliminating academic misconduct such as multiple submission and duplicate publication, and should conduct plagiarism checks two times, respectively on newly received manuscripts and ready-to-release papers.

10. Editors have obligation to remind authors of potential copyright and intellectual property issues that may arise after changes in authorship, affiliation, and author rank.

11. Editors should provide authors with detailed revision suggestions or reasons for rejection.

12. Editors should respect authors’ viewpoints and writing style, and any critical modifications made to the paper that involves changing the viewpoints should be confirmed by authors.

Section 4 Publisher

1. The journal only reports on original research results. But articles can be published a second-time with following conditions: ① published in another language for readers from different countries; ② authorization of publishing must be obtained; ③ the interval between the initial and second publication should be at least one week; ④ secondary published papers should be indicated with the information of the first published journal, year, issue, page number, title, and original website address. 

2. For manuscripts that have been finalized and accepted, if any academic misconduct is found, this journal has right to reject the manuscript and notify the author's institute and journals of the same discipline.

3. If academic misconduct is found in published papers, this journal will make a retraction and publishing a statement.

4. The journal should publish detailed guidelines for authors (such as submission guidelines, writing guidelines, etc.) and update them in a timely manner.

5. Journals should establish a system for managing conflicts of interest among their editors, authors, reviewers, and editorial board members.

For more detailed information, please refer to the official website of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (http://www.publicationethics.org/) and publishing ethical standards established by institutions such as the European Association of Scientific Editors (EASE).