Focus and Scope

Advances in Nursing and Midwifery is the official  peer reviewed journal of  Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.The Editors welcome manuscripts that advance knowledge and understanding of all aspects of nursing and midwifery care, research, practice, education, and management and policy. All manuscripts must have a sound scientific, theoretical or philosophical base. 

Peer Review Process

Advances in Nursing and Midwifery accepts manuscripts that report novel findings, which could result in medicine and life sciences. Quality and topic of submitted manuscript beside the priority of research field are the least considered criteria in each manuscript before entering in formal review process. Any type of submissions containing scientific information necessitates review process to ensure content quality.

For more information you can check this site: https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com

Secretory checks the format and style of manuscript prior to review process to assure its compatibility with journals’s guidelines for authors. Checking compatibility continues in whole of the review process and publication. In cases when the authors have not considered the guidelines, the manuscript will be sent back to the authors for compatibility. Each submitted manuscript will be considered by the editor-in-chief or associate editor in the editorial board. If it meets the minimum criteria to be included in review process, one of the editors (topic expert) selects at least two external reviewers for detailed evaluation process. Selection of reviewers is based on their scientific background and experience, previous works, authors’ suggestion, and expertise. Reviewers promise to undertake the confidentiality of materials previous to ePublication. In the review process of this journal, reviewers stay anonymous, but authors’ names are declared to reviewers. Also, authors could suggest reviewers for their manuscript.

Editor receives the reviewers’ comments and sends them along with decision letter to corresponding author. Final decision on each manuscript will be made by the assigned editor of the manuscript. As Advances in Nursing and Midwifery is a rapid response journal, so this process takes not more than three weeks. Decision letter determines the status of manuscript in five ways:

1. Acceptance: The manuscript could be e-Published ahead of print. This process lasts two weeks. Before ePublication, corresponding author could verify a proof copy of the paper. After ePublication, paper will be in a queue to be published in one of the journals’ upcoming issues.

2. Minor revises: Authors will receive comments upon their manuscript, at which point the authors will be asked to submit a revised copy beside cover letter showing authors’ rejoinders, and also a marked copy Microsoft Word Documents. Revised manuscript should be submitted in one month after decision letter. Unless, authors need to go through a resubmission process.

3. Major revises: It means a chance to reorganize the manuscript to meet the required scientific criteria for another review process. Authors should pay more attention to reviewers’ comments and focus on their highlighted points. Editor may not request the authors to resubmit their revised manuscript beside cover letter and a marked copy. Revised manuscript should be submitted in one month after decision letter. Otherwise, authors need to go through a resubmission process.

4. Reject: In most cases, methodological and scientific concerns are the main origins of rejection. Causes of rejection will be sent to the authors to provide more chance for them for publication in other journals.

5. Withdraw: If author decide to pool off the manuscript in any reason, he/she request for withdraw the manuscript by Emailing the editor. It is not possible to withdraw a manuscript during review process. During the following statuses the author could request for withdraw the manuscript: Primary Control, Minor or Major Revision, Accepted Manuscript

This journal may invite prominent experts to submit editorials or review papers in special topics, which will be reviewed by editors only. Also commentaries may pass the same way in review process. In cases that concerns arise during review process about statistical test, methodology or techniques applied in research, editor may request independent internal/external experts to comment before final decisions.

As the final point, we strongly suggest authors to observe research and publication ethics in their manuscript, as reporting of any unethical issue during steps of review may lead to the rejection of the work by journal. Also, the authors should consider that they are in the charge of all materials (scientific and ethical) that they provide in their articles.

All of editors and reviewers of this journal do their bests to keep the quality of disseminated scientific works to ensure the solid impact of papers. In this journal, the review process lasts maximum one month.

Publication Frequency

This journal publish on Qurterly Frequency that means that journal release an issue each 3 months. Each issue contains 8-10 articles that undergone peer review and got acceptance decision from reviewers and journal's editor.

Open Access Policy

"The basic idea of Open Access is simple: Make research literature available online without price barriers and without most permission barriers."

So this journal provides immediate and free access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to all users.

It means that all articles that published in this journals that have undergone peer review and upon acceptance are immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download.

Archiving

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Publication Ethics and Research Misconduct

Publication of an article in an academic peer-reviewed journal serves several functions, one of which is to validate and preserve the “minutes” of research. It is therefore of immense importance that these “minutes” are accurate and trustworthy. The act of publishing involves many parties, each of which plays an important role in achieving these aims. It therefore follows that the author, the journal editor, the peer-reviewer, the publisher and the owner of Society-owned journals have responsibilities to meet expected ethical standards at all stages in their involvement from submission to publication of an article. 

Advances in Nursing and Midwifery is committed to meeting and upholding standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process. We follow closely the industry associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), that set standards and provide guidelines for best practices in order to meet these requirements. Below is a summary of our key expectations of editors, peer-reviewers and authors.

 1. ETHICAL EXPECTATIONS

Publication and authorship

1. All submitted manuscripts to the HPR are subject to strict peer-review process by at least three reviewers that are experts in the area of applied biotechnology.
2. The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, soundness, significance, originality, readability and language.
3. The possible decisions include acceptance, acceptance with revisions, or rejection.
4. If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.
5. Rejected manuscripts will not be re-reviewed.
6. The manuscript acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
7. No research can be included in more than one publication.

Authors' responsibilities

1. Authors must certify that their manuscripts are their original work.
2. Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere.
3. Authors must certify that the manuscript is not currently being considered for publication elsewhere.
4. Authors must participate in the peer review process.
5. Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
6. All Authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research.
7. Authors must state that all data in the paper are real and authentic.
8. Authors must notify the editors of any conflicts of interest.
9. Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript.
10. Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the editors.

Reviewers' responsibilities

1. Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
2. Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author
3. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments
4. Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
5. Reviewers should also call to the editor- in-chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
6. Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Editors' responsibilities

1. Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
2. Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.
3. Editors should always consider the needs of the authors and the readers when attempting to improve the publication.
4. Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.
5. Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
6. Editors should have a clear picture of a research's funding sources.
7. Editors should base their decisions solely one the papers' importance, originality, clarity and relevance to publication's scope.
8. Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.
9. Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
10. Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines.
11. Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
12. Editors should act if they suspect misconduct, whether a paper is published or unpublished, and make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem.
13. Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions, they should have proof of misconduct.
14. Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers and board members.

2. PROCEDURES FOR DEALING WITH UNETHICAL BEHAVIOUR

 Identification of unethical behavior

Misconduct and unethical behavior may be identified and brought to the attention of the editor and publisher at any time, by anyone.

Misconduct and unethical behavior may include, but need not be limited to, examples as outlined above.

Whoever informs the editor or publisher of such conduct should provide sufficient information and evidence in order for an investigation to be initiated. All allegations should be taken seriously and treated in the same way, until a successful decision or conclusion is reached.

Investigation

• An initial decision should be taken by the editor, who should consult with or seek advice from the publisher, if appropriate.

• Evidence should be gathered, while avoiding spreading any allegations beyond those who need to know.

Minor breaches

• Minor misconduct might be dealt with without the need to consult more widely. In any event, the author should be given the opportunity to respond to any allegations.

Serious breaches

• Serious misconduct might require that the employers of the accused be notified. The editor, in consultation with the publisher or Society as appropriate, should make the decision whether or not to involve the employers, either by examining the available evidence themselves or by further consultation with a limited number of experts.

Outcomes (in increasing order of severity; may be applied separately or in conjunction)

• Informing or educating the author or reviewer where there appears to be a misunderstanding or misapplication of acceptable standards.

• A more strongly worded letter to the author or reviewer covering the misconduct and as a warning to future behavior.

• Publication of a formal notice detailing the misconduct.

• Publication of an editorial detailing the misconduct.

• A formal letter to the head of the author’s or reviewer’s department or funding agency.

• Formal retraction or withdrawal of a publication from the journal, in conjunction with informing the head of the author or reviewer’s department, Abstracting & Indexing services and the readership of the publication.

• Imposition of a formal embargo on contributions from an individual for a defined period.

• Reporting the case and outcome to a professional organization or higher authority for further investigation and action.

PUBLISHING ETHICS ISSUES

1. All editorial members, reviewers and authors must confirm and obey rules defined by COPE.
2. Corresponding author is the main owner of the article so she/he can withdraw the article when it is incomplete (before entering the review process or when a revision is asked for).
3. Authors cannot make major changes in the article after acceptance without a serious reason.
4. All editorial members and authors must will to publish any kind of corrections honestly and completely.
5. Any notes of plagiarism, fraudulent data or any other kinds of fraud must be reported completely to COPE.

Plagiarism Policies

Advances in Nursing and Midwifery journal use iThenticate software to avoid plagiarism in published papers. This web-based software rate the manuscripts with precent. For exaple if a manuscript has 20% plagiarism it means that 20% of the manuscript's words and sentences comming from another sources that are suspected for plagiarism.

The policy of this journal in facing with plagiarism is as below table:

Ethical Considerations for Human Subjects

Human subjects

Authors reporting experimental studies on human subjects must include a statement of assurance in the Patients and Methods section of the manuscript reading that. The project was done with consideration of ethical issues and obtaining license from the ethics of their local committee and obtaining the written consent of participants. Also, it was done according to ethical standards of human experimentation in accordance to the Helsinki Declaration (www.cirp.org/library/ethics/helsinki ).

Informed Consent

In the case of research on human subjects, informed consent and other ethical considerations should be mentioned in the "methods" section of the manuscript. The author should include a statement that informed consent was obtained for any experimentation with human subjects. As JNP follows ICMJE, please consider their guideline for more information. In cases where a study involves the use of live animals or human subjects, the author should also include a statement that all experiments were performed in compliance with the relevant laws and institutional guidelines, and also state the institutional committee(s) that has approved the experiments. Moreover, the templates can be seen from WHO.

http://www.icmje.org/

http://www.icmje.org/urm_main.html

http://www.who.int/rpc/research_ethics/informed_consent/en/

Conflict of Interest: The authors must declare any conflict of interests of contributed authors very briefly in a separate paragraph at the end of the paper. All sources of funding should be declared; unless otherwise the following sentence should be given “Authors declare no conflict of interests”.

To prevent the information on potential conflict of interest for authors from being overlooked or misplaced, mention this information in the cover letter. Authors must identify any potential financial conflicts of interest before the review process begins. Declared conflict of interest will not automatically result in rejection of paper but the editors reserve the right to publish any declared conflict of interest alongside accepted. The following would generally be regarded as potential conflicts of interest:

1. Direct financial payment to an author for the research or manuscript production by the sponsor of a product or service evaluated in an article.

2. Ownership of shares by an author in the company sponsoring a product service evaluated in an article (or in a company sponsoring a competing product).

3. Personal consultant for companies or other organizations with a financial interest in the promotion of particular health care products and services.

Source of Funding: Authors are required to specify the source of funding for their research when submitting a paper. Suppliers of materials should be named and their location (town, state/county, country) included. The information will be disclosed in the Acknowledgements section of the published article.

Copyright Assignment: If your paper is accepted, the author identified as the formal corresponding author for the paper, the corresponding author should study and accept the copyright statement that is available on the journal website.

Acknowledgement: Authors should acknowledge any scientific, technical, statistical and financial supports. Contributors other than coauthors may be very briefly acknowledged in a separate paragraph at the end of the paper. All sources of funding should be declared. 

Journal Information

Charges and Fees

This journal is completely free of any charges. Authors should not be charged for submission or acceptance fee.

Indexing & Abstracting

This journal is also available in:

Indexing Sources: 

CINAHL

EBSCO-Host

Index Copernicus

World Cat

Scientific Indexing Services (SIS)

Reviewer Guideline

After receiving a review request Email and going to the submission URL provided in it, 6 easy review steps should be followed:

1. Accepting the review invitation by clicking on "will do the review" and sending or skipping the Email, which will open automatically. 

2. Reading this reviewer guideline.

3. Downloading the manuscript and its supplementary file(s) by clicking on file names (e.g. 9923-36449-1-RV.DOC).

4. Filling the review form by clicking on its icon and saving it. Please note that the review form is only activated once you accept the review request and send or skip its automatic Email. You may make changes to the form at any time before completing the steps (submitting the review to the editor).

5. This is an optional step for reviewers who wish to upload one or more files in addition to the review form.

6. Selecting the final recommendation from the drop down menu and submit it to the editor by clicking on “submit review to editor” button and sending the email that appears automatically to notify the section editor that you have completed the review. Please note that the drop down menu will be activated only when you complete and save the review form. 

Directory of Research Journals Indexing (DRJI)

Global Impact Factor (GIF)

CABI

J Gate

ISC

MagIran

IranMedex

Data Bases:

Google Scholar Database

Search Engines:

http://google.com

https://scholar.google.com

Ethical Requirements and Responsibilities

For editor:

The editor makes the final decision regarding all the content. Decisions may be made by issues unrelated to the quality of a manuscript, such as suitability for the journal. The editor can reject any article at any time before publication, including after acceptance if concerns arise about the integrity of the work.

- Reviewers' and authors' identities are kept confidential.

- The existence of a submitted manuscript is not revealed to anyone other than the reviewers and editorial staff.

- Corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies will be published whenever needed.

For authors:

- Upon submission, by checking off predesigned statements, author(s) should certify that neither the submitted manuscript nor another one with substantially similar content under their authorship has been published in any language or being considered for publication elsewhere.

- Author(s) should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article and they should meet the criteria of authorship based on ICJME recommendations.

- Author(s) should guarantee that data are available and will be provided if anyone needs them.

- In the event that an author is added or removed from the list of authors, written acceptance, signed by author(s), must be submitted to the editorial office.

- Sources of financial support for the project should be acknowledged.

- Author(s) should disclose any conflict of interest regarding the study.

- If the study involves human beings, the author(s) must include a statement that the study was approved by the local ethical committee and that written informed consent was obtained from the study participants. For those who do not have formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed. Also, the compliance of maintenance and care of experimental animals with National Institutes of Health guidelines for the human use of laboratory animals, should be declared in text.

- All relevant permissions to use unpublished observations of others must be obtained by the manuscript author(s) and stated in the text. The names of the original author(s) should be declared. Also, permission must be obtained to reproduce or adapt any figures or tables that have been published previously and declared in the legend/footnote.

- Author(s) should certify that their research study is in agreement with the regulations of their institution(s) and generally accepted guidelines governing such work; contains no violation of any existing copyright or other third party right; and is free of any obscene, indecent, libelous, or otherwise unlawful material.

For reviewers:

- Reviewers are required to keep manuscripts and their information confidential.

- They must not use knowledge of the manuscript before its publication for their personal interests.

- The reviewers' comments should be constructive, honest, and polite.

- Reviewers should declare their conflicts of interest and decline review if a conflict exists. Knowing the author(s) must not affect their comments and decision. 

Plagiarism policy

Definition:

When an author tries to present the work of someone else as his or her own, it is called plagiarism. In addition, when an author uses a considerable portion of his or her own previously published work in a new one without properly citing the reference, it is called a duplicate publication sometimes also referred to as self-plagiarism. This may range from publishing the same article in another journal to 'salami-slicing', which is data segmentation, to adding little new data to the previous article.

Policy:

The editorial team/reviewers of “AAEM” will check the submitted manuscripts for plagiarism twice (once after submission and once before publication) using available plagiarism detection software such as iThenticate. If suspected plagiarism is found in an article either before (by reviewers or editorial team) or after (by readers) publication, Archives of Academic Emergency Medicine will act according to COPE’s code of conduct and flowcharts.