Guidelines for Editors

These guidelines describe the responsibilities and procedures of the editors of the International Journal of Applied Behavioral Sciences (IJABS), published by the Behavioral Sciences Research Center of Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (SBMU). They are based on the COPE Core Practices and the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing. All editors are expected to read, understand, and follow them.

1. Editorial Roles

Editor-in-Chief: has overall responsibility for the scientific quality, integrity, and policies of the journal, and has the final authority to accept or reject any submission.
Associate (Handling) Editors: manage the peer review of assigned manuscripts, select reviewers, evaluate reports, and make recommendations to the Editor-in-Chief.
Editorial Board Members: advise on the journal’s scope and policies, review manuscripts, encourage submissions, and promote the journal in their field and region.
Editorial Office (Managing Editor): handles the administration of the submission system, initial technical checks, communication with authors and reviewers, record keeping, and the production of issues.

The names, affiliations, countries, and contact details of all editors are published on the journal’s website and kept up to date.

2. The Editorial Board

Members are appointed by the Editor-in-Chief on the basis of their expertise in applied behavioral sciences, their publication record, and their commitment to the journal.
The board should be international and diverse in terms of country, institution, and field of expertise, so that it reflects the journal’s scope and readership.
Members are appointed for a defined term, which may be renewed. Members who are inactive or who do not meet ethical standards may be removed by the Editor-in-Chief.
Every member must be a real person with verifiable credentials. Names are listed only with the member’s consent.

3. Editorial Independence

Editorial decisions are based solely on the scientific merit, originality, relevance, and methodological rigor of the manuscript and its compliance with the journal’s ethical standards. They must not be influenced by the authors’ nationality, gender, religion, political beliefs, or institutional affiliation, by commercial considerations, or by pressure from the publisher or the university. SBMU funds the journal but does not interfere in editorial decisions. The journal charges no submission or publication fees, and payment has no role in the decision process.

4. Initial Screening

The editorial office and the handling editor check every new submission for:

Fit with the aims and scope of the journal.
Compliance with the Author Guidelines and the Submission Preparation Checklist (structure, abstract, MeSH keywords, Vancouver references, tables and figures).
Originality: a similarity check with a plagiarism detection tool is run on every submission. High similarity, text recycling, or duplicate submission leads to rejection or a request for explanation.
Ethical approval and informed consent, with the approval code, for studies involving human participants; registration in a trial registry for clinical trials.
Declarations of conflict of interest, funding, author contributions, data availability, and use of AI tools.
Use of the relevant reporting guideline (for example, CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, COREQ, or SRQR).

Manuscripts that are out of scope, incomplete, or clearly of insufficient quality may be rejected without external review. Authors should be informed promptly so that they can submit elsewhere. Manuscripts that need only technical corrections are returned to the authors.

5. Selecting Reviewers

Each manuscript is assigned to at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise. Reviewers should not be from the same institution as the authors and should have no recent collaboration with them.
Suggestions by authors for or against particular reviewers may be considered, but the editor makes the final choice and must verify the reviewer’s identity, expertise, and independence. Reviewers should not be chosen solely on the basis of author suggestions, and personal e-mail addresses should be checked carefully.
Reviewers are selected from a wide pool, taking into account their record of timely and constructive reviews, and workload is distributed fairly.
Reviewers are provided with the Guidelines for Reviewers and asked to declare any conflict of interest.

6. Managing the Peer Review Process

The journal uses double-blind peer review. Editors must remove information that identifies the authors from the files sent to reviewers, and must not reveal reviewers’ identities to authors.
The target time for the initial screening is one week, the target time for reviewers is three weeks, and the target time for a first decision is eight weeks from submission. The editorial office sends reminders to late reviewers and replaces them when necessary.
If reviewers’ opinions differ substantially, the editor may invite an additional reviewer or ask the Editor-in-Chief or a member of the board for advice.
Editors should read the reviewers’ reports before forwarding them. Reports that are abusive, unprofessional, or unsupported by reasons, or that contain information identifying the reviewer, must be edited or not forwarded.
Editors should not ask authors to cite specific articles unless there is a clear scientific reason, and never to increase the citations of a journal, person, or institution.

7. Editorial Decisions

Decisions are made by the Editor-in-Chief on the recommendation of the handling editor and the reviewers. The possible decisions are:

Accept: the manuscript is suitable for publication without further changes or with minor editing.
Minor revision: small changes are needed, which can be checked by the editor without another round of review.
Major revision: substantial changes are needed. The revised manuscript is sent for further review.
Reject: the manuscript has fundamental flaws or is outside the scope of the journal.

The decision letter must be clear, polite, and informative. It should explain the reasons for the decision, include the reviewers’ comments (without identifying the reviewers), and, for revisions, state exactly what must be done and by when. Editors should not overrule reviewers’ concerns about ethics or validity without a documented reason. Accepted manuscripts are published only after the authors have approved the final proofs.

8. Revised Manuscripts, Appeals, and Complaints

Authors submitting a revision must provide a point-by-point response to the reviewers’ comments. The handling editor decides whether the revised version needs to go back to the original reviewers.
Authors who disagree with a decision may appeal in writing to the editorial office, giving specific scientific reasons. Appeals are considered by the Editor-in-Chief or, if he or she was involved in the original decision, by another senior editor. The decision on an appeal is final.
Complaints about editors, reviewers, or the journal’s processes are sent to the editorial office, acknowledged within a reasonable time, and investigated impartially following COPE guidance. Complainants are informed of the outcome.

9. Conflicts of Interest of Editors

Editors must declare any conflict of interest and decline to handle a manuscript if they have a recent collaboration, a close personal or professional relationship, a financial interest, or a competing relationship with any author, or work at the same department as the authors.
Submissions from the Editor-in-Chief, editors, editorial board members, or staff of the editorial office are handled by an independent editor, and the person concerned has no access to the manuscript, the reviewers’ identities, or the decision in the system. The process is documented. Such submissions go through the same peer review as all others.
Editors must not use confidential information from submitted manuscripts for their own research or advantage.
Editors’ own declarations of interest are made available to the public on the journal’s website.

10. Confidentiality

Editors and editorial office staff must treat submitted manuscripts, reviewers’ reports, and correspondence as confidential. Information about a manuscript may be shared only with the authors, the reviewers, other editors involved, and, when misconduct is suspected, the relevant institution or ethics committee. A manuscript that has been rejected must not be used or passed on to anyone else.

11. Research Ethics and Publication Ethics

The journal requires compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki, approval by an ethics committee, and informed consent for studies involving human participants. Editors may ask for the approval letter or consent documentation at any time.
Clinical trials must be registered in a recognized trial registry before enrolling participants.
The privacy of participants must be protected. Identifying information, including in images, may be published only with the written consent of the person concerned.
Research that raises serious ethical concerns, or was conducted without proper approval, will not be published.
Authors must make a data availability statement, and editors may request the data underlying a study when needed to assess its validity.

12. Authorship

Authorship must meet the ICMJE criteria: substantial contribution to the work, drafting or critical revision, final approval, and accountability for the work.
Contributions of each author are described in the Declarations section. Gift, guest, and ghost authorship are not accepted.
Any change to the list or order of authors after submission requires a written request from the corresponding author with the signed agreement of all authors, including those added or removed. Disputes are referred to the authors’ institutions, and publication may be delayed until they are resolved.

13. Suspected Misconduct

Editors must not ignore any allegation or suspicion of misconduct, whether related to submitted or published articles. This includes plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, image manipulation, duplicate or redundant publication, undisclosed conflicts of interest, authorship disputes, unethical research, and reviewer or editor misconduct, such as breaking confidentiality or manipulating the review process.

The editorial office collects the relevant information and the editor follows the relevant COPE flowchart.
The authors are first asked for an explanation. If it is unsatisfactory, the case is referred to their institution or ethics committee.
Depending on the outcome, the journal may reject the manuscript, publish a correction, retraction, or expression of concern, and/or inform the authors’ institution and funders.
Accusations are treated confidentially and fairly, and the person concerned has the right to respond. All investigations and decisions are documented.

14. Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern

Corrections: an erratum or corrigendum is published when an error in a published article does not invalidate its findings. Corrections are linked to the original article.
Retractions: an article is retracted when its findings are unreliable because of serious error or misconduct, when it is a duplicate publication, plagiarized, or reports unethical research. The retraction notice is linked to the article, states clearly the reason for the retraction, and is freely available. The retracted article remains on the website, clearly marked as retracted.
Expressions of concern: published when there is credible evidence of serious problems but an investigation is incomplete or inconclusive. It is replaced by a correction or retraction when the investigation is finished.

These procedures follow the COPE Retraction Guidelines.

15. Use of Artificial Intelligence

AI tools cannot be authors. Authors must disclose any use of AI tools in preparing the manuscript, and they remain fully responsible for the content.
Editors must not upload manuscripts, reviewers’ reports, or confidential correspondence into generative AI tools, and must not use AI tools to make editorial decisions.
AI-generated images, fabricated references, and paper-mill products are treated as misconduct.

16. Open Access, Licensing, and Fees

The journal is fully open access. All articles are freely available immediately on publication, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Authors retain the copyright and grant the journal a non-exclusive license to publish. The journal does not charge authors, institutions, or readers any fees, and all costs are covered by Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. Editors must ensure that the information about licensing, copyright, and fees is the same in the Author Guidelines, the Copyright Notice, the Open Access Policy, and the article PDFs.

17. Publication Schedule, Metadata, and Archiving

The journal is committed to publishing its issues regularly and on time, with no unexplained gaps between issues.
Each article carries complete metadata: title, authors with affiliations and ORCID iDs, abstract, MeSH keywords, DOI, dates of submission, acceptance, and publication, and the license. The journal’s ISSN, publisher, and contact details are clearly displayed on the website.
The journal’s name and website must not be confusing or misleading, and information about indexing may be given only if it is true and verifiable.
Published content is archived in a digital preservation system to ensure long-term access.

18. Record Keeping and Quality Improvement

The editorial office keeps records of submissions, reviews, decisions, correspondence, and misconduct cases for at least five years.
Editors monitor indicators such as time to first decision, acceptance rate, reviewer response rate, and the geographic distribution of authors and reviewers, and review them regularly with the editorial board.
New editors receive an introduction to these guidelines and the COPE resources. The Editor-in-Chief and the board review the guidelines and policies at least once a year and update them when needed.

19. Contact

Questions about these guidelines or the editorial process should be addressed to the editorial office at: ijabs@sbmu.ac.ir

for Editors