Duties of editors and editorial board

Publication Decisions:

Editors of The Orthopaedic Journal of China (OJC) are responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal should be reviewed or published.

Equal Treatment:

Editors of OJC must evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content and their contribution to specific disciplines, without regard to gender, race, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Peer-review:

Peer-review is the system used to assess the quality of a manuscript before it is published. Independent researchers in the relevant research area assess submitted manuscripts for originality, validity and significance to help editors determine whether the manuscript should be published in their journal. OJC operates two peer review system:

Single-blind peer, where the reviewers are aware of the names and affiliations of the authors, but the reviewer reports provided to authors are anonymous. Single-blind peer review is the traditional model of peer review that many reviewers are comfortable with, and it facilitates a dispassionate critique of a manuscript.

Open peer, where the authors know who the reviewers are, and the reviewers know who the authors are. If the manuscript is accepted, the named reviewer reports are published alongside the article and the authors’ response to the reviewer.

Confidentiality:

Editors of OJC must treat received manuscripts for review as confidential documents. Editors and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher.

Ethical complaint investigations:

Editors of OJC should conduct a proper and fair investigation when an ethical complaint concerning a submitted or published manuscript is reported. Such process may include contacting the authors of the manuscript and the institution, giving due process of the respective complaint. If the complaint has merits, a proper action should be taken, involving publication correction, retraction, etc. Besides, every reported action of unethical publishing behavior should be investigated even if it is discovered years after publication.

Duties of reviewers

Contribution to Editorial Decisions:

Reviewers assist editors in making editorial publication decisions, and also assist authors in improving their submitted manuscripts, through the editorial communications with authors. Therefore, reviewers should always provide explicit and constructive feedback to assist authors in improving their work.

Qualifications:

Reviewers who believe that they are not qualified to review a received manuscript should inform the editors promptly and decline the review process.

Confidentiality and disclosure:

Reviewers must consider all received manuscripts for review as confidential documents. Received manuscripts must not be seen by or discussed with others, except as authorized by OJC editors or authorized editorial staff. Information or ideas obtained through blind reviews must be kept confidential and must not be used by reviewers for personal benefits.

Objectivity:

Reviewers should conduct their reviews objectively. Criticism of the author’s personality or the topic is unprofessional and inappropriate. Reviewers should explain their recommendations clearly and explicitly and provide rational support and justification.

Proper and Accurate Citation:

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Statements that include observation, derivation, or argument (currently or previously reported) should be accompanied by the relevant and accurate citation.

Duties of authors

Originality:

The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration. The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work (please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling (“self-plagiarism”)). A single study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time (e.g. “salami-publishing”).

Reporting standards:

Reported objectives, discussions, data, statistical analysis, and results should be accurate. Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed, as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour are unacceptable.

Plagiarism:

No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (“plagiarism”). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions are secured for material that is copyrighted. 

Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.

Copyright:

Authors submitting articles with a view to publication warrant that the work is not an infringement of an existing copyright and agree to indemnity the publisher against any breach of such warranty.

Authorship of Manuscripts:

Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results. Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, corresponding author, and order of authors at submission. Changes of authorship or in the order of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.

Publisher Responsibilities

Editorial autonomy

OJC is committed to sorting with editors to define clearly the respective roles of publisher and of editors in order to ensure the autonomy of editorial decisions, without influence form advertisers or other commercial partners.

Intellectual property and copyright

We protect the intellectual property and copyright of OJC, its imprints, authors and publishing partners by promoting and maintaining each article’s published version of record. OJC ensures the integrity and transparency of each published article with respect to: conflicts of interest, publication and research funding, publication and research ethics, cases of publication and research misconduct, confidentiality, authorship, article corrections, clarifications and retractions, and timely publication of content.