Publications criteria
Submissions of original and unpublished manuscripts
What is original research?
A research study is not original if it has not been written by those who are listed as authors. This could constitute plagiarism, a practice firmly rejected by the scientific community, or fall within the category of fraud. Fraudulent articles are those that include fictional data, have evidence of ghost or guest authorship, or have been automatically created by programs used specifically for that end.
In all cases, the term original refers to the bond between the authors and the study they state to be theirs and is therefore closely connected with the authorship criteria.
What is unpublished research?
Unpublished means that your research study has not been previously published and is not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere, including digital publishing (manuscripts published, in full text, in institutional repositories: websites for congresses, conferences, symposia, among others).
Duplications
Based on the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), Overlapping Publications, AJRPT will not accept duplicate manuscripts on these two grounds:
- Two or more journals may unnecessarily and unknowingly undertake the work of peer review, edit the same manuscript, and publish the same article.
- Duplication can result in inadvertent double-counting of data or inappropriate weighting of the results of a single study, which distorts the available evidence.
In case duplication is detected during peer-review or after acceptance, the journal will follow the steps proposed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for both instances (duplication detected during peer-review and duplication detected after acceptance).
More INFORMATION FOR AUTHORS →
Derived Articles
In the case of derived articles from the same research project, they will not be considered as "duplicate publication" as long as the stated objectives are different. In other words, these article must address aspects that were not covered in previous publications derived from the same project.
In situations where there are derivative paper from the same research project that are already published or under review in other journals, it is necessary to mention these articles in the "Declaration of Ethical Aspects and Conflict of Interest," requested at the initial submission stage (Download the template). In this declaration, it is essential to clearly describe the differences between those articles and the article submitted for evaluation.
Plagiarism detection
According to the policy of the journal, manuscripts must be original (drafted by the individuals who are listed as authors) and unpublished (not previously published in printed or digital format). To ensure academic integrity and prevent plagiarism, the journal implements a set of strategies to avoid plagiarism in publications as recommended by the COPE guidelines.
Authors are required to refrain from committing plagiarism, which is defined as the appropriation of texts from other authors without their consent and without properly citing the source, even in cases where explicit permission has been obtained from the original authors. Additionally, authors are expected to avoid the inclusion of substantial parts of their own previously published works in the submitted texts, ensuring that there is no more than a 20% overlap between a previous text and the proposed work.
The plagiarism check process is carried out during peer review. The journal's editors use an anti-plagiarism software tool (iThenticate) to analyze each article. If similarities exceeding 20% are detected, the article undergoes a thorough evaluation. The report generated by iThenticate is reviewed by the editors, who contact the authors to inform them about the percentage of plagiarism if it is deemed unacceptable. After this control process, the editors send a report to the author, which may result in the definitive rejection of the article or, alternatively, provide an opportunity to rewrite the work, properly citing the sources of the identified plagiarized texts. Please refer to the steps proposed by COPE in case a possible plagiarism is detected during the review process in the following link.
