All authors are required to comply with ethical and legal guidelines summarized here.  These guidelines also appear in the submission terms and conditions and authors must confirm their compliance with them both when their manuscript is submitted and prior to publication.  

• ICMJE guidelines on authorship and contributorship must be complied with

• Contributions of scientific/medical writers must be fully disclosed

• ICMJE guidelines on conflicts of interest must be complied with

• Research involving human or animal subjects must have appropriate approvals

• Articles containing identifying information or photographs must have the consent of the subject to publication

• Permission must be obtained to reproduce copyrighted material

• Plagiarism is strictly forbidden and all manuscripts received are scanned by detection software

What if a problem arises?

Problems are addressed using the submission terms and conditions, and ICMJE and COPE guidelines.

Identification of Authorship and Contributorship

All Libertas journals apply the ICMJE guidelines on authorship and contributorship.  For further information on this authors should refer to the ICMJE guidelines. 

Identification as an author:

Giving an individual credit as an author should be based on that individual meeting three criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;

2. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and

3. Final approval of the version to be published.

On its own, acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group does not constitute authorship.

Individuals designated as authors should qualify for authorship and all those who qualify must be listed.  Each author must have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate parts of the content.

Identification as a contributor:

Individuals who do not meet the criteria for authorship must be listed in the acknowledgements section.  This may include individuals providing technical help and writing assistance.  Entities supporting these contributions should also be identified.

Individuals identified as contributors should have their function or contribution described.  Because endorsement of the paper may be inferred by their identification, these individuals must give the authors permission to be acknowledged.

Work conducted by large multi-center groups:

If a large, multi-center group has conducted the work, the group should identified the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. 

These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship or contributorship. 

All individuals who are named as authors or contributors should fully meet the criteria for authorship or contributorship.

When submitting a manuscript authored by a large multi-center group the manuscript should clearly identify all individual authors and the group name.  Libertas will list names of individuals in the group in the Acknowledgements. 

The group should decide about contributors and authors before submission of the manuscript.  The corresponding author must be able to explain the presence and order of individuals.  It is not the role of Libertas or the Editor in Chief, Associate Editor or Editorial Board to make authorship or contributorship decisions or arbitrate conflicts.

Contributions by Scientific or Medical Writers

Involvement by scientific/medical writers or anyone else who assisted with the preparation of the manuscript content should be acknowledged.  Funding sources should also be disclosed.  If medical writers are not listed amongst the authors their role should be acknowledged explicitly.  This reflects guidelines set out by the European Medical Writer's Association (EWMA).

Potential Conflicts of Interest

Authors are responsible for declaring conflicts of interest in accordance with the ICMJE guidelines.  Where authors are uncertain whether they are in a conflict of interest they should refer to the ICMJE guidelines and complete and return an ICMJE Uniform Disclosure form.  If they remain uncertain after reviewing the guidelines they should err towards caution by declaring the possible conflict.

Project funding:

Authors must describe the role of any project funding source in respect to study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, writing of the manuscript and the decision as to whether and to which journal it should be submitted to.  Where such involvement exists it is strongly recommended that this information is stated in the manuscript's Methodology section.

If the project funding source had no such involvement this should also be stated. 

Identifiable Human Subjects, Experiments on Humans and Animals

Where a patient(s) is identifiable, even if their name or a picture is not used, a signed letter must be supplied from the patient or their family indicating that their consent has been given for their information to be used in the article. 

In the Disclosures section of your manuscript there must be a statement confirming that consent was obtained: "Written consent was obtained from the patient/s or their relative/s for publication of this study." 

In respect to human subjects, authors should indicate whether experiments were in accordance with ethical standards of the responsible committee and with the Helsinki Declaration.  Where doubt exists authors must set out the rationale for their approach and show that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects.

In respect to animal subjects, authors should indicate whether institutional and national guides on the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.

Copyright

When you submit a manuscript you are asked to confirm that you have copyright clearance to reproduce all copyrighted material, including figures, tables and text exceeding more than about 40 words.  

Please remember that in many cases copyright in figures, tables and text rests with the publisher of the source, not the author.  It is your responsibility to ensure that you have copyright clearance; Libertas accepts no responsibility for getting clearance on your behalf and no liability if you fail to do so.

If you're unsure if you need to get copyright clearance contact the publisher of the source.  

Plagiarism

Plagiarism can be defined as an act of fraud involving use of someone else's work and failure to acknowledge the original source.  The expression of original ideas can be considered intellectual property and is protected by copyright law.  In academia plagiarism is considered to be academic dishonesty or academic fraud, and can lead to disciplinary proceedings.  

All submissions to Libertas journals are scanned using iThenticate.  If you're unsure whether your work contains plagiarised material, or if you need more information on plagiarism, Libertas recommends visiting Plagiarism.org before submitting your manuscript. It contains consise information on how to identify plagiarism and offers a free manuscript scanning service.

Because no scanner is perfect and also to address the possibility of more sophisticated forms of plagiarism (plagiarism of ideas) we also ask peer reviewers and editors to be vigilant.  

We do not consider publication of a scientific poster or deposition of a pre-print in an archive by the same authors to constitute plagiarism.

What about self-plagiarism?

Self-plagiarism, where an author re-uses significant, identical or nearly-identical parts of the author's own work without acknowledgement or citing the original work, is considered to be multiple publication.  It is not uniformly regarded as plagiarism but it is very likley to be a breach of copyright; either because copyright in the original work is held by a publisher exclusively, or because it is held by a group of authors in addition to the author who has re-used the matierial.  To avoid disputes arising with either group we recommend that authors treat self-plagiarism as a form of plagiarism and remedy it accordingly.

Fabricated Data

Manuscripts may not contain fabricated data. Peer reviewers and editorial decision-makers are asked to be vigilant, and where fabrication is suspected COPE guidelines will be applied.