AJMH POLICIES

AJMH policies include the following points that might give clear clarification to the readers, authors, Editors, Reviewers and also about the publisher to others:

Retraction/Withdrawal Policies: In some situations, article withdrawal/retraction/ removal/replacement/correction of published articles might arise due to copyright infringement/ multiple submission/ fake claims of authorship/ fraudulent use of data/ change of data in the article or similar situations. This is an important issue, where authors and publishers have to take this serious into consideration to maintain the high ethical publishing standards. In those circumstances, AJMH strictly follows the following policies to overcome these issues.

a) Article Withdrawal policy: Articles in Article-in-Press (these are the articles which are accepted and are ready to publish), if contains any plagiarized content/ errors/ copyright infringement/ multiple submission/ fake claims of authorship/ fraudulent use of data; that violates publication ethics of AJMH in the view of editors/ by editorial staff; the article will be WITHDRAWN (which means removing the content from the HTML and PDF and replace with a statement that the article is withdrawn from AJMH. This will be notified to Editor-in-Chief, Editor as well as the reviewer and also to author by mentioning the reason for the withdrawal of the article.

Note: AJMH will not encourage any fraudulent activities in publishing the content. It considers this as an offense and will never encourage such kind of authors to submit their further research/ articles in future.

b) Article Retraction Policy: The article can be retracted by its own authors/Editor-in-Chief/ Editor/ by the advice of member’s of the scholarly community due to some copyright infringements in ethical codes/ plagiarized content/ errors/ multiple submission/ fake claims of authorship/ fraudulent use of data/ any conflicts of interest or like. In such case, a RETRACTION NOTE (with proper justification) with the title of the article need to be signed by all the authors/ Editor-in-Chief/ Editor and will be published along with the article. The HTML version of the retracted article will be removed, but the PDF version along with the Retraction Note will appear on the web page of that particular issue.

Note: If this Retraction occurs due to conflicts of interest in between the authors after receiving the review comments/ after the acceptance of the article, then they have to pay 100$ to AJMH, as this involves a lot of labor for processing and HTML conversion or for PDF.

c) Article Removal Policy: It is seen in very rare cases, where it is mandatory to remove the article from the web page. This may be due to, defamatory/ serious infringements of other’s legal rights leading to court order/ where the article is acted upon serious health risks. In such cases, the whole content of the article will be removed (only the Title and list of authors will be retained) and it is replaced with the text stating that the article has been removed due to legal reasons. This will be notified to Editor-in-Chief, Editor as well as the reviewer and also to author by mentioning the reason for the withdrawal of the article.

d) Article Replacement Policy: In this, the correct/ updated article can/will be replaced with the flawed version with the corrected version if it contains too serious health risks/health hazards. These have a different procedure where the retraction notice stating reason will be published along with the corrected version of the article with a history document.

f) Article Correction Policy: If author/s realizes that some significant changes/corrections ha to be done after publication of the article, the author can write a letter to Editor-in-Chief stating the reason along with the justification and also mention the changes/corrections of the article. The author should clearly mention the complete details of the changes made in the article which MUST be signed by all the authors to avoid further Conflicts of Interest in between authors. After receiving all these details correctly, then the Editor-in-Chief of that particular journal handles the issue via consulting Editor/ and Reviewers (who had handled the article before) to take a final decision. If the concerned Editor or Reviewer is not available, then Editor-in-Chief needs to assign this issue to two/three Editors who have the same expertise of the article to follow the Peer Review Process. If these changes are accepted by the Editor-in-Chief, then the article will be replaced with the corrected article along with the text stating that the article has been replaced due to significant corrections.

Copyrights: Publishing rights are required to disseminate the articles published in AJMH , which can be done by making an agreement between the author and the publisher. This agreement clearly states that the transfer of rights from author to AJMH and authors retain significant rights to use and share their own published articles. Authors and AJMH will have an agreement where authors will have copyrights but license rights of their article/s are attributed to AJMH. Authors have the following rights which include:

- Right to share/distribute the article or he/she can reuse a part of content or tables or figures in their next article which can also be published in the other Publishing groups/houses.

Note: Authors can share their article in the same ways to others based on the relevant user license they chose as per the table below-

Note: Copyrights table has been taken from Wikipedia for Reference.

- Authors have right to retain their patent, research data, trademark, and other IPR (Intellectual Property Rights).

How Copyrights are protected in AJMH?
AJMH is strongly committed to protect the author’s work, reputation, and also takes a strict and serious action against the allegations of infringement, plagiarism, ethic disputes and fraudulent activities. It also aims to protect the article in its specific way that has been written to describe the results etc.

It also suggests author’s to be aware of plagiarism, copyright infringement or fraudulent activities to inform the AJMH Editorial Office (editor@ajmhonline.com), so that we strictly take action against them legally.

Editorial decisions: We strongly abide to the Journal’s Editor’s decision’s in processing the articles in an unbiased manner.
Note: The ability to pay does not affect the Peer review process of the article/ its quality. Strict editorial structures and procedures are maintained by AJMH that includes: Editor’s, Editor-in-Chief’s, Review Board members. AJMH doesn’t go against the Editor-in-Chief’s decision for the editorial governance of any given publication. As AJMH follows double blind peer review process it DOESN’T allow the other person’s to interfere and comment on the editorial decisions made.

Permissions: These might differ based on the different situations, which includes- If an author submits his/her article having a material/content from another publication in any article, it is sole responsibility of the author to obtain permission to use material/content. He/ She MUST submit the written permission from author/ publisher of the original material along with the article. If you have modified a figure from a previously published figure, please check with the copyright owners to see whether permission is required and include a complete citation/reference for the original article.

Peer Review Process: Peer reviewing of the article, helps to assess the quality of the manuscript before publishing online. It also helps to put forth the originality, significance and genuine research into online; this would also give a clear picture for the editor’s to determine whether to publish or NOT based on the relevancy, genuinity, research study etc. of the respective journal’s topic. AJMH follows Double-Blind-Peer-Review Process where the reviewers do not know the names of the authors, and the authors do not know who reviewed their manuscript, this is followed to make the review in an unbiased manner and to avoid few disputes.

Note: In rare cases, Reviewer might ask the details of the author, but this will be permitted by taking the permission from the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, if he/she accepts then only the publisher will give the details of the author to the editor. Peer review in an ethical part of scientific community in the publishing field, where it guarantees the validity of the manuscript. In this the reviewers are the experts who volunteer their time to help improve the manuscripts they review.

Hence, AJMH DOES NOT charge any PROCESSING FEE; it charges only the PUBLICATION FEE to maintain the article in two different formats such as HTML and PDF for future reference purposes for years together.

Patient Consent: Reports/Studies on patients/ volunteers requires approval from Ethics Committee along with informed consent which has to be documented along with the article, if the author wishes to include case details personnel information or images of patients or any other individuals in AJMH publication. Authors have to provide the copies informed consents or permissions or evidence on publisher’s request. Particular care MUST be taken while obtaining consent/s from children. Special care has to be taken while mentioning the patient’s name or personnel details or if his/ her face or head appears in the article.

Article Publication Charges: AJMH requires support from an author's research budget, or institution funds as Article Processing Charges (APC) in order to meet rigorous academic standards, articles needs graphics, formatting, and the editing services and to cover the expenses of the entire Peer Review System, Journal Development, Online Hosting and Permanent Archiving of the Article submitted to us. The publication fee is based on the World Bank income levels, which is clearly mentioned in the Publication charges page.

Refund Policy: AJMH will not offer any refunds once articles have been published/ withdrawn/ retracted.

AJMH Waivers Policy: If you like to publish your article in one of our Journals, but if you genuinely cannot afford towards the publication fee, the corresponding author along with Co-authors needs to submit a Waiver Request for partial or full waiver, after acceptance of manuscript. Requests will be assessed and will go through on a case-by-case basis and finally based on the priority for partial and full waivers will be given to authors. This is based on the countries of the authors who reside in. The list of the countries for income levels are followed according to World Bank income levels. Waivers request are assessed and considered by AJMH Management and Accounts Department, where Editor-in-Chief or Editorial Board members are not at all related to this policy.

Note: The ability to pay does not affect the Peer review process of the article/ its quality.

Open Access Policy: AJMH abides to a full open access, where an author is asked to pay for the publication fee, and will be given a choice of open access license.

Confidentiality: AJMH DOES NOT allow its Editors and Reviewers to disclose the information about its articles which includes status, content, reviewer feedback, their decision, comments etc. of that particular journal, to anyone thus maintaining confidentiality in articles submitted to AJMH. AJMH also omits the ideas of usage of knowledge of the work before its publication.

In rare cases, Reviewer might ask the details of the author, but this will be permitted by taking the permission from the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, if he/she accepts then only the publisher will give the details of the author to the editor. In that case Reviewers have to maintain the confidentiality by remaining anonymous to authors, even though we follow Double-Blind-Peer Review Process. Sharing the manuscript to their colleagues or to their friends for personnel use/ copying content from the article before publishing is strictly prohibited and AJMH takes a severe action against these kind of activities. Every author/Editor/Reviewer in AJMH has to abide to the ethical guidelines which are mentioned in the Ethical Guidelines page in the side menu of each journal.

Privacy Policy: AJMH adheres to the principles outlined below, and ensures accurate, timely, fair and ethical publication of scientific papers. It is also committed to the highest data privacy and standards by following the below outlined points-

a) AJMH collects and use personnel information to encourage dissemination, efficacy and productivity of the research.

b) AJMH plays a fair play in giving the editorial decisions, and journal’s development. AJMH DOES NOT show any differences for the articles submitted under waiver’s policy.

c) AJMH will never share the personnel information to other parties without the prior permission from the author as well as from the Editor-in-Chief.

d) AJMH maintains transparency for while collecting the information and will also abide to one’s own particular decision or timings. AJMH will NEVER encourage the personal disputes (if any). It always maintains its transparency with its editor’s, reviewers and authors without any partiality, which in turn benefits authors, readers, reviewers and editors for its fair play.

e) AJMH always strives for a trustworthy, transparent and efficient publishing process.

f) AJMH assure author’s that it will NOT share any personnel information related to payment information, such as a credit or debit card number; address; personal information and any other information that reveals your identity such as device information, anonymous usage data and aggregated information, for any purpose, except where we are restricted by law.

Note: AJMH may change these policies up-to-date based on the information available and will keep updated with latest information regarding the publishing ethics and policies.

Author Contributions: The author should provide the complete contributor’s list (along with the manuscript), in which description of contributions made by each of them toward the manuscript should be mentioned, it’s a MANDATORY. The description can include: Concept, design, definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing, and manuscript review. These contributions will be published along with the article which mentioned under the Heading Contributor’s List before Funding section. This might also include the source of funding for the manuscript submitted.

Publication Standards and Ethics: The publication of an article in an ethical way directly reflects the quality work of the author/their group and their institutions that supports them. The quality publication of an article in an open access journal is a coherent development in the community of scientific knowledge. Peer review process exemplifies and supports the scientific method of Open Access publishing. Therefore, Publication Ethics is a very important tool for an author who resembles in the scientific community.