Journal Policies

General Journal’s Policies

The criteria of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; COPE guidelines) must be adhered to by all parties involved in publishing the Experimental and Applied Veterinary Research Journal (Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J.), including the publisher, editors, post-publication reviewers, and authors. Legally, the Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. ethical policy is in charge of selecting which articles submitted to the journal should be included in the related issue. Regardless of the authors' gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, citizenship, or political beliefs, the Editor-in-Chief and section editors will evaluate the submitted papers. The significance, uniqueness, lucidity, validity of the study, and applicability to the journal's scope will all be taken into consideration while making the decision. The publication of any content in Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. signifies that all of its authors have approved to that material and have made sure that all of Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. rules have been strictly adhered to. If these guidelines are broken, an article might not be accepted for publication.

An article will be posted on the journal website prior to undergoing post publication reviewing if it is accepted for publication by Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. after an initial decision by the designated editor as well as the Editor-in-Chief. After the article is published, the reviewers will help the editorial board to make final decisions. They will also help the author/s to improve the quality of the submitted material. Our contributors' intellectual property rights are respected, and we try to prevent unethical publishing practices that violate our principles, such as fabrication, defamation, and disinformation. The authors should guarantee to the the Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. that the submitted material has not been concurrently published elsewhere and is not being considered for publication by another publisher or journal.

Ethical Policies

Research Involving Animals

Animal, vertebrate, or invertebrate experiments must adhere to national or international rules as well as the ethical standards provided by the authors' organization. Where applicable, a declaration of ethical authorization should be included. If using animals was done without ethical authorization, a clear explanation of why this approval was not needed should be included. In every situation, a declaration should be produced to confirm that every attempt was taken to lessen the suffering of the animals, along with specifics on how this was accomplished.

Use and Care of Animals Policy

The journal's animal welfare statement, which is accessible on the journal website (animal welfare statement), must be signed and submitted by the authors who use animals in their study. This statement requires authors to attest that they have adopted

the principles of National Center for the Replacement Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs). These principles include replacement (approaches that prevent or replace the animals use), reduction (methods that reduce the number of animals used), and refinement (methods that minimize animal suffering and increase wellbeing). For more information, please visit https://nc3rs.org.uk/. Furthermore, the authors must affirm that their research follows accepted guidelines for the use and care of research animals (they must specify which guidelines were utilized when describing their experiment), and that ethical approval was acquired prior to the initiation of the study. The manuscript must include a description of the methods used to sacrifice experimental animals. If there were surgical operations, it is necessary to describe the kind and dose of the anesthetic, analgesic, tranquilizer, and the measures used to reduce pain and discomfort before, during, and after the treatment.

A statement of approval, which must be included in the Materials and Methods section of a submitted manuscript, certifies that all study procedures were carried out in accordance with national and international ethics committee approval and guidelines regarding the use and care of animals. EQUATOR (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research) network offers the suggested reporting guidelines for animal research as stated by Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. As an example:

ARRIVE for reporting in vivo (pre-clinical) animal research

CONSORT for reporting randomized trials 

SRQR for reporting qualitative research 

PRISMA for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses 

STARD for reporting diagnostic/prognostic studies 

STROBE for reporting observational studies

CARE for reporting case reports

Any manuscript that does not follow this journal policy may be rejected by the Editor-in-Chief. An author(s) is responsible for false declarations or breaking this policy.

Plagiarism

Different forms of plagiarism, including copying and paraphrasing data or text without giving recognition to the original source, claiming the ownership of results or ideas from work performed previously, are unacceptable and considered unethical behavior. All manuscripts submitted to Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. will be subjected to plagiarism detection software (iThenticate) before specifying editors. If the result of originality is less than 20%, submissions will be transformed to the section editor for evaluation. If not, the authors will be asked to reduce the percentage to the permited level to be processed later. 

Publication Terms and Conditions

According to the publication's terms and conditions, the article must be fair and accurate, distinguish between fact and opinion clearly, be based on evidence, be obtained through legal and ethical means, and be promptly corrected (where appropriate) or withdrawn if it turns out to be harmful, inaccurate, or misleading. Any article's acceptability will be determined by Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. at its own discretion while taking journal policies into consideration. Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. retains the right, at its discretion, to delay publication at any point or to remove content after it has been published, including but not limited to, if the paper raises ethical or legal issues.

Authorship Criteria

To be eligible for a paper's authorship, authors must take into account the following four requirements:

  1. Making a substantial contribution to the research project's idea or design; or the collection, processing, or interpretation of research data.
  2. Critically drafting or editing the manuscript for significant intellectual substance.
  3. Authorizing the final draft for publication.
  4. Assuming responsibility for answering inquiries about the objectivity of any part of the research project.

Participants in the research who do not meet the requirements to be considered authors should be included in the acknowledgments with their consent. Prior to submitting the work, each author should carefully review the list and order of authors. The corresponding author, who will handle all communications between the other authors and the editor, should be chosen by those authors. Before the initial acceptance of the manuscript, the Editor-in-Chief should be consulted for any changes, such as adding, deleting, or rearranging the authorship list. If an editorial member is an author or has contributed to a manuscript that has been submitted to the journal, in this case he will not participate in the editing and publication decision.

Changes to Author Names 

Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. is aware that there are a variety of reasons why authors might want to change their names. The editorial office will need verification of the person's identity after a request for a name change. Legal or official documentation of a name change is not necessary. Researchers should be aware that a notification of the name change will be sent to the corresponding author. Any name change for an article won't need creating a new version; instead, the DOI will stay the same and all current versions will be updated to reflect the change. Please be aware that Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. considers it a breach of publication and personal ethics to modify someone else's name without agreement of that person.

Open Access and Archive policy

Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. is an open-access journal, where all papers accepted for publication will be directly and always freely available for the user with no charge or registration required. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, build upon, and print any paper in whole or part for any legal purpose, including commercial purposes, given that the author(s) and originally published source are cited properly. This is in line with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) definition of open access. Since Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. is an open-access publication, all published papers are available for free on the journal website. Papers published in the journal are digitally saved in the following archive systems:

  1. Iraqi Academic Scientific Journals (https://iasj.rdd.edu.iq/journals/journals)
  2. Repository of University of Baghdad (https://repository.uobaghdad.edu.iq/)

 

Copyright and Licensing

All papers published in Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. are subjected to the open-access Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). The author(s) retains copyright under this license. Moreover, the authors consent that anyone may read, download, reproduce, distribute, build upon, and print their paper in whole or in part for any purpose, including commercial purposes, at no cost as long as the originally published sources and the author(s) are correctly cited. After an article is initially accepted, the author(s) will receive an email asking them to fill out the Copyright Transfer Agreement. Please visit (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) for additional details.

Permanency of Content

All articles published in Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. will receive a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and will be permanently published. This will be applied regardless of the outcome of the post-publication review process. All contents, including articles that have not yet passed the reviewing process (post-publication), are permanently positioned on the journal website. Although authors can update, modify, and edit their articles by publishing new versions, which are added to the article's history, individual versions will be permanently available on the Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. website and cannot be changed or removed once they are published.

When published contents need to be revised, the following guidelines will be followed to preserve the accuracy and completeness of the scholarly record. The following standards are based on the latest best practices in the scientific publishing and library communities:

Correction to an Article

In conventional journals, where publications undergo peer review prior to publication, corrections are issued to notify readers of errors that are discovered after the final version of the article is published. By contrast, articles in Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. undergo reviewing post publication, and a new revised version can be added up to six months of publication. Any errors that become apparent later after publication can be corrected as a new version.

Retraction

Articles can be withdrawn by Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. for a variety of reasons, including:

  • True errors stated by the authors (for example, mistakes caused by sample mixing or the use of a scientific instrument or piece of equipment that turns out to be faulty).
  • Research misconduct (data fabrication).
  • Duplicate or overlapping publication.
  • Fraudulent use of data.

A retraction notice (to be sent to the corresponding author) for any withdrawn article will explicitly identify the cause of the retraction.

Policy for Comments on Articles

We support free, scholarly debate on all study findings. These submissions are made public via the website of Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. In order to guarantee that the comments are focused on and contribute to the scholarly debate, we typically only permit comments from readers who are officially affiliated within a research institution or other pertinent organization. As an alternative, we might also welcome feedback from readers who can clearly demonstrate their knowledge of a pertinent field of study. The reader's full name and affiliation are included on each public comment in accordance with our dedication to complete transparency. Comments should address the scholarly content offered in the paper with which they are related. Comments that appear to be advertising, defamatory, or legally problematic are not allowed.

Comments that are disrespectful, obscene, or contain disparaging remarks about someone's race, ethnicity, religion, or personal life will not be accepted. Every comment must be written in a clear English language; if it is judged to be incomprehensible, it may be rejected. In order to comment on an article, readers are required to disclose any conflicting interests. Please take into account the considerations outlined in the form of Competing Interests while filling out the Reviewer’s Form).

Reviewers’ Benefits

Being a reviewer for the Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. will give an opportunity for the reviewer to obtain the following:

  1. The reviewer will be awarded Reviewing Certificate (a signed scanned copy).
  2. Credit recognition as an international reviewer on Publons (Clarivate Analytics).
  3. Opportunity to publish a complimentary (free) article for every 10 manuscripts reviewed and awarded reviewing certificates.

The Reviewing Process

Reviewing of articles on Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. will take place after publication; once the article is published, eligible reviewers are encouraged to review under our open and transparent review model. In order to enhance the uniformity of concepts and language in the reviewing process, Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. summarizes the review procedure using the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) as illustrated below:

  • Transparency of identities: Every identity is visible.
  • The reviewer communicates with the editor.
  • Publicly available review data, including review reports, submitted manuscripts, and reviewer identities.
  • Commenting after publication: Open for up to 6 months only of publication.
  • If the authors do not respond to the reviewers’ comments after 4 weeks of notification by the journal, the manuscript will be rejected.

Updates and revisions are released as new versions that include concise justifications of the authors' modifications.

Stopping the Reviewing Process

Some articles that have not obtained enough reviewing reports after a long time may no longer be subjected to review. As a general rule, editors can choose to discontinue reviewing if the manuscript has not obtained any reports after 6 months. Therefore, Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. team may include a disclaimer on the paper to inform readers that reviewing is not happening and not allowed. If reviewing is ceased after consulting with the Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. team, the published paper with its DOI are permanent and cannot be deleted.

Complaint Policy

For any complaints about delays in processing the submission or publication ethics, the complainant can contact the Editor-in-Chief via official email of this journal ([email protected]). In order to handle complaints, look into the claims, and promptly address them, the editorial manager will review the complaint. Editor-in-chief will support suggestions for improving the system and talk about them with staff members and journal editors. The Editor-in-Chief will also give the complainant information and an explanation and ensure that all complaints are handled fairly and successfully.

Conflict of Interest

All authors must clearly disclose any financial and non-financial (personal) relationships with other people/organizations that might improperly affect their work.

Patent applications and registrations, stock ownership, employment, consultancies, and grants or other funding are a few examples of possible conflicts of interest that need to be declared. As soon as feasible, any potential conflicts of interest should be declared.

Charges and Waiver

If authors’ work is approved for publication, they will be charged an article processing charge (APC) to cover the cost of open access publication. The APC for Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. is 125,000 IQD for the Iraqi authors or $100 for non-Iraqi authors in case of a standard 8 pages research. An additional charge of 10,000 IQD (or $10) is applied for each extra page exceeding the standard. The charge to be paid to the journal only after acceptance for publication, and no extra charges required for the submission process or for color figures.

Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. has a waiver policy for authors from developing countries classified by the World Bank Country with low income. There is no fee required for developing countries classified within low income by the World Bank Country.

Early Online Publication Policy

Exp. Appl. Vet. Res. J. provides an Early Online Publication (EOP) service to help with the prompt distribution of academic research. This enables the online publication of accepted submissions before they appear in the final edition.

  1. Qualifications for Early Publication Online. Early online publishing is available to manuscripts that have been successfully accepted by the editorial board.

  2. Accessibility and Format. Early Online articles may not have been typeset or copyedited for printing yet, but they are published in their final form. These publications will be assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). 

  3. Record Version. The Version of Record is the Early Online version. Without changing its DOI, the manuscript will be published in the upcoming issue after undergoing final copyediting and formatting.

  4. Granting Licenses. The provisions of the CC BY 4.0 are applied to articles that are made available online in advance. As long as the original work is properly attributed, this allows for unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium.

  5. Citations and Indexing. Using their DOI, early online articles can be cited and indexed.  

  6. Policy for Withdrawals. Articles are regarded as a permanent part of the scholarly record after they are published online. Withdrawal must adhere to COPE criteria and is only allowed in extraordinary situations, such as proven ethical transgressions or significant mistakes.