Ethical policies and procedures

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The journals of the American Physiological Society (APS) only accept research papers that are original work, no part of which has been submitted for publication elsewhere except as brief abstracts. When submitting a paper, the corresponding author should include copies of related manuscripts submitted or in press elsewhere. Taking material from another's work and submitting it as one's own is considered plagiarism. Fabricating a report of research or suppressing or altering data to agree with one's conclusions is considered fraud.

The Editors expect each author to have made an important scientific contribution to the study and be thoroughly familiar with the original data. The Editors also expect each author to have read the complete manuscript and to take responsibility for the content and completeness of the manuscript and to understand that if the paper, or part of the paper, is found to be faulty or fraudulent, that he/she shares responsibility with his/her coauthors. The Mandatory Submission Form, which is published in the journals, should be signed by each author. In cases in which obtaining a signature from each author would delay publication, the corresponding author's signature is sufficient provided that the corresponding author understands that he or she signs on behalf of the other authors who have not signed the form. An author's name can be removed only at his/her request, but all coauthors must sign a change of authorship agreement for any change in authorship (additions, removals, or change of order) to be made.

APS reviewers have a responsibility to report suspected duplicate publication, fraud, or plagiarism to the Editor. A reviewer may recognize and report that he/she is refereeing, or has recently refereed, a similar or identical paper for another journal by the same author(s). Readers may report that they have seen the same article elsewhere, or authors may see their own published work being plagiarized. In all cases the first action of the journal Editor is to inform the Publications Committee Chair through the Director of Publication by supplying copies of 1) the relevant material and 2) a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner. The Publications Committee Chair must approve any correspondence with the author before it is sent to the author. If the author's explanation is unacceptable and it seems that serious unethical conduct has taken place, the matter is referred to the Publications Committee. After deliberation, a decision is made whether the case is serious enough to warrant a ban on future submissions and/or if the offending author's institution should be informed. The decision has to be approved by the APS Council, and the author has the right of appeal to the Executive Committee of the APS Council.

If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Publications Chair, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the author of APS publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the Editor may require the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record. If APS has violated the copyright of another journal, the Publications Chair writes a letter of apology to the other journal.

The APS guidelines for duplicate publication are summarized as follows. Material published by the author before submission in the following categories is considered prior publication: 1) articles published in any journal; 2) articles, book chapters, and long abstracts containing original data in figures and tables, especially in proceedings publications; 3) widely circulated, copyrighted, or archival reports, such as the technical reports of IBM, the preliminary reports of MIT, the institute reports of the US Army, or the internal reports of NASA; 4) meeting poster presentations that are videotaped and sold; except as noted below. Data portions of submitted papers that have appeared on an author's personal web site will be permitted, with the proviso that the author inform the Editor at the time of the submission that such material exists so that the Editor can determine the suitability of such material for publication. Failure to do so will result in an automatic rejection of the manuscript. Examples of such work include, but are not limited to, immunofluorescence micrographs and/or animated gif/video files posted on a personal web site, or NIH-mandated posting of DNA microarray data. After the article is published in a journal of the APS, the data should be removed from the author's web site.

Authors with concerns about possible prior publication that does not fall clearly into one of these categories should contact the Director of Publications and forward the material for examination.

	FOOTNOTES

10.1152/ajpregu.00168.2002