In order to ensure high-quality of scientific and evidence-based publications, public trust and that idea are credited, it is important to comply with publication ethics following Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This page contains (A) duties of authors, (B) duties of reviewers, (C) duties of editors, and also (D) duties of publisher.
(A) Duties of Authors
i) Approval and Consent
Good research should be well-designed, well planed and well justified with ethical approval. For example, clinical trials in Malaysia required to be register to National Medical Research Register (NMRR) besides ethical approval from the National Committee for Clinical Research. This is including obtaining informed consent from all the study participants. All the information related to the registry, ethical approval shall be clearly stated in the manuscript and enable tracing by the editors.
ii) Accuracy, Falsification and Fabrication
Any author that attempt to report results and draw conclusions from data that are not generated by the study is considered commit fabrication, or, conclusions are generated by manipulating of the data which is known as falsification.
If the editor or reviewer suspicious at the time of review process, authors may be asked to disclose the raw data to confirm or alleviate the suspicion. Datasheets may be requested even after a few years of publication if sufficient doubt is raised. Therefore, authors are advised to preserve the datasheet of research/ clinical trials for a reasonably long period.
iii) Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism
It is unacceptable and consider dishonest when an idea and work of other scientists is taken without giving credit. Copying content from someone’s else manuscript or even your own published manuscript without citation is consider plagiarism. Please refer to Philosophy of self-plagiarism.
iv) Submission Fraud
Manuscript shall not be submit simultaneously to different journals, it is considered disrespectful as it wastes the time of both the editors and reviewers. If detected, the publication will be retracted. It is also non-advisable to publish similar manuscripts with no added novelty as compared to a previous published one.
v) Authorship
All the listed author must have agreed to be in the author list and made a significant contribution to the work written in the manuscript. Authorship is not a “gift” to exchange or trade for any return. Academy of Sciences Malaysia through their Educational Module on Responsible Conduct of Research Conduct Chapter 5 has detailed guidelines on authorship that may be useful for prospective authors in this journal.
vi) Conflict of Interest
Conflict of Interest (COI) is potential financial/personal interest or belief that could affect the objectivity of the result and conclusion presented in the manuscript. It could happen between authors, author-reviewer, researcher – company, or any parties that can influence the means of data presentations. Author is encouraged to give the statement of COI to serve as a notification on the source and nature of that potential conflict. Academy of Sciences Malaysia through their Educational Module on Responsible Conduct of Research Conduct Chapter 4 has detailed guidelines on COI that may be useful for prospective authors in this journal.
vii) AI policy
Author is allowed to use generative-AI tools or AI-assisted technologies only for improve language and readability of an article before submission with the appropriate disclosure at the bottom of the paper in a separate section before the list of references. Declaring the use of these technologies supports transparency and trust between authors, readers, reviewers, editors and contributors and facilitates compliance with the terms of use of the relevant tool or technology.
(B) Duties of Reviewers
Reviewers shall contribute to decision making of editorial board. If in any cases where selected reviewer feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and decline to participate in the review process.
i) Conflict of Interest
Reviewer should clearly state if he/she have a conflict of interest and accordingly refuse to examine the manuscripts. This include cases where conflict of interest is arising out of a competitive, collaborative or other partnership or relationship with any of the authors, companies or entities linked to the papers. In other cases where reviewer might doubt the conflict-of-interest presence, reviewer is requested to include this problem in confidential comments to the editor. Such cases might but not limited to reviewing a manuscript author that you were at a previous or current relationship, or their organization.
ii) Confidentiality
Any document sent to reviewer for review shall be treated confidential. Reviews should be carried out equally and critically, however, personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Based on reviewer’s expertise, if the manuscript is having weakness or missing the logic, reviewer can criticize the science, but not the author. Criticisms should be built on a solid opinion and must be supported by logic, and not simply differences of opinion. The merit value of criticism is to allow the authors to learn through the process of reviewing so they can produce a better article.
For double blind reviewing purposes, reviewer is requested to avoid comments that could serve as clues to his/her identity. Reviewer should not share secret manuscripts with his/her colleagues or use the material in his/her own work. Reviewer analysis and recommendation should also be considered confidential. Forwarding the manuscript to a colleague that reviewer feel is more competent to review the paper is prohibited without first seeking permission from the editor to do so.
iii) The use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the journal editorial process
The policy of generative -AI and AI assisted technologies usage applied as stated in section above. Reviewers should not upload a submitted manuscript or any part of it into a generative AI tool as this may violate the authors’ confidentiality and proprietary rights and, where the paper contains personally identifiable information, may breach data privacy rights. This is extended to the reviewing report as it may potentially disclose the content and information of the authors.
iv) Alertness to ethical issues
A reviewer should be alert to potential ethical issues in the paper and should bring these to the attention of the editor, including any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which the reviewer has personal knowledge. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument that had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation.
Comments to the Editor:
Your Editor’s Comments can only be submitted to the Editor and the Editor-in-Chief. These should include any potential conflicts of interest. Comments to enhance the manuscript quality with constructive criticism should be included in the Author’s comments.
Comments to the Author
Reviewer comments to the author will be submitted to the and the Editor who is handling the manuscript and the Editor in Chief. Authors will also be notified with those comments along with any other anonymous reviewers’ comments directly after decision is taken by the editor.
The reviewing process for the Malaysian journal of Pharmacy should be within the following follow:
- Start by describing the significant contributions made by the paper. What are its key strengths and drawbacks, and its publicity suitability? Please provide both general and detailed comments on these issues and stress your most important points.
- Comments should be positive and intended to improve the text of the manuscript. You should consider yourself the mentor of the authors. Please make your comments as complete and informative as possible.
- Express your views positive or negative clearly with supporting arguments and references as required. It should include clear comments on the work’s aim, opinions’ strengths, shortcomings, research or publication misconduct, and significance of the manuscript, its originality and its value in the field.
- Specific remarks referring to line numbers are most helpful and encouraged while reviewing to ensure the manuscript follow, and interesting ideas without repetition
- If you feel unqualified to deal with certain aspects of the manuscript, please provide a comment to identify these areas.
- Comments should be submitted to maljpharm@gmail.com through the reviewer link in a word file, with the proper previous flow, you name, title, affiliation and date within two weeks from the date you received the manuscript. To protect your privacy, the Editorial Assistant Journal will delete your details from the assets of these papers.
Important questions to contemplate while reviewing:
- Is the submitted manuscript within the scope of the Journal? Is the topic and information of significant interest to the scientific community of the Journal?
- Dose the manuscript structure accurately meet the journal’s templet including the title, abstract, key words, introduction, and conclusions?
- Are the employed methods and procedures appropriate, cutting-edge, and described clearly enough to reproduce the work by someone else?
- Are the ethical issues properly addressed? This includes cases of some cell culture studies relaying on the production of the studied cells from humans, preclinical studies including using animal tissue on the in vitro scale, and clinical work?
- Are appropriate statistical analyses and employed software details used sufficiently?
- Are the used tables or figures supporting the ideas, or repeating itself?
- Are the conclusions and discussion enough and clarifying the presented data?
- Are the cited references correct, appropriate and up to date to support the manuscript?
- Are citations provided when they are necessary? Are any key citations missing?
- Should any portions of the paper be expanded, condensed, combined, or deleted? Does the manuscript comply with the Instructions for Authors?
- Is this work reporting data for first time, or data with a significant degree of novelty, or not? If any, please provide details and suggestions.
- Is the work plagiarised from another published publication? If so, please illustrate in brief with reference(s).
- Is there any indication that the data have been fabricated or inappropriately manipulated? If so, please illustrate in brief with reference(s).
- Is there any indication that the images (western blot, cell culture, …etc) have been fabricated or inappropriately manipulated? If so, please illustrate in brief with reference(s).
(C) Duties of Editors
Editorial board member shall comprise of the need for appropriate, inclusive and diverse representation in the array of pharmaceutical sciences.
i) Publication decision
The editorial board are independently deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published guided solely by the quality of submissions and the outcomes of an appropriate peer review process, free from any political, financial, or personal influences from society staff or volunteer leaders. The editor may be also guided by the advice received from the advisory team in current advancement, national pharmaceutical policies of the journal’s editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding issues such as libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers (or society officers) in making these decisions. The editor shall ensure that the peer review process is fair, unbiased, and timely. Details of the peer review process can be found here in the section of peer review.
ii) Fair play
The editor of MJP shall evaluate the journals regardless of race, country, sexual orientation, gender, belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. The editor should ensure that peer reviewers and authors have played their respective duties diligently based on what is expected of them.
iii) Journal metrics
The editor shall not in any attempts to increase a journal metric artificially by influencing in author’s citation except for genuine scholarly reasons and justification.
iv) Confidentiality
The editor must protect the confidentiality of all material submitted to the journal and all communications with authors and reviewers, unless otherwise agreed with the relevant authors and reviewers. In exceptional circumstances with consultation of the advisory team and the publisher, the editor may share limited information with editors of other journals, institutions, and other organizations to facilitate investigation on cases when deemed necessary such as research misconduct or suspected ethical breaches.
v) The use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the journal editorial process
Editor should not upload any documents sent to the editorial board for reviewing or editing purposes as this will violate the confidentiality of the document submitted to MJP. Any generative-AI tools or AI-assisted technologies should not be used to decision making of a journal article in MJP. In response to the popularity of usage in AI-assisted technologies, MJP editorial board is committed to monitor the development in this aspect to prevent unethical publication of scientific findings.
vi) Editor own’s paper
The editor must not be involved in decisions about papers which he/she has written him/herself or have been written by family members or colleagues or which relate to products or services in which the editor has an interest. Further, any such submission must be subject to all of the journal’s usual procedures, peer review must be handled independently of the relevant author/editor and their research groups, and there should be a clear statement to this effect on any such paper that is published.
(D) Duties of Publisher
Malaysian Journal of Pharmacy (MJP) publishes mainly the health and pharmaceutical related issues in the country as well as across the globe in impacting local healthcare advancement. Therefore, publisher supports and ensures quality publication of the Malaysian Journal of Pharmacy. The publisher also committed to support the huge efforts made by journal editors, and the often-unsung volunteer work undertaken by peer reviewers, in maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record. This has been carried out by subsidising the open access and production fees as well as providing editors with support of Turnitin Similarity Check for all submissions as part of the production processes. The work done by the journal editors in alignment with COPE has been reviewed annually in AGM of MPS.
Malaysian Pharmacists Society (MPS) as publisher for MJP has also been ensuring that the potential for advertising, reprint or other commercial revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions of MJP. MPS is an active organisation that has been supporting all services in ensuring effective communication of pharmaceutical health information, provides extensive education, particularly for early career pharmacist’s researcher as well as the efficient running of MJP.