EDITORIAL POLICIES

The United Press is dedicated to maintaining the integrity of the scientific record through adherence to Publication Ethics and a Publication Malpractice Statement. Our commitment is grounded in the principles of the Code of Conduct and Best Publishing Practices within scientific publications.

PLAGIARISM

Plagiarism, defined as the misrepresentation of someone else's words, ideas, or expressions as one's own, is strictly prohibited. This encompasses the incorporation of external ideas or works into a manuscript without proper attribution, with or without the original author's consent. The United Press also considers "self-plagiarism" as a form of misconduct, whereby authors reuse their own previously published work without adequate citation. To prevent and detect plagiarism, we utilize iThenticate software as part of our manuscript submission system.

PEER REVIEW

All submitted papers undergo a thorough blind review process involving at least two subject experts who assess the paper's relevance, originality, clarity, and significance. This process typically takes 4-5 weeks, with authors receiving the final review decision afterwards. Rejected papers come with constructive feedback for potential resubmission elsewhere. The journal also accepts revised papers, treating them as new submissions subject to a fresh review cycle. Our journal employs a double-blind peer review system, ensuring unbiased evaluation of manuscript quality by independent researchers in relevant fields. This process guarantees anonymity between authors and reviewers during the assessment phase.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Authors must submit a disclosure form during manuscript submission, disclosing any conflicts or financial interests that could impact the study's outcome. This includes involvement in employment, consultation, ownership, honorarium, patent applications, or testimony. Projects funded by the industry must provide a comprehensive declaration of funder involvement. If no role exists, authors must state that sponsors had no involvement in the study's design, execution, recognition, or writing.

PATIENT CONSENT FORMS

Research participants must make informed decisions, guided by a patient consent form detailing the research's purpose, methods, benefits, risks, and alternatives. Manuscripts must include a statement confirming consent in the Material and Methods section, and editors may request a copy of consent forms if necessary.

ETHICS COMMITTEE PERMISSION

Human studies require approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB), with the IRB number and protocol stated in the manuscript. Research involving animals must have protocol approval from the Institutional Committee on Animal Sources, ensuring adherence to ethical standards.

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

Decision-Making on Publication: Editors bear the responsibility of making decisions on whether to accept, reject, or request modifications to a manuscript. In certain cases, multiple rounds of reviews and revisions may be necessary. Editors ensure timely communication of review outcomes and are open to publishing corrections, clarifications, or retractions to uphold the academic record's integrity. The editor reserves the right to edit, clarify, or condense the manuscript as deemed necessary.

Equitable Review Process: Editorial decisions regarding paper acceptance or rejection for publication should be grounded solely in the paper's significance, originality, clarity, and relevance to the journal's focus. Editors must guarantee that each submitted manuscript is evaluated for its intellectual content without considering authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political ideologies. Decisions should solely be based on the paper's importance, originality, clarity, and alignment with the journal's scope.

Maintaining Confidentiality: Editors and editorial staff are committed to preserving the confidentiality of information related to manuscripts submitted by authors.

Disclosure and Management of Conflicts of Interest: Editors and members of the editorial board refrain from utilizing unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their research unless explicit written consent is obtained from the author.

Interactions with Authors: Editors must take reasonable measures to ensure the quality of published material, recognizing the varying aims and standards of different sections within journals. Guidelines should be regularly updated and easily accessible. Editors refrain from reversing decisions to accept submissions unless significant issues are identified.

AUTHORS RESPONSIBILITIES

Adherence to Publication Guidelines: Authors are required to comply with the submission guidelines stipulated by the journal.

Significant Contribution: All authors must make substantial contributions to the research, and all data statements in the articles must be accurate and authentic. Authors are responsible for ensuring the originality of the work they submit, certifying that the manuscript has not been previously published elsewhere. Proper citation and acknowledgement of others' work are imperative. Authors must sign a declaration confirming the originality of the manuscript and its illustrations or affirming that necessary measures have been taken to prevent copyright infringement.

Exclusive Submission: Authors must affirm that the manuscript is not presently under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submitting the same paper to multiple journals is considered unethical publishing practice. All authors listed in the paper must have made significant contributions to the research, and the submitting author ensures the inclusion of only contributing co-authors without any uninvolved individuals.

Conflict of Interest Disclosure: Authors are obligated to inform the editors of any conflicts of interest that could potentially influence the manuscript.

Correction of Errors: Authors are duty-bound to promptly provide retractions or corrections for any substantial errors or inaccuracies discovered in the submitted manuscript at any stage of the publication process.

REVIEWER GUIDELINES

The Innovative Journal of Medical Imaging engages in a rigorous review process, involving a minimum of two experts. Reviewers may be volunteers, members of the Reviewer Board, or those recommended by the academic editor during the initial assessment. Their task is to assess the manuscript's quality and offer a recommendation to the external editor regarding acceptance, the need for revisions, or rejection.

Reviewers are kindly requested to:

• Promptly accept or decline invitations based on the manuscript title and abstract.

• Propose alternative reviewers if the invitation cannot be accepted.

• Promptly seek a deadline extension if additional time is necessary for a thorough report.

Potential Conflicts of Interest: Reviewers are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest, including affiliations with the authors' institute, recent collaboration, joint grant holding, or any academic connections within the past years. Other potential conflicts include personal relationships, financial gains or losses tied to the paper's publication, and any non-financial conflicts (political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, intellectual, commercial, or other) with the authors. Reviewers should disclose conflicts that might introduce bias for or against the paper or authors. Assessing a manuscript previously reviewed for another journal is not considered a conflict, but reviewers are encouraged to inform the Editorial Office of any improvements or lack thereof. Familiarity with COPE's Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers is recommended.

Declaration of Confidentiality: Reviewers are expected to maintain confidentiality regarding the manuscript content, including the Abstract until the article is published. Reviewers should avoid disclosing their identity to authors, both in comments and metadata for reports submitted in Microsoft Word or PDF format. If a colleague is to complete the review on their behalf, reviewers must inform the Editorial Office, ensuring they meet the specified criteria. The Innovative Journal of Medical Imaging allows authors to publish review reports alongside their papers (Open Review), with the reviewers' permission. Otherwise, review reports are considered confidential and will only be disclosed with explicit reviewer consent.

Review reports: Reviewers are instructed to thoroughly read the entire article, including supplementary material, and pay attention to figures, tables, data, and methods. The report should critically analyze the article, providing specific comments on the scientific content. Reviewers are advised against recommending excessive self-citations or citations to boost the reviewer's, authors', or journal's impact. The review report must include a summary, general concept comments, specific comments referring to line numbers or figures, and answers to general questions guiding the review process for research or review articles. The overall content is rated by an Academic Editor for scientific soundness and usefulness in improving the manuscript. The use of AI or AI-assisted tools for reviewing is discouraged. Reviewers should also consider ethical guidelines and standards set by organizations such as ICMJE, CONSORT, TOP, PRISMA, and ARRIVE.

Rating the Manuscript: During manuscript evaluation for this journal, reviewers are instructed to assess various aspects:

1. Novelty: Evaluate if the question is original and well-defined and if the results contribute to advancing current knowledge.

2. Scope: Determine if the work aligns with the journal's scope.

3. Significance: Assess whether the results are appropriately interpreted, and significant, and if all conclusions are justified and supported by the results. Identify carefully formulated hypotheses.

4. Quality: Examine if the article is written appropriately, and if data and analyses are presented with high standards. Ensure the highest standards are used for presenting results.

5. Scientific Soundness: Check if the study is correctly designed and technically sound. Assess the technical standards of analyses and if the data is robust enough for conclusion. Evaluate if methods, tools, software, and reagents are described with sufficient detail for reproducibility.

6. Interest to the Readers: Analyse if the conclusions are interesting for the readership, considering whether the paper will attract a wide readership or be of interest to a limited audience.

7. Overall Merit: Consider the overall benefit of publishing the work, evaluating whether it advances current knowledge, addresses important questions, and presents smart experiments or negative results of valid scientific hypotheses.

8. English Level: Evaluate if the English language used is appropriate and understandable.

Reviewers can suggest if a manuscript may be more suitable for publication in another journal of United Press. Manuscripts should adhere to the highest standards of publication ethics, reporting only original results, avoiding reuse of text without proper citation, and following generally accepted ethical research standards. Reviewers are encouraged to report any scientific misconduct, fraud, plagiarism, or unethical behaviour to the in-house editor if identified.

Overall Recommendation For the next processing stage of the manuscript, reviewers are required to provide an overall recommendation with the following options:

• Accept in Present Form: The paper can be accepted without any further changes.

• Accept after Minor Revisions: The paper can potentially be accepted after revision based on the reviewer's comments. Authors are granted five days for minor revisions.

• Reconsider after Major Revisions: The acceptance depends on substantial revisions. Authors must provide a point-by-point response or a rebuttal if some comments cannot be revised. A maximum of two rounds of major revision per manuscript is usually allowed. Authors should resubmit the revised paper within ten days, and the revised version will be sent back to the reviewer for additional comments. If the revision time is estimated to exceed two months, authors may be recommended to withdraw their manuscript before resubmitting to avoid unnecessary time pressure and ensure sufficient revision.

• Reject: The article has serious flaws, lacks original contribution, and may be rejected with no offer of resubmission to the journal.

It's emphasized that the recommendation is visible only to journal editors and not to the authors. Decisions regarding revisions, acceptance, or rejections should always be well justified.

PUBLISHER RESPONSIBILITIES

The publisher is responsible for providing practical assistance to the editor and executive editorial board.

Readiness to Publish Corrections: The publisher should always be prepared to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies whenever necessary.

Preservation of Academic Integrity: The publisher must maintain the integrity of the academic record, preventing business considerations from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.

Commitment to Permanent Availability: The publisher is dedicated to ensuring the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research. This commitment involves establishing accessibility through collaborations with organizations and maintaining proprietary digital archives.

Adherence to Good Practice: The publisher ensures that good practices are consistently maintained according to the standards outlined above.

Thorough Peer-Review Process: All research manuscripts and other types undergo a rigorous peer-review process, typically involving at least two external peer-reviewers. Following the initial evaluation by journal editors to assess suitability, appropriate independent reviewers with specific expertise are invited. The editor's decision is based on these reviewer reports, which are shared with authors upon decision. In cases where the journal's editor is the author of the submission, steps are taken to ensure the editor's impartiality during the peer-review process. Additional details about the journal's peer-review model can be found on the journal's information pages.

PENALTY

Duplicate Submission: In the event of identifying a duplicate submission, whether internally or from external sources, the editorial board is obligated to investigate the matter. If it is established that the duplicate submission is an internal occurrence, the following actions will be implemented: the review process will be immediately terminated, an explanation will be communicated to reviewers, the editorial board, authors, and corresponding authors, and all authors' names will be marked as blacklisted. Consequently, these authors will be prohibited from submitting any manuscript to these journals for 1-2 years.

Duplicate Publication: In the case of identifying duplicate publications, whether internally or from external sources, the editorial board is required to assess the situation. If it is verified that the duplicate publication was intentional, this information must be reported to editors, authors, and relevant parties.