Editorial Policy

Overview
The editorial policies of SLOAP can be found on the pages listed below. This policy describes guidelines in the publication process of our journals. This policy closely follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Authorship
Authorship provides credit for a researcher's contributions to a study and carries accountability. Authors of SLOAP are expected to fulfil the criteria below that are guided by the ICMJE.

Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; Final approval of the version to be published;

Agrees to be personally accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even ones in which the author was not personally involved, are appropriately investigated and resolved. Investigated, resolved, and documented in the literature.

SLOAP encourage collaboration with colleagues in the locations where the research is conducted, and expect their inclusion as co-authors when they fulfil all authorship criteria described above. Contributors who do not meet all criteria for authorship, should be listed in the Acknowledgements section.

SLOAP does not require manuscript submission letter from all the authors, nor do they impose an order on the list of authors. Submission of manuscript to SLOAP mean that all the listed authors have agreed to all of the contents, including the author list and author contribution statements. The corresponding author is responsible for having ensured that this agreement has been reached that all authors have agreed to be so listed, and have approved the manuscript. The corresponding author is also responsible for submitting a competing interests' statement on behalf of all authors of the manuscript; please refer to our conflicts of interests' policy for more information.

Acknowledgment
All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in ‘Acknowledgements’ section of the manuscript. They include names of people who have contributed technical help, assistance in scientific writing and preparing manuscript, contributed financially or material support, and institution/department head who has supported with access/permissions etc. Organizations that provided support in terms of funding and/or other resources should also be acknowledged.

Changes in authorship
Once a manuscript have been submitted, changes with respect to the authorships (example: additions, deletions, change in order of names or change in the contributions) must be approved by all the authors of the manuscript. If the changes are appropriate and acceptable, the editor will require a written confirmation from the corresponding author that all the authors have provided their consent for the change in authorship. The editor also has the right to contact any or all of the authors to confirm if they have consented for the change in authorship. The changes will be implemented according to COPE specification.

Conflicts of interest
Every author of content submitted to SLOAP is required to disclose affiliations, funding sources, and competing interests that might be perceived as sources of bias related to the reported research and/or presented content.

Authors should disclose any funding and contributions, financial competing interests but also any non-financial competing interests.

Funding and contributions
All authors must disclose complete and correct information about any and all financial contributions to the work being reported. This information should be listed in the Funding statement in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript to ensure transparency during the review process and will be included in the final published work. Non-monetary contribution of goods or services may, if appropriate, be cited in published acknowledgments in the paper.

Financial competing interests include but are not limited to:
Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or honoraria from an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the manuscript, either now or in the future

Holding shares or stocks in an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the manuscript, either now or in the future

Holding, or currently applying for, patents relating to the content of the manuscript

Non-financial competing interests
Non-financial competing interests include (but are not limited to) political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, and intellectual competing interests.

Confidentiality
A submitted manuscript is a confidential material. SLOAP will not disclose submitted manuscript to anyone except individuals who partake in the processing and preparation of the manuscript for publication (if accepted). These individuals include editorial staff, corresponding authors, potential reviewers, actual reviewers, and editors.

Editors, authors and reviewers are required to keep confidential all details of the editorial and peer review process on submitted manuscripts. Unless otherwise declared as a part of open peer review, the peer review process is confidential and conducted anonymously; identities of reviewers are not released. Reviewers must maintain confidentiality of manuscripts. Reviewers should be aware that it is our policy to keep their names confidential and that we do our utmost to ensure this confidentiality. However, in suspected cases of misconduct, a manuscript may be revealed to members of SLOAP ethics committee and institutions/organizations that may require it for the resolution of the misconduct.

SLOAP reserves the right to contact funders, organizations, regulatory bodies, journals and the authors’ institutions in cases of suspected research or publishing misconduct.

Originality and duplication of publication
Manuscripts submitted to an SLOAP must be original, or substantial parts of it, must not be under consideration by any other journal. In any case where there is the potential for overlap or duplication we require that authors are transparent. Authors should declare any potentially overlapping publications on submission and, copies of existing manuscripts with overlapping or duplicated material should be submitted together with the manuscript as supplemental data files so that the Editors can judge the originality of the material and its suitability for publication. Submission of duplicate content, already published elsewhere, will be considered a breach of ethical conduct and will trigger severe consequences. See also section III. D. “Overlapping Publications” of the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work.

Plagiarism
SLOAP uses plagiarism detection software to screen submitted manuscripts for originality. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript will be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, we will issue a correction or retract the paper, as appropriate. We follow COPE definition of plagiarism.

Peer-review policy
Reviewers play a vital role in scholarly publishing. Peer review exists to ensure that journals publish good science which is of benefit to entire scientific community. All research/review articles, and other article types, published in SLOAP undergo thorough double blind peer review. This usually involves review by two independent peer reviewers.

Availability of data and materials
Submission of a manuscript to an SLOAP implies that materials described in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes.

We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, in machine-readable format (such as spreadsheets rather than PDFs) whenever possible. For more information to authors on how to indicate about the source of data and readers who have difficulty in obtaining materials or accessing data, are encouraged to contact the journal editorial office.

Misconduct
All allegations of research or publication misconduct are taken seriously. We will vigorously investigate allegations and reserve the right to contact authors’ institutions, funders or regulatory bodies if needed. Misconduct constitutes violation of the editorial policy, journal policies, publication ethics, or any applicable guidelines or policies specified by COPE and ICMJE. Any other activities that threaten or compromise the integrity of the research or publication process are potential misconducts. Suspected cases of misconduct will be investigated according to COPE guidelines.

Ethics and consent
Research involving human participants, human material, human data, and animal experimentation must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption). Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. In rare cases, the Editor may contact the ethics committee for further information.

Self-archiving and license to publish
SLOAP encourages self-archiving by authors of manuscripts accepted for publication in its journals. SLOAP is open access under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. Author(s) allow(s) to distribute to colleagues and posts to open websites. Author (s) does not (do not) allow(s) to reuse the portions of extracts from the article in other works, to sell or reuse for commercial purposes, to text and data mining, and/or re-user can not choose a different license.

Corrections and retractions
Rarely, it may be necessary for SLOAP to publish corrections to, or retractions of, articles published in its journals, so as to maintain the integrity of the academic record. Corrections may be made to a published article with the authorization of the editor of the journal. Editors will decide the magnitude of the corrections. Minor corrections are made directly to the original article. However, in cases of major corrections, the original article will remain unchanged, while the corrected version will also be published. Both the original and corrected version will be linked to each other. A statement indicating the reason for the major change to the article will also be published. When necessary, retraction of articles will be done according to COPE retraction guidelines.