Peer Review Process

General overview (handling of new submission)

  1.  New submissions were firstly checked for technical issues and plagiarism and define whether or not these submissions (without author names and affiliations, any information in the manuscript that could refer or indicate the author institution name such as the acknowledgment section and others) have to be sent back to author(s) for resubmission or directed to the relevant associate editor.
  2. The associate editors are selected from different universities or institutions of that of the authors to avoid institutional bias and are selected based on their specialty and research interest in order to better assess the quality of the research.
  3. The associate editors that are affiliated to different universities of that of the authors handle and send the manuscript to 2-4 relevant reviewers that belong to different universities or institutions of that of the authors  (Double-Blind review) and follow up the whole peer-review process.
  4. The associate editor thereafter send the reviewer's comments, suggestions and recommendations to either to editor in chief or co-editor in chief for making the final decision.
  5. In some case, the reviewer’s comments are  delivered to the relevant member of the advisory board to help the editor in chief for the final decision
  6. After acceptance, the manuscript are sent to the production team for preparing the galley proof and the final publication of the manuscript thereafter. 

II. Declarations section must be included in the submitted manuscript and include: 

  • Ethics approval and consent to participate

    • Authors should indicate the ethics committee approval and their numbers in case of original research conducted on animals, human or upon using any clinical specimens or tissue from humans or patients. The author should mention not applicable if not present

    • Consent to publish 

      • Authors should indicate in their submission the consent of publications and should mention “not applicable” if not present

      • Availability of data and materials

        • All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article in the main manuscript and/or in the additional supporting file (if present).

        • Competing interests

          • The authors should declare if any competing interest exists or they declare that have no competing interests

          • Funding Statement

            • The authors should declare if any funding was obtained from any agency or any institutional support (if present)

            • or Mention ( No funding source was received) if this was unavailable and the article is self-funded by the authors. All authors shared in the design of the study, collection, analysis, and interpretation of data and in writing the manuscript.

            • Authors’ contributions

All authors contributed to the work presented in this paper should be declared and mention the role and contribution of each author.  All authors must discuss the results approved the manuscript.

  • Acknowledgment

Authors would like to acknowledge any agency, institution, department or any members for their support and providing facilities whenever needed. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proofreading the article, etc.). 

III. Copyright and License

Copyright on any open access article published in the APS-ASU journal is retained by the author(s).

Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.

Authors grant Ain Shams University a copyright transfer agreement to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.

Users have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles under the following conditions: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

 For more information:

 

This work is licensed underhttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 

IV. Human and animal research ethics

There are numerous resources available that can aid authors and journals in improving article quality. As examples, some resources NLM encourages journals and authors to reference are:

V. Misconduct

APC takes seriously all allegations of potential misconduct and follows the  Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/guidance) outlining how to deal with cases of suspected misconduct. In cases of suspected research or publication misconduct, it may be necessary for the Editor to contact and share manuscripts with third parties, for example, author(s)’ institution(s) and ethics committee(s).

Research misconduct

All research involving humans (including human data and human material) and animals must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework (see our Ethics policy for further information). If there is suspicion that research has not taken place within an appropriate ethical framework, the Editor may reject a manuscript and may inform third parties, for example, author(s)’ institution(s) and ethics committee(s).

In cases of proven research misconduct involving published articles, or where the scientific integrity of the article is significantly undermined, articles may be retracted. See our Retraction policy for further information.

Data falsification and fabrication

Data falsification is manipulating research data with the intention of giving a false impression. This includes manipulating images, removing outliers or “inconvenient” results, changing, adding or omitting data points, etc. Data fabrication means the making up of research findings.

Any questions regarding data integrity raised during or after the peer review process will be referred to the Editor. The Editor may request (anonymised) underlying study data from the author(s) for inspection or verification. If the original data cannot be produced, the manuscript may be rejected or, in the case of a published article, retracted. Cases of suspected misconduct will be reported to the author(s)’ institution(s). 

VI. Corrections and retractions

Infrequently, it may be necessary for APS-ASU to publish corrections to, or retractions of, articles published in its journals, so as to maintain the integrity of the academic record.

In line with APC editorial policy, corrections to, or retractions of, published articles will be made by publishing a Correction or a Retraction note bidirectionally linked to the original article. Any alterations to the original article will be described in the note. The original article remains in the public domain and the subsequent Correction or Retraction will be widely indexed. In the exceptional event that material is considered to infringe certain rights or is defamatory, we may have to remove that material from our site and archive sites.

Corrections

Changes to published articles that affect the interpretation and conclusion of the article, but do not fully invalidate the article, will, at the Editor(s)’ discretion, be corrected via publication of a Correction that is indexed and bidirectionally linked to the original article.

Retractions

On rare occasions, when the interpretation or conclusion of an article is substantially undermined, it may be necessary for published articles to be retracted. APS-ASU will follow the COPE guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/guidance) in such cases. Retraction notices are indexed and bidirectionally linked to the original article. The original article is watermarked as retracted and the title is amended with the prefix “Retracted article:”

VII. Appeals and complaints

APS-ASU adheres to COPE guidelines (https://publicationethics.org/guidance) regarding appeals to editorial decisions and complaints. Authors can submit appeal about the editor decision to APS-ASU (aps@pharma.asu.edu.eg)  and providing all necessary documents and reasons for raising such appeal however, in most of cases the first decision is upheld as well as new submission takes priorities over author’ s appeal. The editor in chief or co-editor in chief will provide the final decision within 10-12 weeks.

VIII. Ethics and consent

Research involving human participants, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/; see also our guide to authors; https://aps.journals.ekb.eg/journal/authors.note) 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). Further information and documentation to support this should be made available to the Editor on request. 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.