The Healthcare Quality Professionals Journal is committed to maintaining high standards of publication ethics, research integrity, originality, transparency, confidentiality, patient safety, professional responsibility, and honest scholarly communication.
This Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement explains the ethical responsibilities of authors, reviewers, editors, and editorial staff in relation to manuscript submission, peer review, authorship, plagiarism, clinical information, patient confidentiality, conflicts of interest, corrections, withdrawals, retractions, and publication malpractice.
Ethical Commitment of the Journal
Healthcare Quality Professionals Journal supports ethical, original, and evidence-based academic work that contributes to healthcare quality improvement, patient safety, hospital administration, clinical governance, public health, healthcare management, and allied health sciences.
Originality
Manuscripts must be original and should not contain copied, duplicate, or previously published content without proper citation.
Patient Confidentiality
Authors must protect patient identity, personal information, clinical records, and sensitive healthcare data.
Research Integrity
Data, findings, methods, clinical observations, and quality outcomes must be reported honestly and accurately.
Fair Review
Manuscripts should be evaluated fairly on academic quality, healthcare relevance, ethical compliance, and professional value.
Proper Citation
All sources, guidelines, reports, standards, policies, and previous research must be properly acknowledged.
Responsible Publication
Editorial decisions should be based on originality, quality, relevance, ethics, review comments, and journal standards.
Duties of Authors
Authors are responsible for ensuring that their manuscripts are original, accurate, ethically prepared, properly referenced, and not submitted to another journal at the same time.
- Authors must submit only original and unpublished academic or professional healthcare work.
- The manuscript should not be under review or consideration by another journal at the same time.
- All sources, data, tables, figures, clinical guidelines, healthcare standards, reports, and previous research must be properly cited.
- Authors must not fabricate, falsify, manipulate, or misrepresent research data, clinical information, quality indicators, or findings.
- Authors must protect patient identity and should not disclose personal, clinical, institutional, or confidential information without proper permission.
- All listed authors must have made a meaningful contribution to the study, analysis, writing, review, or professional development of the manuscript.
- Authors should disclose conflicts of interest, funding sources, institutional support, ethical approval, and acknowledgments where applicable.
- Authors should correct any significant error identified during review or after publication.
Originality, Plagiarism and Duplicate Publication
The journal does not accept plagiarism, copied content, duplicate submission, duplicate publication, self-plagiarism, improper paraphrasing, fabricated data, or unauthorized use of another person’s research, clinical work, quality improvement results, or professional material.
- Submitted manuscripts may be checked for similarity and originality.
- Copied text, tables, figures, data, methodology, results, or discussion without proper citation is considered unethical.
- Authors should not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time.
- Previously published work should not be reused without proper acknowledgment and permission where required.
- Manuscripts with serious plagiarism or unethical duplication may be rejected.
- Published articles found to contain serious plagiarism may be corrected, withdrawn, or retracted according to editorial decision.
Unacceptable Practices
- Plagiarism or copied content
- Duplicate submission or duplicate publication
- Fabricated or manipulated healthcare data
- False patient safety or quality improvement claims
- Improper authorship or honorary authorship
- Disclosure of confidential patient or institutional information
Expected Practices
- Original healthcare research and writing
- Accurate data, methods, and results
- Proper citation and reference practice
- Patient privacy and confidentiality protection
- Ethical approval or consent where required
- Transparent conflict of interest disclosure
Authorship Policy
Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made a meaningful academic, clinical, research, analytical, professional, or writing contribution to the manuscript. Authorship must not be used as a favour, formality, gift, or honorary recognition.
- All authors should approve the final version before submission.
- The corresponding author is responsible for communication with the journal.
- Guest authorship, gift authorship, honorary authorship, and ghost authorship are not acceptable.
- Any change in authorship after submission should be clearly justified and approved by all authors.
- All authors share responsibility for the originality, accuracy, ethical preparation, and integrity of the submitted work.
Clinical Ethics, Consent and Patient Privacy
Manuscripts involving patients, clinical records, healthcare institutions, surveys, interviews, quality improvement projects, audits, or sensitive healthcare data should follow ethical and professional standards. Authors must ensure that privacy, consent, institutional permissions, and ethical requirements are properly addressed where applicable.
- Patient names, identification numbers, photographs, or identifiable details should not be disclosed without consent.
- Clinical data should be anonymized wherever possible.
- Ethical approval, institutional permission, or informed consent should be mentioned where required.
- Healthcare data should not be altered, selectively reported, or presented in a misleading manner.
- Authors should respect confidentiality of hospitals, clinics, healthcare workers, patients, and institutions.
Duties of Editors
Editors are responsible for maintaining fairness, confidentiality, academic quality, professional relevance, and ethical integrity throughout the editorial and publication process.
- Editors should evaluate manuscripts based on quality, originality, scope, healthcare relevance, and ethical compliance.
- Editors should make decisions without discrimination, personal bias, or unfair influence.
- Editors must protect confidentiality of submitted manuscripts and editorial communication.
- Editors should not handle manuscripts where they have a conflict of interest.
- Editors may reject manuscripts that do not meet ethical, academic, originality, healthcare, or publication standards.
- Editors should take suitable action if plagiarism, data fabrication, authorship dispute, confidentiality breach, or malpractice is identified.
Duties of Reviewers
Reviewers support the journal by providing fair, objective, respectful, and constructive comments that help improve manuscript quality and professional value.
- Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts according to subject relevance, research quality, methodology, ethics, and professional contribution.
- Reviewer comments should be clear, constructive, professional, and relevant to the manuscript.
- Reviewers must keep submitted manuscripts and review communication confidential.
- Reviewers should identify possible plagiarism, duplicate publication, weak methodology, unsupported claims, citation errors, or ethical concerns where noticed.
- Reviewers should not use unpublished manuscript content for personal, academic, professional, or commercial benefit.
- Reviewers should decline the review if they have a conflict of interest or lack suitable expertise.
Conflict of Interest
Authors, reviewers, and editors should disclose any real or potential conflict of interest that may influence manuscript preparation, review, editorial decision-making, or publication.
- Conflicts may be personal, academic, clinical, institutional, professional, financial, or commercial.
- Authors should disclose funding, sponsorship, institutional support, and professional relationships where applicable.
- Reviewers and editors should not participate in a manuscript process where a conflict exists.
- Undisclosed conflicts may lead to editorial action.
Publication Malpractice
Publication malpractice includes any unethical practice that affects the originality, accuracy, confidentiality, authorship, review fairness, or integrity of a scholarly publication.
| Plagiarism | Copying text, ideas, data, tables, figures, methods, or results without proper acknowledgment. |
| Data Fabrication | Creating false research data, clinical findings, survey responses, audit outcomes, or quality improvement results. |
| Data Falsification | Manipulating data, excluding results unfairly, changing values, or presenting misleading healthcare outcomes. |
| Duplicate Submission | Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. |
| Confidentiality Breach | Disclosing patient identity, clinical records, institutional information, or unpublished manuscript content without permission. |
| Improper Authorship | Including authors who did not contribute or excluding contributors who should be credited. |
Corrections, Retractions and Withdrawals
If an error or ethical concern is identified in a submitted or published manuscript, the journal may consider correction, clarification, withdrawal, or retraction depending on the seriousness of the matter.
- A correction may be issued for genuine errors that do not affect the main validity of the article.
- A retraction may be considered when serious plagiarism, data fabrication, false authorship, or major misconduct is confirmed.
- A withdrawal request may be considered for manuscripts under review according to journal policy and editorial approval.
- The journal may publish an editorial notice where clarification is required for the scholarly record.
Confidentiality
Submitted manuscripts, unpublished healthcare data, patient-related information, reviewer comments, editorial decisions, revision files, author communication, and review records are treated as confidential. Editors, reviewers, and editorial staff must not share or use unpublished content for personal, academic, professional, or commercial advantage.
Final Responsibility
Authors are responsible for the originality, accuracy, ethical compliance, data integrity, patient confidentiality, citation quality, and professional relevance of their manuscripts. The editorial team is responsible for fair review, responsible decision-making, confidentiality, and maintaining publication standards.
Important Note
Submission of a manuscript to the Healthcare Quality Professionals Journal confirms that the authors agree to follow the journal’s publication ethics, malpractice statement, authorship policy, originality standards, patient confidentiality requirements, peer review process, correction policy, and final editorial decision.