Editorial Policies

For journals, the following publication policies are applied by BioPharm Publisher.

BioPharm Publishers follows the single blind peer-review procedure for submissions of all manuscripts to its journals.
All submitted articles are subjected to an extensive peer review in consultation with members of the journal’s editorial board and independent external referees (usually three reviewers).
All manuscripts/chapters are assessed rapidly and the decision based on all the peer reviewers' comments, taken by the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, is then conveyed to the author(s).
Submissions from the Editor-in-Chief will undergo independent peer-review and will be submitted to another Editor for his decision on acceptance.

Articles must be written in good English in a clear and correct style in order to maintain uniformity throughout the text. Articles submitted are copyedited before they are published.

Articles must be submitted by one of the authors of the manuscript, and should not be submitted by anyone on their behalf.
The principal/corresponding author will be required to submit a Copyright Letter along with the manuscript, on behalf of all the co-authors (if any).
The author(s) will confirm that the manuscript (or any part of it) has not been published previously or is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
Furthermore, any illustration, structure or table that has been published elsewhere must be reported, and copyright permission for reproduction must be obtained.

Generally, the editorial decisions are not reverted.
However, authors who think that their manuscript was rejected due to a misunderstanding or mistake may seek an explanation for the decision.
Appeals must give sound reasoning and compelling evidence against the criticism raised in the rejection letter.
A difference of opinion as to the interest, novelty, or suitability of the manuscript for the journal will not be considered as an appeal.
The EIC and other relevant editors will consider the appeal and the decision thereafter taken by the journal will be deemed final.
Acceptance of the manuscript is not guaranteed even if the journal agrees to reconsider the manuscript, and the reconsideration process may involve previous or new reviewers or editors and substantive revision.
Authors who wish to make a complaint should refer them to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal concerned. Complaints to the Publisher may be emailed to info@biopharmpublisher.com

Financial contributions and any potential conflict of interest must be clearly acknowledged under the heading ‘Conflict of Interest’.
Authors must list the source(s) of funding for the study.
This should be done for each author.

Any instance of content overlap is further scrutinized for suspected plagiarism according to the publisher’s Editorial Policies.
BioPharm Publisher allows an overall similarity of 20% for a manuscript to be considered for publication.
The similarity percentage is further checked keeping the following important points in view

The text of every submitted manuscript is checked using the Content Tracking mode.
The Content Tracking mode ensures that manuscripts with an overall low percentage similarity (but may have a higher similarity from a single source) are not overlooked.
The acceptable limit for similarity of text from a single source is 5%.
If the similarity level is above 5%, the manuscript is returned to the author for paraphrasing the text and citing the original source of the copied material.
It is important to mention that the text taken from different sources with an overall low similarity percentage will be considered as a plagiarized content if the majority of the article is a combination of copied material.

There may be some manuscripts with an overall low similarity percentage, but a higher percentage from a single source.
A manuscript may have less than 20% overall similarity but there may be 15% similar text taken from a single article.
The similarity index in such cases is higher than the approved limit for a single source.
Authors are advised to thoroughly rephrase the similar text and properly cite the original source to avoid plagiarism and copyright violation.

We all know that scholarly manuscripts are written after thorough review of previously published articles.

It is therefore not easy to draw a clear boundary between legitimate representation and plagiarism.

However, the following important features can assist in identifying different kinds of plagiarized content. These are:

Reproduction of others words, sentences, ideas or findings as one’s own without proper acknowledgement.
Text recycling, also known as self-plagiarism. It is an author’s use of a previous publication in another paper without proper citation and acknowledgement of the original source.
Poor paraphrasing: Copying complete paragraphs and modifying a few words without changing the structure of original sentences or changing the sentence structure but not the words.
Verbatim copying of text without putting quotation marks and not acknowledging the work of the original author.
Properly citing a work but poorly paraphrasing the original text is considered as unintentional plagiarism. Similarly, manuscripts with language somewhere between paraphrasing and quoting are not acceptable. Authors should either paraphrase properly or quote and in both cases, cite the original source.
Higher similarity in the abstract, introduction, materials and methods, and discussion and conclusion sections indicates that the manuscript may contain plagiarized text. Authors can easily explain these parts of the manuscript in many ways.
However, technical terms and sometimes standard procedures cannot be rephrased; therefore Editors must review these sections carefully before making a decision.

Published manuscripts which are found to contain plagiarized text are retracted from the journal’s website after careful investigation and approval by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal.
A ‘Retraction Note’ as well as a link to the original article is published on the electronic version of the plagiarized manuscript and an addendum with retraction notification in the particular journal.