Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine follows COPE guidelines on publication ethics.
Authorship and Contribution
Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine follows ICMJE recommendations for authorship. Authorship should be based on the following criteria as per ICMJE:
- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
- Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND
- Final approval of the version to be published; AND
- Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
These criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to meet criterion #s 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.
Conflicts of Interest
Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine requires authors to declare any and all conflicts of interests in relation to their work. All manuscripts must include a “Conflicts of Interest” section.
Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any conflicts of interest and may be excluded from the review process if such conflicts exist.
Financial conflicts of interests include (but are not limited to):
- Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary 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 stocks or shares 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.
- Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript.
Non-financial conflicts
- Non-financial competing interests include (but are not limited to) political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, and intellectual competing interests
Commercial organizations
Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical trials, should declare these as competing interests on submission.
Editorial Board Members, Guest Editors, and Editors
Editorial Board Members, Guest Editors, Senior Editors, Associate Editors, and Assistant Editors are required to declare any conflicts of interests and may be excluded from the peer review process if a conflict exists.
In addition, they should exclude themselves from handling manuscripts in cases where there is a known conflict of interest. This may include – but is not limited to – having previously published with one or more of the authors.
Where an Editorial Board Member, Guest Editor, Senior Editor, Associate Editor, or Assistant Editor is on the author list they must declare this in the conflicts of interest section in the submitted manuscript. If they are an author or have any other competing interest regarding a specific manuscript, another Assistant Editor, Associate Editor, Guest Editor, Senior Editor, or member of the Editorial Board will be assigned to assume responsibility for overseeing peer review. These submissions are subject to the exact same review process as any other manuscript.
Editors are welcome to submit papers to the journal. These submissions are not given any priority over other manuscripts, and Editor status has no bearing on editorial consideration.
Peer Reviewers
All external peer reviewers must declare conflicts of interest to the managing editor. Internal peer reviewers will be selected to avoid conflicts of interest but should inform the managing editor of any potential unforeseen conflicts. In order to prevent the majority of conflicts that may arise during the review process, Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine utilizes a double-blind peer review system. If there are conflicts identified during or after the review process, a statement will be included with the final publication.
Ethics and consent
Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine follows ICMJE recommendations on protection of research participants.
Research involving human participants, human material, or human data, 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). Case reports and case series with ≤ 3 patients do not require ethics committee approval or a statement of exemption.
Informed consent, as well as consent to publish, must be obtained from all human subjects. Consent forms do not need to be included at initial submission but must be furnished upon request.
If consent cannot be obtained because the author(s) are unable to trace or contact the patient, a case report or case series may only be published after sufficient anonymization. Sufficient anonymization entails ensuring that no-one, including the patient, is capable of identifying the person described in the case(s). Anonymization may result in the loss of information and evidence. In this case, a statement will be added to the published version of the manuscript: "Detail has been removed to ensure anonymity. The editors and reviewers have seen the complete information available and are satisfied that the arguments contained herein are valid and well supported." In extreme cases it may be necessary to anonymize the author list as well.
Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee.
Clinical Trial and Systematic Review Registration
Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine, in accordance with ICMJE recommendations, requires registration of all clinical trials in a public database. In the case that a trial has not been pre-registered a retrospective registration is acceptable.
Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine recommends, but does not require, systematic reviews and meta-analysis be registered in a public registry.
Data and Reproducibility
Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine strongly encourages that all data on which the conclusions of the paper rely should be available to readers. While data sharing is not mandatory, editors may request access to any data not shared during submission that may be required for assessment of the manuscript. Failure to provide said data may result in rejection.
We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files, in machine-readable format (such as spreadsheets rather than PDFs) whenever possible.
Any custom code described in the manuscript or used to obtain results must be available in either supplementary files or in a public repository for assessment by reviewers and editors.
All publicly available datasets must be references in the reference list with a unique identifier such as a DOI.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine does not allow for the inclusion of Large Language Models (LLM) such as ChatGPT in the author list. Use of LLMs for research purposes should be detailed in the methods section and include an appropriate citation.
Duplicate Publication
All manuscripts submitted to Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine must be original and the manuscript must not be under consideration by any other journal. Common exceptions are listed below:
Theses
Manuscripts derived from theses and dissertations are acceptable. If the original work is available in a public or institutional repository, it should be cited appropriately. Please include a note to the editor if you are submitting work derived from a thesis or dissertation.
Preprints
Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine encourages posting on a preprint server or personal/institutional website. This does not constitute previous publication. Upon acceptance of a manuscript, we request that the preprint be updated to include a link to the final published version.
Abstracts, Posters, and Presentations
Abstracts, posters, and presentations do not prevent consideration of the full manuscript. However, any published abstract should be properly cited.
Other exceptions may be made at the discretion of the editorial board.
Prior Publication in Student Journals
Work submitted previously to internal student journals may be considered on a case-by-case basis. Please include details of the prior publication when submitting your manuscript. It is the authors' responsibility to ensure they are in compliance with all prior copyright agreements.
Post Publication
Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine has no embargo period and encourages posting of accepted articles to institutional or other repositories. At this time, all accepted articles will be posted to Zenodo as part of our journal archiving and preservation efforts.
Allegations of Misconduct
Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine follows COPE guidelines when dealing with 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 ethically. 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.
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 (anonymized) 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 may be reported to the author(s)’ institution(s).
Plagiarism
Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine makes use of Grammarly in combination with editorial oversight to screen for plagiarism. If plagiarism is identified, relevant COPE guidelines on plagiarism will be followed.
Post Publication Discussion and Corrections
Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine encourages continued discussion after publication. We accept letters to the editor and responses from authors.
If it becomes necessary to retract or correct an article, Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine follows relevant COPE guidelines.
If an editor becomes aware of a potentially serious issue, they may issue an expression of concern. This may be superseded by a correction or retraction.
In exceptional circumstances, Intermountain Journal of Translational Medicine may remove an article from its online platform. This may occur if the article in question is found to be unlawful in some way or if it is found to contain content that is deemed to be immediately harmful to the public.
Complaints and Appeals
Appeals
Authors who wish to appeal decisions (including rejection of a manuscript) should directly contact the editor handling their submission. A formal letter of appeal is required. Given that this occurs outside of the normal workflow, several weeks may be required to respond. Appeals will only be considered if (a) the authors can demonstrate an error has been made during review that impacted the final decision (b) additional relevant information can be included or (c) substantial bias in the review process can be demonstrated.
Final decisions on appeals will be made by the managing editor in conjunction with the editorial board and editors-in-chief.
All other feedback and complaints may be directed to the journal contact page.
Complaints
All complaints concerning publication process and ethics will be initially handled by the managing editor. If the complaint concerns the managing editor, the authors should directly forward the complaint to both co-editor-in-chiefs.