The ethical policy of IMJPL is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with IMJPL. The ethical policy of IMJPL is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or articles submitted to the journal should be published in the concerned issue. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit http://publicationethics.org

Duties and Responsibilities of Publisher

(https://publicationethics.org/core-practices)

• IMJPL is committing to ensure that editorial decisions on manuscript submissions are the final.
• IMJPL is promising to ensure that the decision on manuscript submissions is only made based on professional judgment and will not be affected by any commercial interests.
• IMJPL is monitoring the ethics by Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
• IMJPL is always checking the plagiarism and fraudulent data issues involving in the submitted manuscript.
• IMJPL is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.

Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

(http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf)

• The Editors of the journal should have the full authority to reject/accept a manuscript.
• The Editors of the journal should maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts under review or until they are published.
• The Editor-in-Chief should take a decision on submitted manuscripts, whether to be published or not with other editors and reviewers
• The Editors of the journal should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
• The Editors of the journal should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.
• The Editors of the journal should maintain academic integrity and strive to meet the needs of readers and authors.
• The Editors of the journal should be willing to investigate plagiarism and fraudulent data issues and willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
• The Editors of the journal should have the limit themselves only to the intellectual content.
• The Editors of the journal must not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
• Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

(http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Peer%20review%20guidelines.pdf)

• The Reviewers of the journal should assist the Editors in taking the decision for publishing the submitted manuscripts.
• After reviewing the manuscript summary, the selected reviewer should immediately notify the editor of his/her decision to accept or reject the reviewing of the manuscript, and, if accepted, he/she must reviewer the manuscript at the appointed time.
• The Reviewers should maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts, which they are invited to review.
• The Reviewers should provide comments in time that will help editors to make decision on the submitted manuscript to be published or not.
• The Reviewers are bound to treat the manuscript received for peer reviewing as confidential, and must not use the information obtained through peer review for personal advantage. 
• The Reviewers comments against each invited manuscript should be technical, professional and objective.
• The Reviewers should not review the manuscripts in which they have found conflicts of interest with any of the authors, companies, or institutions.
• The Reviewers should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.
• When the reviewers know the author’s identity, they should not be allowed to review the manuscript.
• The reviewers should not entrust the refereeing of the manuscript to another person without informing the editor.
• If the reviewers discover that the manuscript has been sent to another journal or that it is based on another published or unpublished work, they should notify the editor.
• If the manuscript falls outside of the reviewer’s field of expertise, he/she should decline to evaluate it.

Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

(http://publicationethics.org/files/International%20standards_authors_for%20website_11_Nov_2011.pdf)

• Manuscripts must be submitted only in English and should be written according to sound grammar and proper terminology.
• Manuscripts must be submitted with the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis) and are not currently under consideration by another journal published by or any other publisher.
• The submitting corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the manuscript article's publication has been approved by all the other coauthors.
• To sustain the peer review system, authors have an obligation to participate in peer review process to evaluate manuscripts from others. 
• It is also the authors' responsibility to ensure that the manuscripts emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution.
• It is a condition for submission of a manuscript that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.
• Authors are requested to clearly identify who provided financial support for the conduct of research and/or preparation of the manuscript and briefly describe the role of the founder/ sponsor in any part of the work.
• Under open access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly.
• All authors have agreed to allow the corresponding author to serve as the correspondent with the editorial office, to review the edited manuscript and proof.
• When author(s) discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript. 
• All authors must know that that the submitted manuscripts under review or published with IMJPL are subject to screening using Plagiarism Prevention Software. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. 
• All authors must ensure that all authors have read the submission final checklist before being submitted to the IMJPL.  For more details kindly see the link: (https://p-l.journals.miu.ac.ir/page_186.html).
• While submitting the manuscript, the corresponding author must also register the names and information of all co-authors in the system, and after that no additional authors could be added.
• The list of authors should contain the names of those who made a major contribution to the writing of the article.
• The authors of the article are responsible for the article’s content. They must therefore carefully understand and evaluate their viewpoints. The article should also include sufficient sources and information so that other researchers can access the same data set and do a follow-up study.

Principles of Transparency

• Peer review process: IMJPL is a double blind peer reviewed electronic quarterly publication concerned. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, is clearly described on the journal’s Web site (http://p-l.journals.miu.ac.ir/page_162.html).
• Editorial Board: IMJPL has very strong editorial board, whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors is provided on the journal’s Web site (http://p-l.journals.miu.ac.ir/journal/editorial.board).
• Contact information: Journal is provided the contact information for the editorial office of IMJPL (http://p-l.journals.miu.ac.ir/journal/about).
• Access: The Journal database is fully open access and full text of published articles is available for everyone who can get access to the Journal website.
• Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct: Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.
• Web site: A journal’s Web site (http://p-l.journals.miu.ac.ir/) contains that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.
• Name of journal: International Multidisciplinary Journal of Pure Life (IMJPL) has unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal
• Conflicts of interest: Authors are requested to evident whether impending conflicts do or do not exist while submitting their articles to IMJPL through Conflict of Interest Disclosure form (http://p-l.journals.miu.ac.ir/page_184.html).
• Publishing schedule: The periodicity at which a journal publishes is clearly indicated (http://p-l.journals.miu.ac.ir/journal/about).

Handling Cases of Misconduct

Once IMJPL confirms a violation against IMJPL’s publication ethics, IMJPL addresses ethical concerns diligently following an issue-specific standard practice as summarized below.

• The first action of the journal Editor is to inform the Editorial Office of IMJPL by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner.
• If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and it seems that serious unethical conduct has taken place, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via Editorial Office.  After deliberation, the Committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions. 
• If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Publication Committee, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the author of IMJPL publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the Editor may request the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.
• Notification will be sent to corresponding author and any work by the author responsible for the violation or any work these persons coauthored that is under review by IMJPL journal will be rejected immediately.
• In extreme cases, notifications will be sent to the affiliations of the authors and the authors are prohibited from submitting their work to IMJPL for 3 years.
• In serious cases of fraud that result in retraction of the article, a retraction notice will be published in the journal and will be linked to the article in the online version. The online version will also be marked “retracted” with the retraction date.

Plagiarism and Similarity Rates

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works. If the authors have used the work and/or words of others, they should appropriately cite or quote.

Paper Correction and Retraction Policy

A Retraction is a notice that the paper should not be regarded as part of the scientific literature. Retractions are issued if there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, this can be as a result of misconduct or honest error. The retraction may be initiated by the editors of the journal, or by the author(s) of the paper. However, since the Editor-in-Chief are responsible for the journal's content, always make the final decision to retract the material. The journal Editor-in-Chief may retract publications even if all or some of the authors refuse to retract the publication.

Erratum

An error introduced by the publisher that affects the integrity of the version of record, the reputation of the authors, or the reputation of the journal, is termed as Erratum. An Erratum is a statement by the authors of the original paper that briefly describes any correction(s) resulting from errors or omissions. Any effects on the conclusions of the paper should be noted. The corrected article is not removed from the online journal, but notice of erratum is given. The Erratum is made freely available to all readers and is linked to the corrected article.

Addendum

An addendum is a notification of the addition of information to an article. Addenda are published when the editors decide that the addendum is crucial to the reader's understanding of a significant part of the published contribution. Addenda include Editorial Expression of Concern, which is an editorial statement alerting our readership to serious concerns with the published paper. An Editorial Expression of Concern is typically updated with another amendment once further information is available.

Addenda do not contradict the original publication, but if the author inadvertently omitted significant information available at the time, this material can be published as an addendum. Addenda may be peer-reviewed, according to journal policy, and are normally subject to oversight by the editors of the journal. Addenda relating to the article content are published only rarely and only when the journal editors decide that an addendum is crucial to the reader's understanding of a significant part of the published article. All addenda are linked to the original article to which they relate.

Corrigenda

A corrigendum is a notification of a significant error made by the authors of the article. All corrigenda are normally approved by the editors of the journal. Corrigendum or Author Correction. Notification of an important error made by the author(s) that affects the publication record or the scientific integrity of the paper, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.

When should a Publication be Retracted?

Retraction takes place if:

1. The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper referencing, permission or justification.
2. If the work is plagiarized
3. If the work reports unethical research.

So, publications should be retracted as soon as possible when the journal editors are convinced that the publication is seriously flawed and misleading (or is redundant or plagiarized).

Also, in rare and extreme cases involving legal infringement, the Publisher may redact or remove an article. Bibliographic information about the article will be retained to ensure the integrity of the scientific record.

Read COPE Guidelines for Retracting Articles.

What Are the Compelling Reasons?

• Plagiarism
• Bogus Claims of Authorship
• Multiple Submissions
• Fraudulent Data
• Infringements of Ethical Codes
• Redundant Publication
• Failure to Disclose a Major Competing Interest

Should a Withdrawal be Applied in Cases of Disputed Authorship?

Authors sometimes request that articles are retracted when authorship is disputed after publication. If there is no reason to doubt the validity of the findings or the reliability of the data it is not appropriate to retract a publication solely for an authorship dispute. In such cases, the journal editor should inform those who are involved in the dispute that he/she cannot adjudicate in such cases, but they may be willing to publish a correction to the author/contributor list if the authors/contributors (or their institutions) provide appropriate proof that such a change is justified.

Paper Retraction Process

• A retraction note entitled "Retraction: [article title]" signed by the authors and/or the editor is published in the paginated part of a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list.
• In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article.
• The original article is retained unchanged saving for a watermark on the pdf. file version on each page to indicate that it is "retracted".

 Wager E, Barbour V, Yentis S, Kleinert S. Retraction Guidelines. Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Sep 2009. Available from:

http://publicationethics.org/files/retraction%20guidelines.pdf

Withdrawal Regulations

• Withdrawal is an action that takes the manuscript out of the review process and places it back into the author's dashboard. Generally, we do not suggest the article withdrawal, since it wastes valuable manuscript processing time, cost and works spent by the publisher.
• Article withdrawal is applied to submitted papers either within peer review process or accepted for publication that is for the moment only available in a pre-publication form ("Early Release or Ahead of Print"). These sometimes contain errors or are articles that may have already been published and then mistakenly resubmitted for publication elsewhere. Articles may also be retracted to allow authors to correct any errors that had not been identified before submission.

 Withdrawal Steps

• Pre-Review: is a period at which the author(s) submit(s) her/his article until to be sent for the review. The author(s) can withdraw their papers at this step without paying any charges and/or posing compelling reasons.
• Peer-Review: is a period at which the manuscript is submitted completely to the website and is included in the review process. The authors must have compelling reasons and pay cost as the withdrawal penalty.
• Review-Final Decision: is a period from the acceptance of an article until to be sent for publication if the article meets the journal standards. The authors should have their compelling reasons and pay the cost of peer review as the withdrawal penalty.
• Post-Publication: when a paper is published (online and/or hard copy). Withdrawing at this step is not possible at all.

Republishing

Republishing is regarded as Plagiarism in IMJPL. The journal explicitly instructs authors not to submit papers or variations of papers that have already been published elsewhere even in other languages, especially, those articles which are published in local journals (in local languages) are not permitted to be submitted to this journal.

Note: The authors and reviewers can refer to the following link for more information about the rules and regulations of the International Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE):
https://publicationethics.org/core-practices.