Publication Ethics

Multiple, Duplicate, Concurrent Publication/Simultaneous Submission

Forum Multimedia Publishing follows the recommendations of COPE and WAME and adheres to their guidelines on misconduct. Forum Multimedia Publishing will pursue cases of suspected research and publication misconduct, including but not limited to the following:

Multiple, Duplicate, Concurrent Publication/Simultaneous Submission

Forum Multimedia Publishing requires that all manuscripts submitted to our journals must be original. Upon submission of a manuscript, the authors confirm that no similar manuscript has been or will be submitted to any other journal for publication while the article is still under consideration by Forum Multimedia Publishing. It is considered unethical to submit an identical or highly similar manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Multiple submissions of the same paper can damage the reputation of journals if published in more than one journal and waste the time of editors and reviewers. Duplicate publications or redundant publications (re-packaging in different words of data already published by the same authors) will be rejected. If the authors are found to have more than one duplicate submission, Forum Multimedia Publishing will follow the COPE guidelines on Redundant Publications and will report this breach to their institution.

Plagiarism and Other Fraud

Forum Multimedia Publishing requires that authors are responsible for declaring the originality of their manuscripts. All manuscripts are rigorously evaluated at the time of submission using the text similarity detection system iThenticate and routine checks of all images in the manuscript. Therefore, Forum Multimedia Publishing expects all authors to retain their original data and documentation at the time of submission in order to help the journal evaluate the manuscript thoroughly (if this is not provided in a timely manner, this may cause a delay in evaluation until the issue is resolved).

If we discover the possibility of plagiarism in a manuscript, Forum Multimedia Publishing will follow the COPE (flowchart 1 or flowchart 2) and ICMJE guidelines for each manuscript suspected of unethical publishing practices. In the meantime, manuscripts suspected of plagiarism will not be considered for publication. In cases where papers have been published, they may also be corrected or formally retracted, depending on the extent of any plagiarism.

Image Manipulation

All digital images in manuscripts being considered for publication will be scrutinized for any indication of manipulation that does not meet the following guidelines. Violations of the guidelines described below may result in delays in processing or rejection of the manuscript, or retraction of the published article:

Any particular feature in the image must not be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced.
Different parts from the same gel or field of view, or combinations of images from different gels, areas, or exposures, must be clearly stated in the arrangement of the figure and in the legend.
Processing (e.g., changing brightness and contrast) is appropriate only when it is applied uniformly over the entire image and applied equally to the controls. Contrast should not be adjusted to make data disappear. Over-operation, such as emphasizing one area of the image at the expense of other areas (e.g., by using a biased threshold setting selection), is inappropriate, as is emphasizing experimental data relative to the control.
Nonlinear adjustments (e.g., changing gamma settings) must be disclosed in the figure legends.
All papers published in Forum Multimedia Publishing are required to submit raw unprocessed images of gels and protein blots with the final accepted version. These unprocessed images should be posted in the Supplementary Information. Any issues raised during or after the peer review process will be submitted to the editor, who may request raw data from the authors for comparison with the prepared figures. Failure to provide raw data may result in rejection of the manuscript or, in the case of published articles, retraction of the manuscript. Any manipulation that affects the interpretation of the data will result in rejection or retraction. Cases of suspected misconduct will be reported to the authors’ institution.
The use of retouching tools, such as cloning and repair tools in Photoshop, or any function that intentionally obscures manipulation, is unacceptable.