Ethical standards and procedures

ETHICAL STANDARDS AND PROCEDURES

Termedia Publishing House is committed to upholding standards of ethical behaviour at all stages of the publication process. We follow closely the industry associations, such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), that set standards and provide guidelines for best practices in order to meet these requirements. Authors and editors, have ethical obligations with regard to the publication of the results of research. According to our publishing policy, manuscripts not conforming to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki should not be accepted for publication.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF AUTHORS
The Author(s) is obliged to prepare and send the article in accordance with the requirements set out in the journal Editor. Moreover the Author(s) is obliged to submit editorial complemented by a statement which will be included: a statement about the originality of the content of the article (work not yet published anywhere), the integrity of the copyrights of others, no conflict of interest or its application, as well as the superior permission to publish an article in the journal. Authors are obliged to participate in peer review process. The Author(s) are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes, they also should provide a list of references.
Author(s) are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias or be seen to bias their work.
Authors may, at any time before accepting the article for publication, withdraw the article by submitting a statement in the electronic system of the Editorial System.

PEER REVIEW PROCESS
The articles are subject to preliminary peer review by the Editor-in-Chief. If an article does not meet the requirements and is inconsistent with the journal's scope of interests or contains numerous unethically copied passages (based on a high similarity index reported by the anti-plagiarism system), it is rejected outright. If the submitted work has modifiable shortcomings, the Editor-in-Chief sends the article to the authors to be corrected before further evaluation of the manuscript. If the corrected manuscript meets the formal requirements, it is forwarded for further experts review.
Research and review submissions from the Editor-in-Chief and other journal staff members are processed by the Associate Editors who declare no conflicts of interest in the journal's online submission system. The Editor-in-Chief does not have access to their own submissions and cannot influence the selection of peer reviewers.
Reviewer comments are drafted by experts in a given thematic field on the basis of double-blind peer review, which means that the reviewer and author identities are masked. Submitted manuscripts are evaluated by at least two external reviewers. The Editor-in-Chief selects reviewers based on the submission topic and experts’ academic credentials (based on their academic achievements and review experience).
The rules for reviewing papers comply with the guidelines of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (https://www.gov.pl/web/science/ministry1). Additional guidance on peer review is available from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7944958/.
All reviewers are offered an option to be automatically credited for their reviewer accomplishments by Web of Science Reviewer Recognition Service (formerly Publons crediting; https://publons.com/wos-op/).
Improvement of work after review
The work after reviews made by external reviewers and the Editor-in-Chief of this Journal is sent to the authors for revisions and corrections. Revised text passages, information in tables, descriptions of tables or figures should be marked in the text of the work with a different color or in the “track changes” mode, so that it would facilitate further development of the text at the stage of a preparation for publication. The improvement of the work should be sent via an electronic panel with a letter attached as a commentary for reviewers, responding to reviewers’ questions and explaining the changes made.

AUTHORSHIP CRITERIA AND/OR WHO SHOULD BE LISTED AS A CONTRIBUTOR
Termedia Publishing House in the matter of authorship criteria and/or who should be listed as a contributor, respects standards recommended by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics). Detailed information about those criteria you can find in COPE Report publicationethics.org/files/2003pdf12_0.pdf.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF REVIEWERS
Articles are selected for publication in double blind selection system and published in open access system. Reviewer shall review by the electronic system on the basis of questions prepared for a specific title. It is also possible for a reviewer to send individual comments to be published in the article content.
All judgments and findings in the peer-review process should be objective. Reviewers should have no conflict of interest (they make a statement before proceeding to review.). Reviewers - if is a legitimate need - should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited, and reviewed by them articles should be treated confidentially prior to their publication.

DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF EDITORS
Editors are responsible for deciding which articles are accepted for publication. Editors act in a balanced, objective and fair way while carrying out their expected duties, without discrimination on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, ethnic or geographical origin of the authors.
Publisher and Editors are always ready to publish corrections, clarifications, withdrawals and apologies if there is a legitimate need.
In the situation when there is a suspicion that an inappropriate research procedure described in the work sent by autors has taken place, the authors are obliged by the editorial office - if not yet submitted - to submit information regarding the approval of the described research procedure by a properly established ethics committee to conduct clinical trials.

POLICIES REGARDING PLAGIARISM
Plagiarism is using the words, tables, grafics or ideas of others and presenting them as your own. Such activity is a form of fraud. It can take many forms, from deliberately seeking academic advantage by replicating the work of others, to accidentally copying from a source without obtaining permission from the rights holder.
The Editor will not accept a paper which employs ghostwriting or guest authorship, and will disclose all such practices, especially symptoms of scientific dishonesty (breaking or compromising the ethical principles effective in scientific research) and plagiarism.
The author accepts that a submitted manuscript may be screened for plagiarism against previously published works (iThenticate - plagiarism checker). Manuscripts that are found to have been plagiarized will incur plagiarism sanctions: immediate rejection of the submitted manuscript or published article, prohibition of any new submissions.

POLICIES REGARDING ADVERTISEMENTS
All advertisements should be approved by the journal owner, publisher or Editor in Chief. Advertisements are a separate section from content. The advertisement in the publisher‘s journal is not a guarantee, nor an endorsement of the given product, service, company, or of the claims made in such advertising by the publisher, editors or journal owner. Advertising is clearly distinguished from the editorial content.
All advertisements should identify the advertiser by trademark or signature.
The publisher is not responsible for any damages, including but not limited to actual, direct, incidental, or consquental damages.

POLICIES FOR RESEARCH ON HUMAN AND VULNERABLE POPULATIONS
Authors should follow the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association (www.wma.net). The manuscript should contain a statement that the work has been approved by the relevant institutional review boards or ethics committees and that all human participants gave informed consent. Identifying information, including patients’ names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published.
Vulnerable populations (children) require special protection during research.Researchers need to consider additional ethics concerns or issues arising from working with potentially vulnerable persons. In cases where research involves potentially vulnerable groups, for example children, older persons or adults with learning disabilities, every effort should be made to secure freely given informed consent that participants or their legal representatives have actively provided.

INFORMED CONSENT POLICY
All individuals have individual rights that are not to be infringed. Individual participants in studies have, the right to decide what happens to the (identifiable) personal data gathered, to what they have said during a study, as well as to any photograph that was taken. This is especially true concerning images of vulnerable people (e.g. minors, patients, refugees, etc). In many instances authors need to secure written consent before including images. Identifying details (names, dates of birth, identity numbers, biometrical characteristics (such as for example facial features) of the participants that were studied should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and genetic profiles unless the information is essential for scholarly purposes and the participant (or parent/guardian if the participant is a minor or incapable or legal representative) gave written informed consent for publication. Under certain circumstances consent is not required as long as information is anonymized and the submission does not include images that may identify the person.
Informed consent for publication should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of participants is inadequate protection of anonymity.
If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic profiles, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort meaning.
Exceptions where it is not necessary to obtain consent:
• Images such as x rays, laparoscopic images, ultrasound images, brain scans, pathology slides unless there is a concern about identifying information in which case, authors should ensure that consent is obtained.
• If images are being reused from prior publications, the Publisher will assume that the prior publication obtained the relevant information regarding consent. Authors should provide the appropriate attribution for republished images.

DATA SHARING POLICY
Physiotherapy Quarterly is published in open acces without any requirements or restrictions.
Journal is committed to a more open research landscape, facilitating faster and more effective research discovery by enabling reproducibility and verification of data, methodology and reporting standards. We encourage all authors of articles published in our journal to share their research data including, but not limited to: raw data, processed data, algorithms, protocols, methods.
All authors willing to share such data have the opportunity to do so and they are made available in the form of supplementary materials.

POLICY CONCERNING THE PUBLICATION OF SPECIAL THEMATIC ISSUES
Special Issues for this journal are thematic issues and undergo the same review process as other issues published by the journal. The journal Editorial Board maintains editorial oversight.