Journal Policy

  1. Editorial Policy

The publication of an article in a peer reviewed journal is an essential model for Libyan Journal of Medical and Applied Sciences (LJMAS). It is necessary to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editorial, the peer reviewer and the publisher.

Any manuscript or substantial parts of it, submitted to the journal must not be under consideration by any other journal. In general, the manuscript should not have already been published in any journal or other citable form, although it may have been deposited on a preprint server. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.

  1. Open Access Policy

Libyan Journal of Medical and Applied Sciences (LJMAS) is an open journal, therefore there are no fees required for downloading any publication from the journal website by authors, readers, and institution.

The journal applies the license of CC BY (a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license). This license allows authors to keep ownership of the copyright of their papers. But this license permits any user to download, print out, extract, reuse, archive, and distribute the article, so long as appropriate credit is given to the authors and the source of the work.

The license ensures that the article will be available as widely as possible and that the article can be included in any scientific archive.

  1. Peer-review Policy

All the manuscripts submitted to LJMAS will be subjected to the double-blinded peer-review process;

- The manuscript will be reviewed by two suitable experts in the respective subject area.

- Reports of all the reviewers will be considered while deciding on acceptance/revision or rejection of a manuscript.

- Editor-In-Chief will make the final decision, based on the reviewer’s comments.

- Editor-In-Chief can ask one or more advisory board members for their suggestions upon a manuscript, before making the final decision.

- Associate editor and review editors provide administrative support to maintain the integrity of the peer-review process.

- In case, authors challenge the editor’s negative decision with suitable arguments, the manuscript can be sent to one more reviewer and the final decision will be made based upon his recommendations.

  1. Copyright Policy

All the articles published in LJMAS are distributed under a creative common’s attribution CC International license (a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license). This license allows authors to keep ownership f the copyright of their papers. But this license permits any user to download, print out, extract, reuse, archive, and distribute the article, so long as appropriate credit is given to the authors and the source of the work. The license ensures that the article will be available as widely as possible and that the article can be included in any scientific archive.

  1. Authorship Policy

The manuscript authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution and intellectual input to the research submitted to the journal, including design, performance, interpretation of the reported study, and writing the manuscript. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors.

Others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the manuscript but without intellectual input should only be recognized in the acknowledgements section of the manuscript. Also, one of the authors should be selected as the corresponding author to communicate with the journal and approve the final version of the manuscript for publication in the LJMAS.

  1. Author Self-Archiving Policy

The journal allows the authors to self-archive pre-print, post-print and publisher’s version of the articles in any OAI-compliant repository.

  1. Plagiarism Policy

The authors should ensure the originality of their contents while preparing a manuscript draft. In case the authors have used the work and/or words of others this must be appropriately cited or quoted. All the articles submitted to LJMAS shall be screened for plagiarism using iThenticate (online plagiarism detection software). In case, plagiarism is detected during the review/editorial process, such manuscript(s) will be rejected immediately. If the plagiarism is proven after publication, such manuscript(s) will be retracted from the journal and an appropriate announcement will be placed in this regard. We can also consider appropriate action against authors depending upon the seriousness of the case.

Retraction from publication

We can bring such instants in notice of author’s funding agencies, author’s institutes (where they work) and to the original authors whose work has been plagiarized. COPE flow charts shall also be considered while dealing with plagiarism complaints.

Complaints and appeals

Authors & readers can submit their complaints/appeal to the editor or the publisher of the journal through email. All the complaints will assign a unique complaint number by the publisher. Authors/readers can use complaint numbers for further follow-up.

Disclaimer

The author(s) of each article appearing in this Journal is/are solely responsible for the content thereof; neither the Libyan Journal of Medical and Applied Sciences (LJMAS) nor its editors or publisher or anyone else involved in creating, producing or distribution assumes any liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information provided in the Journal, nor shall they be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages arising out of the use of the Libyan Journal of Medical and Applied Sciences (LJMAS).

  1. Conflict of Interest Policy

In order to avoid potential conflicts of interest, journal submissions are assigned to editors. Conflicts between editors and authors are avoided in the following relationships: Current colleagues, recent colleagues, recent co-authors, and doctoral students on whose committee the editor served as chair. Individual editors are required to notify the managing editor of any conflicts that are not listed above after papers are assigned. If none of the editors pass all of the conflict screenings, the manuscript will be assigned to the co-editors who are least conflicted. Furthermore, sitting editors assign co-editors who are least conflicted for all paper submissions. To avoid conflicts of interest, journal submissions are also assigned to referees. After papers are assigned, referees are asked to inform the editor of any conflicts that may exist.

  1. Data Sharing Policy

LJMAS 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 researchers to share their research data, including but not limited to: raw data, processed data, software, algorithms, protocols, methods, and materials, in articles that are published in our journals.

LJMAS encourages authors to share the information by archiving it in a suitable public repository, along with any other artifacts that support the findings in the paper. In order for this statement to be included in their paper, authors may provide a data availability statement along with a link to the repository they used. Published data must be cited. For the purpose of confirming the existence or absence of shared data, all accepted manuscripts have the option to publish a data availability statement. If you've shared data, this declaration will outline how it can be accessed and include a persistent identifier (such as a DOI or accession number) from the repository where the data was shared.