Editorial Policy

Journal of Karnali Academy of Health Sciences (JKAHS) is an open access, indexed, peer-reviewed journal established in 2018 AD. Three issues (Jan-Apr, May-Aug and Sep-Dec) are published per year both online and in print with pISSN (2616-0064) and eISSN (2676-1327).

1. EDITORIAL PROCESS
JKAHS is dedicated to facilitate authors or contributors to disseminate knowledge for the good of all. We value unbiased, methodologically rigorous and ethically sound research work that broadens our understanding in the fields of health sciences. We prioritize publication of research works that generate evidence to guide quality clinical practice, holistic medical education and inclusive health-policy applicable to the remote and low-resource settings. JKAHS emphasize diversity and inclusiveness of authors, reviewer and editors in terms of their professional field of expertise, gender and region. We equally value positive and negative results of methodologically rigorous researches to avoid publication bias.

JKAHS adopts the principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing that is advocated by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). Wherever relevant, we follow International Committee of Medical Journal Editor (ICMJE) recommdndations for the conduct, reporting, editing and publication of the scholarly work in medical journals. Click to Explore More ...

Criteria for publication:
For a manuscript to get published, following criterias should be met at minimum:
1. The conduction and reporting of the manuscript should meet the ethical standards.
2. The article should be original i.e. sufficiently distinct from prior works in its content or context.
3. The manuscript should add something to the body of knowledge or understanding (Null or negative findings may meet this criterion well).
4. The methodology adopted should be of sufficient quality and the limitations acknowledged.
5. English language of the manuscript should be clear and comprehensible.
6. The article should be in line with the aims and scope of the journal.

Any manuscript submitted to the JKAHS must be plagiarism-free and should not have been published in any journal previously, and should not be under consideration for publication in any other journal or other citable forms. Authors are required to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights or other rights of any third party.

2. PEER-REVIEW POLICY & PROCESS
We adopt the double-blind peer-review process—reviewers are not aware of the authors’ identities and the authors are not aware of the reviewers’ identities. Original research article, hypothesis or theory article, review article, case report, brief comunication and protocol are peer-reviewed by at least two external reviewers in addition to editorial team, whereas the editorial, letter to editor, opinion and commentary are reviewed by editorial board members.

We make every effort to reach an initial decision within four to six weeks of submission, depending on the type and clarity of research work, research methodology used, and availability of reviewer. Based on the single or multiple rounds of review , the editorial-board can accepts or accept after revisions or reject of the manuscript.

3. ETHICAL GUIDELINES
We closely follow the spirit of ethical guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and Nepal Health Research Council's National Ethical Guidelines for Health Research in Nepal 2022 that set standards to meet the for best practices for conducting, reporting, editing and publishing the scholarly work. Any research that involves humans in any stage of the work must be conducted under the Declaration of Helsinki (1964).

All original research works that involve human subjects should have been approved by institutional ethics review committee before conduction of the research. Participation in the research should be voluntary and confidentiality should be mainained. Informed consent should have been obtained from each of the participants before participation in the study. For all articles that include information or clinical photographs relating to individual patients, written informed consent from each patient should be taken and should be signed by the patient.

In the case of any animal experiments, the authors must provide a full description of any anesthetic or surgical procedure used, as well as evidence that all possible steps were taken to avoid animal suffering at each stage of the experiment. All animal research must follow the ARRIVE guidelines.

Editors disclose any conflicts of interest before handling manuscripts, and such manuscripts are handled by other editors of our team. All editors handling manuscripts treat the manuscripts as confidential property of the authors and do not share with any third party except for the peer-reviewers before publication. However, it does not prevent the editors from checking for plagiarism using appropriate software. Further, editors do not use the submitted manuscripts for their personal benefits in any form during the editorial process. In case of rejection of a manuscript, all versions of the manuscript and related submission files are deleted from the web-portal of the journal to avoid misuse.

Peer-reviewers should treat the manuscript that they are assigned as confidential, and should not use the same for their personal as well as professional benefits. Also, they should disclose any conflict of interest and communicate with the journal editor before starting the review. The reviewers are supposed to inform the editor if they are unable to review the assigned manuscript in the allocated time frame of 2-4 weeks. Furthermore, the reviewers are requested to delete all the copies of the manuscript from their record after the submission of their review report. Click to Explore More ...

4. CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
JKAHS aims to ensure that conflicts of interest on the part of authors, reviewer and editors do not compromize objective and unbiased publication of research findings.

All authors are asked to disclose any conflicts of interest including inancial support, grant and other relationships that might be perceived as a conflict. We will ask authors to include a concordant statement on the title page of the manuscript. If there are no conflicts of interest to declare, then the authors will be asked to say so explicitly by writing on the title page “Conflict of interest statement: None declared.” or 'The author(s) declare that they have no competing interests.

JKAHS exercises full editorial freedom with regards to the publication of the content of the journal independent of the publisher. Editors disclose any conflicts of interest before handling manuscripts. We minimize the publication of articles authored by the members of the editorial board. No more than 20% of articles authored by editorial board members will be included in one issue of the JKAHS. If any manuscript is authored by an editorial team member of the journal, such a manuscript is handled by other editors of the team. Peer-reviewer should disclose any conflict of interest and communicate with the journal editor before starting the review.

5. CORRECTIONS & RETRACTIONS POLICY
Any errors that come to notice after publication are duely investigated. In case of minor errors, correction notice is published along with the details of the change citing the original publication. Any published articles with unintentional major errors will be retracted and may be considered for republication of the corrected version replacing the original one.

Serious errors that significantly change the results and the conclusions of the published researches are retracted with clear label of retraction, and will remain in the public domain.

8. REPOSITORY POLICY
JKAHS allows the authors to self-archieve any version of their manuscript including the submitted, accepted and published version in institutional or other repositories of their choice.

7. DATA SHARING POLICY
JKAHS encourages data sharing while ensuring de-identification of the participants. It promotes reproducibility and credibility of the research and benefits further research including meta-analysis. Authors are requested to mention the data-availability statement in the manuscript.

8. COMPLAINTS PROCESS
The authors, reviewers and readers can submit their complaints regarding the publication of the JKAHS via this email editor@jkahs.org.np

Editorial Policy

Journal of Karnali Academy of Health Sciences (JKAHS)

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