Journal Policies – JFSTI

JFSTI conforms to the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) recommendations on chatbots, ChatGPT and scholarly manuscripts and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)'s position statement on Authorship and AI tools.

AI bots such as ChatGPT cannot be listed as authors on your submission.

Authors should specify the use of tools based on large language models and generative AI in the manuscript, indicating which tool was used and for what purpose, preferably in the methods or acknowledgements sections.

Authors are responsible for ensuring the accuracy, validity, and appropriateness of any content generated by tools based on large language models and generative AI. They must also verify that the cited references are correct and that the submission is free from plagiarism.

Editors and reviewers must uphold the confidentiality of the peer review process. Editors must not disclose information about submitted manuscripts or peer review reports to any tool based on large language models and generative AI. Reviewers must not use any tools based on large language models and generative AI to generate review reports.

Anyone may inform the editors and/or Editorial Staff at any time of suspected unethical behaviour or any type of misconduct by providing the necessary information or evidence to initiate an investigation.

INVESTIGATION

• Editor / Editor-in-Chief will consult with the Section Editors / Editorial Board on decisions regarding the initiation of an investigation.
• During an investigation, any evidence should be treated as strictly confidential and only made available to those strictly involved in investigating.
• The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them.
• If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious.

MINOR MISCONDUCT

Minor misconduct will be dealt with directly with those involved without involving any other parties, e.g.:

• Communicating to authors/reviewers whenever a minor issue involving misunderstanding or misapplication of academic standards has occurred.
• A warning letter to an author or reviewer regarding relatively minor misconduct.

MAJOR MISCONDUCT

The Editor-in-Chief, in consultation with the Section Editors / Editorial Board and, when appropriate, after further consultation with a small group of experts, should make any decision regarding the appropriate course of action based on the available evidence. The possible outcomes are as follows (these can be used separately or together):

• Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct.
• Informing the author's (or reviewer's) head of department or employer of any misconduct using a formal letter.
• The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal following the Retraction Policy (see below).
• A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period.
• Referring a case to a professional organisation or legal authority for further investigation and action.

When handling complaints and appeals, the editorial team will follow the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts.

The infringement of the legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), the violation of professional ethical codes, and research misconduct—such as multiple submissions, duplicate or overlapping publication, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, data fabrication, undisclosed use of tools based on large language models and generative AI, honest errors reported by the authors (for example, errors due to mixing up samples or using a scientific tool or equipment that is later found to be faulty), unethical research, or any major misconduct—require the retraction of an article. Occasionally, a retraction can be used to correct errors in submission or publication.

For any retracted article, the reason for retraction and the party responsible will be clearly stated in the retraction notice. Some libraries and scholarly organisations have established standards for handling retractions, and JFSTI has adopted this practice. In the electronic retraction notice, a link is provided to the original article. Conversely, in the electronic version of the original article, a link is included to the retraction notice, where it explicitly states that the article has been retracted. The original article is preserved unchanged, except for a watermark on each page of the PDF indicating that it is "retracted."

JFSTI encourages authors to share research data that are necessary for confirming the results published in the manuscript and/or improving the published work, following the principle 'as open as possible, as closed as necessary'. We accept supporting software applications, high-resolution images, background datasets, sound or video clips, extensive appendices, data tables, and other relevant items that cannot be included in the article.

Authors may submit data alongside their manuscript via our journal management system. In this case, the data will be accessible to reviewers and published once the manuscript is accepted online, such as on the general-purpose data repository Zenodo. Each data file will be assigned a DOI, allowing it to be cited in the same way as traditional publications. Please note that these materials will not be copy-edited or typeset: their appearance and format are solely the author's responsibility.

Alternatively, authors may deposit relevant data in a FAIR-compliant repository – institutional, disciplinary, or general-purpose. If you need assistance in finding a FAIR-compliant repository, check this link: https://repositoryfinder.datacite.org/. Authors should also provide via the repository any information needed to replicate, validate, and/or reuse the results or your study and analysis of the data. This includes details of any software, instruments, and other tools used to process the results. Where possible, the tools and instruments themselves should also be provided.

Exceptions: We recognise that openly sharing data may not always be possible. Exceptions to open access to research data underlying publications include the following: the obligation to protect results, confidentiality commitments, security requirements, the obligation to safeguard personal data, and other legitimate constraints. When open access is not available for the data needed to verify the conclusions of a publication reporting original results, authors should provide the necessary access to validate the conclusions, if their legitimate interests or constraints are protected.

If data access is restricted for ethical or security reasons, the manuscript must include:

• a description of the restrictions on the data;
• what, if anything, the relevant Institutional Review Board (IRB) or equivalent said about the data sharing; and
• all necessary information required for a reader or reviewer to apply for access to the data and the conditions under which access will be granted.

Data protection issues

Where human data cannot be effectively anonymised, it must not be shared to protect participant privacy unless individuals have provided explicit written consent for their identifiable data to be made publicly available.

In instances where the data cannot be made available, the manuscript must include:

• an explanation of the data protection concern;
• any intermediary data that can be de-identified without compromising anonymity;
• what, if anything, the relevant IRB or equivalent said about data sharing; and
• where applicable, all necessary information required for a reader or peer reviewer to apply for access to the data and the conditions under which access will be granted.

Furthermore, data should be included in a Data Accessibility Statement within the submitted paper, which will be published openly after publication. If data are not to be shared through the journal publication, the author should provide an explanation. When depositing data for a submission, the following points should be considered.

• The repository in which the data is deposited must be suitable for this subject and have a sustainability model.
• The data must be deposited under an open licence that allows unrestricted access (e.g., CC0, CC-BY). More restrictive licences should only be used if there is a valid reason (e.g., legal).
• The deposited data must include a version that is in an open, non-proprietary format.
• The deposited data must have been labelled in such a way that a 3rd party can make sense of it (e.g., sensible column headers, descriptions in a readme text file).
• Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data must be carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where relevant, the studies should have received approval from an appropriate Ethics Committee. The identity of the research participant should be anonymised wherever possible. For research involving human subjects, informed consent to take part in the study must be obtained from participants (or their legal guardian).
• A 'Data Accessibility Statement' should be included in the submission, before the reference list, detailing the data access information, including the DOI linking to it. If access is restricted in any way, the reason should be provided.

JFSTI is an open-access journal. All its content is available free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, as well as establish HTML links to them, without needing to seek the consent of the author or publisher.

Authors would voluntarily contribute USD 50.00 for articles accepted for publication to support the operations of the journal.

Authors can deposit the author's preprint, postprint (accepted version), and publisher's version (PDF) of their work in an institutional repository, subject-based and general-purpose repository, personal website (including social networking sites such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website either before or during the submission process, at any time after acceptance of the manuscript, and also after publication.

Full bibliographic details (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) of the original publication must be provided, along with links to the article's DOI and the license. The APA 7th edition referencing style, published by the American Psychological Association, is the format to use for citation.

Authors hold the copyright of their published papers and grant the publisher a non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in reuse, and to distribute it across all formats and media. Articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.

Authors may make additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the published paper, such as posting it to an institutional repository or publishing it in a book, provided they acknowledge its original publication in this journal.

The journal metadata are freely accessible to everyone and can be freely reused by anyone, under the terms of the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication licence.

The views expressed in the published works do not reflect those of the Editors and Editorial Staff. The authors assume legal and moral responsibility for the ideas presented in the articles. The publisher shall have no liability in the event of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible if there are any compensation claims.