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Editorial Policies--The FASEB Journal

Editorial Policies

FJ Express Citations
Errata
Misconduct Policy
Embargo Policy
Press Access
Peer Review Process Including Rebuttal Policy
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Criteria for Authorship
Procedures for Changes in Authorship after Acceptance
Statement on the Ethical Use of Humans and/or Animals in Research
Access to Unique Materials such as Cell Lines, Organisms, and Software
Copyright and Permissions Policy
The NIH Public Access Policy and Your Manuscript


FJ Express Citations
There have been a number of issues raised by authors regarding how citations to the The FASEB Journal are handled by Thomson ISI. As a result there has been an ongoing dialog between FASEB staff and Thomson ISI regarding these issues. Please see the letter from Thomson ISI for more information.

Errata
The FASEB Journal makes every effort to publish error-free manuscripts, providing authors with page proofs before publication. There are occasions, however, when it is necessary to publish a correction. Errata may be sent directly to journals{at}faseb.org.

The author will be assessed page charge(s) for errata that result from author error. The journal will cover the costs of errata that are a result of the editing process.

Misconduct
The FASEB Journal only accepts research papers that are original works, no part of which has been submitted for publication elsewhere except as brief abstracts. Duplicate publication, falsification, plagiarism, or fabrication will be considered actionable misconduct. Misconduct does not include honest error or honest differences in interpretations or judgments of data.

If there is a suspicion or allegation of misconduct directed toward any author, The FASEB Journal reserves the right to forward relevant material to the appropriate authorities at the author's institution for investigation. The FASEB Journal recognizes its responsibility to ensure that the suspicion of misconduct has been addressed, but the journal does not make such determinations.

The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the specific editorial conduct of The FASEB Journal and compliance with the relevant policies and procedures. When a report of suspected misconduct has been sent to the Editor-in-Chief, the following course of action will be taken. If the manuscript has yet to be published, all work on the manuscript will stop. No immediate action to already-published material (such as retracting an online pre-print article) will be taken until the matter is resolved. In cases of minor issues, the Editor-in-Chief will contact the corresponding author directly. In cases of major issues, the Editor-in-Chief will inform the Publications Communications Committee (PCC) Chair of the accusation through the Director of Publication by supplying copies of 1) the relevant material and 2) a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner. In some cases, the Editor-in-Chief may contact all of the authors listed on the manuscript. Should the corresponding author’s response fail to resolve the situation satisfactorily, the Editor-in-Chief will contact all of the institutions of the contributing authors. The institutions should then make an inquiry and report back to the Editor-in-Chief. Until the matter is clarified, no papers by any authors on the disputed manuscript will be considered for publication.

If scientific misconduct is confirmed by institutional review, the Editor-in-Chief will report this to the PCC Chair and the FASEB Executive Director. Appropriate action will be decided in consultation with the FASEB Office of Publications. Violations considered severe may warrant official withdrawal of a published article or rapid rejection of a manuscript at any stage before publication. If the infraction is less severe, the Editor-in-Chief will send the corresponding author a letter of reprimand reviewed by the PCC Chair. If FASEB has violated the copyright of another journal, the PCC Chair will write a letter of apology to the other journal’s Editor-in-Chief. If no scientific misconduct is found, the manuscript (if unpublished) will be scheduled for publication. For errors in a published article not deemed to be misconduct, an Erratum or Letter to the Editor will be published. If there is a disagreement about the results of the investigation, the Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to restrict the author(s) from publishing in the journal for a specified period of time.

Embargo Policy
Authors or their representatives (hereafter called authors) may mention to the press the title of the article, authors and their affiliations, date of publication, and citation information before publication/posting.

We ask that authors refrain from publishing large quotes, substantial analysis, or reprinting figures, tables, or other data until the publication/posting date. Authors are welcome to present more detailed information at professional conferences, but authors should refrain from giving out overheads or other handouts that contain substantial material from your article before your publication/posting date.

For the embargo date and time for a specific article, please contact journals{at}faseb.org or phone (301) 634-7104.

Press Access
Members of the press, public affairs officers, and other science writers may request pre-publication copies of articles. For further details, please contact journals{at}faseb.org or phone (301) 634-7104.

Credentialed members of the press may request free online access to the journal. For further details, please contact journals{at}faseb.org or phone (301) 634-7104.

Peer Review Process Including Rebuttal Policy
Before an article is submitted to the journal, authors must submit an initial query (IQ). From this, the Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editors determine if the subject matter is suitable for consideration. An IQ may be sent to an Editorial Board Member for further consideration before a determination is made.

Manuscripts requested after the IQ stage are reviewed critically. After receipt of a manuscript by the Editor-in-Chief, it is sent to an Associate Editor who sends the manuscript to an appropriate number of reviewers (usually two, depending on the type of manuscript). Editors may ask for suggested reviewer names from an Editorial Board Member. Comments from reviewers are examined by the Editor-in-Chief and/or Associate Editors, who make the final decisions. Rebuttals should be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief at journals{at}faseb.org.

All reviewers remain unknown to the authors. Every manuscript is treated by the Editors and reviewers as privileged information, and they are instructed to exclude themselves from review of any manuscript that might involve a conflict of interest or the appearance thereof.

Upon submission of a manuscript, authors must suggest five potential reviewers who have not seen the manuscript before submission. Authors may request disqualification of up to four potential reviewers. Only those individuals who would represent a direct conflict of interest should be excluded. Authors cannot make an extensive or blanket disqualification of a group of possible reviewers, e.g., all potential competitors in one or more industrial laboratories or academic departments. Requests to disqualify reviewers will be honored at the discretion of the Editor assigned to the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest Disclosure
Authors of research articles are required at the time of submission to disclose any potential conflict of interest (e.g., consultancies, stock ownership, equity interests, patent-licensing arrangements) and that they accept full responsibility for the conduct of the study, had full access to all the data, and controlled the decision to publish. Failure to do so may jeopardize eventual publication. Such potential conflict, unless already disclosed in the submitted article, will be held in confidence while the paper is under review. If the article is accepted for publication, information on the potential conflict of interest will be included in the acknowledgments section of the article.

Send disclosures to journals{at}faseb.org. Please make sure the disclosure includes the number of your manuscript.

Criteria for Authorship
The Editors expect each author to have made an important scientific contribution to the study and be thoroughly familiar with the original data. The Editors also expect each author to have read the complete manuscript and to take responsibility for the content and completeness of the manuscript and to understand that if the paper, or part of the paper, is found to be faulty or fraudulent, that he/she shares responsibility with his/her coauthors. Because we hold each author to this high standard, the copyright form must be signed by every author. Furthermore, if a manuscript has 10 or more authors, each author will be required to submit a statement of authorship to the Journal stating that he or she has read each page of the paper and consents to the paper being submitted to the Journal for publication.

Procedures for Changes in Authorship after Acceptance
All substantial changes in authorship (additions, removals, or change of order) requested after acceptance must be approved by the Editor-in-Chief. Changes must be requested by the corresponding author and sent to journals{at}faseb.org. The Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to accept the request, reject the request, withdraw the manuscript from consideration/publication, or retract a published article based on the nature and extent of the circumstances related to the request. All decisions by the Editor-in-Chief in these matters are final.

Statement on the Ethical Use of Humans and/or Animals in Research
The research described in submitted manuscripts that involves the use of human beings, including healthy volunteers, must adhere to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki as well as to Title 45, U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Part 46, Protection of Human Subjects, Revised November 13, 2001, effective December 13, 2001. Research involving animals must adhere Public Health Service Policy on Humane Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. All investigations involving humans or animals reported in its publications must be conducted in conformity with these principles. In addition, all investigations involving humans or animals must be approved by an appropriate institutional review committee.

Access to Unique Materials such as Cell Lines, Organisms, and Software
Authors of papers published in the Journal are obligated to honor any reasonable request by qualified investigators for unique propagative materials, such as cell lines, hybridomas, DNA clones, and organisms that are described in the paper. If computer software programs are developed and used in submitted manuscripts, the programs must be made available to the reviewer upon request. The source code or the program must be made available, either commercially or in downloadable form from the authors, if the manuscript is accepted for publication. The Journal reserves the right to deny further publication rights to authors unwilling to abide by these principles.

The FASEB Journal also does not distinguish between microarray data and other sorts of data (proteomics, sequence data, organic syntheses, crystal structures, etc.) All methods must be publicly available and described. Anything published in The FASEB Journal must have all data available not only for review but to every reader, electronic or print.

Copyright and Permissions Policy
Copyright of published manuscripts is held by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB), which must receive the assignment of copyright from the authors of accepted manuscripts. FASEB holds copyright for the protection of authors and FASEB. Authors seeking permission to republish portions of their own work published in the Journal, authors seeking to republish material in publications owned by not-for-profit organizations, and students wanting to include material in dissertations, theses, etc., should submit a permission request to the editorial office. All other permission requests are handled through:

Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.
222 Rosewood Dr.
Danvers, MA 01923
Copyright.com

The CCC also handles permissions to make copies of articles. Although authors are always granted rights to reproduce figures or tables from their own works free of charge, we ask that formal permission be applied for via the form located here.

Upon publication of their manuscript, authors may request a pdf file of their article. Authors may not post this article to the Internet. However, authors may link to their article on The FASEB Journal's Web site.

The Journal grants the Author permission to provide a copy of the accepted manuscript to NIH upon acceptance for Journal publication, with public release in PubMed Central twelve months after final print publication by the Journal.

NIH Public Access Policy
Under the NIH Public Access Policy, NIH is asking its funded investigators to voluntarily submit to PubMed Central (PMC) the author’s final manuscript of articles resulting from research supported in whole or in part with direct costs from NIH. According to the NIH, this policy applies only to manuscripts accepted for publication on or after May 2, 2005.

If you choose to submit your accepted manuscript to PMC, you will be asked to indicate when that manuscript should be made available to the public. As copyright holder of your article, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB) has the sole right to publish or disseminate it. FASEB, however, grants authors one-time permission to allow public release of their manuscript through PMC 12 months after publication in The FASEB Journal.

This period of time is consistent with our existing policy to make all content publicly available through HighWire Press 12 months after print publication. NIH will be able to determine when 12 months have elapsed because FASEB sends NIH electronic feeds of the article metadata upon publication in the journal. You can, therefore, submit your accepted manuscript to PMC at the time of acceptance and will not have to calculate or track time elapsed from publication. Participation in the NIH policy is voluntary and, according to NIH officials, there will be no sanctions of any kind against authors who do not submit their manuscripts. If you have any questions with respect to the NIH Public Access Policy and the publication of your article in The FASEB Journal, please contact Jennifer Pesanelli at jpesanelli{at}faseb.org.


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