Wal'afiat Hospital Journal (WHJ) is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal in medicine and healthcare. WHJ is committed to responsible scholarly publishing and the protection of research participants, authors, reviewers, editors, and readers. This statement sets out the responsibilities of all parties involved in the publication process and is informed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices. It should be read together with WHJ's author guidelines, peer review policy, and other approved journal policies.
WHJ applies double-blind peer review. Authors should remove identifying information from the blinded manuscript file, while providing required authorship and ethics declarations separately as instructed by the journal. Editors and reviewers must treat all manuscripts as confidential.
Reference framework: COPE Core Practices.
The publisher supports editorial independence, responsible publishing procedures, and the fair handling of complaints and allegations. Commercial, institutional, or financial considerations must not improperly determine editorial outcomes. Publisher identification and operational responsibilities should remain consistent with WHJ’s approved journal records.
Authors must report clinical observations and research findings accurately, transparently, and without fabrication, falsification, selective omission, or misleading presentation. Manuscripts should describe the study design, setting, participants, methods, analyses, limitations, and results in sufficient detail for critical assessment. Authors should follow appropriate reporting guidelines, where applicable.
Authors should retain underlying research data and relevant documentation for a reasonable period in accordance with institutional policies, applicable laws, and ethics approvals. Editors may request supporting information to evaluate concerns about the integrity of a manuscript. Sharing must protect patient privacy, confidential information, and legitimate data-use restrictions.
Submissions must represent original scholarly work. The work, words, tables, figures, and ideas of others must be appropriately cited or acknowledged. Plagiarism, unauthorized reuse of material, fabricated citations, and undisclosed substantial text recycling are unacceptable. Authors must disclose any relevant use of material previously disseminated as a preprint or in another form.
Authors must not submit substantially the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Prior publication and overlapping reports using the same patient cohort, dataset, or case information must be disclosed at submission. Related submissions should be identified so editors can assess overlap and the distinct contribution of the proposed article.
Authors should properly cite relevant prior research, established methods, clinical recommendations, and primary sources. References must accurately reflect the cited material; citations must not be added solely to manipulate metrics or favor particular persons or journals.
Authorship should reflect substantive scholarly contributions and accountability for the published work. The corresponding author is responsible for confirming that all listed authors approved the submitted and final versions and that contributors who do not meet authorship criteria are acknowledged appropriately. Gift, guest, and ghost authorship are unacceptable. Contributions and authorship changes should be disclosed to the editor.
Authors must declare sources of funding, sponsor involvement, and financial or nonfinancial relationships that could reasonably be perceived to influence their work. Disclosure is required even when authors believe no actual bias exists. Sponsors must not improperly control interpretation, editorial decisions, or publication of findings.
Authors who discover a significant error or concern about the integrity of their published article should promptly inform the editor and cooperate in any necessary correction, expression of concern, or retraction. Authors must respond constructively to credible post-publication concerns.
Research involving patients or human participants must comply with applicable ethical standards and institutional requirements. Authors should disclose approval by an appropriate ethics committee, including identifying information when required by the journal, or explain a documented exemption. Prospective clinical studies should follow applicable registration requirements; authors should report registration details when relevant.
Authors must respect participant autonomy, confidentiality, and privacy. Informed consent for participation and, separately where applicable, consent for publication of potentially identifiable patient information or images must be obtained in accordance with ethical and legal requirements. Removing names alone may not make a patient unidentifiable. Patient information must not be disclosed merely because it is clinically interesting.
Clinical claims should be supported by the evidence presented. Authors must accurately report adverse events, harms, exclusions, relevant negative findings, and study limitations. Studies involving interventions, medicines, or devices should describe safety and ethical safeguards as appropriate. Authors should not overstate treatment effectiveness or causality.
Authors remain responsible for the accuracy, originality, confidentiality, and integrity of all submitted content. Generative AI tools must not be listed as authors. Material use of such tools in manuscript preparation or analysis should be transparently disclosed in accordance with the journal’s approved AI policy. Identifiable patient data or confidential manuscripts must not be uploaded to external tools without proper authorization and safeguards.
Editors evaluate manuscripts based on scientific merit, clinical relevance, methodological quality, ethical compliance, and fit with the journal’s scope, without discrimination based on authors’ personal characteristics, affiliation, or beliefs.
Editors and editorial staff must protect submitted manuscripts, reviewer identities, and confidential correspondence. WHJ uses a double-blind peer review process; editors should take reasonable steps to preserve identity masking in the materials shared during review, while recognizing that anonymity cannot be guaranteed in every circumstance.
Editors should disclose relevant conflicts and recuse themselves from handling manuscripts where their impartiality could reasonably be questioned. Unpublished information obtained during editorial handling must not be used for personal research or advantage.
Editors make publication decisions based on the manuscript record, independent expert advice, journal policies, and applicable ethical or legal requirements. Acceptance must not be contingent on financial influence or personal relationships. The editor retains responsibility for the final decision.
Editors should evaluate credible allegations of misconduct fairly and confidentially, seek explanations and supporting evidence, and contact institutions or relevant bodies when appropriate. Corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions should be clearly linked to the article record when warranted. Complaints and appeals should be considered through a fair process.
Peer review helps editors assess originality, methodology, reporting quality, ethical issues, clinical relevance, and the strength of the conclusions. Reviewers should provide clear and constructive recommendations to improve manuscripts.
Invited reviewers should accept assignments only when they have suitable expertise and can meet the requested timeframe. They should notify the editor promptly if they cannot undertake the review or recognize a substantial limitation in their competence.
Reviews must be evidence-based, respectful, and focused on scholarly content. Personal criticism and discriminatory commentary are inappropriate. Reviewers should explain major concerns, distinguish essential revisions from suggestions, and avoid requesting irrelevant citations.
Manuscripts, datasets, images, and communications supplied for peer review are confidential. Reviewers must not share them or use their contents for research, teaching, commercial advantage, or external AI processing without explicit editorial authorization.
Reviewers must promptly declare financial, professional, academic, collaborative, or personal relationships that could affect impartiality. Editors determine whether the reviewer should be recused.
Reviewers should identify important missing references and alert editors to suspected plagiarism, duplicate publication, inappropriate image manipulation, ethics concerns, or substantial overlap with published work, providing specific supporting information where possible.
Concerns about a published or submitted manuscript should be reported to the WHJ editorial office through the journal’s official Contact page. Allegations will be assessed according to the evidence and the applicable editorial policies; outcomes may include clarification, correction, an expression of concern, or retraction.
Wal'afiat Hospital Journal dengan Situs: https://whj.umi.ac.id/index.php/whj berlisensi Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, e-ISSN 2722-9017
