Editorial Policies
The Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences adheres to the principles of transparency and best practices in scholarly publishing. The journal endorses the guidelines and recommendations of internationally recognized organizations in publication ethics and scientific editing, including the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), the Council of Science Editors (CSE), and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Submission of a manuscript to this journal implies that all individuals listed as authors have read the manuscript, agree with its content, and confirm that the manuscript complies with all journal policies and regulations.

 Ethics and Consent
 Ethics Approval
The Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences follows the COPE guidelines. Every research article must include a statement specifying whether ethical approval for the study has been obtained. If obtained, the name of the Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board (IRB) must be mentioned, the ethics approval number or ID must be reported, and it must be declared that participants provided informed consent prior to entering the study. Even if a study has been approved by an ethics committee, editors may request additional information regarding the ethical aspects of the research. All research involving humans, human tissue, and human data must be conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. If the editor determines that the study was not conducted within an appropriate ethical framework, they may reject the manuscript. Additionally, in specific cases, the journal reserves the right to contact the researcher's institutional ethics committee for further information.

 Publication Misconduct
Allegations of research or publication misconduct, whether raised before or after publication, will be investigated carefully. When necessary, the journal may contact the authors’ university or institution, funding bodies, and relevant regulatory organizations. If conclusive evidence of misconduct is found, appropriate measures will be taken to correct the scholarly record, including the publication of a correction or retraction.

 Authors’ Awareness of Publication Ethics
Authors are expected to be familiar with the principles of publication ethics, particularly in relation to authorship, simultaneous submission to multiple journals, plagiarism, image manipulation, conflicts of interest, and compliance with research ethics. In cases of suspected misconduct, the journal will act in accordance with COPE standards and, where necessary, seek advice from COPE.
 
Retrospective Ethics Approval
If a study did not receive ethics approval before its initiation, retrospective ethics approval is generally not possible. In such cases, the manuscript may not be sent for peer review. The final decision regarding whether the manuscript should enter the peer-review process rests with the journal editors.
 
Patient Consent and Confidentiality
Any manuscript submitted to the Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences that contains personal medical information about a living, identifiable individual requires explicit patient consent before publication. Therefore, all patients included in such studies must sign an informed consent form after reviewing the study information sheet, and authors must ensure that the patient is aware that their information may be published.

 When Patient Consent Cannot Be Obtained
In some circumstances, the patient may be unavailable and consent may not be obtainable. In such cases, publication is permissible only if the information has been sufficiently anonymized. Anonymization means that the individual, family members, friends, or any other person cannot confidently identify the patient.

 Deceased Patients
If the patient has died, authors should, where possible, obtain permission from the patient’s relatives or next of kin. This is required as a matter of medical ethics and respect for the patient’s family. If relatives are unavailable, the journal will assess the scientific value of the report, the likelihood of identifying the individual, and the possibility of causing distress or harm to the family before deciding whether publication is appropriate.
 
Use of Medical Images
Radiographic images, laparoscopic images, ultrasound images, pathology slides, and images of body parts that are not identifiable may be published without patient consent, provided that the patient’s identity is not disclosed. In such cases, all identifying markers must be removed, and the manuscript text must not contain information that could lead to patient identification.

 Research Involving Animals
All experimental research involving vertebrates or regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national, and international laws and regulations. Where applicable, approval must be obtained from an animal ethics committee.
 
Basel Declaration
Researchers must comply with the principles set out in the Basel Declaration, which outlines fundamental ethical principles for the use of animals in scientific research.
 
ICLAS Guidelines
Researchers must follow the guidelines of the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS), which provides international ethical guidance for animal research.

 Privately Owned Animals
If a study involves privately owned animals, such as domestic dogs or cats, authors must obtain informed consent from the animal’s owner and demonstrate that the highest standards of veterinary care were observed.

 Trial Registration
According to the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, a clinical trial is any research study in which individuals or groups of individuals are prospectively assigned to an intervention in order to evaluate the effect of that intervention on a health-related outcome.

 Requirement for Trial Registration
The Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences will not consider reports of clinical trials unless they were registered before the enrollment of participants began. This is known as prospective registration.

 Trial Registration Registry
All clinical trials must be registered in a registry approved by the World Health Organization.

 Information Required in the Abstract
The trial registration number and the date of registration must be provided in the final line of the manuscript abstract.

 Standards of Reporting
The Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences recommends that authors use appropriate reporting guidelines provided by the EQUATOR Network when preparing their manuscripts. Authors should follow the relevant checklists during manuscript preparation, and reviewers will refer to these checklists when evaluating submissions. This ensures that the research methods are reported transparently, reviewers can assess the quality of the study, readers can trust the findings, and the study can be replicated.

 Key Reporting Guidelines
For randomized controlled trials, authors should use the CONSORT guideline, which specifies how to report randomization methods, allocation, blinding, participant flow, data analysis, and results.
For systematic reviews and meta-analyses, PRISMA and MOOSE should be used to report the search strategy, study selection, quality assessment, and synthesis of findings.
For observational studies, including cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional studies, STROBE should be followed.
For diagnostic accuracy studies, STARD should be used.
For quality improvement studies, SQUIRE is recommended.
For qualitative research, including in-depth interviews, focus groups, and content analysis, SRQR and COREQ should be followed.
For economic evaluations, CHEERS should be used.
For case reports, authors should follow the CARE Guidelines.

 Statistical Methods
Authors must provide complete information about the statistical methods used, including the statistical tests applied, the rationale for selecting each test, the statistical indices reported, and the statistical software used. The journal recommends the use of the SAMPL Guidelines.
 
Statistical Review
Reviewers are required to assess the statistical methods of submitted manuscripts. Where necessary, a manuscript may be referred to a statistical reviewer, or the editor may consult a methodological expert.

 Data Sharing
The Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences encourages authors to make raw data, supplementary files, protocols, and research instruments available in public data repositories or publish them as supplementary files alongside the article.

 Data Sharing Statement
All manuscripts must include a Data Sharing Statement explaining whether the data will be available, where they are stored, and how they can be accessed.
 
Clinical Trials
For manuscripts arising from clinical trials, a Data Sharing Statement is mandatory. Authors must specify what data will be shared, when they will be made available, and under what conditions they will be accessible to other researchers.
 
Competing Interests
A competing interest is any factor that may influence, or be perceived to influence, the scientific judgment of an author, the peer-review process, editorial decision-making, or publication of a manuscript. A competing interest exists when a secondary interest, such as financial gain, stock ownership, patents, personal relationships, or employment status, may affect the primary interests of patient welfare and scientific integrity.
All authors must disclose all competing interests in the cover letter and in the “Competing Interests” section of the manuscript. If no competing interests exist, the following statement should be included: “The authors declare that they have no competing interests related to the authorship or publication of this article.”

 Types of Competing Interests
The journal emphasizes that a competing interest is not necessarily unethical; however, it must be fully and transparently disclosed.
Financial competing interests include receiving money or financial support from an organization that may gain or lose financially from publication of the article, owning shares in a company related to the manuscript topic, holding or applying for patents related to the research, and receiving financial support from holders of related patents.
Non-financial competing interests include political, ideological, personal, academic, intellectual, or scientific conflicts, even in the absence of financial benefit.
Researchers who have conducted studies on behalf of pharmaceutical companies or other commercial entities must disclose this relationship and follow Good Publication Practice guidelines, including GPP2. The journal does not publish advertorial content.

 Artificial Intelligence
If authors have used artificial intelligence-based technologies, including large language models, chatbots, image generators, or similar tools, this use must be disclosed. The use of AI must be reported both in the cover letter and in the manuscript.
If AI was used to assist with writing, this should be disclosed in the Acknowledgments section. If AI was used for data analysis or figure generation, this must be described in the Materials and Methods section. Authors should report the name of the tool, software version, and, where possible, the prompts used, so that the process can be replicated.
ChatGPT or other chatbots must not be listed as authors because they cannot accept responsibility for the work and cannot guarantee the accuracy or originality of the manuscript. Content generated by AI should not be cited as a primary source.
In accordance with recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the use of AI to process submitted manuscripts may violate manuscript confidentiality. Therefore, the Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences does not recommend the use of AI for reviewing submitted manuscripts. Reviewers must not upload manuscripts to AI systems or submit them to chatbots, as doing so may breach confidentiality, and AI-generated outputs may be inaccurate, incomplete, or biased.

 Authorship
An author is an individual who has made a substantial intellectual contribution to the research. The journal follows the authorship criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
To qualify as an author, an individual must meet all four of the following criteria:
1. Substantial contribution to the conception or design of the study, data collection, data analysis, or interpretation of data;
2. Contribution to drafting the manuscript or critically revising it for important intellectual content;
3. Approval of the final version of the manuscript before publication;
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work and to respond to questions concerning the accuracy and integrity of the research.
Each author must be aware of their own contribution and the contributions of co-authors and must have confidence in the integrity of their collaborators’ contributions. Funding acquisition, data collection, technical assistance, and language editing alone do not justify authorship; individuals who contributed in these ways should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section.

 Acknowledgments
Individuals who contributed to the research but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be named in the Acknowledgments section. Such contributions may include technical assistance, data collection, language editing, or scientific advice.
Authors must ensure that every individual named in this section has agreed to be acknowledged. All sources of financial support, including research grants, university funding, support from scientific institutions, or commercial sponsorship, must be disclosed. If authors received payment for conducting the study, this must also be reported. If any individual assisted with writing or preparing the manuscript, their name and source of funding must be stated.
 
Author Information
The journal publishes author information to establish researcher identity, facilitate indexing in bibliographic databases, and ensure accurate citation. Authors must enter details such as first name, last name, and institutional affiliation accurately, as this information will be published exactly as provided.
Authors are encouraged to ensure that their names are consistent with their previous records in databases such as PubMed and Scopus to prevent indexing errors.

 Authorship Changes
Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences journal has a strict policy on changes to author names, so it is best to carefully check everything before submitting a manuscript. Therefore, any changes to the author list after submission—including adding an author, removing an author, or changing the order of authors—must be approved by all authors. To make these changes, all authors must agree, the reason for the change must be explained to the editor, and each author must personally send confirmation by email. In case of any authorship dispute, the issue must be resolved by the relevant university or institution, since the editor is not responsible for resolving authorship disputes. If the article has already been published, changes to the authors can only be made by publishing an erratum.

Unique Identifiers
The journal encourages the use of researcher identifiers, the most important of which is ORCID. ORCID is a permanent and unique identifier for researchers that links scholarly outputs to their owners, reduces errors in author identification, and integrates academic records.
Providing an ORCID iD is mandatory for the first author and the corresponding author. Editorial board members are also required to register their ORCID iD in their profiles.
 
Citations
Research articles must provide appropriate citations for all claims and information derived from other sources. Authors should use relevant sources, provide accurate references, and avoid misrepresenting the findings of cited works.
Where possible, authors should cite the original article rather than a secondary source that cites it. Authors should not cite articles they have not read, excessively cite their own work, cite only articles by friends or colleagues, cite only studies from one country, or provide an excessive number of unnecessary citations for a single claim.
Whenever possible, peer-reviewed sources should be cited. Citations to advertisements or promotional materials are not permitted.
 
Duplicate Publication
Submitted manuscripts must be original and must not be under consideration by another journal at the same time. If the manuscript overlaps with another work, authors must disclose this transparently, cite the related work, and provide related manuscripts to the editor upon request.
Presentation as a conference poster, oral presentation at a congress, a university thesis, or publication on a preprint server is not usually considered duplicate publication.
The journal uses CrossCheck to detect plagiarism.
 
Text Recycling
Reusing previously published text by the same author without proper disclosure constitutes self-plagiarism. If reuse of previously published text is necessary, it must be clearly disclosed, the previous source must be cited, and copyright regulations must be observed.
If any part of the manuscript has been published previously, authors must inform the editor in the cover letter.

 Peer Review
All research articles and most other article types published in the Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences undergo a rigorous peer-review process. Each manuscript is usually evaluated by three independent reviewers.
All submissions are first assessed by the editor, who determines whether the manuscript is suitable for peer review. If the editor is one of the authors or has a competing interest, another editorial board member will assume responsibility for the peer-review process.
Manuscripts deemed suitable for review are sent to independent experts. After reviewers’ comments are received, the editor evaluates the reports and makes the final decision. Reviewers’ comments are then sent to the authors. Even if one reviewer provides a favorable recommendation, serious concerns raised by another reviewer may lead to rejection.
The journal uses a double-blind peer-review system, meaning that reviewers do not know the authors’ identities and authors do not know the reviewers’ identities.

 Editorial Board Members and Manuscript Submission
Editorial board members are required to disclose any competing interests and must not participate in decisions regarding manuscripts for which they have a conflict of interest. Examples of competing interests include previous research collaboration with the authors, employment at the same institution, or financial or personal relationships.
Editorial board members may submit manuscripts to the journal; however, they receive no preferential treatment, do not participate in decision-making regarding their own manuscripts, and do not have access to confidential peer-review information.

 In-House Submissions
If a manuscript is authored by the editor or an editorial board member, the peer-review process is monitored more carefully to prevent bias. After submission, the manuscript is assigned to an independent editor, sent to appropriate reviewers, usually evaluated by three reviewers, and the final decision is made by the handling editor.

 Peer Reviewers
Authors may suggest potential reviewers, but the final decision rests with the editor. Authors must not suggest close colleagues, recent research collaborators, or individuals employed at the same institution.
When suggesting reviewers, authors should provide information such as an institutional email address, ORCID iD, or Scopus identifier so that the reviewer’s identity can be verified. Authors may also request that certain individuals not be invited to review the manuscript, but they must provide a reason.
Providing false reviewer information, such as a fabricated name or fake email address, constitutes misconduct and may result in manuscript rejection.

 Confidentiality
The Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences treats all manuscripts as confidential documents, and reviewers are required to maintain confidentiality. The journal does not share manuscripts with third parties except in cases such as research misconduct, ethics investigations, or the assessment of alleged violations.

 Advertising
The Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences does not publish advertisements in its journal.

 Research and Publication Misconduct
The Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences takes all allegations of research misconduct very seriously and follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
If misconduct is suspected, manuscript information may be shared with the author’s university, ethics committee, or regulatory bodies, and advice may be sought from COPE where necessary. All studies involving human participants, human data, human tissue, or animals must be conducted within an appropriate ethical framework. If evidence indicates that ethical principles have been violated, the manuscript will be rejected and the relevant institutions may be notified.
If misconduct is proven after publication and compromises the scientific validity of the article, the article may be retracted.
 
Image Manipulation
All digital images submitted for publication are subject to review. Adding elements to an image, removing elements from an image, relocating image components, concealing image information, or selectively enhancing a specific part of an image is prohibited.
Adjustments to brightness, contrast, and color balance are permitted only if they are applied to the entire image and do not distort the scientific information. The editor may request raw data or original image files. If authors are unable to provide the original data, the manuscript may be rejected or, if already published, retracted.
 
Plagiarism
The Journal of Rafsanjan University of Medical Sciences uses iThenticate software to assess manuscript originality. Plagiarism includes direct copying of others’ text, ideas, images, or data; reuse of one’s own previously published text without disclosure; and minor rewording of others’ work without appropriate citation.
If plagiarism is detected during peer review, the manuscript will be rejected. If plagiarism is discovered after publication, a correction may be issued or the article may be retracted, and the authors’ university may be informed.

 Corrections and Retractions
In some cases, maintaining the integrity and reliability of the scholarly record requires correction or retraction of an article.
If an error does not affect the main findings but requires amendment, the journal will publish a Correction or Erratum. Any change in the authorship of a published article will also be made through an Erratum.
If the scientific validity of an article is seriously compromised, the article will be retracted. Data fabrication, manipulation of results, extensive plagiarism, or serious ethical violations may lead to retraction.
After retraction, the article will not be removed from databases; rather, it will remain accessible but will be clearly marked as retracted so that the scientific community is informed.