Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
The Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) is committed to publishing and widely disseminating high-quality content. The editorial operations of the Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) must be governed by rigorous ethical standards that are both transparent and fair. We recognize that the scholarly publishing ecosystem is complex and includes editors, authors, reviewers, and publishers. Our expectation is that all involved have a shared understanding and acceptance of the journal’s policies on publication ethics and malpractice. Our policies are closely aligned with COPE’s (Committee on Publication Ethics) Core Practices document, which can be accessed at: COPE Core Practices.
By submitting an article to the Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ), you agree to comply with the following publication ethics and malpractice statement.
 
1. Responsibility of the Author
Reporting standards
Authors of original research reports should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
 
Data access and retention
Authors could be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the paper for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least ten years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.
 
Originality
Authors will submit only entirely original works and will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should also be cited.
Authors should express their primary ideas and tasks explicitly even they have been revised and quoted objectively. If precise sentences or paragraphs are seen in a research article, which seems it is an extract from an essay or a citation from another author, this sentence should be put in quotation marks. The essay ought to specify the origin of each applied datum and also all data. If specific data collection is applied by another author or this author, it should inform the other published or unpublished tasks. Authors should not submit the article which has been previously submitted to this journal, assessed, and finally disapproved by the editor. If the first version was disapproved and the author is willing to submit a modified version for assessment, the essay resubmission justification should be clearly explained for the author or the editor. The permission for essay resubmission for the second time is possible in a particular situation.
  
Plagiarism
The article registration will inform all authors by sending an e-mail to the Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) website. It is evident that inserting the author's name in the article is considered as his/her main role in writing the essay if the essay authors have no role in writing the essay and their name has not been mentioned. It is necessary to inform the received information by e-mail immediately. All the authors of the article are responsible for the origin of the work. All assessment rights for plagiarism checking in the journal are reserved.
Plagiarism has a variety of forms:
 1. to insert the authors and researchers' names who have no role in the article;
 2. to copy or repeat the most significant part of another article (even the copied article is related to the author of a new essay);
 3. to show the outcome and results of other researches to his/her own;
 4. to express false results, in contrast with scientific findings or distort the outcomes of the research;
 5. continuous publishing by a single author in some journals;
 6. to apply unreliable data or manipulate research data.
The journal editors will study plagiarism items for preserving the validity and the efforts of researchers without any overlook or indulgence based on the level of plagiarism then legally pursued as follows:
 1. The article will be disapproved, and in case of publishing, it will be disappeared from the site;
 2. The name of the authors will be inserted in the blacklist journals of the publisher;
 3. It will be prosecuted by qualified legal and judicial references;
 4. By writing an official letter, the plagiarism file is shared with other related domestic and foreign journals;
 5. By writing an official letter to the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, databases, universities, institutes, and journals or wherever the author has used the printing rate of this article, they are informed of the procedure.
 
Multiple, redundant, or concurrent publication
In general, papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Manuscripts that have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted. In addition, manuscripts under review by one journal should not be submitted to other publications while the manuscript is under review. For the publication of creative works, the journal may make exceptions to the previously published rule; please consult the editor.
 
Acknowledgment of sources
Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission of the author of the work involved in these services.
 
Authorship of the paper
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where others have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.
All the mentioned authors should work seriously in a research article to be responsible for the results. The authorship should be shared in proportion with different supporting. Authors should accept the responsibility and validity of the task, which includes the authorship validity or compilation, only for the task, which they have done practically, or they have helped. Faculty members should list the student's name as the main author if the article is derived from a dissertation or thesis of a student. The corresponding author who submits the article to the journal should send one sheet or one version of the article to all shared co-authors to satisfy them by article submission and publishing.
 
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. Examples of potential conflicts of interest which should be disclosed include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed to the editor at the earliest stage possible. Readers should be informed about who has funded research and the role of the funders in the research.
 
Fundamental errors in published works
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, the author must promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper. If the editor or the publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error, the author must promptly retract or correct the paper or provide evidence to the editor of the correctness of the original paper.
 
Conflict of Interests
The author should express the resources of the financial scheme in the text of the article then applies to submit it. Each of the mentioned resources should be printed with the article. If the type of situation, which shows the contrast, is doubtful, it should be clarified; any item in the field of conflict of benefits should inform the editor or the publishing office. The corresponding author can recommend the probable reviewer for the article at the time of submitting the essay to the Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ). Authors ought to avoid any probable contrasts or its action in selecting the editors and reviewers. This kind of conflict of benefits is not only applied to the corresponding author but also includes all the co-authors of the article.
The examples of possible Conflict of Interests are as follows:

     1. One of the authors is from the same institution or university, where the reviewer is in that institution;

     2. One of the authors, member of the thesis committee who has been reviewer or editor and vice versa;

     3. One of the authors, editors, or reviewers who are the co-author in another article, or had been co-author of an article in the past two years.

Authors should not introduce or name the people whom they know that they have studied the previous article and have put forward their hypothesis because this movement is contrary to the hidden assessment process of the article automatically. Manuscripts submitted by authors from our institution or our reviewers' board should be reviewed by referees from outside. Articles submitted by reviewers and the Editorial Committee for review or revision and resubmission by the author if necessary.

 
Double-blind peer-review
The Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) follows a double-blind peer-review in which the authors do not know the reviewers and vice versa. The authors should respect the confidentiality of the assessment process and do not reveal their identity to reviewers and vice versa. For instance, the article should not include any information like self-revelation so that the reviewer can identify the author. Authors should not publish their submitted articles on personal or social websites (either articles or first versions), because authors can be identified easily by reviewers on the Web. Authors should not mention the people as reviewers where their previous article or previous copy has been studied and suggested his/her recommendations because this awareness or knowledge is contrary to the double-blind peer-review process.
 
Precision
The authors are finally responsible for the whole content of the submitted article to the Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ). Authors are in charge of representing a precise perspective of the done research as well as an objective debate, especially for the research importance. Authors should report their findings thoroughly, not eliminating data relevant to the text or structure of research questions. Regardless of supporting the expected outcomes or being in contrast, results should be reported. Authors should present the features or relevant characteristics of their research, their findings, and their interpretation precisely. Fundamental suggestions, theories, methods, and research schemes relevant to findings and their interpretations should be revealed and subjected.
The article should contain all the necessary details and resources in a way that researchers access to the same data collection to repeat the research. If an author discovers a mistake or an important carelessness, he/she is responsible for informing the editor-in-chief and the procedure immediately to cooperate with the article modification or revision. If the author or publication, by a third person or party, understands that the published article is suffering from a monumental error, the author is responsible for applying the article modification or revision as well as providing the evidence for the editor based on the precision and correction of the main article.
 
Human rights
Authors are in charge of preserving and supporting privacy, human munificence, human freedom, and welfare, as well as research participants. The articles involved in human affairs (field studies, simulations, interviews) should be done according to the human rights regulations.
 
Being up to date
Authors should act quickly and appropriately to revise and modify the articles. If an author cannot act before the deadline (maximum one month), he/she should contact the editor-in-chief for extension or refusal from the assessment process at once.
 
2. Responsibility of the Editor
The editor’s chief responsibility is to determine which submissions to the journal will be published. He/she must ensure that decisions are made based on the manuscript’s merit and that the author’s race, gender, religious or political beliefs, ethnicity, or citizenship are not considered.
 
Confidentiality
Information concerning a submitted manuscript should only be revealed to the corresponding author, reviewers, editorial board members, or the publisher as is required or otherwise appropriate.
 
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Reviewers will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Reviewers will recuse themselves from reviewing manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers. Editors should follow the procedure set out in the COPE flowchart. Editors should respond promptly to complaints and should ensure there is a way for dissatisfied complainants to take complaints further.
 
Independence
Editors should preserve their pen and paper independence to work and make sure if authors are free to write. The editors are responsible for accepting or refusing the articles, which typically depend on the idea, and recommendations of reviewers; by the way, the articles which are inappropriate in the point of view of editors are probably refused without reviewers' assessment.
 
No biases
Editors should improve their position score and circumstances confidentially, constructively unbiased. Editors carry the essay review duty only based on scientific merits. Editors should act unbiased, without personal or ideological advocacy.
 
Conflict of Benefits
Editors should avoid any action, which increases conflicts of benefits with its unreasonable aspect. For instance, to avoid potential conflict of benefits, the editor is not allowed to publish the article, which is not clearly identified, reviewed, or partly reviewed. Liability, writing authority, and editing each article by the editor, submitted to the Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ), should be submitted by the editor to another qualified person like the previous editor or one of the members of the editorial boards. Editors should avoid any article study, which is in contrast with their real or potential conflict of benefits. The contrast is due to the competitive, partnership, financial or other relations with any other companies, organizations, or institutes related to the article. The examples related to the relations, which show conflicts of benefits of the editor or author are:
 1. Both the author and editor have been employed by one institute;
 2. The editor has been one member of the dissertation committee of the author or vice versa;
 3. The editor and the author are currently co-workers and co-authors in another article or have been co-authors in an article in the past two years.
 
Double-Blind Peer-Review
The journal follows a double-blind peer-review in which authors do not know reviewers and vice versa. Assessment standards should be expressed clearly and concisely.
 
Confidentiality
Editors and their editorial boards are not allowed to reveal relevant information about the article to anyone but reviewers and authors. Official and formal procedures should be determined to preserve the confidentiality of the assessment process. Editors are expected to make sure the confidentiality of the double-blind peer-review process and lack of information revelation, which may reveal the authors' identity to reviewers and vice versa. Reviewers' anonymity can be breached only when reviewers permit editors to reveal their identities. Editors should make sure that their editorial boards are compatible and coordinated with them. Some parts of a submitted article, which has not been published, are not allowed to be used in the personal research of an editor without the author's written permission. Confidential ideas or information, which has been got by article assessment, should be preserved privately, not to be used toward private benefits.
 
Assessment quality
Typically, two reviewers are invited to express their idea about an article. The editor should evaluate all assessments qualitatively. The editor may rarely edit an assessed article before submitting it to the author (for example, for eliminating an expression, which reveals the reviewer's identity or does not send the assessed article in case it is not constructive or appropriate. Rankings and scores of assessment quality, as well as other functional features, are assessed periodically by the editor to make sure of the optimized operation of the Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ). These scores and rankings should help decision-making in the field of reappointment of reviewing team and continuous requests. Individual operation data should be accessible for editors and kept confidential.
 
Being up to date
To guarantee the article's assessment and quick response to the authors' requests about assessment status in a determined deadline (maximum one week after receiving the article) editors should apply primary assessment and reviewer selection.
 
Quality of decision
Editors are responsible for describing the decisions of the editorial boards for authors and their articles. Editors should write high-quality letters where these letters represent the combination of the reviewers' recommendations and extra suggestions for another author. Editors should not attach the result of the decision in the letter format without explanation to the advice and suggestions of the reviewer.
 
Precision
As the editor receives convincing evidence from the reviewer based on false concepts or results of an unpublished article, he should inform procedure to the author. If similar evidence about an article were published, the editor should apply an emergency modified publishing, return the previous one, and express relevant matters with other notes appropriately.
 
Authority
The Editor is responsible for the final authority and responsibility of the journal. They should respect the journal formation (such as readers, authors, reviewers, editors, staff of the editorial boards) and try his/her best for the truthful and honest content of the journal as well as continuous improvement. The Editor should select members of the editorial boards based on the written assessment board, determine their responsibilities and evaluate their actions regularly.
 
Operation
The Editor should design the operation in full operational detail, taking account of all policy, technical, economic, financial, institutional, management, environmental, socio-cultural, gender-related aspects. The journal is going to be published based on annual auditing related to admission level, publishing intervals, submitted articles percentage for revision and foreign revision as well as the operation data. Operation indexes ought to improve the journal operation for assessing the revolution of articles along with publishing processes.
 
3. Responsibility of Reviewers
Purpose of Peer-Review
The peer-review process is a crucial component in helping the editor and/or editorial board reach editorial or publishing decisions and may also serve the author in improving the quality of the submission.
 
Promptness
A potential reviewer should withdraw from the review process if he/she feels unqualified to assess the contribution or cannot provide an assessment in a timely manner as defined by the editor.
 
Confidentiality
Manuscripts for review must be considered confidential documents. Information concerning the manuscripts should not be discussed with others without the approval of the editor.
 
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Editors and editorial board members will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Editors will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers; instead, they will ask another member of the editorial board to handle the manuscript.
Reviewers should abstain from assessing the articles, which they think they are involved in conflicts of benefits such as shared financial, organizational, and personal benefits or any connections with other companies, institutes, or related individuals with essay, the reviewers who may have conflicts of benefits in the field of a special article. This conflict should be clarified for the editor to determine the appropriate level of assessment. For instance, there is a situation where the reviewer is editing and evaluating a similar article in that journal or another along with a similar research article, keep in mind that under the process of double-blind peer-review, as reviewers do not know the authors, it is unlikely that reviewers are aware of the involved conflicts of benefits among authors. Thus, they are not limited through these conflicts. If reviewers become aware of such conflicts, they should inform the editor of the journal.
 
Objectivity
Reviewers should strive to be objective in their assessments. Reviewers’ comments should be clearly expressed and supported by data or arguments. Personal criticism of the author(s) is not appropriate.
 
Acknowledgment of sources
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor’s attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
 
Reciprocal communication
Evaluation and studying are professional activities for journals, which have valued the whole profession to be encouraged. It is usually expected that the researchers who submit their articles in a journal accept the journal's invitation for their article assessment.
 
Right to refuse and rejection
Abstinence or rejection of the assessment of an article based on time or status is essential. For example, a reviewer who is not qualified enough to review a research article should refrain from assessing the article. By potential conflicts of benefits, reviewers should abstain from their assessment. If the reviewers are asked to assess an article, which has been previously assessed, they should inform the editor of primary evaluation details unless they are asked to reassess.
 
Double-Blind peer-review
The publication has a process of double-blind peer-review. Reviewers should abstain from assessing the articles, which they have previously provided written suggestions in the first version. If a reviewer is aware of the author's identity or co-author's identity, is involved naturally in assessing the article. Reviewers are also responsible for avoiding writing, telling, and doing whatever reveals their identity for the author.
 
No biases
Reviewers should assess articles objectively, fairly, and professionally. They are recommended to avoid any personal bias in their reviews.
 
Confidentiality
Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of the assessment process. It is important to recognize whether this article is confidential or not. Reviewers should not discuss with anyone except the editor about the article and they are not allowed to transfer the essay information to someone else. If reviewers are suspected of a wrong deed should inform the editor confidentially, not expressing their worries to other departments till the official announcement.
 
Precision
To assess the article and say recommendations to the author (authors), reviewers should always know that the assessment influences the publishing process. Reviewers should be honest with authors about their relevant article worries. Reviewers ought to define and support their scientific review sufficiently and, it means they should provide details and ample information for the editor to justify their advice to the author. Reviewers cannot be bipolar, for instance, on the one hand, very friendly and intimate assessments facing with the author and on the other hand, very sharp assessment in-person discussion with the editor.
 
Punctuality
Reviewers should act quickly in their assessments and reviews. If a reviewer cannot act his/her task in a determined deadline (maximum one month) he/she ought to contact the editor for extending the reviewing time or new reviewer selection.  
 
4. Copyright and License
The Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) is a fully open-access journal, which means that all articles are available on the Web to all users immediately upon publication. All articles are published under a Creative Commons License. Therefore, the copyright of articles accepted for publication rests with the author(s). Author(s) retain copyright to their work without restrictions. The author(s) has complete control over the work (e.g. retains the right to reuse, distribute, republish, etc.). All content of the journal is published with open access under the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). This license allows users to copy and redistribute the article under the following conditions:
        - Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
        - Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material.
  
5. Informed Consent
All participants in human subjects research have a right to privacy that should not be violated without informed consent. Identifying information, including names, initials, etc., should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, or pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the participants (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent in this situation requires that an identifiable participant be shown the manuscript and should provide the consent before publication. Authors should disclose to these patients whether any potential identifiable material might be available via the Internet as well as in print after publication. Participants' consent should be written and archived either with the journal, the authors, or both, as dictated by local regulations or laws.
 
6. Plagiarism Policy
The Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) adheres to the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). We accept all terms and conditions of COPE about plagiarism and in case, any attempt of plagiarism is brought to our attention accompanied by convincing evidence, we act based on flowcharts and workflows determined in COPE.
The Editorial Boards of the Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) take the necessary measures to examine the incoming articles on their originality, reliability of contained information, and correct use of citations. The Editorial Board of the journal acknowledges that plagiarism is unacceptable and therefore establishes the following policies that state-specific actions (penalties) if plagiarism is identified in a manuscript submitted for publication in the journal. Authors should ensure that they submit only entirely original works. If they have used the work and/or statements of others, this must be appropriately cited or referenced. Plagiarism in any form, including quotations or paraphrasing of substantial parts of another’s article (without attribution), “passing off” another’s article as the author’s own, or claiming results from research conducted by others, constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Manuscripts that are a compilation of previously published materials of other authors (without their own creative and authoring interpretation) are not accepted for publication.
It is inadmissible to use unfair text borrowing and assigning research results not belonging to the authors of the submitted manuscript. The authors must ensure that the submitted manuscript:
     - describes completely the original work;
     - is not plagiarism;
     - has not been published before in any language;
     - the information used or words from other publications are appropriately indicated by reference or indicated in the text.
Existing copyright laws and conventions must be observed. Materials protected by copyright (for example, tables, figures or large quotations) should only be reproduced with the permission of their owner. The Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) takes responsibility to assist a scientific community in all aspects of publication ethics policy, particularly in the case of multiple submission/publication and plagiarism. The editors reserve the right to check the received manuscripts for plagiarism. The manuscript submitted to the journal must have a similarity level of less than 10%. Similarity per each detected reference also must be maximum 1%. The textual similarity in the amount of more than 10% is unacceptable.
 
7. The Policy of Screening for Plagiarism
All manuscripts must be free from plagiarism contents. All authors are suggested to use plagiarism detection software to do the similarity checking. Editors check the plagiarism detection of manuscripts in this journal by using Grammarly detection software (www.grammarly.com) and using iThenticate. The journal will immediately reject articles leading to plagiarism or self-plagiarism. The journal adheres to international practices of preventing plagiarism. Thus, all authors that submit their manuscripts to the journal must check that their academic work respects the copyrights of other scholars and avoids any plagiarism. Once the manuscript is submitted to the journal, the editorial board will assign a group of anti-plagiarism members to check the manuscript through various tools. If proof of plagiarism is found, the manuscript will be rejected immediately, and the Editorial Board will communicate with the author to demand an explanation and the amendment of the plagiarized content. If the author does not respond within a reasonable length of time or does not make the necessary adjustments, they will not be able to submit manuscripts to the journal for a period of five (5) years. If the Editorial Board has reason to believe that the manuscript was not drafted or researched in an ethical manner, the journal’s implemented code of ethics (Committee on Publication Ethics [Code of Conduct and Best Practices Guidelines for Journals Editors]) will be reviewed and act accordingly.
 
Definition of Plagiarism:
"Plagiarism is the use of others' published and unpublished ideas or words (or other intellectual property) without attribution or permission, and presenting them as new and original rather than derived from an existing source. The intent and effect of plagiarism are to mislead the reader as to the contributions of the plagiarizer. This applies whether the ideas or words are taken from abstracts, research grant applications, Institutional Review Board applications, or unpublished or published manuscripts in any publication format (print or electronic). Plagiarism is scientific misconduct and should be addressed as such. Self-plagiarism refers to the practice of an author using portions of their previous writings on the same topic in another of their publications, without specifically citing it formally in quotes. This practice is widespread and sometimes unintentional, as there are only so many ways to say the same thing on many occasions, particularly when writing the Methods section of an article. Although this usually violates the copyright that has been assigned to the publisher, there is no consensus as to whether this is a form of scientific misconduct, or how many of one's own words one can use before it is truly "plagiarism." Probably, for this reason, self-plagiarism is not regarded in the same light as plagiarism of the ideas and words of other individuals. If journals have developed a policy on this matter, it should be clearly stated for authors." (WAME, 2020).
Direct plagiarism is the plagiarism of the text. Mosaic plagiarism is the borrowing of ideas and opinions from an original source and a few verbatim words or phrases without crediting the author. Plagiarism is committed when one author uses another work (typically the work of another author) without permission, credit, or acknowledgment. Plagiarism takes different forms, from literal copying to paraphrasing the work of another.
Authors can adhere to the following steps to report plagiarism:

• Inform the editor of the journal where a plagiarized article is published.

• Send original and plagiarized articles with plagiarized parts highlighted.

• If evidence of plagiarism is convincing, the editor should arrange for a disciplinary meeting.

• The editor of the journal where the plagiarized article should communicate with the editor of the journal containing the original article to rectify the matter.

• The plagiarist should be asked to provide an explanation.

• In case of nonresponse in the stipulated time or an unsatisfactory explanation, the article should be permanently retracted.

• The author should be blacklisted and debarred for submitting an article to a particular journal for at least 5 years.

• The concerned head of the institution has to be notified.

The author bears the responsibility for checking whether material submitted is subject to copyright or ownership rights, e.g., figures, tables, photographs, illustrations, trade literature, and data. The author will need to obtain permission to reproduce any such items and include these permissions with their final submission. Where use is so restricted, the editorial office and Publisher must be informed with the final submission of the material. Please add any necessary acknowledgments to the typescript, preferably in the form of an Acknowledgments section at the end of the article. Credit the source and copyright of photographs, figures, illustrations, etc. in the supplementary captions.
Plagiarism is an act intentionally or unintentionally in obtaining or trying to obtain credit or value for scientific work, by quoting part or all of the work and/or scientific work of other parties that are recognized as scientific works, without expressing the source appropriately and adequately. Therefore, manuscripts must be original, never published, and not in the process of waiting for publication elsewhere. Material taken verbally from other sources needs to be clearly identified so that it is different from the original text. If plagiarism is identified, the Editor-in-Chief is responsible for reviewing the manuscript and will approve the action according to the level of plagiarism detected, with the following guidelines.

Plagiarism Level
1. Tracing a portion of a short sentence from another article without mentioning the source.
Action: Authors are given warnings and requests to change the text and quote correctly.
2. Tracing most of the other articles without the right quote and not mentioning the source.
Actions: The submitted manuscript is rejected for publication in the Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) and the Author can be sanctioned for not being allowed to publish in the journal.
3. All manuscript writers are responsible for the content of manuscripts they submit to the journal. If the manuscript is classified as plagiarism, then all authors will be subject to the same action.
4. If the author is proven to submit the manuscript to the journal by simultaneously sending it to another journal, and this overlap is found during the reviewer process or after publication, then the action according to point 2 above is given.
5. If plagiarism is found outside the rules above, the editor of the journal has the right to give sanctions according to the editor's team policy.
6. In the case of multiple borrowing Editorial Board acts according to the rules of COPE.
 There are several indicators of plagiarism that all authors must be aware of:

• The most easily identifiable plagiarism is that of repeated content when an author copies another author's work by reciting words, sentences, or paragraphs without citing original sources. This plagiarism model can be easily identified by our plagiarism checker software.

• The second type of plagiarism occurs when an author reproduces a substantial part of another writer's work, without citing him/her. The term "reproducing substance" here can be understood as copying another's ideas, both in terms of quantity and quality, which potentially eliminates the original author's rights, in the context of intellectual property.

• The third type of plagiarism is when an author takes ideas, words, or phrases in paraphrased sentences or paragraphs, without citing the original source. This type of plagiarism often cannot be checked through plagiarism software, as it is idea-based. Yet, this practice becomes unethical when the author does not cite, nor acknowledge the original source from the original writer.

 
8. Responding to Allegations of Possible Misconduct
Definitions of Misconduct
Deception may be deliberate, by reckless disregard of possible consequences, or by ignorance. Since the underlying goal of misconduct is to deliberately deceive others as to the truth, the journal's preliminary investigation of potential misconduct must take into account not only the particular act or omission but also the apparent intention (as best it can be determined) of the person involved. Misconduct does not include unintentional errors. The most common forms of scientific misconduct include:

• Falsification of data: ranges from fabrication to deceptive selective reporting of findings and omission of conflicting data, or willful suppression and/or distortion of data.

• Plagiarism: The appropriation of the language, ideas, or thoughts of another without crediting their true source, and representation of them as one's own original work (see prior section).

• Improprieties of authorship: Improper assignment of credit, such as excluding others, misrepresentation of the same material as original in more than one publication, the inclusion of individuals as authors who have not contributed to the work published; or submission of multi-authored publications without the concurrence of all authors.

• Misappropriation of the ideas of others: an important aspect of scholarly activity is the exchange of ideas among colleagues. Scholars can acquire novel ideas from others during the process of reviewing grant applications and manuscripts. However, improper use of such information can constitute fraud. Wholesale appropriation of such material constitutes misconduct.

• Violation of generally accepted research practices: Serious deviation from accepted practices in proposing or carrying out research, improper manipulation of experiments to obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, or improper reporting of results.

• Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting research: Including but not limited to serious or substantial, repeated, willful violations of applicable local regulations and law involving the use of funds, care of animals, human subjects, investigational drugs, recombinant products, new devices, or radioactive, biologic, or chemical materials.

• Inappropriate behavior in relation to misconduct: this includes unfounded or knowingly false accusations of misconduct, failure to report known or suspected misconduct, withholding or destruction of information relevant to a claim of misconduct and retaliation against persons involved in the allegation or investigation. This includes qualifications, experience, or research accomplishments to advance the research program, to obtain external funding, or for other professional advancements.

9. Responses to Possible Misconduct
A committee consisting of the editor-in-chief and editorial board members, as determined by the editor-in-chief, who has specific expertise in the area being investigated, will investigate misconduct allegations. The suitable actions were taken based on the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
The Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) follows the policies and guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and abides by its Code of Conduct in dealing with potential cases of misconduct.
 
10. Open Access Policy
The Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) provides immediate open access to its content. Our publisher, the Golestan University of Medical Sciences, abides by the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of Open Access:
“By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its free availability on the public Internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”
Researchers engage in discovery for the public good, yet because of cost barriers or use restrictions imposed by other publishers, research results are not available to the full community of potential users. It is our mission to support a greater global exchange of knowledge by making the research published in this journal open to the public and reusable under the terms of a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC) license. Furthermore, we encourage authors to post their pre-publication manuscripts in institutional repositories or on their websites before and during the submission process and to post the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version after publication. These practices benefit authors with productive exchanges as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. This journal is a fully open-access journal, which means that all articles are available on the Internet to all users immediately upon publication. Non-commercial and commercial use and distribution in any medium is permitted, provided the author and the journal are properly credited.
Benefits of open access for authors include:
      - Authors retain copyright to their work.
     - Free access for all users worldwide.
     - Increased visibility and readership.
     - No spatial constraints.
     - Rapid publication.
Other benefits of open access for authors:
- Fast Publishing: Minimize authors’ long waiting aspect as open-access publishes accepted articles immediately online. All research articles published in this journal journals are immediately freely available to read, download and share.
- High Availability: Manuscripts are available on all search engines and indexing databases, especially Google Scholar, Semantic Scholar, Microsoft Academic, etc.
- High Publicity: Authors get publicity, acceptance, and recognition in the scientific world.
- Maximize the Citation: Authors get frequent citations in others’ articles.
- Minimizing the Cost: It allows only one-time payment for processing of accepted manuscripts and ensures lifetime online availability.
- Recognition and Acceptance of Research work: Authors’ researches get full recognition among the intellectual community without any constraints.
 
11. Data Sharing Policy
The Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) uses the Basic Data Sharing Policy. The journal is committed to a more open research landscape, facilitating faster and more effective research discovery by enabling reproducibility and verification of data, methodology, and reporting standards. The journal encourages authors to cite and share their research data including, but not limited to: raw data, processed data, software, algorithms, protocols, methods, materials. Authors are encouraged to share or make open the data supporting the results, or analyses presented in their article where this does not violate the protection of human subjects or other valid privacy or security concerns. The journal encourages authors to share the data and other artifacts supporting the results in the article by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors should include a Data Accessibility Statement, including a link to the repository they have used, so that this statement can be published alongside their article.
The journal requires authors of Original Investigation, Case Report, and Special Paper articles to (1) place the de-identified data associated with the manuscript in a repository; and (2) include a Data Availability Statement in the manuscript describing where and how the data can be accessed. The journal defines data as the digital materials underlying the results described in the manuscript, including but not limited to spreadsheets, text files, interview recordings or transcripts, images, videos, output from statistical software, and computer code or scripts. Authors are expected to deposit at least the minimum amount of data needed to reproduce the results described in the manuscript.
Data can be placed in any repository that makes data publicly available and provides a unique persistent identifier, including institutional repositories, general repositories (e.g., Figshare, Open Science Framework, Zenodo, Dryad, Harvard Dataverse, OpenICPSR), or discipline-specific repositories.
The Data Availability Statement should be placed in the manuscript at the end of the main text before the references. This statement must include (1) an indication of the location of the data; (2) a unique identifier, such as a digital object identifier (DOI), accession number, or persistent uniform resource locator (URL); and (3) any instructions for accessing the data, if applicable. At the point of submission, you will be asked if there is a data set associated with the article. If you reply yes, you will be asked to provide the DOI, pre-registered DOI, hyperlink, or other persistent identifier associated with the data set(s). If you have selected to provide a pre-registered DOI, please be prepared to share the reviewer URL associated with your data deposit, upon request by reviewers. Where one or multiple data sets are associated with a manuscript, these are not formally peer-reviewed as a part of the journal submission process. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure the soundness of data. Any errors in the data rest solely with the producers of the data set(s).
Please note: As you are submitting your manuscript to the journal where submissions are double-blind peer-reviewed, the main text file should not include any information that might identify the authors (i.e., Author Name, Address, Conflict of Interest, and fund related information). As a data availability statement could reveal your identity, we recommend that you remove this from the anonymized version of the manuscript.
Exceptions to this policy will be made in rare cases in which de-identified data cannot be shared due to their proprietary nature or participant privacy concerns. Exceptions to policy and restrictions on data availability are granted for reasons associated with the protection of human privacy, issues such as biosafety, and/or to respect terms of use for data obtained under license from third parties. Confidential data, e.g., human subject or patient data, should always be anonymized, or permission to share should be obtained in advance. If in doubt, authors should seek counsel from their institution’s ethics committee.
Authors should include a data accessibility statement, including a link to the repository they have used, so that this statement can be published alongside their article. Below are a few examples:
Data Availability Statement:
   1. Data associated with this article are available in the Open Science Framework at .
   2. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at http://doi.org/[doi], reference number [reference number].
   3. The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at [URL], reference number [reference number].
   4. The data that support the findings of this study are available in [repository name] at [URL/DOI], reference number [reference number]. These data were derived from the following resources available in the public domain: [list resources and URLs]
 
Benefits of Sharing Data:
There are several benefits to sharing data:

• Data deposition supports the preservation of data long term.

• Depositing data in a repository that mints a permanent identifier such as a DOI, allows authors and others to cite the data set, allowing researchers to get appropriate credit for their work.

• Sharing data can lead to re-use and discovery, with greater opportunities for carrying out meta-analyses and the extraction of new knowledge.

• Sharing data publicly improves the robustness of the research process, supporting validation, research transparency, reproducibility, and replicability of results. This can, in turn, advance discovery and knowledge.

• Wider public availability of research data supports the translation of research into practice. 

The Medical Laboratory Journal (MLJ) offers the following standardized data sharing policies across our journals:

• Basic – Journal encourages authors to share and make data open where this does not violate the protection of human subjects or other valid subject privacy concerns. Authors are further encouraged to cite data and provide a data availability statement.

• Share upon reasonable request – Authors agree to make their data available upon reasonable request. It is up to the author to determine whether a request is reasonable.

• Publicly available – Authors make their data freely available to the public, under a license of their choice.

• Open data – Authors must make their data freely available to the public, under a license allowing re-use by any third party for any lawful purpose. Data shall be findable and fully accessible.

• Open and fully FAIR (Findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable) – Authors must make their data freely available to the public, under a license allowing re-use by any third party for any lawful purpose. Additionally, data shall meet the FAIR standards as established in the relevant subject area.

 
12. Data Citation
Data should be cited in the same way as article, book, and web citations, and authors are required to include data citations as part of their reference list. Data citation is appropriate for data held within institutional, subject-focused, or more general data repositories. It is not intended to take the place of community standards such as in-line citation of GenBank accession codes. When citing or making claims based on data, authors must refer to the data at the relevant place in the manuscript text and in addition provide a formal citation in the reference list. The journal follows the format proposed by the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles:
Authors; Year; Dataset title; Data repository or archive; Version (if any); Persistent identifier (e.g., DOI)”.
 
Please send questions, concerns or comments to the journal office at mljgoums.ac.ir