Publication Ethics and Research Integrity

Transparency & Best Practice

Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing as recommended by The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) have been incorporated in our policies for publication ethics and research integrity.

Research Standards

Experiments Dealing with Plants

Experiments dealing with all plants, including the collection of plant material, must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. Field studies should be conducted in accordance with local legislation. Voucher specimens must be deposited in a public herbarium.

Experiments Dealing with Animals

Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. Where available, studies should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. Manuscripts will not be reviewed if the in-house editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework.

Experiments Dealing with Human Subjects

Research involving human participants must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by an appropriate institutional review board. Informed consent to participate must be obtained from participants (or legal guardians for minors), and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript.

Clinical Trial Registration

We support improved reporting of clinical trials. Authors are recommended to register their clinical trial with ClinicalTrials.gov. The trial registration number and date should be included in the manuscript.

Data Sharing Policy

Materials contained in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, should be freely available to scientists for non-commercial purposes. Authors are encouraged to deposit datasets in public repositories.

Author Responsibilities

Conflict of Interest Disclosure

Authors should disclose at the time of submission any affiliation or financial interest that may affect the presentation. This information should be provided on a separate sheet titled "Conflict of Interest Disclosure".

Contribution of Authors

Authorship requires substantial contribution to conception, design, data acquisition/analysis, and drafting/revising the manuscript. All authors must approve the submitted version.

Managing Citations

Articles must cite appropriate and relevant literature from peer-reviewed publications. Authors should cite original work rather than review articles where possible and avoid excessive self-citation.

Research or Publication Misconduct

Manuscripts must be original and not under consideration elsewhere. CTNR is a member of CrossCheck’s plagiarism detection initiative. Any suspected cases of covert duplicate submission will be handled as outlined in the COPE guidelines.

Serious Misconduct: Manipulation of research data (images, removing outliers, omitting data points) with the intention to create a false interpretation is very serious misconduct. If misconduct is proven, articles may be retracted.

Reviewer Responsibilities

• Timeliness: Reviewers are expected to submit reviews within three weeks.
• Confidentiality: Manuscripts must be treated as confidential documents. Privileged information must not be used for personal advantage.
• Objectivity: Reviews should be objective, refraining from personal criticism.
• Citation Check: Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited.

Editor & Publisher Responsibilities

Editors are responsible for treating all authors with fairness, courtesy, objectivity, and transparency. They must protect the confidentiality of every author’s work and make decisions with reasonable speed.

Publishers work to respect privacy, protect intellectual property, foster editorial independence, and maintain the integrity of the academic record.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to full-text articles without asking prior permission, in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative and CC BY 4.0 License.

Submission Process

We accept manuscripts in Word format (.doc or .docx). Please choose the submission method that best suits your needs.