Editorial Policies
Submission of a manuscript to the “Current Topics in Nutraceutical Research (CTNR)” implies that all authors have read and agreed to its content and that the manuscript conforms to the journal’s policies pertaining to Research involving plants, animals and human, and Standards for research in complementary and alternative medicine.
Experiments dealing with plants and plant materials
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, and the manuscript should include a statement specifying the appropriate permissions and/or licenses. Voucher specimens must be deposited in a public herbarium or other public collection providing access to deposited material. Information on the voucher specimen and who identified it must be included in the manuscriptmedicine.
Experiments dealing with Animals
Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. The fundamental principles to adhere to when conducting research in animals is outlined under IACUC Central (https://www.aalas.org/iacuc).A statement detailing compliance with relevant USA guidelines must be included in the manuscript. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption and the reasons for the exemption). Manuscripts will not be reviewed if the in-house editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework of Animal Use and Care.
Experiments dealing with Human Subjects
Research involving human participants, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/) and must have been approved by an appropriate institutional review board. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption). Manuscripts will not be reviewed if the in-house editorconsiders that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework.
Research involving human participants, informed consent to participate in the study must be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of minors) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. Consent must be obtained for all forms of personally identifiable data including biomedical, clinical, and biometric data. Documentary evidence of consent must be supplied if requested.
Clinical Trial registration
CTNR supports improved reporting of clinical trials. To this end, authors are recommended to register their clinical trial with Clinical Trial.Gov, US National Library of Medicine (https://clinicaltrials.gov). The trial registration number and date of registration should be included in the manuscript.
Data sharing policy
It was our understanding submission of a manuscript to CTNRauumes that materials contained in the manuscript, including all relevant raw data, will be freely available to any scientist wishing to use them for non-commercial purposes, without breaching any confidentiality. Authors are encouraged to deposit their datasets either in publicly available repositories or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files.
Standards for research in complementary and alternative medicine
Standards for research in complementary and alternative medicine are similar to any evidence-based research. We believe that Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) research should be held to the same standards and evidence threshold as those of medicine research. All clinical research manuscripts must comply with international and national standards for such work. All CAM treatments/techniques to be tested on animal models and/or human patients must have adequate prior evidence that the treatment/technique shows some potential of being therapeutic. Manuscripts must include evidence that takes the form of objective, measurable data from previously published peer reviewed literature which adheres to scientific principles (for instance in vitro or cellular work). Manuscripts describing work lacking this evidence will not be considered on ethical grounds.
Conflict of Interest Disclosure
It is the policy of this journal and the publisher (New Century Health Publishers, LLC) that readers of the journal should be made aware of any affiliation or financial interest that may affect the author's presentation. Therefore, authors of review articles should disclose at the time of submission any financial arrangement they may have with a company whose product figures prominently in the submitted manuscript or with a company making a competing product. Such information will be held in confidence while the paper is under review and will not influence the editorial decision, but if the article is accepted for publication, the editors will usually discuss with the authors the manner in which such information is to be communicated to the reader.
This information should be provided on a separate sheet of paper under title "Conflict of Interest Disclosure" and included with the manuscript submitted. Please provide your name, signature and the title of the manuscript below the "Conflict of Interest Disclosure" statement. If there is no conflict of interest, simply state so. Editors are not to share this statement with the reviewers of the manuscript.
Evaluation of Statistical Treatment of Data
Authors must provide a detailed description of statistical methods and measures used in their research, including justification of the appropriateness of the statistical test used. Reviewers will be asked to check the statistical methods, and the manuscript is also evaluated by the Statistical Editor who is part of the Editorial Board of the journal.
Contribution of Authors
Authorship on the manuscript requires substantial contribution to the conception, design of the work, acquisition, analysis,interpretation of data, writing the manuscript or substantively revising it.It is also assumed that all authors have approved the submitted version and ensure the accuracy or integrity of the work in its entirety. The corresponding authors wishing to make changes to authorship will be required to request permission with justification prior to publication. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript.
Managing Accuracy of Citations
Research articles and non-research articles (e.g. Opinion, Review, and Commentary articles) must cite appropriate and relevant literature from peer-reviewed publications in support of the claims made in the body of the manuscript. Authors should cite the original work rather than a review article that cites an original work.Authors should not use an excessive number of citations to support one point. A single most reference should serve the purpose.
Research or publication Misconduct
Manuscripts submitted to CTNR must be original and the manuscript, or substantial parts of it, must not be under consideration by any other journal. The manuscript must not be already published in any journal or in any other citable form. CTNR is a member of CrossCheck’s plagiarism detection initiative and takes seriously all cases of publication misconduct. Any suspected cases of covert duplicate manuscript submission will be handled as outlined in the COPE guidelines and the Editor may contact the authors’ institution. CTNR also endorses the policies of the ICMJE in relation to overlapping publications. In handling any research or publication misconduct, the author(s) are first requested for an explanation for possible allegation of misconduct. If the misconduct is proven, and the scientific integrity of the article is significantly undermined, articles may be retracted. Any correction to, or retraction of, published articles will be made by publishing a correction or a retraction note linked to the original article. Any alterations to the original article will be described in the note. The original article remains in the public domain and the subsequent Correction or Retraction will be widely indexed. In some cases, we may have to remove the published material from our website. Changes to a published article that may affect the outcome of the article, may be published at discretion of the editor as a correction linked to the original article. Manipulation of research data with the intention to create a false interpretation is a very serious misconduct. Such activities include, manipulating images, removing outliers or “inconvenient” results, changing, adding or omitting data points, etc. Questions regarding data integrity will be referred to the Editor who may request detailed study data from the author(s) for inspection or verification. If the original data cannot be produced, the manuscript may be rejected or, in the case of a published article, retracted. Cases of suspected misconduct will be reported to the author(s)’ institution(s).
Peer review Process
All manuscripts published in the CTNR undergo a thorough a single blind peer review process where only the editor and not the author knows the identity of the reviewers. This involves reviews by 1-3 independent peer reviewers plus journal’s in-house editor. All submissions to the CTNR are first assessed by an in-house editor, who decides whether the submission meets the scope of the journal and it is suitably written for peer review. The in-house editor in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief assigns the manuscript to the one of the several editors who assume responsibility as communicating editor for overseeing peer review. The communicating editors are encouraged to seek assistance of statistics editor when there may be complex experimental design. Communicating Editors in consultation with the Editor-in-Chief will make a decision based on the reviewers’ reports and authors are sent these reports along with the editorial decision (accept, revise, or reject) on their manuscript. Authors of the manuscripts with good science but poor presentation are referred to and advised to choose from one of the many commercial editorial services to revise the manuscript and re-submit mostly as a new manuscript. We follow a close peer review system where reviewers are anonymous and the pre-publication history is not revealed to authors.
Authors may suggest potential reviewers if they wish; however, whether or not to consider these reviewers is at the Consulting Editor's discretion. Authors should not suggest present or past collaborators or colleagues from their institution. Authors who wish to suggest peer reviewers can do so in the cover letter and should provide institutional email addresses where possible, or information which will help the Communicating Editors to verify the identity of the reviewer. Authors may request exclusion of individuals as peer reviewers. Please note that the Communicating Editors may choose to invite excluded peer reviewers.
Advertising Policy
It is the policy of the New Century Health Publishers, LLC to not to publish any paid or unpaid commercial advertisement with the exception of public service announcements such as conference announcements.