Articles

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

 All articles that are due to publish in the APJCN are subject to rigorous blind peer review by field-related researchers and editorial decisions are made by an appropriate team of active-academics in the field, supported by an international Editorial Executive Board. APJCN journal attempts to make a policy of encouraging contribution of authors to expedite reviewing process through their commitment to undertake alternative manuscript reviews. The optional mutual collaboration of journal and authors will contribute to the benefits of our authors and readers as an added incentive to the undertaken reviewing of manuscripts. On the other hand, the journal approves the authors’ suggestion for reviewers to undertake their manuscript in the field. Should any dependency to the work are found in the review process, it will be at journal discretion to replace the reviewer with an independent new one. In line with APJCN policy to develop inter-collaboration among researchers, it will be more prospecting to be chosen if the suggested reviewers are from a different research community from another country. The articles are asked to be reviewed within a two-week period with prompt five-day interval reminders to reviewers during this step.

APJCN is adopted transparent and thorough instructions for best working practices in scientific publishing, working in conjunction with our academic partners. Such policies will benefit our authors, editors, and readers as we strive for a trustworthy, transparent and efficient publishing process. Responsibility for the journal and its policies lies with the Editor-in-Chief in conjunction with the Publisher; any concerns either regarding specific papers or general policies should be directed to the Executive Editor. APJCN offers Advance posting of accepted author manuscripts on its Advance articles page, which is updated daily, and issues are published twice a month online and in print.

Open Access Policy

 Articles published in Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Nursing are 'open access'. A universally accepted definition of the term is provided in the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing in 2003:

1. The article is universally and freely accessible via the Internet, in an easily readable format and deposited immediately upon publication, without embargo, in a PDF format in Journal's site 

2. The author(s) or copyright owner(s) irrevocably grant(s) to any third party, in advance and in perpetuity, the right to use, reproduce or disseminate the research article in its entirety or in part, in any format or medium, provided that no substantive errors are introduced in the process, proper attribution of authorship and correct citation details are given, and that the bibliographic details are not changed. If the article is reproduced or disseminated in part, this must be clearly and unequivocally indicated.

Articles in Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Nursing are published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) to ensure implementation of open access as defined.  

Archiving

The Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Nursing's Archive is preserved in PORTICO's repository system. The agreement was signed last year and the APJCN was added to the agreement in May 2017. 

APJCN statement of Transparency and Principals

•  Peer review process:  APJCN is a peer-reviewed journal. All manuscripts submitted to APJCN will be reviewed by independent reviewers expert in the subject of the manuscript.  An independent reviewer is not part of APJCN’s editorial team nor has any conflict of interest toward the manuscript. The independent reviewers are mainly chosen from the long list of authors who have published in one of the West Asia Organization for Cancer Prevention’s journals or have been suggested by the author and have declared no conflict of interest.
• Governing Body:  APJCN is scientifically governed by a team of scientists from all over the Asia and Pacific region acting as editorial team members and a group of senior scientists who act as the International advisory board and give policy advice to the editorial team. APJCN’s editorial management, editing, full-text production, preservation, and website maintenance are outsourced to professionals in the publishing industry. The financial aspect of the production and outsourcing is handled by the general secretary of the West Asia Organization for Cancer Prevention (WAOCP) who acts as the principal contact for APJCN. WAOCP is a not-for-profit scientific organization registered in Sabzevar/Iran.  The WAOCP has been assigned the responsibility of acting as a chapter of the Asian Pacific Organization for Cancer Prevention (APOCP).  APOCP was established as a cancer control association in 2000 and been involved in promoting cancer control measures throughout Asia and Pacific region by holding scientific conferences and seminars.
• Editorial team/contact information: The full name, affiliation, and CV’s of the editorial and international advisory board are provided to the public on the journal website (click here to visit).  The physical address and the contact information of the principal contact are provided in APJCN’ website (Click Here to see).
• Copyright: All manuscripts published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Cancer Nursing, are under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. This permits anyone to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the published work, provided the original work and source are appropriately cited. The Copyright and licensing information is clearly described on the journal’s Web site (click here) and indicated on all published articles since Oct. 2017.
• Process for identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct:  The editorial team of APJCN shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct (plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication) may occur. In addition, APJCN’s authors, editors, reviewers, and English editors are responsible to report any scientific misconduct that may feel happened. APJCN shall follow COPE’s guidelines in dealing with allegations of research misconduct.
• Ownership and management: The journal ‘owner is the West Asia Organization for Cancer Prevention. The WAOCP has been assigned the responsibility of acting as a chapter of the Asian Pacific Organization for Cancer Prevention. The Information about the ownership and/or management of APJCN is clearly indicated on the journal’s Web site (click here to verify).
• Website: The Web site of the APJCN (apjcn.waocp.com) is managed by Open Journal System software.  The system is widely used by many journals and provides a coherent mean to manage all aspect of the publishing process; submission, review, and publishing.
• Name of journal: The Journal name, Asia Pacific Journal of Cancer Nursing is unique and the uniqueness of the name has been verified when an ISSN was assigned to the journal.  The Journal is considered as an official publication of the Asia Pacific Organization for Cancer Prevention and its subsidiary, West Asia organization for cancer prevention (WAOCP).
• Conflicts of interest: APJCN has clear policies on conflicts of interest for editors, authors, and reviewers.  All the editorial team members, reviewers, or authors must declare a conflict of interest statement prior to comment, review, recommend (for editors and reviewers) and submit (for authors).
• Access:  All the journal contents and individual articles are available to readers free of charge under the term of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source.
• Revenue sources: The revenue sources of the journal are mainly publication fees charged to authors and donation by the WAOCP, and other organizations.  WAOCP as the finical supporter of the journal may seek funding from different bodies to help the journal keep its good standing. WAOCP shall not seek funding from the tobacco industry or industries that their operation increase risk of cancer to the public.
• Advertising: APJCN does not advertise and all logo and names on the journal website are for informing our clients and they shall not be considered as advertising.

Publication Ethics

APJCN is very sensitive to research misconduct and uses all means available to prevent publishing miscounted research. Though there is no a standard definition of research misconduct, the Council of Science Editors defines research misconduct broadly in three categories of action and conducts:

• Mistreatment of research subjects
• Falsification and Fabrication of data
• Piracy and Plagiarism

APJCN uses this definition of the misconduct in its dealing with the issue and follows strictly the COPE follow chart in dealing with research misconduct.  In addition, For each component of the research misconduct, APJCN has many assurance policies as follows 

Protection of human subject:

APJCN does not publish manuscripts that do not declare a statement about the protection of human subject and acquisition of informed consent when the subject of research is human. Normally, the journal requires that a statement is declared that research has been reviewed by an institutional review board (IRB) either in the material method section of the manuscript or in the acknowledgment section of the manuscript. APJCN encourage authors to report the registry number of the IRB in countries that a central registrar of the IRB exists as it is the case in Islamic Republic Iran.

Falsification and Fabrication of data:

Fabrication is defined as making up of data without actually collecting or synthesizing scientific data. Falsification is defined as the manipulation of research material in order to reach a favorable result. Fabrication and falsification could happen at any stage of research (in the field) up to the publication of manuscript where a misuse of citation can happen (referencing to a citation when the citation does not support the argument). APJCN tries to identify any kind of fabrication or falsification in all level of manuscript processing, from initial screening to comprehensive evaluation of a revised manuscript and even after a manuscript has been published. Report of any fabrication and falsification is an ethical duty of our authors, co-authors, reviewers, editors, and readers. In any event of falsification or fabrication, APJCN keeps its right to retract or withdraw the fabricated or falsified article. APJCN strictly follows the COPE follow chart in dealing with fabrication and falsification.

Plagiarism:

Plagiarism is defined as the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit.  Another category of plagiarism is self-plagiarism when author published his own idea, data, and text in different journals when no need of such duplication exists. APJCN uses all means to detect plagiarism. As a matter of quality assurance, a similarity of more than 30 percent in the text of a manuscript will be returned to the author to remove the similarities and reduce the chance of plagiarism.  APJCN strictly follows the COPE follow chart in dealing with plagiarised articles.

APJCN Authorship Consideration and Dispute Management.

 APJCN considers an author as a person who has substantially contributed in all stages of a research that the manuscript reports its result. In other hands, all authors who are listed in a manuscript have contributed to the research and the manuscript submitted to the journal. There are many different definitions of authorship among different bodies that oversee authorship rights and responsibilities. The COPE define the authorship as “The term authorship can refer to the creator or originator of an idea (eg, the author of the theory of relativity) or the individual or individuals who develop and bring to fruition the product that disseminates intellectual or creative works (eg, the author of a poem or a scholarly article).” International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) bases the authorship on the following four criteria:

1. “Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved”

 APJCN policies in maintaining its high standard of ethics have many provisions that help editorial to establish the authorship requirement that was defined by COPE or ICMJE. For this, APJCN uses its editorial management system to validate the authorship of a manuscript submitted. APJCN’s initial engagement with authors is through its “Editorial Management System”. The system functionally deals with the corresponding author but informs other authors any changes or major steps that are taken in the process of submission, review, revision, editing and final steps of publication. The only means of communication with authors are by email. All listed authors are required to verify their contribution to a submitted manuscript by receiving an email that informs them of the submission and the nature of authorship of the manuscript (author list with the order that is registered in the EMSS). The email clearly validates the contribution of listed authors in the manuscript. In a case that an author disputes the submitted manuscript or his contribution, the journal returns the manuscript to the corresponding author and ask to resubmit when the dispute is resolved. Any authorship dispute, after the initial step, is managed as the COPE recommends. Authors that may need information on authorship right and responsibility and the way handle disputes are referred to the COPE publication on how to handle authorship dispute at (https://publicationethics.org/files/2003pdf12_0.pdf) or to Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors in ICMJE ‘s web site at (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html). We expect that all authors listed in a manuscript will receive the journal’s email and read and the content of the email that is provided for the purpose of authorship validation.  

Research Involving Animals

 APJCN promotes the ethical aspect of research on animals. All research involving animal (no matter large animals or small), must provide evidence of an ethical review board.  The evidence could be a statement indicating that the research has been approved by an independent ethical committee placed either in material and method section of the manuscript or as an acknowledgment at the end of the manuscript.

In addition, manuscript submitted to APJCN that involves animals must meet the minimum standard described in ARRIVE guidelines. The guideline consists of information that scientific publication reporting an animal experimentation should report. APJCN encourages its author to read through the guideline and try to provide the minimum information that the guideline recommends, especially details of animal welfare, including information about housing, feeding, and steps taken to minimize suffering, including the use of anesthesia and method of sacrifice.   

Article Processing Charges (APCs)

Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Nursing does not charge any article processing charges (APCs). The publishing cost of APJCN is funded and supported by West Asia Organization for Cancer Prevention (WAOCP).

Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Nursing (APJCN) does not charge any Submission Charges.