Journal Policies

Open Access Copyright Policy

All JMBHE articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution License (see each article for the exact CC BY version used). With this license, Authors retain copyright, but allow any user to share, copy, distribute, transmit, adapt and make commercial use of the work without needing additional permission, provided appropriate attribution is made to the original author or source.

Publication Ethics

JMBHE adheres to the prevailing industry standards and procedures for investigating publication ethics.

JMBHE does not allow dual publication (the same material published twice in the peer-reviewed literature) or dual submission (the same material is simultaneously submitted to more than one journal).

Specifically, JMBHE does not tolerate plagiarism, data or figure manipulation, knowingly providing incorrect information, copyright infringement, attempting to manipulate the peer review process inappropriately, or failing to declare conflicts of interest, fraud, and libel. This list is not exhaustive - if there is the uncertainty about what constitutes such actions, then more resources may be found at the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Council of Science Editors (CSE), or the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

JMBHE will rigorously enforce our standards and follow up on any transgressions. In extreme cases, this may call for individuals to be reported to their institutions and/or for manuscripts to be retracted.

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

JMBHE adheres to the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines. We follow recommended COPE procedures whenever we are alerted to an issue that requires investigation.

Competing Interests

JMBHE requires that all parties involved in a publication (i.e. the authors, reviewers and academic editors) should transparently declare any potential Competing Interests (also known as Conflicts of Interest). The disclosure of a Competing Interest does not necessarily mean an issue to be addressed; it simply ensures that all parties are appropriately informed of relevant considerations while they work on the submission.

Authors are asked to declare all competing interests upon submission. Reviewers are expected to consider any competing interests before agreeing to review and to confirm that they have no competing interests before submitting their review. Academic Editors are expected to recuse themselves from handling a manuscript if they feel they have a competing interest.

Potential competing interests should be declared even if the individual in question feels that these interests do not represent an actual conflict. Examples of Competing Interests include, but are not limited to: possible financial benefits if the manuscript is published; prior working or personal relationships with any of the authors; patent activity on the results; consultancy activity around the results; personal material or financial gain (such as free travel, gifts, etc.) relating to the work; personal convictions (religious, political, etc.) which may have a bearing on the work, and so on.

While possible financial benefits should appear here, actual funding sources (institutional, corporate, grants, etc.) should be detailed in the funding disclosure statement.

Funding Disclosure

Apart from declaring Competing Interests, JMBHE also requires authors to disclose the financing that made their work possible.

The Funding statement is published in the final article. This disclosure provides added transparency.

Ethics Statement

Where applicable, JMBHE requires that authors provide an Ethics statement detailing the relevant ethical standards met when conducting the research.

Ethics statements are required whenever research is conducted on humans or human tissue, on animals or animal tissue, or whenever the approval of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) is required.

In addition to providing an Ethics statement upon submission (for review purposes), this statement should also be provided in the Materials and Methods section of the manuscript.

Where IRB approval was required, the authors must provide an ethics statement as part of their Materials and Methods section detailing full information regarding their approval (including the name of the granting organization and the approval reference numbers).​​ If an approval reference number is not provided, written approval must be provided as a confidential supplemental file.

Field Research Permits and Permissions

When research is conducted in any location other than at the researchers’ institution or a permanent field station, appropriate permission (aka ‘field research permit’) to access the site must have been obtained according to applicable laws and norms.

Adequate proof of this permission or a clear indication of how the access was allowed under local or international law must be provided at submission.

If verbal permission was obtained, the name and authority of the person who gave it must be provided.

If material (samples, specimens, etc.) were collected, then the field permit or a separate collection permit must be provided to show that this was permitted by the appropriate authority.

If materials were exported, documentation must also be provided to show that this was approved by the source and destination countries according to relevant national and international laws.

This documentation is not necessarily published, but by requiring these documents, we aim to ensure the legality and integrity of the science we publish.

Copyright Permissions

JMBHE publishes accepted manuscripts under a CC BY license.

The author must obtain the appropriate permissions from the original publisher to republish any previously published text, figures, tables, Supplementary Information, etc., in an Open Access journal under a CC BY license.

Retraction Policy

JMBHE reserves the right to retract articles found to be fraudulent (for example, subject to deception such as data manipulation) or in serious breach of one of our policies.