Do you feel fed up on being rejected by high-impact journals several times without any prior notice? Mars Publications is the company that transforms technical failures into publication achievements. A lot of genius scientists can fall at the last stumbling block because of lack of documentation or ethical mismanagement.
Our consultancy will offer special Resubmission Support to assist you in going through complicated editorial requirements. We review your paper, compile necessary statements, and make sure your paper is of the gold standard of COPE and ICMJE. Get your research integrity and indexing fast with Mars Publications today.
What Will Be the Outcome of the Absence of Ethics Statement?
Transparency is a desire but a requirement in the context of the current age of academic publishing. In fact, editors in large houses such as Springer, Elsevier and Wiley consider ethics statements as the foundation of a legitimate manuscript. Without this important section you may not only lose a small portion of time. You run the risk of disclosing the integrity of your whole study.
It is important to know what happens in the absence of an ethics statement in any researcher. Be it an experienced professor or a doctoral student, the following are the results that are common to a manuscript which is lacking ethical clarity.
Immediate Desk Rejection
The most prevalent result of the lack of ethics statement is an instant desk rejection. Journal managers do technical checks and your abstract will not be seen by the Editor-in-Chief. Such gatekeepers seek certain compliance indicators. In case they do not find a reference to the IRB approval or the consent of the participants, they will probably repatriate the paper.
Desk rejection is disappointing since it is a waste of time. The lack of one paragraph costs you weeks of the publication cycle. Professional Resubmission Support can also assist you in managing to self-detect these gaps until you press the submit button, and then you can be sure that your paper will be sent straight to the peer review.
The Pause of Misconduct in a Research
An absence of an ethics statement may simply be an indication of lack of integrity. The editors are hyper-vigilant of predatory or unethical research practices. In case one statement is not provided, an editor may be curious whether you have received the required approvals.
This suspicion may result in an official investigation. The journal can reach out to your school to confirm that the research was conducted within the legal ethics. When a journal raises a red flag against your name due to a possible misconduct, it will be hard to take off the red stain in your work history. The only defense you can have against such an allegation is transparency.
The Hurdle of Retrospective Approval
When a journal can correct the omission, you have the difficulty of the retrospective approval. The majority of ethics committees do not approve a study once it has been completed. In case you conducted some research on human beings or animals without obtaining permission, you cannot just write it in later.
Most journals in the Q1 and Q2 (without evidence of prior permission) will be permanently disqualifying your data. You can not rely on unethical data gathered to make a valid academic publication. This can usually render the whole project useless and the time and money lost is tremendous.
Effects on Multi-Author Collaborations
The absence of an ethics statement exposes each of the co-authors. In team projects, submission is normally dealt with by the respective author. Nonetheless, the ethical compliance rests with all the authors. When a paper is retracted or its publication is rejected due to the ethical lapses, it will impact all the people on the masthead.
Supportive Resubmission: This includes proper audit of the contribution of authors and consent forms. This means that all the members of the research team will be safeguarded by a strong and precise declaration of ethics.
Post-Publication Retraction
Mr. Sometimes, a manuscript that lacks an ethics statement is overlooked and it is published. This is not a “win.” In case a reader or a whistleblower realizes the absence of the ethical disclosure, the journal will initiate a post-publication enquiry.
In case you are unable to show evidence of consent or IRB approval, the journal will withdraw your paper. Retractions are not only public, but permanent. They are found in such databases as Scopus or Web of Science with a watermark of Retracted on your work. This is much more harmful than an outright rejection because it implies a serious violation of scientific trust.
What should an Ethics Statement Contain?
In order not to fall into these pitfalls, your ethics statement should be complete. It must also clearly show the name of the approving committee and the reference number of approval. You also need to explain what nature of informed consent you have taken. In case your study used animals, you have to mention the compliance with international laboratory animal welfare standards.
A statement should be included even though your research does not need ethics approval (some meta-analyses, or reviews of publicly available data). You should clearly mention that approval was not needed in the study and a reason. Silence can never be a decent replacement for a formal statement.
Resubmission Support So that You save your work
In case your paper has been rejected because of some ethics that were not taken then panic not. Resubmission Support services are used to rebuild the needed documentation. Scholars will assist you in making contacts with your IRB to obtain the necessary letters or draft a Correction to a paper already in the pipeline.
At Mars Publications we make sure that your statement of ethics is in line with the requirements of your target journal. We also ensure regional differences in laws regarding ethics meaning that your work will be up to date regardless of whether you are a publisher in Europe, the US, or the Gulf.
The Conclusion: The Battle of Ethics is Non-Negotiable
Lacking a statement of ethics is a red flag that brings the publication process to a standstill. It raises a question of your professionalism and the legitimacy of your data. By laying as much emphasis as possible on this section at the writing stage, you have shown that you are committed to the community of scientists all over the world.