Ethics summary
This journal follows International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)‘s Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. Therefor we genuinely recommend and appreciate it if authors read these recommendations prior to their manuscript submission.
If research misconduct, fraud or plagiarism is suspected, editors will follow the COPE guidelines and reserve the rights to inform authors or their institution.

  Conflict-of-Interest Statement
According to ICMJE, conflict of interest occurred when a financial or personal relationship exist between any participant in the peer review and publication process – authors, reviewers, editors, or editorial board members of journals – and might bias or be seen to bias fulfilling their role.

 At first any conflict of interest in a given manuscript should be report by submitting ICMJE form for Disclosure of Conflicts of Interest on “Journal Name” website. Then we utilize COPE workflow to transparently handle it.

  Copyright and License
Iranian Journal of Health Education and Health Promotion is an open-access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

  Authorship
We stick to ICMJE definition of author and contributor based on its four criteria as follow:  

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.”

We required the authors to understand and accept the ethical policy especially:  

1. ​Declaration of interests — it is important to declare the funding that made the research possible.
2. Registering clinical trials — clinical trials should be registered in publicly accessible registries.
3. Respecting confidentiality — protecting patients from being recognized if used in research and in publication.
4. Protecting research subjects, patients and experimental animals.

   Regulation for Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

  Section A: Publication and authorship 

1. ​All submitted papers are subject to strict peer-review process by at least two reviewers that are experts in the area of the particular paper. Deputy Editors and Editor-in-Chief are selecting reviewers.
2. The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, originality, readability, statistical validity and language.
3. The possible decisions include acceptance, minor revisions, major revision or rejection.
4. If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted. But retracting or correcting articles will be done by the journal when needed.
5. Rejected articles will not be re-reviewed.
6. The paper acceptance is constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
7. No research can be included in more than one publication, whether within the same journal or in another journal.

   Section B: Authors' responsibilities 

1. ​Authors must certify that their manuscript is their original work.
2. Authors must certify that the manuscript has not previously been published elsewhere, or even submitted and been in reviewed in another journal.
3. Authors must participate in the peer review process and follow the comments.
4. Authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
5. All Authors mentioned in the paper must have significantly contributed to the research. Level of their contribution also must be defined in the “Authors’ Contributions” section of the article.
6. Authors must state that all data in the paper are real and authentic.
7. Authors must notify the Editors of any conflicts of interest.
8. Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript.
9. Authors must report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors.
10. Authors must state that informed consent was obtained from all human adult participants and from the parents or legal guardians of minors. Include the name of the appropriate institutional review board that approved the project.
11. The authors should follow WMA Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects and clearly state this in their manuscripts.
12. Authors are recommended to conform to the Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines for reporting animal studies.

   Section C: Peer review/responsibility for the reviewers 

1. ​Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
2. Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
3. Reviewers should also call to the Editor-in-Chief's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
4. Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
5. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in 500 to 1000 words.
6. Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author. No self-knowledge of the author(s) must affect their comments and decision.

   Section D: Editorial responsibilities 

1. Editors (Deputy Editors or Editor-in-Chief) have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article.
2. Editors must not change their decision after submitting a decision (especially after reject or accept) unless they have a serious reason.
3. Editors should not allow any conflicts of interest between staff, authors, reviewers and board members.
4. Editors should not reject papers based on suspicions; they should have proof of misconduct.
5. Editors should act if they suspect misconduct, whether a paper is published or unpublished, and make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem.
6. Editors should only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
7. Editors should ensure that all research material they publish conforms to international accepted ethical guidelines.
8. Editors should preserve the anonymity of reviewers
9. Editors should not reverse their decisions nor overturn the ones of previous editors without serious reason.
10. Editors should base their decisions solely one the papers' importance, originality, clarity and relevance to publication's scope.
11. Editors should have a clear picture of a research's funding sources.
12. Editors should publish errata pages or make corrections when needed.
13. Editors should guarantee the quality of the papers and the integrity of the academic record.
14. Editors should always consider the needs of the authors and the readers when attempting to improve the publication.
15. Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication.

          Section E: Publishing Ethics Issues

1. All editorial members, reviewers and authors must confirm and obey rules defined by ICMJE.
2. All editorial members and authors must will to publish any kind of corrections honestly and completely.
3. Authors cannot make major changes in the article after acceptance without a serious reason.
4. Corresponding author is the main owner of the article so she/he can withdraw the article when it is incomplete (before entering the review process or when a revision is asked for).

          Section F: Information For Readers 

• We encourage readers to sign up for the publishing notification service for this journal. Use the Register link at main meneu  for the journal. This registration will result in the reader receiving the Table of Contents by email for each new issue of the journal. This list also allows the journal to claim a certain level of support or readership. See the journal's Privacy Statement, which assures readers that their name and email address will not be used for other purposes.

    Section G: Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections

• Any complaints, concerns, or questions regarding the technical correctness, clarity, completeness, or quality of an article published in Iranian Journal of Health Education and Health Promotion should be directed to the editor-in-chief of the journal. For ethical concerns, please also see the Ethics Complaints and Appeals Process.

•     The title, authors, and issue number of the article in question
•     The role of the reporter (i.e. author, reader, other)
•     A brief description of the technical concern
•     Links to any relevant supporting evidence (articles, data, etc.) 

• For significant concerns that potentially impact the reliability of the research, the editor will initiate an investigation to determine how the concern will be addressed. Original authors and reviewers will be included in the investigation as needed. The editor will strive to complete investigations within 60 days of reporting. Outcomes of the investigation may include:
•     No Change

• Article galleys are removed
• Article page is updated with retraction notice and reason for retraction
• A retraction notice is issued in the next issue of the journal

All significant corrections will undergo the peer review process per Razavi International Journal of Medicine policy. Retraction decisions are based on COPE Retraction Guidelines.

Appeals
If an author or reporter disagrees with the decision of the editor-in-chief, they may appeal the decision. Upon receiving an appeal, the editor-in-chief shall convene an ad hoc Appeals Committee consisting of the editor-in-chief (as chair) and four editorial board members. The Appeals Committee shall review the appeal and render a decision based on a majority vote within 60 days.


    Section H: Corrections, Retractions and Matters Arising

Iranian Journal of Health Education and Health Promotion follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) and the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/guidance).

We aim to ensure the integrity of the academic record of all published or potential publications. Whenever it is recognized that a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement, or distorted report has been published, it must be corrected promptly and with due prominence. If, after an appropriate investigation, an item proves to be fraudulent, it should be retracted. The retraction should be clearly identifiable to readers and indexing systems.

Corrections

Errors in published papers may be identified in the form of a corrigendum or erratum when the Editor-in-Chief considers it appropriate to inform the journal readership about a previous error and makes a correction to the error in the published article. The corrigendum or erratum will appear as a new article in the journal, and will cite the original published article.

Retractions

Retractions are considered and published when there are severe errors in an article that invalidate the conclusions. Retractions are also made in cases where there is evidence of publication malpractice, such as plagiarism, duplicate publication, or unethical research.

According to industry best practice and in accordance with COPE guidelines, AME implements the following procedure if a retraction is confirmed:

1.     A retraction note titled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the authors and/or the editor is published in a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list.

2.     In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article.

3.     The online article is preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.

4.     The original article is retained unchanged save for a watermark on the HTML and PDF indicating on each page that it has been “retracted.”

Editorial expressions of concern

Where substantial doubt arises as to the honesty or integrity of a submitted or published article, journal editors may consider issuing an expression of concern. However, expressions of concern should only be issued if an investigation into the problems relating to the article has proven inconclusive, and if there remain strong indicators that the concerns are valid.  Under some rare cases, an editorial expression of concern may also be issued when an investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time.

The expression of concern will be linked back to the published article it relates to.


    Section I: Artificial Intelligence (AI) in publication
 

he use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in any step of manuscript preparation is in agreement with the COPE position statement. Authors could use AI in writing of the manuscript to improve the language and readability, to produce images of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data. Authors are required to disclose any utilization of AI tools (how and which AI tools have been used) at the end of the manuscript. It is essential that the final content is thoroughly reviewed by the authors and they are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript.

Example

Declaration: We acknowledge the use of [AI tool name] to [write the introduction section] OR We have not used any AI tools or technologies to prepare this manuscript. Editors and peer reviewers do not upload unaccepted manuscripts (or any parts of manuscripts including figures and tables) into Generative AI tools.