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  allow the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions. Also the journal allow the author(s) to retain publishing rights without restrictions.

  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.