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Journal Policies

This page details the operational practices and policies of the Journal of Innovation in Health Sciences Education (JIHSE). Our editorial board is committed to adhering to best practices and ethical standards of scholarly publication as established by independent organizations, including the Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

For complete details on formatting a manuscript submission, please see our Manuscript Submission Guidelines.

Contents

Mission of the Journal of Innovation in Health Sciences Education

The mission of the Journal of Innovation in Health Sciences Education is to make available peer-reviewed research focused on transformational educational approaches, emerging instructional technologies, and outcome-focused teaching and learning innovation in health sciences education (face to face, virtual, or hybrid).

JIHSE aims to:

  • promote transformational educational approaches among health professionals,
  • illuminate outcome-driven teaching and learning innovation within health sciences education,
  • advance the application of evidence-based and technology-rich teaching approaches.

For more information on content suitable for submission, please see our Aims and Scope page.

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Who Can Submit?

Anyone may submit an original article to be considered for publication in Journal of Innovation in Health Sciences Education, provided they own the copyright to the work being submitted or are authorized by the copyright owner or owners to submit the article. Authors are the initial owners of the copyrights to their works (an exception in the non-academic world to this might exist if the authors have, as a condition of employment, agreed to transfer copyright to their employer).

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General Submission Rules

Articles submitted to JIHSE must not have been previously published in journals, published proceedings, or books (print or electronic), or be under review for such publication. By submitting an article to JIHSE, the author is stating that the submitted work is not currently in the publication process with another journal (print or electronic) and that the work will not be submitted to another journal until the final review decision has been made by the editors of JIHSE. 

Please note: "publication" in a working-paper series or a pre-print server, or institutional publication of a dissertation does not constitute prior publication for the purposes of submission to JIHSE.

Please see the Aims and Scope page for content and article types appropriate for submission to JIHSE.

If you have questions or concerns about the submission terms for JIHSE, please contact the editors.

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Standard for Listed Authorship

Listed Authors

The Journal of Innovation in Health Sciences Education follows the definition of authorship set by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which lists 4 criteria for inclusion as an author on a research paper:

  • Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  • Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  • 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

Any listed author should meet all four criteria, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors.

Non-author Contributors

Those who do not meet all four ICMJE criteria should be acknowledged. Because acknowledgment may imply endorsement by acknowledged individuals of a study’s data and conclusions, authors are advised to obtain written permission to be acknowledged from all acknowledged individuals. A brief statement acknowledging the individual and their contribution is sufficient, and effusive statements are discouraged. Acknowledgements should utilize the standardized CRediT Taxonomy of Contributor Roles described below.

Please see the ICMJE Roles and Responsibilities page for further details.

CRediT Taxonomy of Contributor Roles

The journal also utilizes the CRediT Taxonomy of Contributor Roles promoted by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) for sharing complete and accurate description of individual contributions to the research. (These standards were originally developed by the Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information [CASRAI].) Individual contributors may hold multiple roles, and a given role may apply to multiple contributors. CRediT offers supplemental information on contributorship and does not affect the journal’s criteria to qualify for authorship under the ICMJE definition above. Nor does a listed contributor need meet the ICMJE criteria for authorship to receive role recognition under CRediT.

A complete description of each author’s roles using the relevant categories should be included in the submission cover letter. An overview of the CRediT contributor roles is listed below:

  • Conceptualization – Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
  • Data curation – Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later re-use.
  • Formal analysis – Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
  • Funding acquisition ​- Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
  • Investigation – ​Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
  • Methodology – Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
  • Project administration – Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
  • Resources – Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
  • Software – Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
  • Supervision – Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
  • Validation – Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
  • Visualization – Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
  • Writing – original draft – ​Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
  • Writing – review & editing – Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary, or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages.

Please see the CRedIT Taxonomy website for additional information.

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Open Access Statement

In alignment with the values of the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences Library and its commitment to the open dissemination of research, JIHSE  supports "diamond" open access for all work published in JIHSE, providing access to all content in its final form immediately and without charge to the end reader or their institution, and with no publication processing charges for authors.

Users may read, download, print or share the full text of all articles published within this journal without seeking permission from individual authors or the publisher, so long as that use adheres to the Creative Commons Attribution License. Please see the section below for best practices on attribution and usage under the CC-BY-4.0 license when sharing articles from JIHSE.

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Absence of Publication Charges and Fees

JIHSE charges no fees for submission, review, or publication of articles. There are no hidden fees at any stage of the review or publication process. All publication costs are absorbed by the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences library. This is done in alignment with the USAHS Library’s commitment to advancing open access publication of scientific research and with JIHSE's mission to promote open access publication and dissemination of accessible education research.

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Attribution and Usage Policies

Work in JIHSE is published under a  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). Reproduction, electronic posting, transmission, or other distribution or use of the article or any material therein, requires that attribution be made to the Author and JIHSE.

Best practice for such attribution is to include a standard citation of the article, linking to the DOI of the original publication, and to include the statement "Used under CC-BY 4.0 License". If possible, a link to the CC-BY 4.0 license information at the Creative Commons website (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) should also be provided. The cover page attached to each article meets these terms fully.

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Author Rights

As further described in the Submission Agreement, by submitting the Work for publication, the authors agree to allow first publication rights to JIHSE  and to allow JIHSE to share the Work under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) International License.

Notwithstanding this CC-BY License, authors retain all rights to future use, including later publication, of their work without restriction.

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JIHSE does not require any copyright transfer agreement for publication. Authors do grant to JIHSE the non-exclusive first right to publish accepted work in the journal. Accepted work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). Authors retain all rights to use their work in the future without restriction.

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Formatting Requirements

JIHSE relies generally upon the Publication Manual of the American Psychology Association, 7th ed., for formatting, citation, and reference guidelines. Specific requirements for submission to JIHSE can be found in the Manuscript Submission Guidelines.

Only manuscripts meeting these guidelines will be considered for publication.

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Article Submission Agreement

All author(s) must agree to the submission rules (see the Submission Agreement) set forth by JIHSE upon submission of the article. The agreement includes the author(s) approval, contribution verification(s), agreement of submission, responsibility for the submitted content, conflict of interest, financial disclosures, a statement of exclusive submission, and the Creative Commons license agreement. If there are concerns about the submission agreement, please contact our editors at jihse@usa.edu.

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Conflicts of Interest

Editors and peer reviewers are expected to disclose any potential conflicts before agreeing to review a manuscript, if possible. In any case, such conflicts should be disclosed prior to the submission of a review or publishing recommendation.

Authors

Upon submission of manuscripts to JIHSE, the authors must disclose all financial and personal relationships and interests that may pose as a potential bias or conflict of interest within their work. Purposeful failure to disclose conflicts of interest is a form of misconduct which may result in the manuscript not being published by JIHSE.

Peer Reviewers

Reviewers must decline to review any article for which there exists any apparent financial or personal relationship or interest that may pose as a potential bias or conflict of interest for their review. Whenever possible, this should occur before accepting an article to review. If noting such a conflict after accepting a review, reviewers must immediately notify the editor of the conflict so that the review may be reassigned to another reviewer. Purposeful failure to disclose conflicts of interest is a form of misconduct which may result in reporting of the conduct to any appropriate institutions by JIHSE.

Journal Editors

Editors making final decisions regarding manuscripts submitted to JIHSE will make decisions only for articles in which they hold no conflict of interest. If there is a conflict of interest, the conflict should be immediately disclosed to the senior editor, and the decision will be assigned to an editor who does not pose a conflict of interest.

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Plagiarism Policy

All acts of plagiarism, copyright infringement, and other ethical breaches related to the publication of manuscripts are taken very seriously. If plagiarism is suspected, JIHSE reserves the right to use third-party plagiarism software to determine if plagiarism has occurred. Manuscripts may be retained within third-party plagiarism software after they have been checked. If the commission of plagiarism is identified, JIHSE reserves the right to take action regarding the specified article, including reporting any misconduct to appropriate institutions.

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Confidentiality

All information regarding manuscript submissions to JIHSE is considered confidential information with intellectual property held by the original authors. The editors and reviewers of JIHSE will not discuss any information submitted to the journal, including the review process or publishing decisions, with anyone but the authors and reviewers. There will be no sharing of the authors’ work or ideas prior to publication of the manuscript; this helps to ensure the protection of authors’ intellectual property. If a manuscript is rejected, a copy remains within the electronic system but is only accessible by authorized editors when necessary for administrative purposes. If confidentiality is breached for allegations of dishonesty, JIHSE editors will notify authors or reviewers.

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Peer Review Process

Each manuscript will undergo a careful peer review process before being accepted for publication.

  • Each submission will initially be reviewed by at least one of our editors to ensure that its content meets the aims and scope of the journal and that it has been appropriately reviewed for spelling and grammar.
  • The manuscript will then be reviewed by at least two reviewers with expertise in the field of health sciences education. Where possible, specialists on the topic of the paper will be selected. These reviewers assess the importance, methodology, validity, and applicability of the work to health sciences education. To ensure evaluation of all aspects referred to above, reviewers are asked to refer to the journal's Peer Reviewer Feedback Form when evaluating manuscripts.
  • All reviews are double-blinded. Suggested edits and publication decisions from reviewers will be communicated to editors, who will communicate with the author for revision as required.
  • The review process should be completed within 8 weeks for the delivery of initial revision requests to authors. Additional rounds of review, if needed, may extend that time further. If the manuscript is accepted and when all requested revisions have been made, the editors will submit a final proof to the author for approval. Authors are expected to respond promptly to requests for revision and approval of final proofs.

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Archival Policy

As part of our commitment to the persistent accessibility of published scholarly material, all content published in JIHSE will be sustainably archived through a network of mirror sites. Archival pages are also regularly deposited to the Internet Archive upon the completion of each new issue.

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Crossmark Policy for Corrections and Retractions

JIHSE participates in Crossmark, a multi-publisher initiative supported by the Crossref organization to provide a standard method for locating the current and authoritative version of a piece of content. Addenda, corrigenda, errata, and retractions will be issued for previously published articles as appropriate. These will be published in JIHSE and linked directly to the original work through the Crossmark system. Please see our Crossmark Document Update Policy for details.

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Reporting Misconduct

JIHSE is committed to ethical publication practices and adheres as closely as possible to the guidelines, frameworks, and reporting practices established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All reports of misconduct will be investigated. JIHSE will likewise cooperate with investigations into misconduct at other institutions that are brought to our attention. Where misconduct is found, disciplinary action will be taken in accordance with best practices established by the COPE. Disciplinary action may include retraction of work, reporting of misconduct to the authors' home institution, and/or the sharing of information with other journal editors where appropriate.

  • Author misconduct may include abuse of credited authorship, data manipulation or fabrication, statistical manipulation, plagiarism, abuse of informed consent, undisclosed conflicts of interest, or other research misconduct. Author misconduct should be reported directly to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal for investigation. See the Editorial Board for contact information.
  • Peer reviewer misconduct may include intentional violation of double-blind review policy, failure to disclose financial interest or conflicts, or unethical bias in publication recommendations. Peer reviewer misconduct should be reported directly to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal for investigation. Please see the Editorial Board for individual contact information.
  • Editor misconduct may include assertions of publication bias, abuse of the blind peer-review policy, manipulation of journal impact ratings, failure to disclose conflicts, or other unethical publication management behavior. Editor misconduct should be reported to the journal’s independent publication ombudsperson, Brian Goldstein, Chief Academic Officer and President, University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences (cao@usa.edu.).

    • The COPE has published detailed flowcharts which clearly outline the steps to be taken following reports of misconduct. The journal, the editors, and the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences Library are committed to following these established practices to ensure the integrity of the journal, while providing a fair process to all individuals concerned in decisions of misconduct. These flowcharts and other independently established policies can be reviewed on the COPE website.

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