Editorial and Publishing Policies

1. Focus and Scope

The journal Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences is dedicated to share and disseminate knowledge between all disciplines that work in the field of developmental diversities. Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences is a peer-reviewed, independent, open-access social sciences and humanities journal. The mission of Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences is to facilitate the equitable global dissemination of high-quality disability and diversity research; to promote reattach treatment; to initiate international dialogue and collaboration on health issues; to improve special education; and to expand and deepen the understanding of rehabilitation sciences. The Journal will examine issues relevant to diversity and disability internationally.

The journal Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences publishes original papers that have not been published previously. The following articles will be considered for publication: original scientific and review articles, short report, letters to the editor, clinical experiences, survey of cases, doctoral dissertations, master of arts, conference papers, editorials, rapid communications

Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences is an Open Access journal.

Contributions to the journal shall be submitted in English language, with summaries in the English language.

The Journal is issued 2 times a year.

The journal is registered in ROAD. It is indexed in CrossRef and Dimensions, and is harvested by BASE, OpenAIRE and Google Scholar. Copies of the published articles are deposited in Zenodo (as of February 10th, 2023).

Digital copies of the journal are archived in the LOCKSS, CLOCKSS, Eprints.

2. Peer Review Process

Unbiased, independent, critical assessment is an intrinsic part of all scholarly work, including scientific investigation. Peer reviewers are experts in their field who are not part of the editorial staff and thus are an important extension of the scientific process. Manuscripts will be reviewed by at least 2 reviewers. Peer reviewers are asked to submit their review within two (2) weeks. All randomized controlled trials will be fast-tracked through the peer-review and editorial process and we will endeavor to publish accepted trials within 2 weeks of final acceptance.

3. Publication Frequency

Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences publishes accepted papers as issues after completion of peer-review and editorial processes. Papers will subsequently be collated as biannual editions for indexing and citation purposes. The journal will publish at least 15 research and review articles per calendar year.

4. Editorial responsibilities

The Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences will be published. The Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board is guided by the Editorial Policy and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board reserves the right to decide not to publish submitted manuscripts in case it is found that they do not meet relevant standards concerning the content and formal aspects. The Editorial Staff will inform the authors whether the manuscript is accepted for publication within two months from the date of the manuscript submission.

Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the manuscript shall be made by the Editors and the Editorial Staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors before, during and after the evaluation process and the authors remain anonymous to reviewers until the end of the review procedure.

Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board shall evaluate manuscripts for their scientific content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.

The Editor and the Editorial Board must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors. The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential and must not be used for personal gain.

5. Editorial board terms of reference

• The volunteer Editorial Board will provide input, oversight, contacts and moral support.
• The Journal’s Editorial Board will consist of highly skilled, internationally committed professionals. It will represent the Journal’s various constituencies: readers, researchers, physicians, using their skills to achieve the Journal objectives. The Journal’s Editorial Board will include a maximum of 30 members.
• By agreeing to sit on the Board, Editorial Board members will assist the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal to review, solicit and submit relevant papers for the Journal and support Journal efforts to secure ongoing funding.
• The Editorial Board will support the Editor-in-Chief to maintain Journal principles underlying the editorial integrity and independence of the Journal example supporting editorial independence, Journal advertising policies and the open access platform.
• The Editorial Board will meet virtually once per year to receive a report on Journal progress from the Editor-in-Chief and to review a report on the performance of the Editor-in-Chief from the Chair of the Editorial Council.
• Initial membership of the Editorial Board will initially be determined by the ‘Friends of the Journal’ group who came forward to work to create the Journal.
• Ongoing membership of the Editorial Board will be determined by the Editor-in-Chief in conjunction with the existing Editorial Board. A new member can be nominated by 2 editors and/or board members, and is approved by a two-third vote of existing editorial board members. Members will serve for a staggered period of 4 years, renewable once.
• Data sharing policy

6.Authors' responsibilities

Authors warrant that their manuscripts are their original work, that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same manuscript to another journal constitutes misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from consideration by the Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences. We don’t accept preprints.

If a manuscript has previously been submitted elsewhere, authors should provide information about the previous reviewing process and its outcome. This provides an opportunity for authors to detail how subsequent revisions have taken into account previous reviews, and why certain reviewer comments were not taken into account. Information about the author's previous reviewing experience is to the author's advantage: it often helps the editors select more appropriate reviewers.

In case a submitted manuscript is a result of a research project, or its previous version has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the project, the conference, etc. shall be provided in the section Acknowledgements.

It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences are written with ethical standards in mind. Authors affirm that the manuscript contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

6.1. Reporting standards

Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences is committed to serving the research community by ensuring that all articles include enough information to allow others to reproduce the work. A submitted manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit reviewers and, subsequently, readers to verify the claims presented in it - e.g. provide complete details of the methods used, including time frames, etc. Authors are required to review the standards available for many research applications from Equator Network and use those that are relevant for the reported research applications. The deliberate presentation of false claims is a violation of ethical standards.

Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions and must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the content public. Authors are also exclusively responsible for the contents of their data/supplementary files. Authors affirm that data protection regulations, ethical standards, third party copyright and other rights have been respected in the process of collecting, processing and sharing data.

Authors wishing to include figures, tables or other materials that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s). Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

6.2. Authorship

Authors must make sure that only contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors and, conversely, that all contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the Acknowledgements section.

As a guide, authors should refer to the criteria for authorship that have been developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). In order to be named on the author list one must have:

• made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• contributed to the drafting the work, or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• provided final approval of the version to be published; AND
• agreed 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; AND
• agreed to be named on the author list, and approved of the full author list.

Each author’s contribution must be detailed by selecting CRediT roles on the article submission form.

The addition or removal of authors during the editorial process will only be permitted only if a justifiable explanation is provided to the editorial team and publisher. Attempts to introduce 'ghost', 'gift' or ‘honorary’ authorship will be treated as cases of misconduct.

Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences considers that both ghost and guest authorship are breaches of publication ethics, and believes they violate readers’ trust in scientific reporting and can potentially bias medical literature. The Journal’s editors and readers need to be confident that authors listed have undertaken the work and that the written manuscript reflects their work; public confidence and scientific integrity depend on this.

Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences acknowledges the role of professional medical writers and requires that all writing assistance be disclosed.

To support transparent and complete authorship reporting, Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences expects authors to fulfill the following requirements:

1. Authors must provide a contributor statement that describes the specific contribution of each author to the manuscript and shows how each author meets the 3 authorship criteria of the ICMJE. For example:

“Peter White participated in finalizing the study methodology, managed the quantitative component and was the principal writer of the manuscript. Katarina Johnson conceived the project, oversaw the data collection and analysis and participated in all phases of the writing. Luke Fernandez helped implement the study, worked on finalizing the methodology and contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript. Angela Mayer supervised the data collection, described the qualitative methods used in the study and reviewed all manuscript drafts. Julia Walsh conducted the data analysis and participated in editing and reviewing manuscript drafts. John Petersen conceived the study and oversaw its implementation and participated in the writing of the manuscript. James Stuart helped guide the analysis and participated in the writing. All of the authors approved the final version of the manuscript.”

1. Authors should specify who wrote the first draft of the article (and for research studies, who wrote the protocol and did the statistical analyses). If the people named are not authors, the Journal editors will contact them to confirm their contribution.
2. Contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be named in an Acknowledgements section with their contribution clearly described. Vague statements in the Acknowledgements section, such as “We thank XX” (without specifying for what), or “XY provided editorial assistance,” will not be accepted.
3. Authors should retain copies of drafts to facilitate investigations of possible misconduct.
4. Any and all assistance from professional writers must in every case be appropriately acknowledged and described and their funding source named.
5. Professional medical writers whose contribution to a manuscript qualifies them as an author according to the ICMJE criteria for authorship must be listed as authors, with their affiliations and competing interests provided and the source of their funding named.
6. Professional writers whose contribution to a manuscript does not qualify them as an author according to the ICMJE criteria for authorship must be named in the Acknowledgements section, with their contribution clearly described and their funding source named. Authors are requested to contact the Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences editors to obtain clarification as to the appropriate place in the manuscript to acknowledge and describe the contribution of a medical writer.

6.3. Acknowledgment of Sources

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Information received in a private conversation or correspondence with third parties, in reviewing project applications, manuscripts and similar materials, must not be used without the express written consent of the information source.

When citing or making claims based on data, authors should provide the reference to data in the same way as they cite publications. We recommend the format proposed by the FORCE11 Data Citation Principles.

6.4. Plagiarism

Plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

Plagiarism includes the following:

• Word for word, or almost word for word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks);
• Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

Please note that all submissions are thoroughly checked for plagiarism. JHRS uses the Turnitin software for the detection of the text-similarity and overlapping of the submitted manuscripts with published literature.

Any manuscript that shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected.

In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described below under Retraction policy, and authors will be blacklisted to have no opportunity to submit a manuscript to JHRS.

6.5. Conflict of interest

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation. If there is no conflict of interest to declare, the following standard statement should be added: ‘No competing interests were disclosed’. More information in the section Competing interests.

6.6. Fundamental errors in published works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal Editor or publisher and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper.

By submitting a manuscript the authors agree to abide by the Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences’s Editorial Policies.

6.7. Funding information

If a paper is a result of the funded project, authors are required to specify funding sources according to their contracts with the funder.

6.8. Confidentiality policy

Manuscripts must be reviewed with due respect for authors’ confidentiality. In submitting their manuscripts for review, authors entrust editors with the results of their scientific work and creative effort, on which their reputation and career may depend. Authors’ rights may be violated by disclosure of the confidential details of the review of their manuscript. Reviewers also have rights to confidentiality, which must be respected by the editor. Confidentiality may have to be breached if dishonesty or fraud is alleged but otherwise must be honoured. Editors will not disclose information about manuscripts (including their receipt, content, status in the reviewing process, criticism by reviewers, or ultimate fate) to anyone other than the authors and reviewers. This includes requests to use the materials for legal proceedings.

Editors will make clear to their reviewers that manuscripts sent for review are privileged communications and are the private property of the authors. Therefore, reviewers and members of the editorial staff must respect the authors’ rights by not publicly discussing the authors’ work or appropriating their ideas before the manuscript is published. Reviewers must not be allowed to make copies of the manuscript for their files and must be prohibited from sharing it with others, except with the permission of the editor. Reviewers should return or destroy copies of manuscripts after submitting reviews. Editors will not keep copies of rejected manuscripts. Reviewers will be anonymous and their identity will not be revealed to the author or anyone else without the reviewer’s permission.

Reviewer comments will not be published or otherwise made public without permission of the reviewer, author, and editor. Reviewers’ comments will be sent to other reviewers of the same manuscript, which helps reviewers learn from the review process, and reviewers may be notified of the editor’s decision.

6.9. ORCID

The journal asks that all authors submitting a paper register an account with Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID). ORCID identifiers for all authors and co-authors should be added to the author data upon submission and will be published alongside the submitted paper, should it be accepted.

ORCID registration provides a unique and persistent digital identifier for the account that enables accurate attribution and improves the discoverability of published papers, ensuring that the correct author receives the correct credit for their work.

7. Generative AI policies for journals

1. Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences does not accept manuscript that use chatbots as co-authors. The reason for this is that LLMs do not satisfy our instructions for authors as they cannot bear responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the content they generate.
2. Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences does not accept manuscripts that use chatbots as sources. The reason for this is that content generated by LLMs is not reproducible or traceable and can accidentally contain third-party material without identifying it as such.
3. Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences does accept manuscripts that use chatbots as tools supporting the writing processes (scaffolding). Acceptable purposes include proofreading, feedback on structure and style, general brainstorming, translations, data analyses, and coding. Authors that use generative technologies in this manner need to acknowledge this at relevant locations in their manuscripts. This can be done in the following manner:
1. For general scaffolding such as brainstorming, feedback on structure and style, or proofreading, please add an acknowledgement at the end of your manuscript that contains information about the type of language model or other tool you employed as well as when and how you used it.
2. For translations, please add a footnote to the part translated that contains information on the type of language model (or other machine translator) you employed, the prompt(s) you used, the date, and the original version of the text.
3. Using LLMs for data analysis and coding purposes constitutes a significant methodological intervention. In such cases, please add a part to the methods section of your manuscript where you explain how you proceeded including the type of language model you employed, the prompt(s) you used (excluding the material to be coded or analyzed), the date, and a link to the dataset.
4. When using chatbots for data analysis: Please keep in mind that most generative LLMs that are freely available do not adhere to accepted standards for the handling of personal or sensitive data. Make sure you only use models that have been approved by your research institution or other reliable bodies.

The use of generative AI and AI-assisted tools in figures, images and artwork

We do not permit the use of Generative AI or AI-assisted tools to create or alter images in submitted manuscripts. This may include enhancing, obscuring, moving, removing, or introducing a specific feature within an image or figure. Adjustments of brightness, contrast, or color balance are acceptable if and as long as they do not obscure or eliminate any information present in the original. Image forensics tools or specialized software might be applied to submitted manuscripts to identify suspected image irregularities.

The only exception is if the use of AI or AI-assisted tools is part of the research design or research methods (such as in AI-assisted imaging approaches to generate or interpret the underlying research data, for example in the field of biomedical imaging). If this is done, such use must be described in a reproducible manner in the methods section. This should include an explanation of how the AI or AI-assisted tools were used in the image creation or alteration process, and the name of the model or tool, version and extension numbers, and manufacturer. Authors should adhere to the AI software’s specific usage policies and ensure correct content attribution. Where applicable, authors could be asked to provide pre-AI-adjusted versions of images and/or the composite raw images used to create the final submitted versions, for editorial assessment.

The use of generative AI or AI-assisted tools in the production of artwork such as for graphical abstracts is not permitted. The use of generative AI in the production of cover art may in some cases be allowed, if the author obtains prior permission from the journal editor and publisher, can demonstrate that all necessary rights have been cleared for the use of the relevant material, and ensures that there is correct content attribution.