Publishing Policies
» Focus and Scope
» Peer Review Process
» Open Access Policy
» Journal Archiving and Digital Preservation
» About the Publisher
» Terms of Use
» Publishing Process
» Advertising Policy
» Publishing Policy
» Publishing Quality
» Conflict of Interest
» Editor's Code of Ethics
» Reviewer's Code of Ethics
» Human and Animal Rights
» Plagiarism Screening Policy
» Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
» Copyright, Licensing, Permission to Reuse
» Informed Consent and Patient Confidentiality
» Publication Ethics, Publication Malpractice Statement
» Data Sharing Policy
» Preprints Policy
» Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern
Journal of Hematology, published in print and online, is an international journal that concentrates on basic research and clinical practice of hematology, blood diseases, and transfusion medicine, translational hematology. Journal of Hematology presents up-to-date coverage of hematology studies and clinical reports on the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment aspects. Manuscripts should present novel findings addressing significant questions in hematology, in the form of original article, review, short communication, or case report, all submissions are rigorously peer reviewed.
Peer Review Process
The peer-review process and editorial scrutiny are the main mechanisms for ensuring the quality of published articles. To this end, the submitted articles are rigorously peer-reviewed to ensure the high quality submissions are accepted and published; these published articles reflect the up-to-date research findings, with reliable and sound results, objective and unbiased discussion of the results. The journal's editorial board is composed of research scientists and medical specialists with rich research and publication experiences.
The most important criterion for acceptance is the originality of the work. Other factors may affect decisions, such factors are, but not limited to, the extent and importance of new information in the paper compared with that in other papers being considered, the Journal's need to represent a wide range of topics, and the overall suitability for this journal. Decisions on peer-reviewed papers are sent to the authors within an average of 3 weeks from the date of submission.
Peer-review Procedures
1. Manuscript submitted via the journal online submission system, then a manuscript No. is assigned.
2. Primary manuscript check by the editorial assistant against the submission Checklist, to check if components of manuscript are complete and conforming to the submission requirements, whether there is issue of duplicate submission, plagiarism, and other concerns. If manuscript does not meet the submission requirements, the manuscript will be returned to the authors for corrections and resubmission, or even rejected for ethical violation concerns.
3. When the submitted manuscript is complete, it will be reviewed first by the Editor-in-Chief for novelty, scientific importance, and relevance to the journal's general readership.
4. If the manuscript is found lacking sufficient quality or the topic is not well within the journal scope, or is very poorly written, lack of suitable English language correctness and readability, without sufficient research creative novelty, or any other serious ethical issues, the manuscript will be rejected outright promptly without further consideration and review (a desk reject).
5. Manuscript that passes the initial screening will be sent to and reviewed by peer reviewers.
6. Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two external expert reviewers who will provide unbiased, critical and independent assessment of the submission; Reviewers are asked to complete the review within the assigned time (usually 2 weeks). The peer reviewers' comments will be sent to the Editor-in-Chief, who will decide whether to accept with/without revision, or reject the submission. The corresponding/submitting author is notified of the editorial decision.
7. Manuscripts which are returned to the authors for minor or major revisions should be resubmitted within assigned deadline. If necessary, the revised manuscripts are reassessed by the same reviewers to determine if the authors have satisfactorily addressed their criticisms and comments. Depending upon the re-evaluation, the Editor-in-Chief will make the final decision.
8. The above review process may be repeated (one or more times) if a manuscript revision (major or minor) is requested.
9. The peer-review process is single blinded with the reviewers aware of whom the authors of the manuscript are, the authors do not know who the reviewers are.
10. All manuscripts are treated by the editorial staff, editors and assigned reviewers as privileged and confidential information. Reviewers' comments are not published. The reviewers' identity remains anonymous. The manuscripts under review are not revealed to anyone other than the peer reviewers and editorial staff.
Reviewer conflict of interest
Conflict of interest (COI) self-assessment must be performed by members of the editorial team and external peer reviewers involved in the assessment of manuscripts. Common examples of COI include situations where there is financial gain, or when authors who are collaborating, directly competing, or are members of the same institution are reviewing each other's work. To some extent, especially within highly subspecialized fields, some degree of conflict of interest may be difficult to avoid.
Editors and reviewers will be asked to provide a COI statement when reviewing articles addressing the following questions:
1. Is there any financial gain that may result from your review of this work? (Yes or No)
2. Currently or in the last 2 years, is there an existing relationship with any of the manuscript authors such as shared grant support, shared publications, or collaborative projects? (Yes or No)
3. Currently or in the last 2 years, do you share institutional or other affiliations with any of the authors that may affect your judgement of this work? (Yes or No)
4. Do you have (currently or in the past) a personal or family relationship with any of the authors that may result in a conflict or a perceived conflict of interest? (Yes or No)
If the answer to any of these statements is Yes, the editor or reviewer should recuse themselves from the review of the manuscript and the article will be assigned to a different editor or reviewer.
Submissions from members of the editorial board
Members of the editorial board are permitted to submit articles for consideration by the journal. In order to minimize the possibility of COI, the managing editor for the submission will be a member of the editorial board who is from a different institution. The editor submitting the article will not be included in editorial discussions, the peer review process, or decisions regarding the manuscript. For purposes of the submission, they will receive the same treatment as any other author who submits work to the journal.
Similarly, article submissions from the editor in chief will be handled by a member of the editorial board from a different institution, who will oversee the editorial process and peer review. The editor in chief will not be permitted to participate in the editorial process and final decision regarding the manuscript will be made by the managing editor.
As above, determining the editorial team members and peer reviewers who are best positioned to assess the manuscript, will be guided by the above-mentioned COI self-assessment.
Open Access Policy
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
Elmer Press publishes articles under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Creative Commons Attribution license (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International CC-BY-NC 4.0).
Journal Archiving
Journal archiving and digital preservation: Portico
This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.
About the Publisher
This journal is owned and published by Elmer Press Inc.
Elmer Press Inc is an independent academic publisher, it is registered and operated as a federal incorporation in Canada, the Federal Corporation Number is 8179590. The Elmer Press was originally established in Montreal, Quebec, and started medical publishing from 2008. In the summer of 2016, the company moved to Toronto.
Address:
Elmer Press Inc.
9225 Leslie Street, Suite 201
Richmond Hill
Ontario, L4B 3H6
Canada
Tel: 647-671-2629
production@elmerpress.com
Please click here for more information of the publisher.
Terms of Use
Use of the websites owned by Elmer Press Inc is subject to the terms and conditions listed herein. By using these websites, you agree to be bound by the terms which form a binding contract between you and Elmer Press Inc. If you do not agree with these terms, you are advised to cease using the websites.
Unless otherwise indicated, the contents available in Elmer Press productions are protected by copyright in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License and other applicable laws, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial use of our contents, you should contact Elmer Press to obtain prior permission.
The names and email addresses and other authors' information collected by the Elmer Press will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of article publishing and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party. Reviewers provide comments for the editor and for the authors. Elmer Press expects reviewers to treat manuscripts as confidential communications and not to use the content for their own purposes or make copies of the manuscripts. Reviewers are also expected to declare to the editor any possible conflicts of interest.
Elmer Press reserves the right to suspend or terminate your access and use of our contents at any time without prior notice.
The editors of Elmer Press journals, at their sole discretion, reserve the right to accept, reject or edit the submissions.
You agree not to redistribute any of our contents or use these contents to set up a database, without prior consent of Elmer Press or as otherwise authorized under the Creative Common Open Access license.
The statements and opinions contained in the publications of Elmer Press are solely those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors or the publisher. The appearance of advertisements in the journals or websites is not a warranty, endorsement or approval of the products or services advertised or of their safety. The editors-in-Chief and the publisher disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any ideas or products referred to in the articles or advertisements.
You agree to use the contents of publications in compliance with all local applicable laws, regulations and rules, you agree to indemnify Elmer Press against any claims, damages or losses as a result of your breach of these terms and rules.
Users agree to not to breach any intellectual property rights of Elmer Press, or any other third parties. Modifications of any content of the Elmer Press websites without express permission are prohibited.
Elmer Press reserves the right to amend the terms of use without prior notice.
Publishing Process
1). Authors submit manuscript via online submission portal.
2). Primary check by the editorial assistant to ensure the completeness of submission.
3). Sent out for peer-review.
4). Decision is made and authors are notified, manuscript is accepted, rejected, or accepted with revision requirements.
5). Authors revise the manuscript as required.
6). Second review for revised manuscript.
7). Final decision issued.
8). Payments are required for accepted articles.
9). Scientific and copy editing of the manuscript.
10). Typesetting and layout for online and print version.
11). Galley proof sent to authors for proofreading.
12). Editors approve the final galley proof.
13). Publishing online and in print.
14). Published articles sent to indexing databases if required.
Advertising Policy
Welcome to Elmer Press, the ideal media for medical information exchange, and also for your business advertising. We would like to thank you for considering our publication as a possible advertising outlet for your business, and we assure you satisfactory exposure and visibility.
As follows, we have put together the introductory guide to give you a glimpse of what we’re about, why advertising with the Elmer Press Journals will yield unprecedented business.
Our Mission and Viewers
The mission of The Elmer Press medical journals is to provide a fast, reliable and thought-provoking media outlet to the world medical communities in both basic research and clinical practice, with timely coverage of diverse medical disciplinary topics.
The nature of all our journals are open access, which means all the contents of the journals are accessible freely to all viewers from every part of the world as long as they have internet accessibility, our viewers are from all over the world.
In addition to the contemporary online editions of journals, we also have print editions of journals circulating all over the world, this traditional media platform can meet different needs of our customers.
Competitive Rates
Our rates for advertising are very competitive, we can offer you prime advertising space for a very reasonable price. Our professional team can help you in each steps of advertising and strives to meet your need.
Submission of Ad
Your may submit your advertisement in acceptable formats, or we can design your ad in a affordable rates, these rates are decided on a case-by-case basis.
Terms of Advertising
All advertising is subject to the approval of the Elmer Press. Placement or page/webpage positions can be requested but will not be guaranteed. The Elmer Press is not responsible for errors in advertisements following proof approval or self-submission.
Disclaimer
The statements and opinions contained in the advertisement are solely those of the advertisers and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors or the publisher. The appearance of advertisements in the Journals is not a warranty, endorsement or approval of the products or services advertised or of their safety. The Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any ideas or productions referred to in the articles or advertisements.
For all advertising information, please contact: production@elmerpress.com
Publishing Policy
The single most important criterion for acceptance is the originality of the work. Other factors may affect decisions, such factors are, the extent and importance of new information in the paper compared with that in other papers being considered, the Journal's need to represent a wide range of topics, and the overall suitability for this journal.
Publishing Quality
The main mechanisms for ensuring the scientific quality of published articles are peer-review, editorial scrutiny. To this end, the submitted articles are rigorously peer-reviewed to ensure to accept the high quality submissions, and the quality is controlled by the Editor(s)-in-Chief. The editorial board members and peer reviewers are all experts in their field from various countries and regions around the world. The published articles reflect the up-to-date research findings, with reliable results, objective and un-biased discussion of the results.
In the production stage, the copyediting, layout, proofreading, online and printing publication are all maintained in highest possible quality.
Conflict of Interest
All authors should declare any conflict of interests related to the manuscript, these interests include but not limited to commercial, personal, political and intellectual aspects. All editors, editorial staff and reviewers should also report potential conflict of interests related to the submissions they are working with.
Editor's Code of Ethics
The editors and editorial staff should abide by the following codes of ethics:
1. Protect the privacy of peer reviewers and authors of manuscripts submitted for review.
2. Protect the copyright and intellectual property rights of all authors and contributors.
3. Strive to maintain the quality of the materials published.
4. Maintain the integrity of the academic record.
5. Make editorial decision based only on the manuscript’s importance, originality, relevance to the
journal, and the overall quality.
6. Provide authors with clear submissions guidelines.
7. Be willing to publish corrections and retractions.
8. Provide reviewers with up-to-date review guidelines.
9. Protect peer reviewers’ identities.
10. Avoid publishing articles containing any material that is defamatory, inaccurate, libelous, misleading,
obscene, scandalous, and unlawful.
11. Ensure manuscripts remains confidential while under review.
Reviewer's Code of Ethics
The reviewers should provide unbiased comments for the manuscript, and indicate whether the work is original, creative and scientifically accurate and sounded. The reviewers should provide suggestions to editors whether the work is within the journal’s scope, suitable to be published in the journal. The reviewers should provide suggestions whether the work is published as is, published after revising, or should be rejected. The reviewers should report any conflict of interest related to the manuscript being reviewed. The reviewers should destroy or delete the manuscript files after finishing reviewing and may not disclose any information to third parties.
Human and Animal Rights
Published research must comply with the international recognized guidelines for human studies and animal welfare regulations.
1. For submission with human subjects, the study should have conformed to the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors should state that subjects have given their informed consent and that the study protocol has been approved by the institutional/local ethical committee on human research.
2. Ethical guidance in publication on vulnerable populations
Research involving vulnerable populations should conform to the Declaration of Helsinki, researchers should provide research ethical board with the information who are vulnerable, the authors should state whether special attention and additional protection were provided during research for those who cannot give or refuse consent for themselves, for those who may be subject to giving consent under duress, for those who will not benefit personally from the research and for those for whom the research is combined with care.
3. In animal study, the animals should have been treated in humane manner in compliance with ARRIVE guidelines (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments). We support the ICLAS (International Council for Laboratory Animal Science) Guidelines to handle the submissions involving animal study. Authors should state that animal experiment was approved by the ethical committee of animal study.
Plagiarism Screening Policy
Plagiarism, duplicate submission, data falsification, inappropriate authorship credit, and all the like misconducts are not tolerated. This journal uses CrossCheck plagiarism screening system (iThenticate) to detect any possible plagiarism in the submissions.
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
This journal follows the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, for details please check here.
Copyright, Licensing, Permission to Reuse
Open access
This journal provides immediate open access to its content, by this way, we make research freely available to the public and support a greater global exchange of knowledge.
By default, Elmer Press publishes all articles under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International CC-BY-NC 4.0), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Permission for authors
The authors retain the copyright of their published articles, and the corresponding author has the right to grant on behalf of all authors the license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License) to the publisher. This license allows the publisher to publish, reproduce, display, distribute and store the author's submission; this license allows the authors to use their own articles for their own non-commercial purposes without seeking permission from the publisher, but should provide proper acknowledgement and citation of the first publication in our journal. If the use is for commercial purpose, the authors should obtain permission from the publisher, and a fee may apply.
Permission for the third parties
Anyone (other than the authors) is free to reuse, change and build upon the work non-commercially, but the new work must be non-commercial and the original source must be acknowledged and cited. Any third party who wants to reproduce an article, in part or fulltext, for commercial proposes, should seek our permission, a fee may apply.
The non-commercial use may include but not limited to the following:
1) Post a fulltext or abstract of their own article on their own personal or institutional websites.
2) Making a reasonable number of copies for personal or non-commercial professional use, e.g. for authors’ own teaching tasks.
3) Using the article in a course pack or compilation (whether paper or electronic) in the authors’ institution. This does not apply if a commercial charge is made for the compilation or training program.
The commercial use may include but not limited to the following:
1) Incorporating advertisement for a fee when redistributing or displaying the published article by online or print format.
2) Using the published articles for redistribution, sale or licensing, or other commercial exploitations for a fee.
3) Incorporation of part or whole published articles in other works for a fee.
4) Use of the published articles in part or in whole by any organizations or bodies for promotional or advertising purposes for a fee.
5) Distribution of published article in part or in whole by pharmaceutical agencies is all considered commercial use.
6) Republishing part or the entire article in a book or other publication edited by the author or others, the book will be for sale and for profit.
For any inquiries regarding copyright, usage permission, reproduction, reprints, and print copy order, please contact directly at: production@elmerpress.com
Informed Consent and Patient Confidentiality
This journals follows the ICMJE guidelines for reporting on human subjects.
In most clinical studies (trials), retrospective or prospective nature, with human subjects involved, the individual patient informed consent is required, there should be such statement in the manuscript. If such informed consent is not necessary or exempted judged by the Ethical Committee (such as in some retrospective studies), the authors should clearly state such waiver of informed consent in the manuscript.
In case report(s), the authors should include a statement that the patient's consent has been obtained IF the patient's identifying information, such as name, hospital number, and any other privacy nature items will be published due to the information are essential for the scientific purposes. In the manuscript, there should be such statement "Patient's informed consent for publication of this report was obtained". IF there is not any identifying information in the manuscript, authors may state "Informed Consent: Not Applicable".
If the patient is deceased, the authors should seek informed consent from a relative of the patient. If neither the patient nor a relative can provide such consent, the manuscript can only be accepted and published if the identifying information has been sufficiently anonymized and covered.
In particular, please remove any identifying information (patient name, birth, hospital number, etc) in the images, ECG report, pathology slides, X-ray, ultrasound and any other imaging data prior to submission, if these information are not relevant to scientific purposes
The authors should keep the signed informed consent form, a copy should be available upon journal editor's request.
Publication Ethics, Publication Malpractice Statement
This journal adheres to:
COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers
COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers
COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Editors
ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors)
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
Wame Guidelines
Authors should submit the manuscripts prepared following the Instructions to the Authors, all results and data should be accurate and original, no fabricated, and plagiarized data, no duplicate submission and redundant publication. It is authors’ responsibility to retain the original data of the manuscript, and can provide to the editor upon request. Authorship should follow the guidelines of ICMJE, the corresponding author is responsible for the accuracy and appropriateness of authorship in the manuscript, each author should be responsible for the data accuracy of the work he/she participated. The authors should declare any conflict of interests, financial support. If the authors find errors in published article, they should report to the editor as soon as possible to correct.
The editors should do the best to ensure the peer review processing is unbiased, and the decisions are based on the review results and decisions are fair, editors should ensure the whole peer review process does not involve any undeclared conflict of interests. The editors should fairly evaluate the submissions for the scientific contributions, disregard of the manuscript’s origin, authors’ race, etc. The editors should protect the reviewers’ and authors’ privacy.
Peer reviewers should treat the manuscripts as confidential files and may not disclose to any other party without the editor’s consent. The reviewers cannot use any of the unpublished data for their own purposes, such as used in their own research and report. Reviewers should also review the manuscript in a fair and unbiased way, reviewers’ comments should be objective and contains no harsh and derogatory words. The reviewers should inform the editors of any potential conflict of interests with the manuscript to be reviewed. The reviewers should not suggest the authors cite their work for no grounded scientific reason.
Data Sharing Policy
The authors of articles published in this journal are encouraged to deposit the research data associated with the manuscript in a repository, and include a data availability statement in the manuscript indicating the repository name and how the data could be accessed.
Authors are encouraged to share such data in order that the methodology and results can be reproduced and verified by other researchers.
Herein, the "data" denotes the digital materials based on which the manuscript was written and prepared, including but not limited to research materials records, results records, images, videos, statistical software processing outcome, protocols and methods, and so on.
Authors should select one of the following statements applicable to their study to include in the the mansucript, under a subheading "Data Availability" before the Reference list.
1. The authors declare that data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.
2. The data supporting the findings of this study have been deposited in (repository name) and can be accessed (via access method).
3. The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
4. Any inquiries regarding supporting data availability of this study should be directed to the corresponding author.
Preprints Policy
Preprints are defined as an author’s version of a research manuscript prior to formal peer review at a journal, which is deposited on a public server (preprint server). Preprints may be submitted to preprint sever at any time during the peer review process. Posting of preprints is not considered prior publication.
But authors should disclose details of preprint posting, including preprint server name, URL link, DOI and other details in the Cover Letter when submitting to our journal. There is no obligation for authors to remove preprints from preprint server prior to submission.
After the article is officially published in our journal after peer-reviewed process, the authors should update the preprints with acknowledgement of official publication in our journal including a URL link. Authors may also choose to remove the preprints after officially published in our journal.
Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern
Retractions should follow the COPE Retraction Guidelines.
If serious error or scientific misconduct occurs, the article will be retracted during any stage of publishing. If the paper with error has been published, and the error is minor without affecting the overall results and conclusions of the study, a correction statement will be published in the next available issue. If errors occur during the editing/copyediting or proofreading because of the publisher, a correction will be published as erratum.
In some cases, if serious concerns about published article have been raised, an Expression of Concern (EOC) is to be published to alert readers of such concern, this EOC may be served as an interim notice while the case is being investigated until a final resolution or decision has been reached. These EOCs are usually prepared by the journal's editor or editorial office.
