Principles

As a responsible open access publisher, Dove Medical Press has created this page to address the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing developed by WAME, COPE, DOAJ and OASPA.

1. Peer review process: All manuscripts submitted to Dove Medical Press journals undergo single blind peer review. An outline of this process is available on the peer review schematic. Authors may lodge an appeal against an editorial decision. They should send grounds for their appeal to [email protected]. The appeal will be heard by the Editor-in-Chief in conjunction with one or more Editorial Board members or Associate Editors. The Editor-in-Chief's decision on the appeal will be final.
   
   
2. Governing Body: The full names and affiliations of members of the Editorial Boards are displayed on the Editors tab of each journal.
   
   
3. Editorial team/contact information: The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors are displayed on the Editors tab of each journal, and the contact information for the editorial office is on the Contact Us page. 
   
   
4. Author fees: Author fees can be clearly found on each journal, we call them "Publishing Fees". They are also shown in the Author Guidelines.
   
   
5. Copyright: The CC-BY-NC/CC-BY license is shown on each published article and in the Author Guidelines (Author Information - Copyright).
   Dove Medical Press publishes its articles under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license (CC-BY-NC). This allows for the non-commercial reuse of the published paper so long as the published paper is fully attributed. Commercial re-use can only be undertaken with the permission of the publisher. UK authors whose articles are funded by the organisations listed here (under the CC-BY heading) the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. This license permits the reuse for commercial purposes, but still requires that the article is fully attributed.
   
   
6. Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct: Dove Medical Press takes all reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication. These are outlined on the Publication Ethics page.
    
7. Ownership and management: The About webpage outlines the ownership of Dove Medical Press.
   
   
8. Web site: The Dove Medical Press team takes pride in publishing to highly professional and ethical standards. 
   - All papers are checked for completeness before being submitted to the Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate) plagiarism detection system;
   - Papers are peer reviewed, with a minimum of two sets of peer reviewers' comments;
   - The  Editor-in-Chief reviews the peer reviewers' comments along with the submitted manuscript;
   - For the manuscripts that need to be revised and resubmitted, the Editor-in-Chief will review the revisions and the authors' point-by-point response to the referees' comments;
   - Our team of experienced, native English-speaking editors revise the manuscript for English language and grammar if required. They implement American Medical Association (AMA) manuscript style to ensure consistency across our journals;
   - The paper is typeset and proofread by professional native English speaking proofreaders who identify any typographical errors and highlight any inconsistencies;
   - All our authors receive typeset proofs and the paper is published only after each author has signed their approval.
   
   
9. Name of journal: Prior to launching a new journal thorough checks are made to ensure no journal of a similar name already exists. 
   
   
10. Conflicts of interest: These are clearly outlined on the Conflict of Interest Policies page, and also in communication with the editor, author and peer reviewers.
    
    
11. Access: As on open access publisher, all articles published by Dove Medical Press are freely available to be read at no cost to the reader. This is stated on the Open Access web page and each article is clearly marked with the CC-BY-NC license.
    
    
12. Revenue sources: The revenue sources of Dove Medical Press are stated on the Business Model page.
    
    
13. Advertising: The advertising policy is stated on the Business Model page.
    
    
14. Publishing schedule: An outline of the Dove Medical Press open access publishing schedule is available on the Business Model page.
    
    
15. Archiving: The plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content in the event a journal is no longer published is stated on the Business Model page.
    
    
16. Direct marketing: We are committed to sending only appropriate, well targeted and unobtrusive direct marketing emails. These include Call for Papers, emails to our registrants and via the use of medical list companies. This is clearly stated on the Business Model page.
    
    
17. Complaints: Complaints should be submitted by email to [email protected]. Please provide details of your complaint.
    
    
18. Author Corrections: Corrections of typographical errors or Dove introduced errors will not incur any cost to the authors.
    
    
19. Advertisements: Dove Medical Press does not accept any paid advertising in any of its publications (journal articles or website).

Updated 4 October 2017