Policies
Philosophy of The Journal of Wellness
For more information, please see The Journal of Wellness Aims and Scope page (https://journalofwellness.com/journal-of-wellness-scope/).
Who Can Submit?
Anyone may submit an original article to be considered for publication in The Journal of Wellness provided he or she owns the copyright to the work being submitted or is authorized by the copyright owner/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). This journal does not charge article processing/submission/publishing charges (APCs) of any kind.
General Submission Rules
Research Involving Human Subjects
Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript. Further information and documentation to support this should be made available to the Editor on request. Manuscripts may be rejected if the editor believes the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework.
Research Involving Animals
For research involving vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates a statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines (e.g. The International Council for Laboratory Animal Science - ICLAS) and ethical approval (including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate) must be included in the manuscript. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript.
Consent
For all research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. Manuscripts may be rejected at journal editors’ discretion if they report a study involving vulnerable groups: such as unconscious patients, where there is the potential for coercion (e.g., prisoners) or where consent may not have been fully informed.
Conflicts of Interest
All authors are required to declare all conflicts of interest (COI) in relation to their work. Submitted manuscripts must include a COI section listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). Where authors have no COIs they should state that "The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare." The editor(s) may ask for further information relating to COIs. Editors and / or reviewers are also required to declare any COIs and may be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists.
Duplicate Publication
Submitted articles cannot have been previously published, nor be forthcoming in an archival journal or book (print or electronic). All submissions are checked for plagiarism and editors follow published COPE guidelines in cases of suspected plagiarism.
Please confirm that the figures / images are completely the original work of the author, never published before, and not based on published work. If replicated from other published sources, please provide appropriate citation and copyright information.
In addition, by submitting material to the Journal of Wellness, the author is stipulating that the material is not currently under review at another journal (electronic or print) and that he or she will not submit the material to another journal (electronic or print) until the completion of the editorial decision process at the Journal of Wellness. If you have concerns about the submission terms for The Journal of Wellness, please contact the editors.
Peer Review
All research articles (Original Research, Innovation, Brief Report) and Review articles published in Journal of Wellness undergo thorough, double-blind review by two independent peer reviewers. Editorials, Humanities, and Case Reports are reviewed by both editors-in-chief.
Reviewers are asked to provide the managing editor with their recommendation regarding the scientific merit, research ethics, and manuscript quality in the form of a decision from one of the following:
- Reject
- Major Revision
- Minor Revision
- Accept
Decisions are then communicated to the author with further instruction on the appropriate next steps.
Formatting Requirements
All submissions should adhere to Vancouver style formatting for text and references; click here or see Final Manuscript Preparation Guidelines for details. Although bepress can provide limited technical support, it is ultimately the responsibility of the author to produce an electronic version of the article as a Microsoft Word, WordPerfect or RTF file that can be converted to a PDF file. It is understood that the current state of technology of Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) is such that there are no, and can be no, guarantees that documents in PDF will work perfectly with all possible hardware and software configurations that readers may have.
Attribution and Usage Policies
Author(s) submitting to the The Journal of Wellness retain full copyright in the submitted article and therefore can exercise copyright accordingly and consistently with governing copyright law. Upon acceptance, author(s) will grant the University of Louisville a nonexclusive license to publish the submitted article subject to the other terms and conditions of the Journal of Wellness publication agreement signed by author(s) and any requirements governing any Creative Commons licenses affixed to the journal and individual articles.
This policy is compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Allegations of Research Misconduct
The journal takes allegations of research misconduct seriously, and follows up on all cases of suspected plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification or fabrication according to the published standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics.
Appeals
In the case of authors wishing to make appeals to the editorial decisions of the journal, correspondence should be directed to the editorial office containing the specific grounds for the appeal. This is reviewed by the editorial office and the Editors-in-chief. The authors will then be informed of the results of the appeal and the appropriate next steps.
Authorship and Contributions
Listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and agreed to be an author. Anyone contributing to the research or manuscript preparation who is not an author should be acknowledged at the end of the manuscript with their permission. Submissions by anyone other than an author are not considered.
Corrections
Errors by the authors may be corrected by submitting an update to the editorial office including the name of the article along with proposed corrections. All authors will be asked to agree to the content of the corrections. The correction will be listed in an erratum on the journal. For errors that significantly affect the scientific conclusions of the work or if there is evidence of misconduct, a retraction may be required or an expression of concern in keeping with COPE Retraction Guidelines.
General Terms and Conditions of Use
Users of the ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository website and software agree not to misuse the ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository service or software in any way.
The failure of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository to exercise or enforce any right or provision in the policies or the Submission Agreement does not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any term of the Submission Agreement or these policies is found to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the Submission Agreement and these policies remain in full force and effect. These policies and the Submission Agreement constitute the entire agreement between ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository and the author(s) regarding submission of the article.