WHO EMRO | EMHJ Guidelines on Ethical Conduct and Publication of Health Research

As with all research journals, EMHJ has encountered cases of suspected infringement of ethical research conduct and publication, including lack of ethical clearance and/or informed consent of participants when needed and instances of plagiarism and duplicate publication. Our experience in addressing such incidents suggested that in some cases the authors were genuinely unaware of or unfamiliar with key ethical aspects of research conduct and publication, for example what constitutes plagiarism, why duplicate publication is unacceptable. While we provide brief information in the EMHJ authors’ guidelines and links to relevant sites and publications, we have had no explicit or detailed guidelines on research and publication ethics and EMHJ’s position on these issues and response to cases of suspected ethical misconduct.