Data Storage and Documentation
ATR encourages authors to make their data, transcripts, and other artifacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper available via a publicly available data repository. The journal, however, respects the privacy, confidentiality, and ethical considerations of the data. For papers that include original data, at least one author should confirm that he or she has full access to all data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the analysis.
Studies Involving Humans
For studies that involve human participants, ATR requires a statement identifying the ethics committee that approved the study and that the study conforms to recognized standards. Images (i.e., photographs) and information from individual participants will be published only when the authors have obtained the individual’s prior informed consent. For studies involving minors (i.e., children and infants), authors should confirm that written informed consent from legally authorized representatives—parents or guardians—was obtained and is available upon request. If verbal informed consent was obtained, reasons for obtaining the verbal consent must be provided.
Studies Involving Animals
For studies involving animals, ATR requires a statement indicating 1) the protocol and procedures applied and that these were reviewed and approved by an appropriate animal ethics committee and 2) the name of the body giving such approval. These information must be included in the Methods section of the manuscript. ATR encourages authors to adhere to animal research reporting standards for reporting study design and statistical analysis, experimental procedures, and basic protocols involved in housing, husbandry, and health management of experimental animals. Authors should clearly state that experiments and/or clinical trials were performed in accordance with relevant institutional and national guidelines and regulations for the care and use of laboratory animals or the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC).
Conflict of Interest
ATR requires that all authors disclose potential sources of conflict of interest or competing interest. Potential sources of conflict of interest may be financial or non-financial in nature that may influence an author’s objectivity. These potential sources of conflict of interest include but are not limited to patent or stock ownership, employment or membership in an organization’s board of directors, membership of an advisory board or committee of an organization, and consultancy for or receipt of honoraria from an organization, or any interest and relationship that might be perceived as inappropriately influencing an author’s objectivity. Conflict of interest may also arise from personal relationships with research participants or with the leadership of the subject organization. It is a must that authors disclose with the submission all pertinent commercial and other relationships that can constitute a conflict of interest.
The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication. ATR requires that all authors review this policy and disclose with the submission of all pertinent commercial and other relationships. If there is no disclosure, authors must say so, and ATR will indicate “No potential competing interest was reported by the authors” under the section, Conflict of Interest.
Funding
Authors should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation.
Authorship
Only those who contributed to the research and writing of the paper should be included in the list of authors. More specifically, those listed as authors qualify for authorship according to the following criteria by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICME):
- They have contributed substantially to conception and design, data acquisition, analysis, and interpretation. They have also been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
- They have given final approval for the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.
- They agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. ATR requires a statement at the end of the manuscript describing the role of each author in designing and implementing the research and in writing the paper. Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section to recognize contributions from people who provided technical help, collation of data, writing assistance, acquisition of funding, or a department chairperson who provided general support. It is assumed that prior to submitting the manuscript, all authors agree on the order of their names in the paper. In the case of joint first authorship, a footnote should be added to the author listing (e.g., Authors A and B should be considered joint first authors). Editors and editorial team members are excluded from publication decisions when they are authors or have contributed to a manuscript.
Adding Authors After Review
ATR does not allow adding new co-authors after the review. A request to add new co-authors is grounds for rejection of the manuscript. The list of authors must be complete before submitting the manuscript.
Plagiarism
Prior to the review, ATR subjects the submission to the Turnitin plagiarism software. Only submissions with a similarity score of 4% or less will be subjected to a peer review. Articles that do not reach the acceptable similarity index will be returned to the authors for revision or may result in outright rejection.
Research Fraud
ATR considers research fraud a serious offense. Research fraud is the act of publishing research results and generating conclusions from fabricated data and falsification. Fabrication involves reporting research data not generated by experiments or observations, while falsification includes manipulating research data, materials, processes, and images. Both fabrication and falsification are serious forms of violations of ethical standards in publication. Thus, ATR rejects and retracts articles proven to be derived from fraudulent research.
Retraction
ATR reserves the right to retract articles reporting research that are fraudulent and have breached scientific ethics. Articles in the ATR may be retracted based on the following:
- The research is fraudulent – the research findings and conclusions reported in the paper are from fabricated and falsified data. ATR also retracts papers with manipulated images and miscalculations or an experimental error;
- The research reported does not follow ethical standards, and
- The paper is a redundant publication, that is, the findings reported have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission or justification. ATR considers as duplication translation articles without proper permission from the publisher. In submitting the paper, ATR requires that the cover letter explicitly state the following: 1) the paper is original, 2) no part of the manuscript has been published previously in a peer-reviewed publication, and 3) the manuscript is not under consideration by other journals.
ORCID
As part of our commitment to supporting authors at every step of the publishing process, ATR encourages all authors to provide an ORCID iD when submitting a manuscript. For more information about ORCID, click here.