Following is an outline of our commitment to publication ethics and transparency in accordance with the principles of the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE), and the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). 

Peer review process: All submitted manuscripts undergo rigorous peer review. The peer review process is detailed here. 

Governing Body/Editorial team/contact information: The details of the editorial board members of JCBMR are given here. 

Author fees: Currently, there is no article processing fee. This is mentioned here. JCBMR will introduce author fees in the future. When introduced, it will be clearly identified here. Currently, it does not depend on author fees. 

Copyright/Licensing Policy: The authors retain the copyright of their published articles. All our publications are open access, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY NC 4.0). This policy is displayed below each published article on our website, and also on the html and pdf of articles published from September 2015. 

Process for identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct 

Plagiarism check:  All submitted articles undergo plagiarism check first. We work with CrossRef to use iThenticate to detect plagiarism. iThenticate gives a 'similarity index', which is the word-by-word copying of materials from previously published literature. We use similarity index to make a decision. Even if the original source was cited, articles with more than 10% similarity index will be returned to the authors without peer review for corrective action. For articles with similarity index between 1-10%, we follow the guidelines of COPE on text recycling to make a decision. 

Responsibility of Authors: The responsibilities of authors are included here. 

Responsibility of reviewers: Reviewers are expected to keep the manuscripts confidential, provide an unbiased scientific opinion of the manuscript on time and declare any conflict of interest as described here. 

Copyright violation: Where relevant, it is the responsibility of the authors to obtain permission from copyright holders, and to ensure that the use of images, data and illustrations in the manuscript do not violate copyright laws. If a copyright violation in any of the published article is brought to our attention, we will notify the authors. It is the responsibility of the authors to settle issues with the copyright holder.  

Corrections: If an error in any of the published article is brought to our attention, we will publish an Erratum or Corrigendum. The published manuscript will remain unaltered. 

Retraction: Proof of scientific misconduct will lead to retraction of a published article. Other issues will be dealt with on a case-by-case based on the retraction guidelines of COPE. The retracted article and the reason(s) for retraction will be clearly stated. 

Ownership and management: The first issue of JCBMR was launched in August 2015 under the banner of Codon Publications, a privately-owned Australian company. Due to the controversial nature of the journal, in April 2019, a decision was made to separate JCBMR from the other ‘traditional’ journals of Codon Publications and publish it under the new banner of Biogenic Press. All articles published after April 2019 will have the doi prefix of Biogenic Press. Apart from this, there are no other changes. The same team that has been managing the journal since its inception continues to manage the journal. The journal continues to be published in the original website. The administrative aspects of the journal are done in Australia. The infrastructure and technical support for online presence is provided by the Open Journal Systems (Arizona, USA). Post-acceptance processing of articles is delegated to various companies. Permanent preservation of published articles is done via Portico and LOCKSS. Services for doi and plagiarism check are provided by Crossref.

Web site: To the best of our knowledge, the site does not contain any misleading information. If any misleading information on the website is brought to our attention, we will take corrective action.

Name of journal: PubMed indexation and ISSN were used as the criteria for determining the name of the journal.  At the time of publication of the first issue in August 2015, to the best of our knowledge, there were no other journals with the similar name that met both criteria. 

Conflict of interest: It is mandatory that reviewers and authors disclose conflict of interest as described here. 

Access: Our publications are freely available online. There is no need for any kind of registration to access them. 

Revenue sources: Enough start-up fund is available to run the journal smoothly without having to rely on author fees or any other revenue sources.   

Advertising: We do not accept third-party advertisements. 

Publishing schedule: Each calendar year will have one volume. JCBMR publishes articles as soon as the final copy-edited version is approved by the authors rather than waiting for a collection of articles. Also, each article is published in its respective category (editorial, review, original or commentary). As a result, the page numbers in the 'Table of Contents' displayed for each issue will reflect this rather than numerical order. This policy is mentioned here. 

Archiving: We use Portico and LOCKSS for permanent preservation of our published contents.  

Direct marketing: Potential authors are invited by email.

Contact details: Our contact details are displayed under “Contact”. 

Instructions for Authors: Detailed guidelines for authors are included here. 

Article level metrics: We provide article level metrics, which is found below the abstract of each article. This is part of the Open Journals System software. We do not have any control over its functionality.

Complaints: Any complaint about JCBMR should be sent to [email protected] with the subject line "Complaint". In the initial contact, identify yourself, state the complaint and sign off with your full name and contact details, including a valid phone number with the country and area code. The initial email should not contain any attachments, html codes, or clickable links. All correspondence should be in English with the subject line ‘Complaint’. Initial emails that do not meet any of these criteria will not receive a response and will be deleted. Emails that meet these criteria will receive a response from the editorial office within 72 hours. The Publisher will work with the person who made the complaint for a speedy resolution. To maintain transparency, all correspondence will be in writing, via the above email address.