Journal’s Policy on CrossMark	Journal’s Policy on Data Sharing and Reproducibility
Journal’s Policy on Allegations of Misconduct	Journal’s Ethical Oversight
Journal’s Policy on Authorship and Contributorship	Journal’s Policy on Overlapping Publications
i. Author’s Roles and Responsibilities	Journal’s Policy on Journal Management
ii. Roles of Corresponding Author	Journal’s Policy on Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections
iii. Removal or Addition of an Author	i. Correction
iv. Group Authorship	ii. Retraction
v. Non-Author Contributors	iii. Editorial Expressions of Concerns
Journal’s Policy on Handling Complaints and Appeals	Journal’s Policy on the Use of Generative AI and AI-assisted Technologies in Preparing Manuscripts for TAPS
Journal’s Policy on Conflicts of Interest / Competing Interests	Journal’s Policy on Intellectual Property
i. Financial Competing Interests	Journal’s Policy on Article Processing Charges
ii. Non-financial Competing Interests	Journal’s Policy on Archiving

 

The policies on CrossMark is adapted from Crossref. 

Journal policies on (i) Authorship and contributorship; (ii) Handling complaints and appeals; (iii) Conflicts of interests / competing interests; (iv) Overlapping publications; (v) Post-publication discussions and corrections; (vi) Intellectual property; (vii) Data sharing and reproducibility, (viii) Ethical oversight, are adapted according to ICMJE and COPE guidelines. 

Journal’s Policy on CrossMark 

CrossMark is a multi-publisher initiative from Crossref to provide a standard way for readers to locate the current version of a piece of content. By applying the CrossMark logo, TAPS is committing to maintaining the content it publishes and to alerting readers to changes if and when they occur.

Clicking on the CrossMark logo will tell you the current status of a document and may also give you additional publication record information about the document.

Journal’s Policy on Allegations of Misconduct 

TAPS is committed to upholding the highest standards of integrity and ethical practices. As part of this commitment, TAPS follow the guidelines from COPE to manage any dispute related to allegations of misconduct, which includes research fraud, plagiarism, and other ethical breaches. Allegations can be reported confidentially, and are initially assessed to determine if a full investigation is necessary. An impartial Investigation Committee, possibly including external experts, conducts a thorough inquiry if required. The journal ensures transparency and fairness throughout the process, from initial assessment to the conclusion of the investigation. Confirmed cases of misconduct may result in retraction of published work and other disciplinary actions. Respondents have the right to appeal decisions. This policy is regularly reviewed to align with COPE guidelines and best practices in publishing ethics.

Journal’s Policy on Authorship and Contributorship

TAPS outlines the definitions of authorship and contributorship here. All authors and contributors must declare their roles and responsibilities in the Manuscripts Submission Form. TAPS will follow the guidelines from COPE to manage any dispute related to authorship and contributorship.

Authorship confers credit for the work that the authors have done and implies responsibility and accountability for published work.  Authors listed on an article must meet all of the following criteria in accordance with ICMJE recommendations:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. 

 

    i. Author’s Roles and Responsibilities

In addition to the above criteria, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors. Non-author contributors should be acknowledged.

It is the collective responsibility of the authors, not the journal to which the work is submitted, to determine that all people named as authors meet all four criteria; it is not the role of journal editors to determine who qualifies or does not qualify for authorship or to arbitrate authorship conflicts. If agreement cannot be reached about who qualifies for authorship, the institution(s) where the work was performed, not the journal editor, should be asked to investigate.

    ii. Roles of Corresponding Author

The roles of corresponding author include:

1. Taking primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer-review, and publication process.
2. Ensuring that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and disclosures of relationships and activities are properly completed and reported, although these duties may be delegated to one or more co-authors.
3. Being available throughout the submission and peer-review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way.
4. Being available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication.

Although the corresponding author has primary responsibility for correspondence with the journal, the editors may send copies of all correspondence to all listed authors.

    iii. Removal or Addition of an Author

If authors request removal or addition of an author after manuscript submission or publication, editors of TAPS will seek an explanation and signed statement of agreement for the requested change from all listed authors and from the author to be removed or added.

    iv. Group Authorship

When a large multi-author group has conducted the work, the group ideally should decide who will be an author before the work is started and confirm who is an author before submitting the manuscript for publication. All members of the group named as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, including approval of the final manuscript, and they should be able to take public responsibility for the work and should have full confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the work of other group authors. They will also be expected as individuals to complete disclosure forms.

When submitting a manuscript authored by a group using a group name, with or without the names of individuals, the corresponding author should specify the group name if one exists, and clearly identify the group members who can take credit and responsibility for the work as authors. The byline of the article identifies who is directly responsible for the manuscript, and MEDLINE lists as authors whichever names appear on the byline. If the byline includes a group name, MEDLINE will list the names of individual group members who are authors or who are collaborators, sometimes called non-author contributors, if there is a note associated with the byline clearly stating that the individual names are elsewhere in the paper and whether those names are authors or collaborators.

   v. Non-Author Contributors

Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Examples of activities are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading (e.g. “Clinical Investigators” or “Participating Investigators”), and their contributions should be specified (e.g., “served as scientific advisors,” “critically reviewed the study proposal,” “collected data,” “provided and cared for study patients,” “participated in writing or technical editing of the manuscript”).

Journal’s Policy on Handling Complaints and Appeals

TAPS follows the COPE guidelines in relation to complaints and appeals. If you wish to make an appeal about an editorial decision or make a complaint, you should contact the editorial office.

Please provide the following information when submitting: names, email, DOI number, manuscript ID, title of manuscript). All complaints must be within the realm of TAPS Editorial Office’s remit (content, policies or processes of the journal). We will not consider complaints with regards to the disagreement with the final decision by the editorial team. An appeal will only be considered under highly specific circumstances.

We will acknowledge all complaints within five working days and investigation will be carried out. The duration in resolving complaints will depend on its severity. However, we will provide interim communications and update.

Journal’s Policy on Conflicts of Interest / Competing Interests

“A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial interest, or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual or organization. The presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of impropriety.”

All authors submitting a manuscript must declare the conflict of interest. TAPS will follow the guidelines from COPE to manage any issues related conflict of interest.

    i) Financial Competing Interests

Authors must reveal any conflict with a relevant disclosure statement in the text of their article.

• Financial interests or arrangements with a company whose product was used in a study or is referred to in a manuscript,
• Any financial interests of arrangement with a competing company,
• Any direct payment to an author(s) from any source for the purpose of writing the manuscript, and
• Any other financial connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated – including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organisation(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition. Authors may be asked to provide additional details about the interest. Depending on the details, the article may be prevented from publication. If the manuscript is published, such information must be communicated in a note following the text, before the references.

If there is no disclosure, the author(s) should include the following statement: “No potential competing interest was reported by the authors.”

    ii) Non-financial Competing Interests

• All participants in the peer-review and publication process—not only authors but also peer reviewers, editors, and editorial board members of journals—must consider and disclose their relationships and activities when fulfilling their roles in the process of article review and publication.
• When authors submit a manuscript of any type or format they are responsible for disclosing all relationships and activities that might bias or be seen to bias their work. 
• Reviewers will be asked at the time they are invited to critique a manuscript if they have relationships or activities that could complicate their review in the reviewer form. Reviewers must disclose to editors any relationships or activities that could bias their opinions of the manuscript, and should recuse themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if the potential for bias exists. Reviewers must not use knowledge of the work they are reviewing before its publication to further their own interests.
• Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts will need to recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have relationships or activities that pose potential conflicts related to articles under consideration. Other editorial staff members who participate in editorial decisions must provide editors with a current description of their relationships or activities (as they might relate to editorial judgments) and recuse themselves from any decisions in which an interest that poses a potential conflict exists. Editorial staff must not use information gained through working with manuscripts for private gain. Editors should regularly publish their own disclosure statements and those of their journal staff. Guest editors should follow these same procedures.

Journal’s Policy on Data Sharing and Reproducibility

Sharing these data publicly helps to maximize the discoverability and impact of your research. It also improves the robustness of the research process, supporting validation, research transparency, reproducibility and replicability of results.

The Asia Pacific Scholar (TAPS) acknowledges the archive of data makes available to the higher education community, a repertoire of resources for data replication and scientific progress as well as enabling results validation for papers submitted to TAPS.

Where possible, TAPS encourages authors to deposit their data for the submitted papers in a suitable public repository via a valid link for archive and validation purposes. This repository should be open access and enjoy guaranteed preservation. This statement can be published in their paper and shared data should be cited.

Full Manuscript—For data deposit with DOI, refer here (e.g. Open Science Framework).
Anonymised Manuscript—For data deposit with anonymised datasets, refer here (e.g. Figshare).

The following table provides few freely available data repositories for consideration.

Repository Name	Information on fees/costs	Size limits
Scholarbank	For NUS Users only Free of charge	1 GB per file
Harvard Dataverse	Free archive up to over 1 TB	2.5 GB per file, 10 GB per dataset
Open Science Framework	Free of charge	5 GB per file, multiple files can be uploaded
Zenodo	Donations towards sustainability encouraged	50 GB per dataset, multiple datasets can be uploaded
Mendeley Data	Contact repository for dataset up to a maximum size of 100GB	10 GB per dataset
Figshare	Free for 100 GB per Scientific Data manuscript. Additional fees apply for larger datasets	1 TB per dataset

Authors are to take care in ensuring that the data archived should be replicable both in results and analysis to support the stated conclusion in the submitted paper. Authors should also ensure that the data shared neither violate the protection of human subjects/rights nor invoke privacy/legal concerns.

The above mentioned is subjected to TAPS Informed Consent Policy and editorial policy.

Journal’s Ethical Oversight

The Belmont Report and the Nuremberg Code both address voluntary informed consent as a requirement for the ethical conduct of human subjects’ research. Voluntary informed consent is a pre-requisite for a subject’s participation in research. It is crucial to provide sufficient information to a participant so he/she can make an informed decision about whether to enrol in a study or to continue to participate voluntarily. Obtaining consent involves informing the participants about their rights, the purpose of the study, the procedures to be undergone, and the potential risks and benefits of participation. The participants have the right to “withdraw” or “opt-out” of the study or procedure at any time.

Identifying details (names, dates of birth, identity numbers and other information) of the participants that were studied should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and genetic profiles unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the participant (or parent or guardian if the participant is incapable) gave written informed consent for publication.

All manuscripts involving human subjects or human-derived samples must adhere to ethical standards, including obtaining informed consent as mandated by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the author’s institution. The principal investigator is responsible for retaining copies of these consent documents. The research must comply with the Helsinki ethical principles, as stated by the World Medical Association. By submitting a manuscript to TAPS, the author affirms their commitment to these principles throughout their research.

Journal’s Policy on Overlapping Publications

1. Preprints

Preprints are defined as an author’s version of a research manuscript prior to formal peer review at a journal, which is deposited on a public server; preprints may be posted at any time during the peer review process. Posting of preprints is not considered prior publication and will not jeopardise consideration at TAPS journal.

Our policy on posting and citation of preprints is summarised below.

Authors should disclose details of preprint posting, including DOI, the URL link and a statement of the disclaimer that the previous work is ‘not peer reviewed’ in the Manuscript Submission Form, upon submission of the manuscript or at any other point during consideration at TAPS journal. Once the preprint is published, it is the author’s responsibility to ensure that the preprint record is updated with a publication reference, including the DOI and a URL link to the published version of the article on the journal website.

Preprints must be cited in the reference list of articles according to APA 7th as shown below:

Bar, D. Z., Atkatsh, K., Tavarez, U., Erdos, M. R., Gruenbaum, Y., Collins, F. S. (2016). Biotinylation by antibody recognition- A novel method for proximity labeling. BioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/069187

2. Conference proceedings, letter to the editors, report and other similar work published

Publishing work in conference proceedings, letters to the editors, report and other similar work are common in some research communities. TAPS is happy to consider these submissions. However, authors must provide details (title, name and date of the conference, where the conference is being held, and the url link if possible) of the conference proceedings paper, letters to the editors, report and other similar work published in the Manuscript Submission Form. Authors must obtain all necessary permissions to re-use previously published material and attribute appropriately.

Journal’s Policy on Journal Management

TAPS adheres to rigorous standards in its management practices, ensuring that operations are conducted in accordance with COPE guidelines and established best practices within the academic publishing industry. The editorial process is structured to uphold integrity and transparency, with a robust double-blinded peer review system that enforces ethical conduct at all stages. The management team, comprised of seasoned professionals and academic experts, is tasked with the oversight of these processes, ensuring compliance with ethical standards and the efficient operation of the journal. This includes regular updates to our policies, ongoing training for the editorial board, and maintenance of a publication process that is both fair and devoid of bias.

Journal’s Policy on Post-publication Discussions and Corrections

Although all articles undergo rigorous peer review and production stages, honest errors may still be present in the published content. When detected, these errors must be corrected.

    i) Correction

Pervasive errors can result from a coding problem or a miscalculation and may result in extensive inaccuracies throughout an article. If such errors do not change the direction or significance of the results, interpretations, and conclusions of the article, TAPS will take the following actions:

1. 1. TAPS will publish a correction notice as soon as possible detailing changes from and citing the original publication; the correction will be on an electronic or numbered print page that is included in an electronic or a print Table of Contents to ensure proper indexing.
   2. TAPS will post a new article version with details of the changes from the original version and the date(s) on which the changes were made.
   3. TAPS will archive all prior versions of the article. This archive can be either directly accessible to readers or can be made available to the reader on request.
   4. Previous electronic versions will be prominently noted that there are more recent versions of the article.
   5. TAPS will ensure that the citation will be to the most recent version.

 

    ii) Retraction

If errors are serious enough to invalidate a paper’s results and conclusions, a retraction may require.

The decision to issue a retraction for an article will be made in accordance with COPE guidelines, and will involve an investigation by TAPS editorial staff in collaboration with the editor. Authors and institutions may request a retraction of their articles if their reasons meet the criteria for retraction.

• It has clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of major error (eg, miscalculation or experimental error), or as a result of fabrication (eg, of data) or falsification (eg, image manipulation)
• It constitutes plagiarism
• The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution to previous sources or disclosure to the editor, permission to republish, or justification (ie, cases of redundant publication)
• It contains material or data without authorisation for use
• Copyright has been infringed or there is some other serious legal issue (eg, libel, privacy)
• It reports unethical research
• It has been published solely on the basis of a compromised or manipulated peer review process
• The author(s) failed to disclose a major competing interest (a.k.a. conflict of interest) that, in the view of the editor, would have unduly affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and peer reviewers.

Where the decision has been taken to retract an article TAPS will:

• Add a “retracted” watermark to the published Version of Record of the article.
• Issue a retraction statement stating the ‘title’, ‘article ID’, who is retracting the article and the reason for retraction.
• Paginate and make available the retraction statement in the online issue of the journal.

However, retraction with republication (also referred to as “replacement”) will be considered by TAPS in cases where honest error (e.g., a misclassification or miscalculation) leads to a major change in the direction or significance of the results, interpretations, and conclusions. If the error is judged to be unintentional, the underlying science appears valid, and the changed version of the paper survives further review and editorial scrutiny, then retraction with republication of the changed paper, with an explanation, allows full correction of the scientific literature.

    iii) Editorial Expressions of Concern

In some cases, an Expression of Concern notice may be considered to raise awareness to a possible problem in an article. Here are some scenarios when an Expression of Concern will be issued:

• There is an inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors
• There is evidence that the findings are unreliable but the authors’ institution will not investigate the case
• There is an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been, or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive
• There is an investigation underway but a judgement will not be available till a considerable time

The expression of concern will be linked back to the published article it relates to and state the reasons for the concern. If more evidence becomes available the expression of concern could be replaced by a retraction notice or an exonerating statement, depending on the outcome.

Journal’s Policy on the Use of Generative AI and AI-assisted Technologies in Preparing Manuscripts for TAPS

When authors use AI and AI-assisted technologies in preparing manuscriptsto enhance readability and language it should not replace key tasks such as producing scientific, pedagogic, or medical insights, drawing scientific conclusions, or making clinical recommendations. The application of AI should always involve human oversight and control, with thorough review and editing to ensure accuracy. Authors remain ultimately responsible and accountable for their work’s content.

Authors must disclose the use of AI and AI-assisted technologies in their manuscripts, and a corresponding statement will be included in the published work. This disclosure promotes transparency and trust among authors, readers, reviewers, editors, and contributors and ensures compliance with the terms of use of the relevant technologies. We request authors who have used AI or AI-assisted tools to insert a statement at the end of their manuscript above the references or bibliography entitled ‘Declaration of AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process’. In that statement, we ask authors to specify the tool that was used and the reason for using the tool. We suggest that authors follow this format when preparing their statement:

During the preparation of this work the author(s) used [NAME TOOL / SERVICE] in order to [REASON]. After using this tool/service, the author(s) reviewed and edited the content as needed and take(s) full responsibility for the content of the publication.

AI and AI-assisted technologies should not be listed as authors or co-authors, nor cited as authors. Authorship entails responsibilities and tasks that only humans can fulfill. Each co-author must be able to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the work, approve the final version, and agree to its submission. Authors are also responsible for ensuring the originality of the work, the eligibility of all listed authors, and the absence of third-party rights infringement. They should familiarise themselves with TAPS’s Publishing Ethics policy before submission.

Journal’s Policy on Intellectual Property

According to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, plagiarism involves the use of another’s work without permission, credit, or acknowledgment. It constitutes the presentation of someone else’s work or ideas as one’s own, ranging from complete manuscripts to specific phrases, data, or findings. Redundant or overlapping publication, on the other hand, refers to the practice of publishing pieces of research that overlap significantly with work that has already been published, without clear, transparent disclosure to the editors or readers. This includes publishing the same data or findings in multiple articles, which can mislead readers regarding the novelty or extent of the research. COPE emphasizes the importance of originality, transparency, and proper attribution in scholarly publishing to uphold the integrity of the academic record. Authors are required to ensure that their work is original, has not been published elsewhere, and acknowledges all data and materials not original to their work. Upon submission, authors confirm that their manuscript is approved by all co-authors and relevant authorities. Additionally, the journal performs rigorous checks for plagiarism and duplication using specialized software to ensure the originality and authenticity of content before publication.

TAPS is an open access journal where our published materials are under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). Under this license, readers of TAPS are free to adapt and share the published materials for non-commercial purposes, provided that TAPS is duly accredited and cited.

Authors are required to obtain written permissions from the copyright holders for any copyrighted material used in the study. Additionally, the original source must be properly cited.

Authors and co-authors will have to sign the Author Submission Form to confirm that:

• The contribution is their own work
• All individuals identified as contributors have actually contributed to the article
• All individuals who contributed are listed
• The contribution is submitted only to the specified journal and has not been published before
• They have obtained written permission from the copyright owners to reproduce any material owned by third parties, and that they have included appropriate acknowledgement within the text of their contribution
• That the contribution contains no libelous or unlawful statements, does not infringe upon the rights or the privacy of others, and does not contain any material or instructions that might cause harm or injury

Authors will be required to transfer the copyright for audio, video and written manuscripts to TAPS by signing the Copyright Transfer Statement in the submission form.

Refer to Journal’s Policy on Overlapping Publications for more information.

Journal’s Policy on Article Processing Charges

There are no Article Processing Charges (APC) or publishing charges incurred for reading and publishing of materials with TAPS.

Journal’s Policy on Archiving

TAPS is currently electronically archived and preserved in National Library Board Singapore.