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 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 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 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 intellectual property

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.

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.

Other policies

1. Click here for Policy on Data Sharing.
2. Click here for Policy on Ethical Oversight.