UCLA Radiological Sciences Proceedings follows the standards established in the “Core Practices” of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Authors, editors, and reviewers are required to comply with the ethical guidelines as written below.

Authorship and contributorship

UCLA Radiological Sciences Proceedings follows the authorship guidelines set forth by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). These guidelines state that a person is qualified for authorship credit on a manuscript only if they:

1.     Made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

2.     Participated in drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND

3.     Provided final approval of the version to be published; AND

4.     Agree 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.

All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all people who meet all four criteria for authorship should be identified as authors.

Contributors to the work who do not meet all four criteria for authorship should be acknowledged.

Complaints and appeals

Readers with concerns about published articles should first contact the corresponding author to attempt a resolution. In cases where contacting the corresponding author is inappropriate—or if the corresponding author is unresponsive or unable to resolve the reader’s concerns—concerned readers can contact the editorial coordinators, who will work with the Editorial Board to achieve a resolution. Decisions about corrections or retractions will be made by Editorial Board members.

Authors with concerns should note that the Editorial Board and the journal’s staff have broad discretion when making publication decisions. However, authors who believe their manuscripts have been unfairly rejected are welcome to submit an appeal to the editorial coordinators, who will decide how to proceed.

Conflicts of interest

Authors. All authors are required to complete his or her own ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. These forms should be uploaded at submission by the corresponding author.

Authors are also requested to identify funding sources for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement, then this should be stated. View the Submission Guidelines for more information.

Reviewers. Reviewers are required to disclose (on the reviewer score sheet) whether they have any financial or professional affiliations that may be perceived as a conflict of interest in reviewing a specific manuscript. Reviewers should decline to review any manuscript with which they have any conflict of interest issues regarding the topic, authors, or related affiliations that may hinder providing a fair and balanced review. If unsure, reviewers should contact the editorial coordinators for clarification.

Editors and Journal Staff. Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts should recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships 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 financial interests or other conflicts (as they might relate to editorial judgments) and recuse themselves from any decisions in which a conflict of interest exists. Editorial staff must not use information gained through working with manuscripts for private gain.

Editorial Board members and journal staff are required to sign a conflict of interest and financial disclosure statement annually, which is kept confidential in the editorial office.

Data and reproducibility

UCLA Radiological Sciences Proceedings encourages but does not require authors to deposit data and code in a trusted repository that allows for accession and reuse—unless such action might cause ethical, legal, or privacy issues. Authors should clarify the availability status of their data at the time of submission. To ensure enduring transparency, we also recommend that authors archive their research or provide minimal datasets to the journal as Supplemental Material.

Informed consent

Authors submitting manuscripts in which a patient might be identified by their case description, even if only by the patient themselves, must obtain written informed consent from the patient

• UCLA authors: English, UCLA form 10069 or Spanish, UCLA form 10069a
• Non-UCLA authors: General Consent Form

If the patient is deceased, written consent should be sought from the patient’s next-of-kin.

In addition to providing the patient with a draft of the manuscript, authors should take care to provide information in the patient’s primary language and to mitigate barriers such as low health literacy.

Intellectual property

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract, a published lecture, or an academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright holder. To verify originality, your article will be checked by the originality detection service “Crossref Similarity Check.”

Live subjects

Research on human or animal subjects must be reviewed and approved by IRB of the institution at which the research was conducted. Authors should include an attestation that IRB approval was obtained in the Materials and Methods section of relevant manuscripts.

Special care should be taken in studies that involve vulnerable populations. Any study that describes groups by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, disease, etc. should explain the need for such categorization. Studies should engage vulnerable groups and people in vulnerable groups only if their involvement is necessary and the output of the study is beneficial to them.

Peer review

UCLA Radiological Sciences Proceedings uses a double anonymized review process in adherence to the guidelines set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Detailed information about the journal’s peer-review policies can be found under “Peer-Review Process and Confidentiality.”

Post-publication corrections and retractions

Once published, a journal article cannot generally be revised or removed. We feel it is important to provide perpetual access to materials published whenever possible and appropriate. However, we will remove publications under special circumstances, including in the case of submission errors, rights violations, or inappropriate content. Please be aware, however, that even after the removal of a work, a citation to the work, along with a URL, will remain on eScholarship.

In the case that a significant error is discovered, corrections or retractions can be made at the discretion of the Editorial Board.

If you would like your work removed from eScholarship, or if a significant error or submission is discovered, please contact the editorial coordinators.

Advertisements

We do not accept advertisements for any industry or institution for inclusion in UCLA Radiological Sciences Proceedings. All publications will be free of advertisements and remain open access.