Research Integrity

Author Responsibilities

• Original work: All submitted manuscripts must be original and not under consideration elsewhere.
• Data accuracy: All data, figures, and results must be accurately reported. Fabrication or falsification of data is grounds for immediate rejection and retraction.
• Authorship criteria: All listed authors must meet ICMJE criteria for authorship. Gift and ghost authorship are strictly prohibited.
• Conflict of interest: All financial and non-financial conflicts of interest must be disclosed at submission.
• Ethics approval: Studies involving human participants or animals must report relevant IRB/ethics committee approval numbers.

Corrections and Retractions

MedHorizons takes a transparent approach to post-publication corrections. Errors are corrected with a clearly dated correction notice linked to the original article. Retractions are issued when results are found to be unreliable due to misconduct, honest error, or data integrity concerns.

Retraction notices identify the reason for retraction, whether authors concurred, and remain permanently linked to the original article which is watermarked as retracted.

Plagiarism Policy

All manuscripts are screened with iThenticate before peer review. A similarity score above 15% triggers a manual review. Self-plagiarism — reusing substantial portions of previously published text without citation — is treated equivalently to plagiarism.