Updated on November 1, 2021

PUBLICATION POLICY

1.Errata and Retractions

The journal recognizes the importance of maintaining the integrity of published literature.

A published article that contains an error may be corrected through the publication of an Erratum. Errata describe errors that significantly affect the scientific integrity of a publication, the reputation of the authors, or the journal itself. Authors who wish to correct a published article should contact the editor who handled their manuscript or the Editorial Office with full details of the error(s) and their requested changes. In cases where co-authors disagree over a correction, the Editor-in-Chief may consult the Editorial Board or external peer reviewers for advice. If a Correction is published, any dissenting authors will be noted in the text.

A published article that contains invalid or unreliable results or conclusions, has been published elsewhere, or has infringed codes of conduct (covering research or publication ethics) may be retracted. Individuals who believe that a published article should be retracted are encouraged to contact the journal’s Editorial Office with full details of their concerns. The Editor-in-Chief will investigate further and contact the authors of the published article for their response. In cases where co-authors disagree over a retraction, the Editor-in-Chief may consult the Editorial Board or external peer reviewers for advice. If a Retraction is published, any dissenting authors will be noted in the text.

The decision to publish Errata or Retractions is made at the sole discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.

2. Secondary Publication

MRMS aims to ensure the dissemination of knowledge, especially that which is inaccessible to the journal’s broad international audience. In line with ICMJE policies, the journal therefore considers articles that have been previously published in different languages if the following conditions are met:

• All authors of the original publication agree to the secondary publication, but understand that acceptance in the journal is not guaranteed.
• The manuscript undergoes full peer review.
• Editors from both journals approve of the re-publication.
• Full copyright permissions, per the section ‘Reproducing copyrighted material’, are supplied upon manuscript submission.
• A reasonable period of time has elapsed before the publication of the English version, to maintain the priority of the original publication. This time will be decided by the editors of both journals.
• The journal’s audience is different to the original publication’s audience. Differentiating elements can include that the original publication and the original journal are published wholly in other languages; the original journal is not in the Science Citation Index Expanded (Clarivate Analytics), Scopus (Elsevier) or other large international database; and the original journal has a restricted distribution (e.g. in print to members of a society only). Authors should contact the Editor-in-Chief for clarification if needed.
• The secondary publication faithfully reflects the data and interpretations of the original publication.  

Secondary publications will include text that indicates they are fully peer-reviewed translations of an original publication. They will contain a statement such as: “Part or all of this article was originally published in (e.g. Japanese) as [citation (20ZZ)]”.

3. Preprints

To support the wide dissemination of research, the journal encourages authors to post their research manuscripts on community-recognized preprint servers, either before or alongside submission to the journal. This policy applies only to the original version of a manuscript that describes primary research. Any version of a manuscript that has been revised in response to reviewers’ comments, accepted for publication or published in the journal should not be posted on a preprint server. Instead, forward links to the published manuscript may be posted on the preprint server.
Authors should notify MRMS of any preprint related to a manuscript submission. Authors should retain copyright in their work when posting to a preprint server.

4. Scooping

In the context of preprint servers MRMS offers protection against scooping, which is the prior publication of similar work. If authors post their manuscript to a community-recognized preprint server before submitting to MRMS, any similar work that is then published by others will not impact on MRMS's novelty criterion. Submission of the manuscript must be made to the journal within 4 months of posting the work to a preprint server.

5. Image Integrity

Authors may digitally manipulate or process images, but only if the adjustments are kept to a minimum, are applied to the entire image, meet community standards, and are clearly described in the manuscript. All images in a manuscript must accurately reflect the original data on which they are based. Authors must not move, remove, add or enhance individual parts of an image. The editors reserve the right to request original, unprocessed images from the authors. Failure to provide requested images may result in a manuscript being rejected or retracted.

6. Availability of Data and Materials

Authors are encouraged to disclose the source of publicly available data and materials, such as public repositories or commercial manufacturers, by including accession numbers or company details in their manuscript, as appropriate.

OTHER POLICIES

7. Clinical trial Registration

The journal adheres to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) policy on Clinical Trials Registration, which recommends that all clinical trials are registered in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrollment as a condition of consideration for publication. Manuscripts describing prospective clinical trials must include the registration number of the trial and the name of the trial registry.

8. Reporting Guidelines

The journal requires authors to follow the EQUATOR Network’s Reporting Guidelines for health research. Study types include, but are not limited to, randomized trials, observational studies, systematic reviews, case reports, qualitative research, diagnostic and prognostic studies, economic evaluations, animal pre-clinical studies and study protocols.

9. Self-archiving Policy

Self-archiving enables authors to deposit a copy of their manuscript in an online repository. MRMS encourages authors of original research manuscripts to upload their article to an institutional or public repository immediately after publication in the journal.

10. Long-term Digital Archiving

J-STAGE preserves its full digital library, including MRMS, with Portico in a dark archive (see https://www.portico.org/publishers/jstage/). In the event that the material becomes unavailable at J-STAGE, it will be released and made available by Portico.

11. Advertising Policy

All journal content is independently curated and advertising does not in any way influence editorial decisions. Advertising is clearly marked as such and the editors have full and final authority for approving print and online advertisements and for enforcing advertising policy. The journal will not carry advertisements for products proven to be seriously harmful to health and the editors will consider all criticisms of advertisements for publication.

CONTACT

Inquiry to: MRMS Editorial Office
c/o International Academic Publishing Co. Ltd.
Publishing Center, 332-6 Yamabuki-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-0801, Japan
TEL: +81-3-6824-9399, FAX: +81-3-5206-5331 Email: mrms-edit@bunken.co.jp