Publication Ethics

Open access policy:

-  Microbes and Infectious Diseases provide immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. All articles published in Microbes and Infectious Diseases are made immediately available worldwide under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which allows unrestricted reuse of the material with proper attribution. Users have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles provided the original work is properly cited.

-  This policy is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative(https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai-10-recommendations). Microbes and Infectious Diseases defines open access by the following conditions:

  • Peer-reviewed literature is freely available without a subscription.
  • Literature is immediately released in open-access format.
  • Published material can be re-used without obtaining permission if a correct citation to the original publication is given. 

Copyright and Publication Rights 

Authors retain the copyrights and transfer the commercial rights only to the publisher (Zagazig University).

-  Authors have the right to:

  • Share their article according to the [Personal Use rights] ** so long as it contains the end user license and the DOI link to the version of record in this journal.
  • Retain intellectual property rights (including research data).
  • Proper attribution and credit for the published work.

* This includes the right to make and authorize commercial use.

** Personal use rights:


Authors can use their articles, in full or in part, for scholarly, non-commercial purposes such as:

  • Use by an author in the author’s teaching activities (including distribution of copies, paper or electronic).
  • Distribution of copies to known research colleagues for their personal use (but not for Commercial Use).
  • Inclusion in a thesis or dissertation (if this is not to be published commercially).
  • Use in a subsequent compilation of the author’s works.
  • Extending the Article to book-length form.
  • Preparation of other derivative works.

Authorship of the paper: 

-  Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. Transparency about the contributions of authors is encouraged.

-  Authors are strongly advised to ensure the author group, the corresponding author, and the order of authors is all correct at submission.

-  Adding and/or deleting authors during the revision stages is generally not permitted, but in some cases may be warranted. Reasons for changes in authorship should be explained in detail. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript. 

Compliance with Ethical Standards

-  To ensure that accepted principles of ethical and professional conduct have been followed, authors should include information regarding sources of funding, potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial) and acknowledgement of sources.

-  Statements of compliance are required if the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that has any unusual hazards inherent in their use, or if it involves the use of animal or human subjects.

-  Studies on patients or volunteers require ethics committee approval and informed consent, which should be documented in the paper. 

Conflict of interest

-  Conflict of interest for a given manuscript exists when a participant in the peer review and publication process - author, reviewer, and editor has ties to activities that could inappropriately influence his or her judgment, whether or not judgement is in fact affected. Financial relationships with industry (for example, through employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria expert testimony) either directly or through immediate family, are usually considered to be the most important conflicts of interest. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.

-  Authors should be responsible for recognizing and disclosing financial and other conflicts of interest that might bias their work. They should acknowledge in the manuscript all financial support for the work and other financial or personal connections to the work.

Originality and plagiarism: 

-  The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works.

-  If the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.

-  To verify originality, your article may be checked by the originality detection service. All new submissions to Microbes and Infectious Diseases are automatically screened using Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate) to screen all new manuscripts for plagiarism within the editorial system. Editors may also choose to run a similarity report at any other stage during the peer review process or post-publication. Authors and researchers can also use iThenticate to screen their work before submission by visiting http://www.ithenticate.com/.

Multiple, redundant, or concurrent publications: 

-  The manuscript should not be submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.

-  An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal.

-  Prior publication in the form of an abstract or publication as an academic thesis is allowed. 

Data access and retention: 

-  Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review. 

Fundamental errors:

-  Authors have an obligation to correct mistakes once they discover a significant error in their published article.

-  The author(s) is/are requested to contact the journal and explain in what sense the error is impacting the article.

-  A decision on how to correct the literature will depend on the nature of the error. This may be a correction or retraction.

Article withdrawal and retraction:

-  If there is a valid concern of misbehavior, the Journal contacts the author(s) concerned under their given e-mail address and is given an opportunity to address the issue. Depending on the situation, this may result in the Journal’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

  • If the manuscript is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
  • If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction:

-  An erratum/correction may be placed with the article

-  An expression of concern may be placed with the article

-  Or in severe cases retraction of the article may occur. The reason will be given in the published erratum, expression of concern, or retraction note.

Editors of Microbes and Infectious Diseases follows the ICMJE's Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. (see: https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/about-the-recommendations/purpose-of-the-recommendations.html).  

Our Editors follow guidelines and best practices published by professional organizations, including Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from ICMJE (www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) and Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (https://doaj.org/bestpractice).  

Our Editors are familiar with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) “Code of Conduct and Best Pracice Guidelines for Journal Editors” (see: https://publicationethics.org/about/our-organisation).  

Editors encourage the use of reporting guidelines for all study designs such as the CONSORT statement for randomized, controlled trials and the STROBE statement for observational studies (see Equator network at: https://www.equator-network.org/)  

Editorial Freedom 

Microbes and Infectious Diseases follow the World Association of Medical Ethics (WAME) (available at: https://wame.org/editorial-independence). Editorial freedom is defined as editors holding full responsibility for editorial decisions on individual manuscripts. Editors base their editorial decisions on the transparency, validity, and quality of all manuscripts, and our Editors are free to express critical but responsible views about all aspects of medicine without fear of forfeit. Our Editors are supported by the Editorial board who assists the Editor with editorial policy.  

Confidentiality 

All manuscripts submitted to Microbes and Infectious Diseases are privileged communications. The Journal’s Editorial Board, and all editorial and publication staff, are asked to keep all information about a submitted manuscript confidential, sharing it only with those involved in the peer review, and publication processes.  

Peer review and timeliness 

Our Editors are responsible to select expert reviewers within the topic of each submitted manuscript from the journal database or suggested by JANE or Publons (WOS). Editors are also responsible to ensure that reviewer comments are properly assessed and interpreted with declared conflicts of interest. Editors will do all they can to ensure the timely processing of manuscripts as per the peer review policy (see: https://mid.journals.ekb.eg/journal/process). Manuscripts submitted by a member of a journal’s editorial team are independently peer-reviewed. In this case, the Editor will have no role in the peer review process or publication decision for his own article.  

Competing interests 

The Journal’s Editors are responsible to give all editorial decisions based on the relevance of a manuscript to the journal and on the manuscript’s originality, quality, and transparency. They agree to ensure that those decisions will not be influenced by commercial interests or conflicts of Interest.  

Ethical approval 

Our Editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the following requirements: 

Research work involving human participants, human material, or human data should be performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (See: https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/).  

Informed consent and ethics committee/IRB approval: A paper describing experimental work in humans must: (1) indicate that informed consent has been obtained from patients where appropriate, (2) include a statement that the responsible ethics committee (e.g: Institutional Review Board, Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University) has given approval. Do not use patients’ names, initials or hospital numbers, especially in illustrative material.  

All animal experiments should comply with the ARRIVE guidelines (see: https://arriveguidelines.org/), and should be carried out in accordance with the U.K. Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act, 1986 and associated guidelines, EU Directive 2010/63/EU for animal experiments (see: https://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/lab_animals/legislation_en.htm).   

Dealing with possible misconduct 

Our Editors are responsible to act if they suspect misconduct. This task involves both published and unpublished manuscripts.

Editors will reject papers with raised concerns about possible misconduct and will be ethically obliged to pursue alleged cases. 

Editors will seek a response from authors suspected of misconduct. If they are not satisfied with the response, they will raise their concerns to the relevant employers, or institution, or appropriate body.