Business Model
As Hamadan University of Medical Sciences has supported all of the publishing costs of UMSHA Press journals, article processing charge and any other publication fees in the journals are free for authors.
UMSHA Press is an open access publisher and all papers are published when they have been accepted and have completed the manuscript production process. All articles are made freely available on the journal's website immediately upon publication. All of our authors receive finalized PDFs of their papers.
As a responsible publisher UMSHA Press are very aware of the various anti-spam laws worldwide and only employ reputable medical list companies who supply fully opted-in lists. UMSHA Press use the double opt-in confirmation when users sign up to receive email alerts on the UMSHA website. When signing up to email alerts registrants can choose to be emailed daily, weekly or monthly, and there are unsubscribe links on all emails sent.
UMSHA Press does not accept any paid advertising in any of its publications (journal articles or website).
Conflict of Interest Policies
UMSHA Press requires that all authors, peer reviewers and editors disclose all potential conflicts of interests.
- Authors
All authors are required to complete the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. It is important to complete this accurately. If you do not declare a conflict of interest and you are subsequently found to have one your paper will lose credibility. Conversely, full disclosure of conflict of interest does not prevent a paper from being published but does allow you to be open with your readers.
- Peer Reviewers
All peer reviewers are asked to declare any conflict of interests upon acceptance to review a paper. Peer reviewers may not undertake a review on a manuscript if they are unable to do so objectively.
The Editor-in-Chief of any UMSHA Press journal is bound by the same conflict of interest principles as authors. Editors-in-Chief must declare any financial and/or personal conflict of interest for each submitted manuscript, and decisions on manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest will be made by another editor. The Editor-in-Chief is sent conflict of interest forms for every author on the paper he/she is reviewing. To preserve editorial integrity and eliminate bias, the Editor-in-Chief is not aware of the fee structure for any of the papers he/she reviews. Editorial decisions for manuscripts commissioned or solicited by the Editor-in-Chief will not be made by that Editor-in-Chief. Where the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor, or Editorial Board member submits a paper to their own UMSHA Press journal, the policy is that another Editor on that journal is responsible for making the editorial decision (in accordance with section 9 of the COPE Ethical Editing guide, see also COPE case number 05-22 "Editor as author in own journal"). In this case we would also require a minimum of three sets of independent peer-review comments.