Editorial Policies

Aims & Scope

Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine (ISSN 1995-7645 CODEN: APJTB6) (APJTM) is an international English scientific monthly publication which was launched in March 2008. It is administrated by Hainan Medical University, sponsored by the Institute of Tropical Disease, Hainan Medical University (China) and Hainan Medical University Journal Publisher, aims to provide an academic communicating platform for international physicians, medical scientists, allied health scientists and public health workers, especially those of the Asia-Pacific region and worldwide on tropical medicine, infectious diseases and public health, and to meet the growing challenges of understanding, preventing and controlling the dramatic global emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases in the Asia-Pacific.
APJTM publishes new findings in basic and clinical research on tropical medicine and public health worldwide. It particularly pays attention to tropical disease, such as dengue/dengue hemorrhagic fever, kala azar, anthracia pestis, malaria, cholera, plague, leishmaniasis, tsutsugamushi, schistosomiasis, filariasis, trypanosomatosis, leprosy, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, yellow fever, babesiasis, Lyme disease, avian influenza, enzootic hepatitis, African meningitis, red tide, influenza, tuberculosis, epidemic polyarthritis, Japanese encephalitis, hepatitis and other parasitological diseases and zoonoses, which have repeatedly caused major epidemics regionally. Pharmacological studies, molecular biological studies, biological studies, physiological studies, pathological studies, gene studies on treatment and management for these alarming global emergence and re-emergences of infectious diseases are our focuses, too. Original research articles, review articles, case reports, and clinical studies in all areas of tropical medicine are welcome.

Human and Animal Rights

Human experiments should be performed only in accordance with the ethical standards provided by the responsible committee of the institution and in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki (as revised in Edinburgh 2000), available at http://www.wma.net/e/policy/b3.htm. Animal experiments should be in accordance with the instructions for the care and use provided by the institution at which the research was carried out.

Informed consent 

All investigations on human subjects must include a statement that the subject gave informed consent. Patient anonymity should be preserved. Photographs need to be cropped sufficiently to prevent human subjects being recognized (or an eye bar should be used).

Copyright         
The submission of a manuscript by authors implies that they automatically agree to assign exclusive copyright to the Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine if the manuscript is accepted for publication. As an author you can retain copyright and have certain rights to reuse and share your published articles with a DOI link to the version of record on ScienceDirect.

Conflict of interest

All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Asian Pacific Journal of Tropical Medicine is a member of COPE, the Committee on Publication Ethics. To comply with existing Elsevier policies & COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and ensure the high-quality, fair and ethical publication of scientific papers, the principles outlined below should be obeyed by all participants involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer, and the publisher in the publication process.

Responsibility for the Authors
1. All authors should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for the content. Written approval signed by all authors should be presented with the manuscript. The sequence of authors’ names represents the degree of contribution. Co-authorship should be indentified in the manuscript.
2. Authors must certify that their manuscript is their original work, has not previously been published elsewhere, or even submitted and been in reviewed in another journal. Any kinds of plagiarism, fraudulent data found in the paper will be denied for publication.
3. Authors are obliged to provide corrections of mistakes and report any errors they discover in their published paper to the Editors by email: apjtm2008@aliyun.com.
4. Authors must identify all sources used in the creation of their manuscript and state that all data in the paper are real and authentic.
5. All submitted papers are subjected to strict peer review process.
6. All submitted papers will be checked for plagiarism using iThenticate software. An overall similarity less than 20% and similarity of text from a single source less than 5% for a manuscript will be considered for publication.

Responsibility for the reviewers
1. Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential.
2. Reviewers should express their views objectively and clearly with supporting arguments, no personal criticism of the author, and provide the author with useful suggestions for improvement of the manuscript.
3. Reviewers may identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors and should contact the editorial office for any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published papers.
4. Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers and inform the editorial office.

Responsibility for the editors
1. Editors should guarantee the quality of the publication.
2. Editors should process the submitted papers fairly and timely.
3. Editors should select appropriate and eligible reviewers for the submitted papers and keep all information of reviewers confidential.

Peer Review Process

The acceptance of each paper will be decided by three reviewers for publication.
1. Editor receives manuscript and then sends it to three qualified reviewers.
2. If one of the three reviewers disagrees with publication, editor will select the fourth reviewer for peer review.
3. If the fourth reviewer agrees with publication, editor will inform the author for acceptance.
4. If the fourth reviewer disagrees with publication, editor will select the fifth reviewer. 
5. If the fifth reviewer agrees with publication, editor will inform the author. If not, the paper will be rejected.
6. If no experts included in our expert database are qualified for the peer review of an article, editor will invite other competent experts to make a decision.
7. The final decision of acceptance lies with the chief editor based on the comments of the reviewers. and authors will be informed of the decision (Acceptance, minor revision, major revision or rejection).
8. Each peer review process is expected to be completed within 10 days (the first three reviewers will finish reviewing within 10 days, and the fourth and fifth reviewers have 10 days each).

1. Two statistical editorial members are responsible for the review of statistical analyses.
2. Two linguistic experts are in charge of language evaluation each article.
3. Crosscheck plagiarism screening tool is used to prevent plagiarism.
4. As a member of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the journal firmly sticks to the COPE's code.
5. The journal strictly implements the regulations of Medical Ethics Committee.
6. The journal strictly complies with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ uniform requirements for manuscripts.

Open Access Policy

Publication Fee
The journal does not charge for submission and processing of the manuscripts.

Indexing
APJTM is currently included in SCI, PubMed/Medline, Biological Abstracts, Chemical Abstracts, Cambridge Scientific Abstracts, Excepta Medica, Scopus, Western Pacific Region Index Medicus, Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience Abstracts, Global Health, Zoological Record, Open Academic Journals Index, Ulrich International Periodical Director, and Index Copernicus.

Disclaimer

   The Publisher, Society and Editors cannot be held responsible for errors and any consequences arising from the use of information contained in this journal; the views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Publisher, Society and Editor, neither does the publication of advertisements constitute any endorsement by the Publisher, Society and Editor of the products advertised.
To the extent permissible under applicable laws, no responsibility is assumed by Elsevier (Singapore) Pte Ltd nor by Hainan Medical University Journal Publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a result of any actual or alleged libelous statements, infringement of intellectual property or privacy rights, or products liability, whether resulting from negligence or otherwise, or from any use or operation of any ideas, instructions, procedures, products or methods contained in the material therein.