105 Scientific Journal of the Faculty of Medicine in Niš 2014;31(2):105-111 Original article ■ Ethical Considerations in Publishing Medical Articles in Iranian Journals Mohsen Koushan 1 , Akbar Pejhan 2 , Nematullah Shomoossi 3 , Azam Shomoossi 4 1 Department of Nursing, Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences, P.O. Box 319, Sabzevar, Iran 2 Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences, P.O. Box 319, Sabzevar, Iran 3 Department of English, Faculty of Medicine, Sabzevar University of Medical Sciences, P.O. Box 319, Sabzevar, Iran 4 Department of Linguistics, Alzahra University, Tehran 19834, Iran ACTA FACULTATIS MEDICAE NAISSENSIS UDC:174:[001.816:61(55) SUMMARY Publication ethics has always been a major concern of chief editors and members of editorial boards of journals. Therefore, the current study intends to investigate ethi- cal issues in sticking to publication ethics in major medical journals in Iran. This descriptive analytical study was conducted on Iranian medical journals approved as “scientific research journals” published from 2011 to 2012; the sample in- cluded 109 articles from 102 journals published in Persian. For data gathering, a check- list was developed, and completed through careful scrutiny of the articles and contact with authors. Ethical misconducts were recorded and summarized to compute the mis- conduct cases. Ethical misconducts included lack of the ethics committee approval (81.7%), un- stated informed consent (45%), authors with insufficient contribution (46.8%), dispute on the order of authors (84.4%), honor authors (8.3%), ghost authors (6.4%), salami pu- blishing (10.1%), concurrent submission (4.6%), missing acknowledgements (49.5%) and not mentioning the financial support providers (56.9%). The results indicated that some ethical considerations are ignored in publishing medical articles. Therefore, both journals and authors need to take action to avoid mis- conducts. Key words: ethics, publication, ethics committee, informed consent, authors Corresponding author: Nematullah Shomoossi  phone: +98 5712264407 e-mail: nshomoossi@yahoo.com  DOI: 10.2478/afmnai-2014-0012 Unauthenticated | 46.100.136.228 Download Date | 7/13/14 7:50 PM