Preamble
OraPro encourages intending authors to read the following policies thoroughly before submitting an article to the Journal. Every manuscript submitted to the journal has to conform to the policies.
Once an author submits a manuscript to the journal, he agrees to OraPro's policies.
Authorship
For any author to assert his right as an author of an OraPro article, he must have contributed substantially to the development of the article.
Even though our peer-review and editorial processes are tailored to minimize errors in information each published article presents, all authors of OraPro published articles are responsible for the accuracy and integrity of the information they provide. Before publication, authors must sign a statement attesting that an article fulfills the authorship criteria. This statement may be signed by the lead or corresponding author on behalf of others.
Corresponding author
Where there are more than an author for an article, the authors must designate an author to act as the corresponding author, on behalf of other authors. All correspondences concerning the article will be made with this author.
All manuscripts must be submitted by an author.
In-text Citations and Referencing
OraPro allows the use of the APA referencing guide (7th edition)
Authors should review this style to ensure their manuscript follows its conventions.
Consent for publication
Written informed consent (including the clause that images will be made freely available on the internet and may be seen by the general public) must be sought and obtained for details, images, and videos from copyright owners or their parent/guardian (if under 18), or next of kin (if the copyright holder has died) under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0. The author is free from this burden if details, images or videos are entirely unidentifiable there are no details on individuals reported within the manuscript.
The manuscript must include a statement that written informed consent for publication was obtained.
Self-Plagiarism
This is the replication of text from one's own previous publication. This may be considered unacceptable in some cases, but sometimes, it is necessary or unavoidable. In this case, it must be transparently reported, bearing in mind, copyright requirements.
Ethics approval
Prior to commencing a research study involving human participants, human material, or human data, which must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, Ethics approval must be sought from an appropriate ethics committee.
Authors are obligated to write a statement in their manuscript regarding such approval or exemption. The name and the reference number of the committee must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research.
The editor reserves the right to contact the committee, if indicated, for more information.
Competing interests
OraPro requires that authors, editors, and reviewers declare all competing interests (financial and non-financial), if they exist. Authors should declare theirs at the end of their manuscript. Where authors have no competing interests, the statement should read “The author(s) declare(s) that they have no competing interests”.
The authors’, editor’s or reviewer’s interpretation of data or presentation of information may be, or perceived to be, influenced by, their personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations.
For clarity, a competing interest exists when an author, editor or reviewer is
a. receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from or holding stocks or shares in, an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the manuscript, either now or in the future or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript or holds or the individual or organization is holding, or currently applying for, patents relating to the content of the manuscript
b. having political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, and intellectual interests that may cause embarrassment after publication.
Co-publication in multiple journals
Publishing an article originally published elsewhere is permissible at the Editor’s discretion and in agreement with the original publisher.
Research summaries
Summaries of research reports of independent researchers/organizations that are relevant to the niche of the journal may be made freely accessible in full online, from time to time. These may also be peer-reviewed.
Acknowledgments
All persons who contributed to the success of a manuscript may be listed in the ‘Acknowledgements’ section.
Other Important Editorial Policies
Peer-review
OraPro utilizes a thorough peer-review process to ensure that articles submitted are in the niche of the journal and that information provided is significant, accurate, and original. This way, we ensure that the right, precise information gets to our end-users.
OraPro operates a double-blind peer-review system.
As a matter of policy, a whole article, excluding author’s name(s) and institutional affiliation(s) is/are sent to 2 independent researchers/experts, in a relevant field covered by the journal’s niche, for review, using the Journal’s peer-review guidelines
Anonymous reviewer reports/comments are made available to the author(s) for article-revision. After corrections have been made, the article is re-submitted and then subjected to the editorial review of our Editorial Board.
The Journal Editor-in-Chief will be the handling editor for all manuscripts’ peer-review process, except, where the EIC has a competing interest regarding a manuscript or is its author/co-author, another member of the editorial team will be saddled with the responsibility of being the handling editor for the peer-review of the manuscript.
The Handling Editor does the initial assessment of, decides the suitability of a manuscript for review, sends the manuscript to appropriately identified independent experts/researchers for review and makes the final decision of publishing or rejecting an article, based on reviewers’ reports, authors’ response and editorial decisions.
Peer-reviewers
Considering independent experts to review a manuscript is the purview of the Handling Editor.
Authors may suggest potential reviewers, who are not present colleagues at work or recent collaborators. Authors may, as well, request exclusion of individuals as peer-reviewers; but the Handling Editor is not obligated to use or exclude these reviewers. Authors who wish to suggest potential reviewers should provide full names, specialties, addresses, including institutional email addresses and all other information that may aid in the identification of these experts in their cover letter.
Portability of Peer-review
OraPro will consider manuscripts that have been previously reviewed by another publisher or a third party but couldn’t get published by the journal, made available to it.
Editorial review
Our editorial process is painstakingly laborious but rewarding as we carefully review and edit manuscripts to certify the correctness of facts and the poise of views presented.
Confidentiality
Editors and reviewers are required to treat all manuscripts and other information that is made available to them, in the normal course of the editorial or review process, as confidential. The only information that should go public is the one eventually published by the Journal. Note, however, that this confidentiality policy does not cover periodic surveys and other research projects to improve processes and communication for stakeholders. If there is a need to share a manuscript with a third party or to get ethical consent for a study, the corresponding author would be contacted.
Open access
All articles in OraPro are open-access articles distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors of articles published in OraPro are the copyright holders of their article. When they accept our terms of use, they grant to any third party the right to use, reproduce, or disseminate their article freely without fiscal or registration restrictions.
Consequently, the full texts of all OraPro Articles are made freely available on the journal’s website and other third party sites upon publication, free-of-charge.
Archiving/ Preprint servers and author/institutional repositories
The full texts of published articles will be deposited in a digital archive to guarantee long term preservation and continual availability.
The full texts of a manuscript accepted for publication or published in OraPro may be deposited in a digital archive to guarantee long term preservation by respective authors.
Articles may be posted on an author’s personal or institutional website before publication. Academic thesis may be placed in the public domain as required by the awarding institution. Incomplete manuscripts may be maintained by individuals or organizations at any repositories. These do not constitute previous publication and such manuscripts or manuscripts that contain parts replete with such may be considered by OraPro for publication.
Publication Journey
1. Receipt of a manuscript (submitted via the journal's online journal management system)
2. The submission undergoes initial editorial review to ensure it is complete and conforms to the Journal's aim and to prepare the file for reviewers
3. The submission is sent out to 2 independent researchers/scholars for pre-publication external peer-review (double-blind review)
4. Author revises submission (if indicated from '3’ above) and uploads the revised file
5. Decision is taken concerning the submission - Accept, Reject or send for further refereeing. If sent for further refereeing, the peer-review process is repeated. When accepted or rejected, author is notified
6. The author pays the Article Processing Charge (APC) of 20USD only if the submission is accepted for publication
7. The final editorial review of the submission takes place
8. The submission is copy-edited
9. Publishable files are produced
10. The submission is published
11. The article is immediately available on the Journal's website and made available on other third-party sites
12. The article is Archived on LOCKSS and PKP PN for long-term preservation
13. If, for any reason, an author or authors desires/desire to pull down a published article, they have to write a letter to the editor requesting a pull-down and stating the reason(s) for the request, and accompany the request with evidence of the payment of an administrative fee of 20USD only
**Note that the Author gets notified each time a strategic decision or a salient step is taken. An author may also keep track of developments with their manuscript from their Journal account
Contacts
Feel free to contact us for questions or should you have any concerns at any stage of the process:
Physical: F. Gaye R., Sukuta-Jamisa, Greater Banjul Area, The Gambia.
Postal: UMTG, PMB 405, Serrekunda, The Gambia.
E-mail: [email protected]
WhatsApp/Telegram: +220-718-5516
Citing articles on OraPro
OraPro publishes articles exclusively online. Articles are published in volumes and each article in a volume is given a unique article number. In the APA 7th edition style, an article in OraPro is cited as:
Author(s). (year). Title. Orapuh Protocols, Volume number: Article number.
E.g.
Jallow, L. U., & Cham, B. I. (2022). How to measure periodontal pockets. Orapuh Protocols, 2(1), p11
This hypothetic citation refers to article 11 from volume 2, issue 1 of the journal, published in 2022.
Appeals and complaints
To appeal a rejection or lodge a complaint, contact the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) directly ([email protected]). If unsatisfied with an intervention, you may contact the Orapuh Redress & Disciplinary Committee (ORDC).