Life and Science aims to adhere to COPE Authorship and contribution for publication
1.   Author and Non-Author Contributors The journal considers corresponding author as the one who takes primary responsibility for responding to editorial queries in a timely way during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process. The journal considers authorship on following four criteria as recommended by ICMJE:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work
• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content
• Final approval of the version to be published
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributors who meet fewer than all four of the above criteria for authorship are not considered as authors but as non-author contributors and should be acknowledged. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author, not the journal, to determine that all people named as authors meet all four criteria and to ensure non-author contributors are acknowledged. In case if submitted manuscript is authored by a group, the corresponding author should clearly identify the group name and members as authors. The journal requires submission of a signed Authorship and Contribution Declaration form by the corresponding author, clearly stating each author’s last name against following appropriate categories:

• Study conception and design
• Accusation of data
• Analysis and interpretation of data
• Drafting of manuscript
• Critical revisions

The journal will not accept any request of removal or addition of an author after manuscript submission or publication.
2.    Responsibilities of Authors Authors should abide by all principles of authorship and declaration of conflict of interest in the submission process. Authors will be responsible for any information written/informed/reported in the submitted manuscript. It is author's responsibility to obtain signed permission from the copyright holder to use and reproduce text, illustrations, tables, etc., published previously in other journals, electronic or print media. Authors are not permitted to post the work on any website/blog/forum/board or at any other place, by any means, from the time such work is submitted to the Life and Science until the final decision on the paper has been given to them. In case a manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors may not post the work in its entirety on any website/blog/forum/board or at any other place, by any means, till the paper is published in the Life and Science. The authors may, however, post the title, authors’ names and their affiliations and abstract, with the following statement on the first page of the paper - "The manuscript has been accepted for publication in the Life and Science". After publication of the article, it may be posted anywhere with full journal citation included. Before acceptance of a manuscript for publication, a corresponding author and all co-authors of the manuscript will sign and submit a complete undertaking and authorship agreement
3.   Gift Authorship & Intellectual Corruption The practice of gift authorship and intellectual corruption is strongly discouraged and closely checked by Life and Science.

Life and Science does not believe intrusive advertisement. We follows transparency and best practice of Directory of Open Access Journal, (DOAJ), the Committee on Publication Ethics, (COPE), and the World Association of Medical Editors, (WAME)

Life and Science supports a range of policies to benefit the authors, with respect to providing them with an e-print. E-prints are sent out automatically to the corresponding author of articles published ahead of print and in-print issues. A link is provided to the authors for downloading the article directly from the Life and Science website and forwarding the link to their co-authors, peers, or anyone.

All appeals and complaints regarding (but not limited to) misconduct, authorship conflicts or plagiarism in publications at Life and Science will be directed to the Life and Science Complain and Appeal Scrutiny Committee Authors whose articles have been rejected have the right to send a letter of appeal giving detailed explanations. This will be reviewed in-house and a decision will be taken accordingly. Revised articles will not be considered at this stage.

Life and Science, an open-access journal is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).   Life and Science understands that copyright is part of the larger framework of intellectual property rights. The journal allows authors to retain the copyright of their work. They can claim copyright and full intellectual property rights provided the right of first publication stands with Life and Science. The Journal or the Publisher does not hold any commercial rights. We recommend our authors visit the DOAJ Copyright Licensing Series which focuses on the details of copyright and licensing. Our author(s) must obtain signed permission from the copyright holder to use and reproduce text, illustrations, and tables that are published previously in other journals (electronic or print). The Authors Copyright Agreement is a requirement to be fulfilled with signatures by the corresponding author and all co-authors before acceptance of a manuscript for publication.

The journal considers conflict of interest when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients’ welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain). The journal requires that all participants in the peer-review and publication process including authors, peer reviewers, editors, and editorial board members must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest. Submission of a signed disclosure of Conflicts of Interest certificate by all authors is mandatory at the time of submission. The manuscript will be published with the disclosure and sources of funding.
Conflict of interest statements must be provided at the end of the article. If no conflict of interest is mentioned by the authors, the following statement will be used by the publisher by default: "The authors declare no conflict of interest." Authors are required to disclose any sponsorship or funding received from any institution relating to their research. The editor(s) will determine what disclosures, if any, should be available to the readers.
Upon identification of any conflict of interest, the editors may require more information from the author that may include the following:

• Acknowledgement of financial support/sponsorship in their contribution.
• Any financial involvements that might present an appearance of a conflict of interest related to the contribution are disclosed in a covering letter accompanying the contribution and all such potential conflicts of interest will be discussed with the Editor as to whether disclosure of this information with the published contribution is to be made in the journal.
• If they have signed an agreement with any sponsor of the research reported in the contribution that prevents you from publishing both positive and negative results or that forbids you from publishing this research without a prior approval of the sponsor.

Privacy Statement
The names and email addresses entered in this Life and Science website will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.
Protection of Research Participants

• The journal requires submission of an Institutional Review Committee approval for all researches involving human data. However, approval by a responsible review committee does not prevent the journal editor from forming his own judgment about the ethical conduct of the research
• When reporting experiments on animals, authors will indicate whether institutional and national standards for the care and use of laboratory animals were met
• The journal requires a written statement by the authors that they have received and archived written patient

The Life and Science aims to preserve all the published content on digital repositories. In order to follow that, the Life and Science commits to submit the metadata of all its manuscripts to LOCKSS as we have recently implemented the use of the OJS (Open Journal System). This service is free for the OJS users. This is to ensure the availability of the published scholarly content by Life and Science to the community despite any accidental loss of data in its personal archival records. Life and Science has further ensured that the metadata of all of its open access articles is compatible to all the well-known repository services and their digital crawlers may regularly collect it for record and preservation. Besides,  Life and Science also assigns Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) to all its issues and the contents to facilitate reaching their permanent links on the internet.

Data validity
During peer review, editors and reviewers have access to methods, results, and discussion provided by the authors in the submitted research articles, including any appendices. However, Life and Science do not have access to, nor do they store, raw data related to research studies, and data verification remains the responsibility of the authors who have conducted the original research.
Upon submission, authors are asked to confirm that more than one author has directly accessed and verified the data reported in the research paper, and that all authors had access to the data and accept responsibility for submitting the article for publication. The journal will publish all relevant statements provided by the authors.
Reproducing material from other sources
It is the author's responsibility to secure all permissions prior to submission of the manuscript. Any part of the article accessed from another source, should be accompanied by a signed letter of consent from the copyright holder, which may be the author, journal or the publisher.
Reproducing material published by Life and Science
No part of the Journal may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any other means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission, in writing, of Life and Science. This includes material previously published by the requesting author.
Data sharing
Life and Science requires that all research papers include a data sharing statement from the authors that details what data will be shared, whether additional documents will be shared, when data will become available, and by what access criteria data will be shared. A data sharing statement will be published in the article. Read a statement from the COPE guide lines on Data and reproducibility

Life and Science follows COPE guidelines on Ethical oversight. According to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), ethical oversight should include, but is not limited to, policies on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, handling confidential data and ethical business/marketing practices. Life and Science is committed to considering appeals concerning the non-observance of ethical principles by our authors.
For studies involving data relating to human or animal experimental investigations, appropriate institutional review board approval is required and should be described within the article. For investigations involving human subjects, authors should explain how informed consent was obtained from the participants involved. Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information should not be included unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or legal guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the manuscript. In attempting to maintain patient anonymity, identifying details should be omitted where they are not essential. However, patient data should never be amended or falsified. Informed consent should be obtained whenever there is any doubt that anonymity can be assured.
All manuscripts published in Life and Science must have been conducted according to international and local guidelines ensuring ethically conducted research.
Ethics approval for all studies must be obtained before the research is conducted. Authors must be prepared to provide further information to the journal editorial office upon request.

Life and Science follows the latest guidelines by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). At submission, L&S requires authors to disclose whether they used Artificial Intelligence (AI)– assisted technologies in the creation of submitted work.
AI and AI-assisted technologies cannot be listed as an author or co-author, nor they can be cited as an author.  Authors who use AI technology should clearly mention, in both the cover letter and the appropriate section of the manuscript, how they used AI. For example, if AI was used for writing assistance, describe this in the acknowledgment section. If AI was used for data collection, analysis, or figure generation, authors should mention this use in the methods. Authors are responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work, and these responsibilities are required for authorship. Authors (humans) are responsible for any submitted material that includes the use of AI-assisted technologies.

Role of Publisher / Editor-In-Chief  

• The Vice Chancellor of National University of Medical Sciences is the Editor-in-Chief
• He has the authority to appoint and dismiss any member of editorial team, will provide editors, at the time of appointment, with a contract that clearly states their rights, duties and authority
• The performance of editors will be assessed using mutually agreed-upon measures including but not limited to readership, manuscript submissions and handling times
• He has the authority to appoint an independent editorial board for establishing and maintaining editorial policy
• The journal adopts the World Association of Medical Editors definition of editorial freedom which states that editor in chief has full authority over the entire editorial content of their journal and the timing of publication of that He will also have the final authority in decisions about advertisements and sponsored content
• He will ensure that appropriate insurance is obtained in the event of legal action against the editors and will ensure that legal advice is available
• The editors will have direct access to the Editor-in-Chief

At Life and Science, we deal with allegations of scientific misconduct on a case to case basis following guidance provided by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), (COPE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). WAME provides an overview of misconduct, using an amended version of the US Office of Research Integrity definition of scientific misconduct including:

Falsification of data	Ranging from fabrication to deceptive selective reporting of findings and omission of conflicting data, or willful suppression and/or distortion of data.
Plagiarism	The appropriation of the language, ideas, or thoughts of another without crediting their true source, and representation of them as one's own original work.
Improprieties of authorship	Improper assignment of credit, such as excluding others, misrepresentation of the same material as original in more than one publication, inclusion of individuals as authors who have not made a definite contribution to the work published; or submission of multi-authored publications without the concurrence of all authors.
Misappropriation of the ideas of others	An important aspect of scholarly activity is the exchange of ideas among colleagues. Scholars can acquire novel ideas from others during the process of reviewing grant applications and manuscripts. However, improper use of such information can constitute fraud. Wholesale appropriation of such material constitutes misconduct.
Violation of generally accepted research practices	Serious deviation from accepted practices in proposing or carrying out research, improper manipulation of experiments to obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, or improper reporting of results.
Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting research:	Including but not limited to serious or substantial, repeated, willful violations of applicable local regulations and law involving the use of funds, care of animals, human subjects, investigational drugs, recombinant products, new devices, or radioactive, biologic, or chemical materials.
Inappropriate behavior in relation to misconduct	This includes unfounded or knowingly false accusations of misconduct, failure to report known or suspected misconduct, withholding or destruction of information relevant to a claim of misconduct and retaliation against persons involved in the allegation or investigation.

If an editor has concerns that a submitted article describes something that might be considered to constitute misconduct in research, publication, we may discuss the case in confidence with Life and Science Ethics Committee. The case will be process based upon the deliberations of the L&S Ethics Committee. The committee may decide to contact author for clarification, if the case cannot be resolved by discussion with the author(s), and the committee still has concerns, he/she may report the case to the appropriate authorities.

The journal’s contents are published and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), with the following terms:

• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
• No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

For further details, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and DOAJ Copyright licensing series.

Open Access Statement
Life and Science is a quarterly and peer-reviewed journal that follows an open-access publishing policy, and the full text of all published articles is available for free.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0). The journal does not charge any fee for full text and reuse is only permissible with the following terms:

• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
• NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
• No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Advantages of open access

• Visibility and transparency
• Increase citation and usage
• Better public engagement
• Higher impact
• Collaboration opportunities
• Increased interdisciplinary interaction and research

For further details, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and Life and Science adhere to the DOAJ’s definition of open access.

i. Duplicate submission:
The journal considers duplicate submission as submission of the same manuscript in same or different languages simultaneously to more than one journal. The journal does not accept any duplicate submission. Authors will require a signed declaration stating that the manuscript has not been submitted elsewhere. All submitted manuscripts without such signed declaration will be rejected.
ii. Duplicate and prior publication The journal considers duplicate publication as a publication of a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published, but without clear, visible reference to the previous publication. The journal does not accept any duplicate publication. The journal does not consider following as duplicate / prior publication:

• A complete report that follows publication of a preliminary report, such as a letter to the editor, a preprint, or an abstract or poster displayed at a scientific conference

• Any paper that has been presented at a scientific meeting but was not published in full text
• In the event of a public health emergency, information with immediate implications for public health should be disseminated without concern that this will preclude subsequent consideration for publication in a journal

iii.  Acceptable secondary publication: The journal considers secondary publication as materials published in other journals or online justifiable and beneficial, especially when intended to disseminate important information to the widest possible audience (e.g., guidelines produced by government agencies and professional organizations in the same or a different language). The journal will consider secondary publications for all other reasons if the following ICMJE conditions are met:

1. The authors have received approval from the editors of both journals (the editor concerned with secondary publication must have access to the primary version)
2. The priority of the primary publication is respected by a publication interval negotiated by both editors with the authors
3. The paper for secondary publication is intended for a different group of readers; an abbreviated version could be sufficient
4. The secondary version faithfully reflects the data and interpretations of the primary version.
5. The secondary version informs readers, peers, and documenting agencies that the paper has been published in whole or in part elsewhere—for example, with a note that might read, “This article is based on a study first reported in the [journal title, with full reference]”—and the secondary version cites the primary
6. The title of the secondary publication should indicate that it is a secondary publication (complete or abridged republication or translation) of a primary publication

iv.  Manuscript based on the same data base: The journal considers all those manuscripts as independent submissions which are received from either separate research groups or from the same group analyzing the same data set (for example, from a public database, or systematic reviews or meta-analyses of the same evidence) because they may differ in their analytic methods, conclusions, or both. The journal will give preference to the manuscript submitted first if the data interpretation and conclusions are similar. Secondary analyses of clinical trial data should cite any primary publication and should clearly state that it contains secondary analyses/results, and use the same identifying trial registration number as the primary trial.
v. Correspondence: The journal has a mechanism for submitting  comments,  questions,  or  criticisms  about published articles through a correspondence section or online forum. Correspondence may be edited for length, grammatical correctness, and journal style and screen discourteous, inaccurate comments. Editors will have the prerogative to reject correspondence
vi.  Supplements The journal considers supplements as collections of papers that deal with related issues or topics, published as a separate issue of the journal or as part of a regular issue. The journal may publish supplements, theme issues, and special series from time to time. The same principles of authorship, conflict of interest, confidentiality, timeliness, peer-review, integrity, scientific misconduct and secondary publication, as discussed under relevant sections will also be applicable to supplements.
vii. Clinical trial registration: The journal requires registration of clinical trials in a public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrollment as a condition of consideration for publication.

Life and science is a medical journal who intends to advance the state of medical art through publishing the highest quality scientific research. The high quality standard can only be achieved if plagiarism is endured or Plagiarism concept is understood completely by clinicians, investigators, physician-scientists, researchers, policy makers, and public health workers. Generally, In the sciences, ethical writing, scholarly endeavors,  a specific manners are demanded when  any ideas, conclusions, data, are borrowed from others, should be  properly acknowledged. Definitions Plagiarism, as defined in Concise Oxford Dictionary , “taking and using the thoughts, writing, and invention of another person as one’s own”. Plagiarism, as defined in HEC Plagiarism Policy "taking and using the thoughts, writings, and inventions of another person as one's own". Categories of Plagiarism

• Self-Plagiarism: The verbatim or near-verbatim re-use of significant portions of one’s own copyrighted work without citing the original source.
• Plagiarism of ideas: It occurs when someone’ s idea is being appropriated by  someone else. The  idea may relate to a conclusion, an explanation, a metaphor, a theory, a hypothesis,) in whole or in part, or presented  with superficial modifications without crediting its original source. The true source must be  acknowledged properly.
• Plagiarism of text: It occurs when someone copy a portion of text or use others' word-for-word (i.e., verbatim) text from another source and did not give appropriate credit to its author.Universally accepted rule to use others' word-for-word (i.e., verbatim) text is to enclose that information in quotations and to write down specific original source of that text.

Common forms of scientific misconduct

• Data Falsification: Research data is manipulated to give false impression. It may include false selective reporting of research findings, willful suppression and/or distortion of data. and omission of conflicting data. This includes manipulating images such as micrographs, radiological images, gels, removing“inconvenient” results, changing, adding or omitting data points, etc.
• Data fabrication: This is related to making up of research findings.
• Duplicate submission / publication: It occurs when the same study is submitted or publish into two journals.
• Redundant publication: (also indicated as ‘salami publishing’): It occurs when one study is fragmented into several parts and submitted to two or more journals.

Permissible limit. Limit of Plagiarism: As per HEC Guidelines (Annex-I),  similarity index 18% <
Implementation: This policy will be implemented immediately after its approval for dealing with acts of plagiarism.
Applicability: The plagiarism policy is applied to all manuscripts submitted in the life and science journal to get publish. Scruitinization of all submitted manuscripts will be performed  through Turnitin (software for detecting plagiarism) and originality report of all articles will be generated and analyzed. One week will be spend by the focal person to analyze the article.

1. If the similarity index is greater than 19% then the manuscript will be sent back to the author to revise manuscript and make it down to acceptable limit.
2. If author fails to submit the manuscript with permissible limit of plagiarism after two revisions then the manuscript will be rejected and stop further processing.
3. Life and Science employs Turnitin software to evaluate the similarity index of all submitted manuscripts. Authors are notified if the similarity index is 40% or below. However, if the similarity index exceeds 40%, the manuscript is automatically declined without further review. Furthermore, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has strict guidelines regarding similarity. The overall similarity index must not exceed 19%, and no more than 5% similarity should come from a single source to maintain the authenticity and originality of the work. These measures are in place to uphold high academic standards and ensure the integrity of published research.

Guilty of the act of Plagiarism: Plagiarism if detected and proved, would be taken as academic dishonesty and considered to be punishable offence. The case would be referred immediately to the author’s institution or other regulatory body and requested an investigation. If Plagiarism is proven then the article will be retracted.
Reference

1. HEC Guidelines for plagiarism policy
2. https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/editors/publishing-ethics-for-journals/4176#c4188

Life and Science follows double-blind peer review process. Initial editorial screening is done for scope and quality, followed by peer review from the subject specialist including national and international. The reviewer’s recommendation process is time bound (four -six weeks). At least two reviews are required before the handling. Editor make a decision as to whether to accept, reject, or ask for a 'revise and resubmit' of the submitted paper.  The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles and his decision is final.

The submission fee of PKR 1500/- (non-refundable for both national and international authors) is to be paid at the time of submission of the article through Online Transfer or Bank Deposit in the favor of NUMS ORIC account and evidence of payment/receipt shared at ([email protected]). All authors will pay PKR 7,500/- as publication fee, if the article is accepted for publication. The publication fee will be paid before issuance of acceptance letter. Life and Science does not offer a fast-track option for publication.

Account Details
 

Life and Science follows guidelines and policies of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in letter and spirit and operates according to HEC Ethical Guide Lines
Editors and Reviewers
Our editors and reviewers are required to declare any conflicts of interest related to the manuscript they are requested to evaluate. To ensure transparent double-blind peer-review, the identities of authors are not disclosed to referees, and vice versa. Manuscripts submission by the editor/associate editor or by any member of the editorial board is not allowed as per HEC policy guidelines for the research journals.
Authors
Authors are expected to adopt the general ethical standards in their research and writing, ensuring that:

• The submitted work or any of its essential content has not been previously published in a refereed journal and is not being considered for publication elsewhere. To ensure this, the editors screen out the submissions using the anti-plagiarism software, i.e. Turnitin.com.
• Published relevant material/work referred by the authors in their research must be properly cited as per APA formatting guidelines.
• Mentioning and acknowledging the sources of funding and significant help is the ethical obligation of the authors. It must be explicitly mentioned under the heading of ‘Compliance with the Ethical Standards’ at the end of the manuscript.
• Obtaining the consents from the parties with vested interests is the ethical responsibility of the authors.

If a published paper or its essential content is found to have been published before or if any other unethical conduct by the authors is verified, the journal will take one or more of the following actions:

• Publishing a notice
• Retracting the paper
• Preventing the corresponding author from publishing in Multidisciplinary Journals
• Reporting the impropriety to the corresponding author’s, co-authors, employer, head of department (HOD), funding body, and HEC.

Life and Science publishes corrections only when significant errors arise from author error (Corrigenda) or editorial mistakes (Errata). If there is a serious complaint about a journal’s own procedures, the managing editor will confer with the corresponding author and any relevant members of the editorial board in order to resolve the problem. The advisory board of Journal will be consulted if further guidance is required.
1. Correction and Retractions / Republications and Version control
The journal discusses matters of debates as letters to the editor or as print/electronic correspondence, or as posts in a journal-sponsored online forum. The journal considers all updates of previous publications (e.g., an updated systematic review or clinical guideline) as new publication rather than a version of a previously published article A correction will be published in the journal if honest scientific error of fact is made The journal will follow ICMJE standards for publication of correction:

• The journal will publish a correction notice as soon as possible detailing changes from and citing the original publication; the correction will be on the electronic or numbered print page that is included in an electronic or a print Table of Contents to ensure proper indexing.
• The journal will also post a new article version with details of the changes from the original version and the date(s) on which the changes were
• The journal will archive all prior versions of the article. This archive will be made available to the reader on
• Previous electronic versions will prominently note that there are more recent versions of the
• The citation will be to the most recent version
• The journal will have the right to retract any published article if the scientific errors invalidate results, interpretations and
• Retraction with republication by the journal will only be consider when the errors are judged to be unintentional, but has led to a major change in the direction or significance of the results, interpretations, and In this case, if the changed version of the paper survives further review and editorial scrutiny, only then retraction with republication of the changed paper will be considered, with an explanation to allow full correction of the scientific literature.

2. Scientific misconduct, expressions of concern and retraction
The journal encourages reviewers / readers to comment on ethical issues, validity of submitted research paper, so as to identify subtle and/or blatant type of plagiarism, research and publication misconduct (e.g. inappropriate research design, incomplete detail on participant’s consent, data manipulation). Scientific misconduct includes data fabrication and falsification. Data falsification includes deceptive manipulation of images and plagiarism. Plagiarism is defined by HEC Plagiarism Policy as "taking and using the thoughts, writings, and inventions of another person as one's own". These include but are not limited to the following:

• Verbatim copying, near-verbatim copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's paper or unpublished report without citing the exact
• Copying elements of another author's paper, such as equations or illustrations that are not common knowledge, or copying or purposely paraphrasing sentences without citing the
• Verbatim copying portions of another author's paper or from reports by citing but not clearly differentiating what text has been copied (e.g. not applying quotation marks correctly) and /or not citing the source
• The unacknowledged use of computer programs, mathematical / computer models / algorithms, computer software in all forms, macros, spreadsheets, web pages, databases, mathematical deviations and calculations, designs / models / displays of any sort, diagrams, graphs, tables, drawings, works of art of any sort, fine art pieces or artifacts, digital images, computer-aided design drawings, GIS files, photographs, maps, music / composition of any sort, posters, presentations and tracing.

• Self-plagiarism that is, the verbatim or near-verbatim re-use of significant portions of one's own copyrighted work without citing the original

The journal carries objective check through Turnitin and/or searching for similar titles to the submitted research paper. The journal will carry out individual assessment of each case of alleged scientific misconduct. An investigation committee headed by the editor will contact the corresponding author with his enclosed signed authorship statement and documentary evidence of misconduct, for an explanatory response. If the investigation proves scientific misconduct, then the journal will publish a retraction of the article. The journal will prominently label the retraction, on electronic or numbered print page or a print table of contents.

Life and Science allows authors to deposit the accepted and published versions of their manuscripts in an institutional or other repository of their choice.