Journal of Human Environment and Health Promotion (JHEHP) is an international, quarterly, peer reviewed, open access  journal that aims to receive and publish high quality scientific papers involved in environmental health, public health, occupational health, and food hygiene from the scientist around the world. This academic journal published free of charge in both online and print forms, and welcomes manuscripts that meet the general criteria of novelty and scientific importance. One of the most important objectives of the JHEHP is to ensure that the papers reflect a wide range of topics regarding journal scopes; perform a fair, scientific, fast, as well as high quality peer review process; providing a wide and varied geographical coverage of articles worldwide; and publishing articles that have a reliable source of scientific information for the audience. Acceptable types of submissions include original article, review articles, short communication, case report, letter to the editor, editorial and book review on the journal's scopes research areas. JHEHP is an official journal owned by School of Public Health, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran.

Human and animal rights

    Authors are required to State that all procedures were followed according to the ethical standards of human experimentation and the Helsinki declaration revised in 2013 (available at: https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/ or here), and informed consent was obtained from all cases included in the research.
    For Animal studies it should be stated that all guidelines for care and use of laboratory animals were followed.

Conflict of interest

    The authors should declare separately by name that has no conflict of interest. Otherwise, submitting a manuscript must be accompanied with a statement from the authors disclosing all financial and personnel relationship that might bias their work. Besides, they are requested to evident whether impending conflicts do or do not exist. A separate page should cover this proclamation and if there are further details, could be mentioned in covering letter. You can download the JHEHP Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest by clicking here.

Informed consent

    Informed consent of the patients participating in the study should be undertaken. All individuals have individual rights that are not to be infringed. Individual participants in studies have, for example, the right to decide what happens to the (identifiable) personal data gathered, to what they have said during a study or an interview, as well as to any photograph that was taken.

    Hence it is important that all participants gave their informed consent in writing prior to inclusion in the study. Identifying details (names, dates of birth, identity numbers and other information) of the participants that were studied should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and genetic profiles unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the participant (or parent or guardian if the participant is incapable) gave written informed consent for publication. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve in some cases, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt.

Ethics of scientific publishing 

    JHEHP will follow the COPE guidelines on dealing with any potential misconduct. In order to maintaining the research integrity, authors should follow the rules which include:
-Authors should clarify that they has not been submitted the manuscript in more than one journal (duplicate submission).
-Authors should not publish the submitted manuscript in JHEHP elsewhere previously as part or full (duplicate publication), unless some new results would be considered. In this situation, authors should clear the re-use of material in order to avoiding the self-plagiarism.
-Authors should avoid "salami-publishing". It means the authors should not split up the results of a work to publish them in more than one journal.
-Authors should not use the data that have been fabricated or manipulated such as images in order to support the conclusions.
-Authors should mention clearly the data, text, or theories by other authors using quotation marks or writing in acknowledgement.
-Authors should permit for using the material that is copyrighted and secured.
-All authors should have consent about the responsible authorities.
-Authors in the submitted manuscript should have sufficient contributions to the scientific work and have responsibility for the results.
-Authors should be informed that any changes in authorship or in the order of the authors in the submitted manuscript in JHEHP would not be considered by this journal after acceptance of the manuscript. But, if all authors have a written approval with explanation in detail about deletion or adding another one(s), this journal will consider the changes.
-Authors should prepare and send to the journal the relevant documents or data to verify the validity of the results.
-Authors should avoid self-plagiarism. It means they do not use the previous own published materials without acknowledgment of the source.
-Authors should use the relevant references inside the manuscript.
    If JHEHP finds the potential or suspicion of misconduct, this journal will follow the COPE guidelines. If the journal ensure about the misconduct, this journal will contact to the author and request the author to address the issue. After establishment of the doubt, Editor-in-Chief will follow:
-If the manuscript is under consideration, it may be returned to the author or rejected.
-If the article has been published, it may retract and therefore the reason in detail will be published as retraction note. Also, this journal may publish an erratum with explanation in detail.
-Finally, this journal will contact the author's institution.

Retractions, corrections, expressions of concern, and withdrawal of articles

    Retraction will be published by JHEHP if errors affect the interpretation of the results or it is proven serious ethical misconduct, including duplication, redundant publication (publishing the data elsewhere without cross-referencing, permission or justification), disagreement of all authors for publication, plagiarism, miscalculation, experimental error. In order to maintain the integrity and completeness of our scholarly records, JHEHP follows the COPE guidelines when the published contents need retraction. Thus, the editor-in-chief may retract an article in any of the following circumstances:
• They have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of major error (eg, miscalculation or experimental error), or as a result of fabrication (eg, of data) or falsification (eg, image manipulation)
• It constitutes plagiarism
• The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution to previous sources or disclosure to the editor, permission to republish, or justification (ie, cases of redundant publication)
• It contains material or data without authorization for use
• Copyright has been infringed or there is some other serious legal issue (eg, libel, privacy)
• It reports unethical research
• It has been published solely on the basis of a compromised or manipulated peer review process
• The author(s) failed to disclose a major competing interest (a.k.a. conflict of interest) that, in the view of the editor, would have unduly affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and peer reviewers.
    JHEHP will be published corrections if important errors are found. The corrections should be distinguishable from retractions and statements of concern relating to misconduct. If errors would be enough fundamental to make invalid the work, the journal have right to retract the published paper. Also, this journal will be published correction if the author/contributor list would be incorrect including, a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included.
   Expressions of concern will be published by JHEHP if editors receive inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors, unreliability of the findings, an investigation would be underway but a judgment will not be available for a considerable time.
    If legal infringements, defamation, false on inaccurate data would be occurred especially those could pose a serious health risk, the JHEHP have right to remove or withdraw the article. In this circumstance, a retraction statement will be published by this journal and an explanation will be given about the circumstances of removal or withdrawal.

Copyright and plagiarism

    JHEHP is an open access journal under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which allows users to read, download, copy, distribute, print or link to the full text of articles and make derivative works for non-commercial purposes, as long as the author of the original work is cited properly. The manuscript should not be copy or published any materials contained on the journal without the prior written permission of it or the appropriate copyright owner. The authors should sign the Authors Agreement Form and transfer it alongside with submitted manuscript. If authors submit any material to which they do not own copyright, they will need to secure permission to use the copyrighted materials.

    JHEHP is a participant of Crossref Similarity Check powered by iThenticate. It is a multi-publisher plagiarism detection initiative to screen published and submitted content for originality. iThenticate consists of two products: a database of scholarly publications (CrossCheck) and a web-based tool (iThenticate) to check an authored work against that database.
    JHEHP use these services to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted manuscripts. Results returned by the software may be used as a criterion for the analysis of the manuscript by the editorial board and may eventually result in a rejection due to plagiarism, duplicate and/or redundant publication. Plagiarism of text from a previously published manuscript by the same or another author is a serious publication offence. Small amounts of text may be used, but only where the source of the material quoted is clearly acknowledged and the text is inserted in quotation mark. If there is an allegation of plagiarism, scientific misconduct or fraud, the journal will follow the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics/COPE (http://publicationethics.org/) and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors/ICMJE (http://www.icmje.org/).

Open access policy

    JHEHP is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print or link to the full text of articles and make derivative works for non-commercial purposes, as long as the author of the original work is cited properly. 
All articles published by JHEHP are made freely and permanently accessible online. All articles to JHEHP are posted online immediately as they are ready for publication. All articles will be assigned a DOI number (Digital Object Identifier) whereby they become searchable and citable without delay.

Authors' contributions

    Individuals claiming authorship should meet all of the conditions in accordance with the "International Committee of Medical Journal Editors" (available at: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html). Individuals claiming authorship should meet all 4 of the following conditions:
1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. 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.
    Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Any host, guest or honorary authors must be strictly avoided. Allowing one’s name to appear as an author without having contributed significantly to the study or adding the name of an individual who has not contributed or who has not agreed to the work in its current form is considered a breach of appropriate authorship. In this journal, there is no limitation in authorship numbers. 
    Corresponding author on behalf of all authors (if there is more than one author) should be responsible for:
- All communications;
- Uploading all submissions;
- Revisions of the work;
- Submitting a brief description of all contributions to the manuscript in the Authors Agreement Form;
- Disclosing any information on prior or duplicate publication or submission elsewhere of any part of the work

The contributions of all authors must be described based on the guidlines of CRediT available at: https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles-defined/

     Format of Authors' contributions:

Author 1: Conceptualization ; Data curation ; Formal analysis ; Funding acquisition; Investigation ; Methodology ; Project administration; Resources; Software; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Writing-original draft; Writing-review & editing. Author 2: Conceptualization; Funding acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Writing-original draft; Writing-review & editing. ...

     Changes in authorship: Author list and their order should be finalized by all the authors prior to first submission. Before submitting the manuscript, the authors should be agreed with the authors listed in the manuscript. Any requested changes in authorship including, order, addition, and deletion should be explained in a letter to the editor signed by all authors or email from each author.
    Ghost-writing is NOT acceptable: No one, other than the authors listed below, should have contributed substantially to the writing and revising of the manuscript. Contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the acknowledgment. Examples include: individuals who allowed their laboratory experience to be included, a person who provided purely technical help, copyediting, proofreading or translation assistance (NO ghostwriters allowed), or a department Chair who provided only general support. Groups of persons who have contributed materially to the paper, but whose contributions do not justify authorship may be listed under a heading such as “participating investigators,” and their function or contribution should be described; for example, “served as scientific advisors,” “critically reviewed the study proposal”. If you have any question about this, contact that editorial office before submitting your manuscript at jhehpzums.ac.ir or jhehpinfogmail.com.

Editorial independence

    JHEHP adopts the World Association of Medical Editors' definition of editorial freedom. According to this definition, editorial freedom, or independence, is the concept that editors-in-chief have full authority over the editorial content of their journal and the timing of publication of that content. Journal owners should not interfere in the evaluation, selection, or editing of individual articles either directly or by creating an environment that strongly influences decisions. For more information you can read the "The Relationship between Journal Editors-in-Chief and Owners (formerly titled Editorial Independence)" at (http://wame.org/editorial-independence).

Disposal of material

    Once published, all copies of the manuscript, correspondence and artwork will be held for 6 months before disposal. The editorial board of the journal, reserves the right to accept or reject the manuscript in any stage and any time or delete a part of the text, tables or figures, if necessary.

Article Publication Charge (APC):

    There is no Article Publication Charge (APC) for publication in this journal.

English language editing 
   
   English language editing will be done by expert/editors. However manuscript must be of good quality English at the time of submission, otherwise it will be rejected at the initial stage. The English language editing will be done free of cost. We have taken this step to help the authors who do not bear the cost of English language editing.

 Advertising policy

    The journal does not carry advertising, neither print nor online.