Publication policy

Aims and Scope*

General Medicine is a medical journal of General Medicine Section of Serbian Medical Society. Journal will consider any original article that advances science and practice in the field of general/family medicine

Journal publishes original, previously unpublished articles:

Original research article or a case report (an article is considered original research if it is the report of the study written by the researchers who actually did the study).

Review paper that contains an original, detailed and critical review of the research problem, or of an area in which the author has already made a contribution, presented in the form of self quotations.

Short or preliminary announcement which includes an original scientific paper of full format but in smaller volume.

Scientific criticism, or controversies on a particular topic based on scientific arguments, current topics: contemporary issues of theoretical and practical importance for the profession.

Monographic, historical, lexicographic, bibliographic studies or data survey, presented as summarized data that were previously unavailable to the public.

If the paper is part of a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation, or part of the research project, that fact should be specifically indicated in the note at the end of the text. Also, if the work has previously been presented at a scientific meeting, indicate the official name of the event, place and time.

Research topics: General Medicine, Disease Prevention, Organization and administration, Health Promotion, Treatment Management, Education and Research

Peer reviewers*

Opšta medicina uses double-blind review system for all papers. Each manuscript is reviewed by at least two reviewers. The reviewers act independently and they are not aware of each other’s identities. The reviewers are selected solely according to whether they have the relevant expertise for evaluating a manuscript. They must not be from the same institution as the author(s) of the manuscript, nor be their co-authors in the recent past. No suggestions of individual reviewers by the author(s) of the manuscript will be accepted.

The purpose of peer review is to assists the Editorial Board in making decision of whether to accept or reject a paper. The purpose is also to assist the author in improving papers.

Peer review process*

Manuscripts are sent for review only if they pass the initial evaluation regarding their form and thematic scope. A special care is taken that the initial evaluation does not last more than necessary.

Under normal circumstances, the review process takes up to four weeks, and only exceptionally up to three months. The total period from the submission of a manuscript until its publication takes an average of 90 days.

During the review process the Editor-in-Chief may require authors to provide additional information (including raw data) if they are necessary for the evaluation of the manuscript. These materials shall be kept confidential and must not be used for any other purposes.

Resolving inconsistences*

In the case that the authors have serious and reasonable objections to the reviews, the Editorial Board makes an assessment of whether a review is objective and whether it meets academic standards. If there is a doubt about the objectivity or quality of review, the Editor-in-Chief will assign additional reviewer(s).

Additional reviewers may also be assigned when reviewers’ decisions (accept or reject) are contrary to each other or otherwise substantially incompatible.

The final decision on the acceptance of the manuscript for publication rests solely with the Editor-in-Chief.

Authors' responsibilities*

Authors warrant that their manuscripts are their original works, that they have not been published before, and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Parallel submission of the same paper to another journal constitutes a misconduct and eliminates the manuscript from further consideration. The work that has already been published elsewhere cannot be reprinted in the Opšta medicina.

Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions. Authors affirm that the article contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of third parties.

Authors must make sure that their author team listed in the manuscript includes all and only those authors who have significantly contributed to the submitted manuscript. If persons other than authors were involved in important aspects of the research project and the preparation of the manuscript, their contribution should be acknowledged in a footnote or the Acknowledgments section.

It is the responsibility of the authors to specify the title and code label of the research project within which the work was created, as well as the full title of the funding institution. In case a submitted manuscript has been presented at a conference in the form of an oral presentation (under the same or similar title), detailed information about the conference shall be provided in the same place.

Authors are required to properly cite sources that have significantly influenced their research and their manuscript. Parts of the manuscript, including text, equations, pictures and tables that are taken verbatim from other works must be clearly marked, e.g. by quotation marks accompanied by their location in the original document (page number), or, if more extensive, given in a separate paragraph.

Full references of each quotation (in-text citation) must be listed in the separate section (Literature or References) in a uniform manner, according to the citation style used by the journal. References section should list only quoted/cited, and not all sources used for the preparation of a manuscript.

When authors discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief (or publisher) and cooperate with him/her to retract or correct the paper.

Authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might have influenced the presented results or their interpretation.

By submitting a manuscript the authors agree to abide by the Editorial Policies of Opšta medicina.

Editorial responsibilities*

The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal will be published. The decisions are made based exclusively on the manuscript's merit. They must be free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias. When making decisions the Editor-in-Chief is also guided by the editorial policy and legal provisions relating to defamation, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

Members of the Editorial Board including the Editor-in-Chief must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. Members who feel they might be perceived as being involved in such a conflict do not participate in the decision process for a particular manuscript.

The information and ideas presented in submitted manuscripts shall be kept confidential. Information and ideas contained in unpublished materials must not be used for personal gain without the written consent of the authors.

Editors and the editorial staff shall take all reasonable measures to ensure that the authors/reviewers remain anonymous during and after the evaluation process in accordance with the type of reviewing in use.

Reviewers' responsibilities*

Reviewers are required to provide the qualified and timely assessment of the scholarly merits of the manuscript. The reviewer takes special care of the real contribution and originality of the manuscript. The review must be fully objective. The judgment of the reviewers must be clear and substantiated by arguments.

The reviewers assess manuscript for the compliance with the profile of the journal, the relevance of the investigated topic and applied methods, the scientific relevance of information presented in the manuscript, the presentation style and scholarly apparatus. The review has a standard format.

The reviewer must not be in a conflict of interest with the authors or funders of research. If such a conflict exists, the reviewer is obliged to promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief. The reviewer shall not accept for reviewing papers beyond the field of his/her full competence.

Reviewers should alert the Editor-in-Chief to any well-founded suspicions or the knowledge of possible violations of ethical standards by the authors. Reviewers should recognize relevant published works that have not been considered in the manuscript. They may recommend specific references for citation, but shall not require to cite papers published in Opšta medicina, or their own papers, unless it is justified.

The reviewers are expected to improve the quality of the manuscript through their suggestions. If they recommend correction of the manuscript prior to publication, they are obliged to specify the manner in which this can be achieved.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not use unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts without the express written consent of the authors.

Dealing with unethical behaviour*

Anyone may inform the Editor-in-Chief / Editorial Board at any time of suspected unethical behaviour or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary credible information/evidence to start an investigation.

Editor-in-Chief makes the decision regarding the initiation of an investigation.
During an investigation, any evidence should be treated as confidential and only made available to those strictly involved in the process.
The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them.
If it is judged at the end of the investigation that misconduct has occurred, then it will be classified as either minor or serious.

Minor misconduct (with no influence on the integrity of the paper and the journal, for example, when it comes to misunderstanding or wrong application of publishing standards) will be dealt directly with authors and reviewers without involving any other parties. Outcomes include:

Sending a warning letter to authors and/or reviewers.
Publishing correction of a paper, e.g. when sources properly quoted in the text are omitted from the reference list.
Publishing an erratum, e.g. if the error was made by editorial staff.

In the case of major misconduct the Editor-in-Chief / Editorial Board may adopt different measures:

Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct.
Informing officially the author's/reviewer's affiliating institution.
The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the Retraction Policy.
A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period.
Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action.

The above actions may be taken separately or jointly. If necessary, in the process of resolving the case relevant expert organizations, bodies, or individuals may be consulted.

When dealing with unethical behaviour, the Editorial Board will rely on the guidelines and recommendations provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Plagiarism prevention*

Opšta medicina does not publish plagiarised papers. The Editorial Board has adopted the stance that plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

Plagiarism includes the following:

Verbatim (word for word), or almost verbatim copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks) in a way described under Authors’ responsibilities;
Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

Any manuscript which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected. In case plagiarism is discovered in a paper that has already been published by the journal, it will be retracted in accordance with the procedure described under Retraction policy .

To prevent plagiarism the manuscripts are submitted to a plagiarism detection process using iThenticate/CrossRefwithin SCIndeks Assistant. The results obtained are verified by the Editorial Board in accordance with the guidelines and recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

If autohors have used any of the artificial intelligence programs in their work, they are obliged to write that, as well as for what purposes, that program was used.

Retraction policy*

Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or any major misconduct require retraction of an article.

Occasionally a retraction can be used to correct numerous serious errors, which cannot be covered by publishing corrections. A retraction may be published by the Editor-in-Chief / Editorial Board, the author(s), or both parties consensually.

The retraction takes the form of a separate item listed in the contents and labeled as "Retraction". In SCIndeks, as the journals' primary full-text database, a two-way communication (HTML link) between the original work and the retraction is established. The original article is retained unchanged, except for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is “retracted”.

Retractions are published according to the requirements of COPE operationalized by CEON/CEES as the journal indexer and aggregator.

Conflict of interest*

Opšta medicina adheres to the conflict of interest policy recommended by COPE and/or other international research publishing regulatory authorities (ICMJE, EASE). The authors must declare their conflicts of interest in the Conflict of Interest Statement (CoIS). In the CoIS, each named author of the article is required to provide: (1) A statement of any potential conflicts of interest relevant to the content or a statement that there are no such conflicts. (2) Disclosure of how the article is funded, including specific disclosure of any and all company funding (partial or total), or a statement that there was no such involvement (if applicable). (3) A comprehensive explanation of the role of sponsors in article preparation if the article is sponsored in part or whole.

Informed consent policy

Authors of papers published in Opšta medicina are obliged to demonstrate that they handle the information of individuals participating in their studies with the highest levels of confidence and discretion. Therefore, authors must obtain written informed consent from all patients involved in the study. However, a study may be published without explicit consent if all three of the following conditions are fulfilled: the information is of great significance to public health, obtaining consent would be unusually difficult, and a reasonable individual would be unlikely to object to publication.

Human and animal rights

In articles reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and complied with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2013.

For articles reporting experimental research on animals, authors should indicate whether the procedures comply with national or international guidelines. Where available, the procedures should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement in accordance with relevant guidelines (Directive 2010/63/EU in Europe) and/or ethical approval must be submitted with the manuscript. Studies must include accepted norms of veterinary best practice regarding animal sacrifice.

Open access policy*

Journal Opšta medicina is published under an Open Access licence. All its content is available free of charge. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search the full text of articles, as well as to establish HTML links to them, without having to seek the consent of the author or publisher.

The right to use content without consent does not release the users from the obligation to give the credit to the journal and its content in a manner described under Licensing.

Archiving digital version*

In accordance with law, digital copies of all published volumes are archived in the legal deposit library of the National Library of Serbia and concurrently in the Repository of SCIndeks - The Serbian Citation Index as the primary full text database.

Article processing charge*

"General medicine" journal does not charge Article Submission Charge for authors from Serbia. For authors outside of Serbia Article Submission Charge is 40 €. Authors from abroad bear expenses of sending the paper regardless of the outcome of the review. Authors pay this amount even for re-submitted articles that were previously rejected. Please note that the payment of this amount does not guarantee the acceptance of the manuscript and does not affect the outcome of the reviews.

If the editorial board decide that the article is of major importance for general/family medicine, the author from abroad may be exempted from the payment of Article Submission Charge. Applications for exemption from Article Submission Charge should be sent to the address ompm@sld.org.rs.

The journal does not charge Article Processing Charge.

Authors retain copyright of the published papers and grant to the publisher the non-exclusive right to publish the article, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, and to distribute it in all forms and media.

Licensing*

The published articles will be distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA) . It is allowed to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and remix, transform, and build upon it for any purpose, even commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given to the original author(s), a link to the license is provided, it is indicated if changes were made and the new work is distributed under the same license as the original.

Users are required to provide full bibliographic description of the original publication (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages), as well as its DOI code. In electronic publishing, users are also required to link the content with both the original article published in Opšta medicina and the licence used.

Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Self-archiving policy*

Authors are permitted to publisher's version (PDF) of their work in an institutional repository, subject-based repository, author's personal website (including social networking sites, such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, etc.), and/or departmental website at any time after publication.

Full bibliographic information (authors, article title, journal title, volume, issue, pages) about the original publication must be provided and links must be made to the article's DOI and the license.

Disclaimer*

The views expressed in the published works do not express the views of the Editors and the Editorial Staff. The authors take legal and moral responsibility for the ideas expressed in the articles. Publisher shall have no liability in the event of issuance of any claims for damages. The Publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.