Disclosures
Aims and Scope
As a peer-reviewed undergraduate journal, the Journal of Young Investigators (JYI) is dedicated to international science scholarship. JYI engages students in research, publishing, and creative science communication while fostering a culture of personal and professional development. JYI draws its undergraduate staff from around the world and maintains a network of experienced mentors who provide in-depth advice throughout the scientific writing and reviewing processes. We are committed to a scientific community that is open and accessible to all.
Research manuscript and review submission criteria can be found at https://www.jyi.org/submit/manuscript-requirements.
Open Access
The Journal of Young Investigators is committed to providing student researchers and readers a versatile, accessible, and free platform to share research. As such, JYI publishes all articles Open Access and allows any readers to read, download, link, search and otherwise lawfully utilize all its articles. JYI does not charge a fee to publish work nor to access and read any article. All articles are freely available to read and use from the date of publication.
Editorial Policies
Statement on authorship policy
Authorship should be resolved between the individuals who have contributed a paper. The first author of the paper must be an undergraduate or have been an undergraduate at the time the work was completed. Those who have made significant contributions to the manuscript should be included as co-authors.Original research or review of literature being presented in a must have been completed under the supervision of a mentor holding a doctoral degree or a faculty position at a post-secondary institution, other research-oriented institution, or the equivalent in industry.
Post-publication policy
Should the authors of an article officially accepted and/or published in JYI have any post-publication corrections, changes and related edits, or if the article authors wish to withdraw the article for any reason, they are advised to contact the Editor-in-Chief to make arrangements. JYI will make full efforts to respect, uphold and implement all author-desired changes as seen fit by the editorial team. If significant changes, to the degree of compromising the original intellectual merit of the paper that was accepted, are requested, JYI will leave the decision to retain publication of the paper to the Editor-in-Chief.
Academic Misconduct Procedure
Should the authors be found to be guilty of serious academic misconduct in their manuscript, JYI reserves the right to retract a published paper without the author(s) consent following a majority vote from the editorial board.
Policy on IP
Material published within JYI may be used in patent applications in jurisdictions where this would be allowable (e.g. the USA via the embargo period). If the material submitted to JYI has been previously published in a patent, it may still be considered for publication, but JYI requires notification of this and self-plagiarism is not allowable.
Marketing and advertising rules
We will not advertise content that is deemed inappropriate, including but not limited to:
Unscientific or false
Inciteful
Deemed as offensive or discriminatory
Unsuitable for an undergraduate audience
Complaints procedure
JYI strives to provide its authors with a good initial experience of the publishing world. However, if you are dissatisfied with any aspect of your submission (or as a reader) please see below the recommended process to go about complaints.
If you have a complaint about a reviewers comments - please contact the research editor managing your manuscript
If you have a complaint about a decision made about a manuscript, please address these to the senior research editor
If your issue has not been resolved after discussing it with both the research editor and senior research editor, please address your concerns to the editor in chief
If you have a serious issue that has failed to be resolved by all the aforementioned persons, please address them to the chair of the board of directors
Plagiarism Statement
As a journal committed to maintaining the highest standards of academic, intellectual and ethical integrity, we diligently screen all submitted manuscripts, including original research articles, review papers, and perspectives pieces, for plagiarism. Using a software called “CopyLeaks,” papers are submitted for screening by the Senior Research Editor or Deputy Senior Research Editor. Papers will only move forward to the peer-review stage after successfully passing the plagiarism check.
The CopyLeaks software provides the Research Department with an elaborate plagiarism report along with a “match” percentage. This statistic estimates the extent to which the manuscript of interest and publicly available scientific manuscripts indexed by tools used in academia at-large are similar. Since each submission is different, plagiarism reports are always evaluated holistically by one or more senior members of the Research Department. However, as a rule of thumb, the Department is very careful in evaluating original research articles with match scores above 15% and perspectives pieces/review articles with match scores above 20%, both which are percentages recommended directly by CopyLeaks itself. Match scores beyond this percentage will likely be rejected.
Peer Review Process
Peer review statement - All peer reviews are conducted by trained associate editors at JYI supported by a PhD- holding academic mentor. The process is double-blinded, meaning you, as the author, will not know the identity of the reviewer, and the reviewer will not know your identity.
Policies on Conflict of Interest, Human and Animal rights, and Informed Consent
Any conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise, should be explicitly declared at the end of the manuscript under a separate heading entitled “conflicts of interest.” Failure to share conflicts of interest may result in the withdrawal/retraction of the manuscript, with or without the consent of the author(s).
If any animal or human research is contained within the manuscript you submit to us, you will be required to affirm that the appropriate institutional ethical review board has approved the experiments. These boards may include, but are not limited to, Institutional Review Board (IRB) and Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) approval.
Informed Consent
You will be asked to affirm that the research team has obtained proper, legally defined, and explicit informed consent from any human participants. These are strict guidelines and failure to comply will result in immediate termination of the manuscript’s progress through JYI’s editorial routine.
Valid consent must meet the four core criteria, namely, the participant must have the capacity for consent, the consent must be freely given, the consent must be specific to the procedure and research performed, and the consent must be ethically and legally informed. Please refer to informed consent templates from organizations such as the NIH for assistance in framing your forms.
Data Sharing
Authors should share the raw data of their experiments upon request with interested parties so that the results can be examined and/or used for meta-analysis etc.
Copyright Policies
Information about JYI’s copyright policies can be found here.