Policy and Ethics

The Thailand Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine is published by Huachiew Traditional Chinese Medicine Clinic.

The Journal's objectives are
(1) to disseminate technical and research articles on Traditional Chinese Medicine
(2) to serve as a central forum for the exchange and development of technical and innovative aspects of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Two issues of the Journal are published annually in both print (ISSN: 2822-0145) (Print) and electronic versions (ISSN: 2822-0153) (Online) (https://he01.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/TJTCM). These two issues are:     
     Issue No. 1: January-June 
     Issue No. 2: July-December

 

1. Overall policy of the Thailand Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine 

      The Journal has got a policy to review or consider technical and research articles on Traditional Chinese medicine, indigenous medicine and alternative medicine and to disseminate such papers systematically and fairly, based on the national standards.

     As for the peer-review process of original articles” and “review articles”, the acceptance and preliminary review process for each article is undertaken by the editorial board; then it will be forwarded to at least two experts or reviewers for independent peer review and comments for quality improvements, using a double-blind review process whereby the authors are unable to identify the reviewers’ name and the reviewers do not know the names of the authors. After receiving the reviewers' technical comments in the established format, the editorial board will coordinate with the author to improving the article in accordance with the technical comments of the reviewers. After the revision, the revised version will be forwarded to the reviewers again for additional comments. The editorial board will have a final say as to whether or not the article will be accepted for publication, after final revision as necessary and appropriate.

     However, the opinions and conclusions in the original and review articles published in the Journal are regarded as those of the author, not the opinions or responsibilities of the Journal's editorial board.

2. Ethical policy and ethics of the Thailand Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine 

2.1 The editor and the editorial board have to ensure that the operations of The Journal are carried out according to its policy, objectives and ethics and take suitable action against the author or technical/research article that has been found to violate the code of ethics.

2.2 The technical/research article to be published in the Journal must have been examined to avoid publishing duplications and plagiarism as well as a conflict of interest in the review and publication process of such an article.

All research articles involving humans or animals must be approved for ethical research in humans or animals by a credible humans or animals research ethics committee. These articles must specify the details of the ethical approval, including the name of the approving organization and committee, as well as the approval number. For research articles that have not been approved for ethical research in humans or animals, details regarding the conditions for exemption from obtaining approval must be clearly stated, along with the procedures the researchers have implemented to ensure that the research complies with ethical standards for humans or animals research. All these details, whether in cases of approval or exemption, must be included in the Methods section of the research.

Editors may consider and decide to reject any research article that does not provide such details, especially research articles that may not adhere to ethical standards for humans or animals research.

3. Responsibilities of the editor

3.1 The editor is responsible for all the operations of the Thailand Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine as per the Journal's objectives and shall improve its accuracy and quality standards continually.

3.2 The editor creates a process for selecting and examining technical/research articles to be submitted for quality assessment or review according to the Journal's policy and objectives.

3.3 The editor shall not disclose the information about technical/research articles, authors and reviewers to other people in the peer-review process, except that he/she is requested for good reason and the disclosure will not have any negative impact on any relevant persons.

3.4 The editor shall examine and protect the intellectual property standards of the technical/research articles published in the Journal, and examine to avoid publishing duplications and plagiarism.

3.5 The editor has got a system for managing conflicts of interest among the editor, the author, the reviewers and the editorial board to ensure appropriate review and publication of technical and research articles.

3.6 The editor and the editorial board shall select experts or reviewers in relevant technical fields and from various organizations within and outside the Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and create as well as update the Author's Instructions on continually      .

3.7 The editor and the editorial board shall retract the technical article that has been found later that it contains substantial error, scientific fraud, or does not follow the author's responsibility.

4. Author's responsibilities

4.1 The author must have honesty, morality, ethics and technical independence without bias in all research steps (as per the Researcher's Professional Ethics and Practical Guidelines of the National Research Council of Thailand, B.E. 2556 (2013)].

4.2 The author must report technical/research results, based on the study's facts and correct data without any false and distorted data, and prepare an article or manuscript according to the "Author's Instructions".

4.3 The author must make reference to other people's findings that appear in his/her own article, and must have technical honesty without any plagiarism in whole or in part.

4.4 The author should try to avoid a conflict of interest in the process of research and/or the publication of research findings. This kind of relationship might be positive, negative, personal, business or financial in nature, and might cause bias in the research undertaking. If the author anticipates a conflict of interest in his/her research process, he/she needs to disclose it to the editor in advance; and the funding source has to be mentioned in the acknowledgements section.

4.5 The author must be responsible for his/her own findings and certify that the work has neither been published, nor in the process of being reviewed for publication, in another journal.

4.6 The author must state the names of all other co-authors or co-researchers as well as each one's clear role and proportion of contribution, in case he/she is not the sole author.

4.7 In case the author commits wrongdoing concerning the author's responsibilities, particularly clauses 4.2-4.5, the editorial board shall disqualify his/her publication in the Thailand Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine for at least three years, and shall also notify the author's organization as the case may be.

5. Reviewer's responsibilities

5.1 The reviewer plays a role in reviewing a technical/research article and giving technical comments or recommendations on such an article in a fair and unbiased manner, assisting the editor in considering the appropriateness of the article's publication in the Journal, and assisting the author in improving the article's accuracy and quality.

5.2 The reviewer should review a technical/research article in the field of his/her expertise and should withdraw from the review if he/she is not in a position to carry out such a review for any reason by notifying the editor.

5.3 The reviewer must not have a conflict of interest or a competing interest with the author or article that he/she is reviewing.

5.4 The reviewer must maintain the confidentiality of the technical/research article under his/her review, and should not express any opinions or discuss/exchange anything related to the unpublished article. In case the reviewer wishes to have a co-reviewer, consent must be obtained from the editor in advance; and the CO-reviewer's name must also appear in the review form.

5.5 If the reviewer has found that any part of the technical/research article under review is similar to, or a duplicate work of, another article, he/she must notify the editor for further action as appropriate.

5.6 The reviewer should recommend other important and useful technical/research articles to which the author has not made any reference, but not the reviewer's works.