Focus and Scope

Digestive System Disease Research is dedicated to the research and development of new technologies and methods for the diagnosis and treatment of digestive diseases, which aims to improve the diagnosis and efficacy of digestive diseases and translate the latest research results of digestion into clinical applications to benefit the patients. The journal focuses on diseases’ researches occurring in the oral cavity, salivary glands, oesophagus, stomach, intestines, bile, glands, peritoneal level omentum and other organs.

Subject areas of this journal include but are not limited to:

• Gastroenterology
• Gastrointestinal hormones
• Gastrointestinal immunity
• Acute gastritis
• Chronic gastritis
• Imaging diagnosis
• Radioimmunoassay
• Peptic ulcer
• Cell biology
• Molecular biology
• Biochemistry
• Endocrinology
• Immunology
• Enzymology

Digestive System Disease Research welcomes original research articles, review articles, case reports, editorials, etc.

Article Types

Articles

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

To ensure high-quality publication, Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. (APACSCI) conducts a stringent double-blind peer review process for all manuscripts submitted to its journals:

1. Upon submission, a manuscript is reviewed by the managing editor of the journal to assess for integrality and similarity. Once the manuscript has passed this pre-screening, it will be passed to one of the academic editors (usually Editorial Board members. Whoever they are, they should hold no conflicts of interest).
2. The assigned academic editor carefully evaluates the manuscript to determine if its topic and content are suitable for consideration.
3. The assigned academic editor invites at least two independent-external reviewers who are suitably qualified to assess the paper. Authors can recommend reviewers or provide an avoidance list, and basic information for identifying and contacting the reviewers should be given. The recommended reviewers may not be invited upon the decision of the assigned academic editor.
4. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the manuscript's originality, methodology, contribution to the literature, presentation of results and support for the conclusion, and appropriate referencing of previous relevant studies.
5. According to the evaluation reports by the reviewers along with a review from the assigned academic editor, the Editor-in-Chief makes one of the following decisions: accept the submission, accept with minor revisions, accept with revisions required (major revisions), require resubmission for review, or decline the submission.
6. If the Editor-in-Chief suggests minor revisions, authors are encouraged to revise the manuscript within about 14 days.
7. If the Editor-in-Chief suggests major revisions, authors are encouraged to promptly inform the assistant editor of the anticipated time required to return the revised version of their work. The assistant editor and the author will then engage in a mutual negotiation to determine a suitable timeline for the revised work. In exceptional circumstances, such as a revision period of more than three months, the author may be requested to withdraw the manuscript and resubmit it to be assigned a new manuscript ID. If so, this new submission should be accompanied by the review comments on the previous manuscript and the revised manuscript with a cover letter providing an explanation regarding the revisions.
8. After the resubmission of the revised manuscript, the above steps are repeated before the manuscript is accepted for publication.
9. Authors of rejected submissions have the right to make an appeal in writing to the editorial office of the specific journal (for this journal, editorial_office@apacsci.com) within 4 weeks of receiving the decision. The written appeal should include specific reasons for the appeal and point-by-point responses to the reviewers' comments.
10. Decisions made on appeals by the Editor-in-Chief are final, and no further considerations will be made.

Editorial processes and decisions are not influenced by journal ownership, revenue streams, or advertising policies.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. All published content is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC), permitting all non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium under the condition that the original work is properly cited.

Publishing Ethics

Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. requests all members involved in the journal publishing process to adhere to the Core Practices on publication ethics as stipulated by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in compliance with the information and guidelines on handling publishing ethics allegations as described in the Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (PERK).

The publisher strictly adheres to the guidelines and best practices, which include Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing developed by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

The publisher journal editors take all possible misconducts seriously. The Editors, authors or readers can forward their concerns to the journal if they find out that the description in a submitted article may constitute an academic fraud, research misconduct or publication malpractice. The concerns or complaints on the possible allegations submitted to the journal will be dealt with promptly and appropriately according to the procedure set out in the COPE flowchart on complaints and in PERK. The complainant may direct all inquiries and correspondence to the publisher at editorial-dsdr@apacsci.com.

The Digestive System Disease Research (DSDR) adopts a zero-tolerance policy concerning any academic misconducts and ethical violations in research and publication regardless of the severity of these issues. The violations include plagiarism, falsification of research, data fabrication, submitting manuscripts of others as one’s own, submission of same manuscript to different publication venues at the same time and breached intellectual property rights. In cases of suspected misconduct and ethical violation, a panel will be formed to investigate the allegation. If the allegation is supported by evidence, the submitted manuscript in question will be declined for consideration in the journal and all authors will be informed in this regard. A retraction initiated by authors or by the journal is required to take place if the paper has already been published, and the retraction will be made public. Authors of the work in question will receive the panel’s Decision via email and all appeals regarding the decision will have to be made to the publisher at editorial-dsdr@apacsci.com within 30 days of the decision date.

Authorship

Authorship of a scholarly paper should be limited to individuals who have contributed substantially to its intellectual content. Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or general supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. All authors should hold the responsibility of fairly evaluating their respective roles and their co-authors’ roles in the project. This is to ensure that authorship is attributed according to a fixed standard in all publications for which they will be listed as authors.

In order to be listed as an author for a paper, one should have contributed sufficiently to the project. A co-author is expected to have contributed to some component of the work which led to the paper or be involved in the interpretation of its results. All authors should have a say in the final approval of the version to be published, in addition to reviewing the final manuscript prior to submission.

Individuals who do not meet the above requirements, but have provided a valuable contribution to the work, may be acknowledged for their contribution as appropriate to the publication.

Conflict of Interest

Conflicts of interest may exist when professional judgements concerning a primary interest have the possibility of being influenced by a secondary interest (e.g.: financial gains). It is to be noted that even perceptions of conflicts of interest are as important as the actual conflicts of interest.

Any agreements with study sponsors (for profit or non-profit), which interfere with the authors’ access to the study data, ability to analyze or interpret the data and publish manuscripts independently according to their own decision, should be avoided by authors at all costs.

A declaration of interests for all authors must be received before an article can be reviewed and accepted for publication.

Plagiarism

Authors are advised to observe high standards in the aspect of publication ethics. Any plagiarism (fabrication or falsification of data) are strictly unacceptable practices in FCR, including duplicate publication of the author’s work without proper citation.

Every manuscript submitted for publication is checked for plagiarism via CrossCheck (powered by iThenticate) after submission and before being sent to the editor for editorial review. Any detection of overlapping and similar texts in the manuscripts submitted will be investigated promptly and may lead to the manuscript being rejected.

Language

The language used in manuscripts submitted to Digestive System Disease Research is English. Authors whose first language is not English may want to have their manuscripts professionally edited before the final submission to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by its prospective readers.

Withdrawal Policy

If the author decides to withdraw an article that has already been submitted to the journal, he/she would be required to pay a penalty fee. Authors are advised to keep in mind that an article should only be withdrawn if the authors detect significant error or flaws, as it is not an acceptable practice to withdraw an article after it has been sent for peer review. The withdrawal process is considered to be complete once the author receives a confirmation of withdrawal from the Journal Editorial Office.

Waiver Policy

The Digestive System Disease Research is committed to ensuring that financial constraints do not present a barrier to knowledge sharing and learning, and thus has developed a waiver policy especially for authors from low- or middle-income countries. Authors who are interested in applying for a waiver may contact the editorial office prior to submitting their article. DSDR reserves the right to approve or reject a waiver application.

Permission and Reprints

Any part of materials published in Digestive System Disease Research may not be reproduced without written permission of the publisher. Please click here to write in the permission request.

Editorial Policies

Authors should read the “Author Guidelines” before making a submission, and make sure that the manuscripts were written in accordance to the style and specifications of the journal’s policy.

All manuscripts submitted to Digestive System Disease Research are subject to rigorous peer review. Prior to peer review process, the manuscripts will be screened for acceptable English language, novelty and relevance to the Focus and Scope of the journal.

Any manuscripts submitted to Digestive System Disease Research will be treated as confidential materials. The manuscripts will not be disclosed to anyone except individuals such as editorial staff, reviewers and editors who participate in the initial screening, review, processing and preparation of the manuscript for publication (if accepted).

A manuscript would not be accepted if it has been published or is currently under consideration for publication in any other journals. The authors are required to notify the editorial team if the findings and data in their submissions have been presented in conferences.

Changes to Authorship

The authors should carefully check the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript. The Editorial Office considers the authorship list is definitive by the time the original submission is received.

Any addition, deletion or rearrangement of author names in the authorship list should be made only before the manuscript is accepted for publication. The corresponding author should provide the reasons for the change in authorship list and the proof of written confirmation from all authors (including the existing authors, author(s) to be added and/or removed) agreeing with such change, to the Editorial Office.

The requests for authorship changes need to be approved by the Editorial Office before any changes can be made.

Disclaimer

This journal  is not liable to the statements, perspectives, and opinions contained in the published articles. The appearance of advertisements in the journal shall not be construed as a warranty, endorsement, or approval of the products or services advertised and/or the safety thereof. This journal and the Publisher disclaim responsibility for any injury to persons or property resulting from any ideas or products referred to in the articles or advertisements.

Copyright and License

The authors shall retain the copyright of their work but allow the Publisher to publish, copy, distribute, and convey the work.

All articles published by the Characterization and Application of Nanomaterials are licensed under the Creative Commons International Licenses. Without any explicit request from the corresponding author during submission stage, a paper will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) by default. The authors who would like to publish their work under a more accommodating license, i.e. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), they should express explicit request during submission stage. Please include statement below in the Comments for the Editor column on the submission page:

The contributors or authors for this submission entitled “[MANUSCRIPT TITLE]”, i.e. [NAMES of ALL AUTHORS], have given their consents to alter the Creative Commons license to *CC BY 4.0* under which this submission will be published in Characterization and Application of Nanomaterials.

Advertising Policy

All advertisements are subject to approval to the Publisher. Advertisements must comply with the relevant regulations in the country where the advertisements appear. For more inquiries, please send email to editorial-dsdr@apacsci.com.

Article Processing Charges (APC)

Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. publishes all its journals in Gold Open Access format. The scientific community and the general public have free of all restrictions on accessing (e.g., subscription) and free of many restrictions on using its contents as soon as it is published online. Asia Pacific Academy of Science Pte. Ltd. does not require readers to purchase any form of subscription to view online versions of the journals. In order to defray our editorial and production costs, authors of the accepted articles are required to pay the article processing charges (APCs). The charges will come from authors' institutes or research funding bodies.

Digestive System Disease Research (DSDR) receives financial support from Beijing Chuncheng Education Publications Research Center, hence the APC is free for authors for the time being. The editorial office of DSDR expresses its sincere thanks to the sponsor.

Clinical Trials Registration

The Journal complies with the standards of WHO ICPRP and ICMJE regarding to clinical trial registry. According to the WHO ICPRP and ICMJE, a clinical trial is any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes. Clinical trials may also be referred to as interventional trials. Interventions include but are not restricted to drugs, cells and other biological products, surgical procedures, radiologic procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, process-of-care changes, preventive care, etc. This definition includes Phase I to Phase IV trials.

The Journal requires that all research protocols involving a first clinical trial be registered in a public clinical trial registry (except those that have already been published). WHO regards trial registration as the publication of an  internationally-agreed set of information about the design, conduct and administration of clinical trials. This requirement is not only conducive to increasing the transparency of clinical trial information and reducing publication bias, but also conducive to guaranteeing the quality of clinical trials, increasing the standardization of the trial process and the credibility of the test results.

Authors whose manuscript involve clinical trials, should demonstrate the trial registry information in a cover letter, such as the name of trial registry, and the unique ID number assigned by the Primary Registry to this trial. Meanwhile, authors also should mention the trial registry information at the “Materials and Methods” section with appropriate references. Secondary data analyses of primary (parent) clinical trials should not be registered as separate clinical trials, but instead should reference the trial registration number of the primary trial.

Some primary registers meeting the specific criteria of WHO Registry Network and the requirements of the ICMJE, include International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP), ClinicalTrials.gov.