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Policies

Contents

Philosophy of The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy

OJOT is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal with a mission to publish high quality articles that focus on applied research, practice, and education in the occupational therapy profession. For more information, please see The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy About this Journal page.

OJOT strives to meet the needs of its authors, reviewers, and readers and will consider any feedback that may improve the quality of the journal. You may at ot-ojot@wmich.edu.

Ethics Statement:
OJOT follows the recommendations of The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and maintains fair and ethical publishing practices with transparent ethical requirements for authors and published works to protect the integrity of the journal. Any fraudulent practices including predatory publishing practices or editorial instructions leading to excessive, inauthentic journal self-citation are unacceptable.
Confidentiality: editors and reviewers do not share any information about manuscripts to anyone other than the authors and reviewers.
General submission rules: submitted articles cannot have been previously published nor under review at another journal. All authors must agree with the Submission Agreement upon manuscript submission, which includes author approval, contribution verification, agreement of submission, acceptance of responsibility for article content, declaration of potential conflicts of interest, financial disclosure, and declaration of exclusive submission.
Plagiarism policy: during copyediting, all manuscripts are actively screened for any potentially libelous and plagiarized content by thorough review of all citations and references. Additionally, OJOT uses a plagiarism detection software.
Conflicts of interest: all authors are required to disclose all financial and personal relationships that might bias or be seen to bias their work. They must review a conflict of interest form adapted from the ICMJE to determine if there are any potential conflicts and disclose of them upon submission. Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts submitted to OJOT will recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that pose potential conflicts related to articles under review and will not use information submitted to or published in OJOT for private gain.
Informed consent and human-subjects research: Any manuscripts with reports of research findings involving human-subjects must include a statement in the methods section of the text, verifying that the study was approved by an independent, named human subjects/ethics committee and that all subjects/participants provided informed consent.
Clinical trial registration: manuscripts describing clinical trials that started participant recruitment after Jan 1, 2016 must be registered in one of two clinical trial registration systems (see below). The trial registration website address and trial registration number are required for publication.
Continue reading this page for more detail about these policies and others.

Rights for Authors, Readers, and ScholarWorks at WMU

As described in our submission agreement (the Submission Agreement), in consideration for publication of the article, no copyright agreement form needs to be completed. OJOT is an open journal and therefore all authors retain the copyright of their manuscripts even after they have been published. Authors must, however, provide copyright permission for any copyrighted tables, figures, illustrations, appendices, or lengthy quotations that are used in the manuscript.

Copyright statement: Copyright transfer agreements are not obtained by The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy (OJOT). Reprint permission for this article should be obtained from the corresponding author(s).

Open access statement: This is an open access journal which means that all content is immediately freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, or print full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. To copy or distribute individual articles, obtain permission from the corresponding author(s).

Creative Commons License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Confidentiality: Manuscripts submitted to OJOT are privileged communications that are authors’ private property. Editors of OJOT do not share any information about manuscripts, including review status, criticism by reviewers, and decisions, to anyone other than the authors and reviewers. Reviewers and editors keep manuscripts and the information they contain strictly confidential. Reviewers may not publicly discuss the authors’ work or appropriate authors’ ideas before the manuscript is published. Reviewers must not retain the manuscript for their personal use and should destroy paper copies (if applicable) and delete electronic copies after submitting their reviews. When a manuscript is rejected, the copy is retained in the electronic system but is accessible only by necessary, authorized editors for statistical purposes only. If confidentiality must be breached for allegations of dishonesty or fraught, editors will notify authors or reviewers.

General Terms and Conditions of Use

Users of the ScholarWorks at WMU website and/or software agree not to misuse the ScholarWorks at WMU service or software in any way.

The failure of ScholarWorks at WMU to exercise or enforce any right or provision in the policies or the Submission Agreement does not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any term of the Submission Agreement or these policies is found to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the Submission Agreement and these policies remain in full force and effect. These policies and the Submission Agreement constitute the entire agreement between ScholarWorks at WMU and the Author(s) regarding submission of the Article.

External linking: OJOT does not endorse or take responsibility or liability for any content, sponsorship, products, or other materials on linked web sites, and does not take responsibility for the linked sites’ availability.

Please at ot-ojot@wmich.edu with questions regarding use.

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Who Can Submit?

Anyone may submit an original article to be considered for publication in The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy, provided he or she owns the copyright to the work being submitted or is authorized by the copyright owner(s) to submit the article. Authors are the initial owners of the copyrights to their works (an exception in the non-academic world to this might exist if the authors have, as a condition of employment, agreed to transfer copyright to their employer).

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General Submission Rules

Submitted articles cannot have been previously published, nor be forthcoming in an archival journal or book (print or electronic). Please note: "publication" in a working-paper series does not constitute prior publication. In addition, by submitting material to The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy, the author is stipulating that the material is not currently under review at another journal (electronic or print) and that he or she will not submit the material to another journal (electronic or print) until the completion of the editorial decision process at The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy.

Article Submission Agreement
All author(s) must agree with our submission agreement (the Submission Agreement) upon manuscript submission. The Submission Agreement includes author(s) approval, author(s) contribution verification(s), author(s) agreement of submission, acceptance of responsibility for article content, conflict of interest, financial disclosure, and declaration of exclusive submission. By accepting the Submission Agreement, all authors agree that the terms are true.
If you have concerns about the submission terms for The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy, please at ot-ojot@wmich.edu.

Plagiarism Policy
All accepted manuscripts are subject to copyediting. During the copyediting process, the manuscript is actively screened for any potentially libelous and plagiarized content by thorough review of all citations and references. If such content is suspected, resolution is made at the discretion of the editors. During the copy editing process, it is OJOT's policy to check every reference, whether it is quoted or not, and read each source for accuracy and plagiarism. Edits are made to the article to remove any potential plagiarism. In 2017, OJOT began using a plagiarism detection software, iThenticate. This software is designed for publishers and editors to check submissions for originality and to prevent plagiarism in published works. Journals and publishers that use this software include Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley-Blackwell. iThenticate partners with ProQuest and Crossref.

Conflicts of Interest
All authors are required to disclose all financial and personal relationships that might bias or be seen to bias their work. They must review a conflict of interest form adapted from the ICMJE to determine if there are any potential conflicts and disclose of them upon submission. A statement regarding disclosure is included in each published article. The purpose of the disclosure is to provide readers with information about the author's or authors' interests that could influence how readers receive and understand the work. Purposeful failure to disclose conflicts of interest is a form of misconduct.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Technology
Authors must disclose at submission whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the creation of the manuscript. Authors who use AI-Assisted technology must describe how they used it, in both the cover letter and submitted manuscript. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) should not be listed as authors because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work, and these responsibilities are required for authorship (see “Article Submission Agreement” in the Author Guidelines). Humans are responsible for any submitted material and the author(s) should carefully review and edit the AI results because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, and/or biased. Do not list AI or AI-assisted technologies as an author. All authors are responsible to confirm that there is no plagiarism in their submission, including in text and images produced by the AI. Humans must ensure there is attribution of all quoted material, including full citations.

Peer-Review Policy
The Editor-in-Chief reviews all manuscripts submitted to OJOT. All manuscripts that correspond with the mission and categories of publication for OJOT will be confidentially peer-reviewed by 2-3 members of the Editorial Review Board. The identity of the author(s) and reviewers are not revealed during the review process. If a manuscript requires revision before acceptance, it will be subjected to further confidential peer-review by the original reviewers or new reviewers, if needed. Please see the Confidentiality statement (above) for further information regarding protection of authors’ manuscripts during the review process. You can also read this Letter from the Editor to learn more about the OJOT publication process.

Journal Editors and Reviewers
Editorial decisions are based on the relevance of a manuscript to OJOT and on the manuscript's originality, quality, and contribution to evidence about important questions. Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts submitted to OJOT will recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that pose potential conflicts related to articles under review. Editors of OJOT will not use information submitted to or published in OJOT for private gain. This includes guest editors. For confidentiality purposes, editors nor reviewers will upload a manuscript to software or other Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Technologies. Reviewers will disclose to the Editors if and how they are using AI-Assisted Technologies to facilitate their reviews. Reviewers and Editors are aware that AI-Assisted Technologies can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, or biased.

Informed Consent and Human-Subjects Research
Any manuscripts with reports of research findings involving human subjects must include a statement in the methods section of the text, verifying that the study was approved by an independent, named human subjects/ethics committee and that all subjects/participants provided informed consent. Research that does not include this information will not be published in OJOT. Additionally, any manuscripts with human-subjects must be registered in a clinical trial registration system (see next section).

Clinical Trial Registration
Manuscripts describing clinical trials that started participant recruitment after January 1, 2016, must be registered in a clinical trial registration system [WHO ICTRP or ClinicalTrials.gov] and registration must occur prior to participant recruitment to be considered for publication. Trials whose participant enrollment began before January 1, 2016, must be registered retrospectively. OJOT follows the guidelines put forth by The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The ICMJE defines a clinical trial as:

any research project that prospectively assigns people or a group of people to an intervention, with or without concurrent comparison or control groups, to study the cause-and-effect relationship between a health-related intervention and a health outcome. Health-related interventions are those used to modify a biomedical or health-related outcome; examples include drugs, surgical procedures, devices, behavioural treatments, educational programs, dietary interventions, quality improvement interventions, and process-of-care changes. Health outcomes are any biomedical or health-related measures obtained in patients or participants, including pharmacokinetic measures and adverse events. The ICMJE does not define the timing of first patient enrollment, but best practice dictates registration by the time of first patient consent.

Manuscripts that are submitted to OJOT must provide the trial registration website address and trial registration number during submission in the Cover Page Footnote field. The manuscript will not be published without receipt of this information. The following types of trials do not need to be registered: trials that evaluate the effects, efficacy, or effectiveness of educational methodologies and techniques for occupational therapy practitioners or for continuing education; and trials that do not have client health or behavioral factors as outcomes. Please visit http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/publishing-and-editorial-issues/clinical-trial-registration.html and http://www.icmje.org/news-and-editorials/data_sharing_june_2017.pdf for complete information from ICMJE.

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Publication Fees

Once a manuscript has been accepted for publication, the author(s) must pay a processing fee based on the category of manuscript. The fee must be paid online with a credit card. It is a single fee per article, regardless of the number of authors. See below for the amount based on category of publication:

  • Applied Research: $700 U.S. dollars
  • Topics in Education: $700 U.S. dollars
  • Guidelines for Practice and Technological Guidelines: $700 U.S. dollars
  • Opinions in the Profession: $500 U.S. dollars
  • Policy and Advocacy: $500 U.S. dollars
  • Letters to the Editor: $300 U.S. dollars
There is no cost to submit an article to OJOT for review. Because OJOT is an open journal, the authors maintain the copyright and therefore are entitled to any future profits from the publication. Additionally, this publication fee includes professional copy editing services for all manuscripts. The publication fee is requested upon acceptance of the article for publication and is nonrefundable. Copy editing services will not commence until the publication fee has been paid, which could result in delayed publication. The publication fee is subject to change at any time at the discretion of the Advisory and Editorial Board members.

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Formatting Requirements

The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy provides guidelines regarding the formatting of articles upon submission. Please see the Author Guidelines page for details. Although bepress can provide limited technical support, it is ultimately the responsibility of the author to produce an electronic version of the article as a Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) file that can be converted to a high-quality PDF file for publication.

It is understood that the current state of technology of Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) is such that there are no, and can be no, guarantees that documents in PDF will work perfectly with all possible hardware and software configurations that readers may have.

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Policy and Process for Corrections, Retractions, and Editorial Expressions of Concern

Honest errors are a part of science and publishing and OJOT’s policy is to publish a correction when they are detected and include a statement of erratum. Corrections are needed for errors of fact. Matters of debate are handled as Letters to the Editor. Updates of previous publications (e.g., an updated systematic review or clinical guideline) are considered a new publication rather than a version of a previously published article.
If a correction is needed, OJOT follow these standards as recommended by the International Committee of Medical Editors (ICMJE; 2019):
- Correction of the error(s) and a correction notice as part of the article metadata that details changes from the original publication.
- The original/all prior version(s) is removed from the website and archived to avoid any confusion. The archive is available to the reader on request.
- The most recent version is maintained in the electronic journal with the correction notice.

Errors serious enough to invalidate an article’s results and conclusions may require retraction. Retraction with republication can be considered in cases where honest error (e.g., a misclassification or miscalculation) leads to a major change in the direction or significance of the results, interpretations, and conclusions. If the error is judged to be unintentional by the Editorial Board, the underlying science appears valid, and the changed version of the paper survives further review and editorial scrutiny, then retraction with republication of the changed paper, with an explanation, allows full correction of the scientific literature. In such cases, the extent of the changes is provided in an appendix, for complete transparency.

In the event of alleged scientific misconduct, each situation will be assessed by the Editorial Board (and Advisory Board if necessary). Appropriate procedures detailed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) will be initiated. On a case-by-case basis, OJOT will consider informing the institutions and funders and may publish an expression of concern pending the outcomes of those procedures. If the procedures involve an investigation at the authors’ institution, the Editors will seek to discover the outcome of that investigation; notify readers of the outcome if appropriate; and if the investigation proves scientific misconduct, publish a retraction of the article. There may be circumstances in which no misconduct is proven, but an exchange of Letters to the Editor may be published to highlight matters of debate to readers. The retraction and original article will be linked in both directions and the retracted article will be clearly labelled as retracted in all its forms (abstract, full text, PDF). Ideally, the authors of the retraction will be the same as those of the article, but if they are unwilling or unable the Editors may under certain circumstances accept retractions by other responsible persons, or the editor may be the sole author of the retraction or expression of concern. The text of the retraction will explain why the article is being retracted and include a complete citation reference to that article. Retracted articles will remain in the public domain and be clearly labelled as retracted.

ICMJE. (2019, December). Recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. ICMJE. http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/

Last updated 9/25/2024

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