Following is an outline of our commitment to publication ethics and transparency in accordance with the principles of the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE).

Peer review process: All submitted manuscripts undergo rigorous peer review. The peer review process is detailed here

Governing Body/Editorial team/contact information: The editorial board members of A&I are experts in the journal's field. Their full names and affiliations are given here

Publishing fee: The journal charge publication fees from authors to cover the expanses in journal process. There is no submission fee.

Copyright/Licensing Policy: The authors retain the copyright of their published articles. All our publications are open access, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Process for identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct 

Plagiarism check:  All submitted articles undergo plagiarism check first. We work with CrossRef to use iThenticate to detect plagiarism. iThenticate gives a 'similarity index', which is the word-by-word copying of materials from previously published literature. We use similarity index to make a decision. Even if the original source was cited, articles with more than 10% similarity index will be returned to the authors without peer review for re-writing. For articles with similarity index between 1-10%, we follow the guidelines of COPE on text recycling to make a decision. 

Responsibility of Authors: As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance as included towards the end of this page. 

Responsibility of reviewers: Reviewers are expected to keep the manuscripts confidential, provide an unbiased scientific opinion of the manuscript on time and declare any conflict of interest. 

Copyright violation: Where relevant, it is the responsibility of the authors to obtain permission from copyright holders, and to ensure that the use of images, data and illustrations in the manuscript do not violate copyright laws. If a copyright violation in any of the published article is brought to our attention, we will notify the authors. It is the responsibility of the author to settle issues with the copyright holder. As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off this statement. 

Corrections: If an error in any of the published article is brought to our attention, we will publish an Erratum or Corrigendum. The published manuscript will remain unaltered. 

Retraction: Proof of scientific misconduct will lead to retraction of a published article. Other issues will be dealt with on a case-by-case based on the retraction guidelines of COPE. The retracted article and the reason(s) for retraction will be clearly stated. 

The handling of research misconduct is the role of the scientific advisory board. 

Ownership and management: The journal is published under the banner of Codon Publications, a privately-owned company. The company is registered in Sinapore and Australia. The administrative aspects of the journal are done in Australia. The infrastructure, technical support and post-acceptance processing of articles are delegated to various companies. Permanent preservation of published articles is done via  PubMed. Services for doi and plagiarism check are provided by Crossref.

Web site: To the best of our knowledge, the site does not contain any misleading information.

Conflict of interest: It is mandatory that Editors and authors disclose conflict of interest. More information is given here.

Access: Our publications are freely available online. There is no need for any kind of registration to access them. 

Advertising: We do not accept advertisements. 

Publishing schedule: Each calendar year will have one volume and six issues per volume. A&I publishes articles as soon as the final copy-edited version is approved by the authors rather than waiting for a collection of articles for a specific issue. Also each article is published in its respective category (review, original or case report). As a result, the page numbers in the 'Table of Contents' displayed for each issue will reflect this rather than numerical order. 

Archiving: We use  PubMed for the permanent preservation of our published contents.  

Direct marketing: Potential authors are invited via email based on their prior publication track record in the field of journal.  

Contact details: Our contact details are displayed under “Contact”. Although our phone number is given, we prefer email as the primary means of correspondence due to difference in time zone.

Instructions for Authors: Detailed guidelines for authors are included under “Submission”. 

Complaints: Any complaint about the operations of A&I should be sent to [email protected]. To maintain transparency, all correspondence will be in writing, via the above email address. In the initial contact, please identify yourself, state the complaint and sign off with your full name and contact details, including a valid phone number with the country and area code. The initial email should not contain any attachments, html codes, or clickable links. All correspondence should be in English with the subject line ‘Complaint’. Initial emails that do not meet any of these criteria will not receive a response and will be deleted. Emails that meet these criteria will receive a response from the editorial office within 72 hours to discuss the issue for a speedy resolution.