Editorial Policy page contains the following policies:

Ownership and management

Strides in Development of Medical Education Journal (SDME) is owned, managed, and published by Kerman University of Medical Sciences. SDME is scientifically supported by Kerman  University of Medical Sciences.

Authorship Criteria and Contributorship 

SDME strictly adheres to the authorship guidelines established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). To qualify for authorship, every listed author must meet all four of the following criteria: Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND Final approval of the version to be published; AND Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Author Contribution Statement (CRediT Taxonomy): Authors are required to declare the individual contributions of each co-author using the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) in the manuscript title page (e.g., Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal Analysis, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing, Supervision).

Acknowledgments and Non-Author Contributors: Individuals who participated in the research but do not meet all four ICMJE criteria (such as administrative assistants, purely technical support, language editors, or department chairs providing general oversight) must not be listed as authors. Instead, their contributions should be recognized in the Acknowledgments section, provided their written consent has been obtained. Gift, guest, and ghost authorships are considered severe forms of scientific misconduct and are strictly prohibited.

Language and Linguistic Editing

Strides in Development of Medical Education (SDME) is an international, peer-reviewed journal published exclusively in the English language. All submitted manuscripts, including original submissions, revisions, and final proofs, must be prepared in clear, grammatically correct English. Non-native English-speaking authors are strongly encouraged to ensure their manuscripts undergo professional language editing prior to submission or during the revision process to avoid editorial delays. Authors are entirely free to choose their preferred professional academic editing services or independent language experts. The journal does not endorse or mandate any specific commercial editing agency, and language polishing does not guarantee manuscript acceptance, which is determined strictly through competitive, independent peer review.

Publication Ethics

Strides in Development of Medical Education (SDME) is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and manages all publication ethics and allegations of misconduct in strict accordance with COPE Core Practices and flowcharts. The journal also follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. For further details, please refer to our [Publication Ethics Policy] and the official [COPE Guidelines].

Competing Interests

The SDME journal requires authors to declare all competing interests in their work. Authors are requested to disclose their interests that are directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication. All submissions must include a " Competing Interests/Conflict interest" section at the end of the article listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). interests to be considered and disclosed but not limited to:

Employment: Recent employment (during a research project), current or anticipated employment by any organization that may have a financial gain or loss through the publication of this manuscript. This includes multiple affiliations (if any).

Funding: Research grants from funding agencies (please mention research funder and grant number) and / or research grants (including salaries, equipment, supplies, refunds for symposia and other expenses) By organizations that may gain or lose through publication.

Financial interests: stocks and shares in companies that may have a financial gain or loss through the publication of this letter. Consulting costs or other forms of rewards from organizations that may be financially profitable or unprofitable. Inventions or patent applications whose value may be affected by the publication of this manuscript.

Non-financial interests: In addition, authors are asked to disclose interests that go beyond financial interests that could lead to bias in the work presented for publication, such as professional interests, personal relationships, or personal beliefs.

Early research papers require a disclosure statement. Review articles provide a synthesis mix of evidence and may be considered as a valid work on a subject. Therefore, review articles need a disclosure statement. Other types of articles such as editorials, book reviews, comments (among others) may require a disclosure statement depending on their content.

Plagiarism detection

The manuscript should not contain the verbatim text of previously published papers or manuscripts submitted elsewhere. Hence, we evaluate all submitted manuscripts by the iThenticate plagiarism checker, which based on the detected plagiarism of the submitted manuscripts, we will ask the authors to rephrase the manuscript. COPE's flowcharts and guidelines would be used to handle plagiarism. Plagiarisms will be reported to the Vice-Chancellor for Research and Technology of relevant universities and organizations through official correspondence.

Copyright and Licensing

If a manuscript contains any previous published image or text, it is the responsibility of the author to obtain authorization from copyright holders. The author is required to obtain and submit the written original permission letters for all copyrighted material used in his/her manuscript.

Peer review policy

This Journal is a double-blind peer-reviewed journal and its purpose is providing an accurate and fair critical review of all submitted manuscripts. For paper submission, the author should register on the journal website (https://sdme.kmu.ac.ir) and register. For more information please see guideline

Publication Fees

This  journal is published and  sponsored by Kerman University of Medical Sciences . Therefore, there are no submission and publication fees for the authors at the moment. Although the cost of translation and editing in English by the company approved by the journal is the responsibility of the author.

Open Access Agreement

Strides in Development of Medical Education (SDME) supports the principles of Open Access. Authors retain the copyright to their published work without restriction. Abstracts and full-text articles in PDF format are freely available to all readers immediately upon publication. The reuse and redistribution of articles published in SDME—including the main text, tables, and figures—are permitted under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. Users may copy, redistribute, and adapt SDME articles in any medium or format, provided that the original work is appropriately cited, a link to the license is included, and any changes made are clearly indicated.

Please ensure that the journal officially uses the CC BY 4.0 license before publication of this statement.

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

Policy on intellectual property 

SDME requires authors  to make their article open access under one of the Creative Commons Licenses in order to meet the terms of open access publication and ensure the widest possible dissemination. The Creative Commons website explains how these licenses work.

Revenu Sources

SDME is financially supported completely by Kerman University of Medical Sciences, and has no other sources for earning funds.

Advertising/Direct marketing

SDME accepts No advertisements on the site or even as a report article and our publisher does not consider advertisements in its collection of scholarly journals.

Permissions

It is the author’s responsibility to secure all permissions prior to publication. Even before submitting your manuscript to the journal, please make sure you check the copyright status for the content you want to use in your article, identify the relevant copyright holders, and determine if you can possibly get permission from them. 

Complaint’s policy

The journal is committed to addressing all complaints from authors, reviewers, and readers promptly and transparently. Complaints can be submitted either directly to our dedicated editorial email at medcj@kmu.ac.ir or via the online contact form available at https://sdme.kmu.ac.ir/journal/contact.us. All complaints are initially reviewed by the Associated Editor within 7 business days, with substantive responses provided within 14 days. Grievances concerning the Editor-in-Chief are independently reviewed and escalated to an appointed ombudsperson or an independent oversight committee. Ethical complaints are strictly investigated in accordance with COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines. In cases involving a conflict of interest, an alternate editor or independent editorial board member is assigned to manage the case. If a resolution cannot be reached internally, matters may be further escalated to the publisher or the university’s ethics committee. 

Data Sharing, Reproducibility, and Availability Policy

To guarantee long-term digital preservation is Open Archive and publicly and openly accessible to all digital readers, all articles published in the SDME are archived in Kerman university of medical sciences and pre-print servers.

Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence and AI-Assisted Technologies

Strides in Development of Medical Education (SDME) upholds the principles of transparency and integrity in the research and publishing process. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools—such as Large Language Models (LLMs), chatbots, and image generators—continue to evolve, the journal mandates that authors strictly adhere to the following guidelines:

1. AI is Not an Author

AI-based tools (including chatbots, smart assistants, etc.) do not qualify for authorship. Because AI lacks the capacity for moral and legal accountability regarding the accuracy, integrity, originality, and validity of scholarly work, it cannot be listed as an author or co-author. Authors should never cite AI or AI-assisted technologies as an author in their manuscripts.

2. Requirement for Disclosure

Authors are obligated to disclose the use of any AI-assisted technologies in the production of their submitted work:

• In the Cover Letter: Authors must transparently declare the use of any such technologies in their cover letter to the Editor-in-Chief.
• In the Manuscript Text:
• Acknowledgments Section: If AI tools were utilized for writing assistance, editing, or language refinement, this must be explicitly described in the Acknowledgment section.
• Methods Section: If AI was employed for data collection, statistical analysis, code generation, or the creation of figures and diagrams, the specific usage and the tool employed must be detailed in the Methods section.

3. Human Responsibility

Authors bear full responsibility for all content submitted to SDME. AI tools can generate authoritative-sounding outputs that may be factually incorrect, incomplete, or biased. Therefore:

• Authors must meticulously review, edit, and verify all AI-generated content.
• Authors are responsible for the accuracy of all data, claims, and references provided in the work.
• Authors remain solely accountable for any plagiarism, including content or images produced by AI, even if unintentionally generated.

4. Adherence to Publication Ethics

Authors must ensure that the use of AI tools does not infringe upon copyright laws. All quoted material, data, or images derived from or processed by AI must be properly attributed, with full and accurate citations provided in accordance with the journal’s standards.

COPE guideline in Artificial intelligence is  available through following link: https://publicationethics.org/news/artificial-intelligence-news.