About the Journal

Focus and Scope

“Dietary Supplements and Nutraceuticals: Science and Practice” is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that focuses on nutraceuticals and dietary supplements. The major goal of “Dietary Supplements and Nutraceuticals: Science and Practice” is to publish research demonstrating how nutraceuticals and dietary supplements can aid in the promotion of optimal health, and prevent nutritional deficiencies, illnesses, and chronic/viral diseases. Ultimately, this research encourages the advancement of these products. The journal is a great resource for students, professors, public health professionals, medical doctors, dieticians, nutritionists, government representatives (FDA, NIH, USDA), and the general public for information regarding the latest advancements for promoting optimal health, reducing the risk of chronic and viral diseases, and managing their symptoms using nutraceuticals and dietary supplements. In this journal, you may find topics such as nutraceuticals; dietary supplements; vitamins and minerals; herbs or other botanicals; amino acids and enzymes; metabolites, glandulars, and organ tissues; concentrates and extracts; food and foodstuff; and processed foods.

As defined by the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) of 1994, “a dietary supplement is a product taken by mouth that contains a ‘dietary ingredient’ intended to supplement the diet. The ‘dietary ingredients’ in these products may include: vitamins, minerals, herbs or other botanicals, amino acids, and substances such as enzymes, organ tissues, glandulars, and metabolites. Dietary supplements can also be extracts or concentrates, and may be found in many forms such as tablets, capsules, softgels, gelcaps, liquids, or powders. They can also be in other forms, such as a bar, but if they are, information on their label must not represent the product as a conventional food or a sole item of a meal or diet. Whatever their form may be, DSHEA places dietary supplements in a special category under the general umbrella of "foods," not drugs, and requires that every supplement be labeled a dietary supplement.”

There is no government definition of nutraceuticals, which is part of what causes confusion related to the term. “Dietary Supplements and Nutraceuticals: Science and Practice” defines nutraceuticals as foods, or parts of food, such as isolated nutrients, food supplements, herbal products, extracts, and processed food products, that provide health benefits to individuals and can aid in the prevention and treatment of diseases.

Both dietary supplements and nutraceuticals serve to improve the health and wellness of individuals; however, dietary supplements are generally consumed in the form of pills and contain singular components like vitamins to treat a form of deficiency, whereas nutraceuticals are normally given in a food, herbal, or extract form in order to treat diseases and disorders. By viewing each distinctly, “Dietary Supplements and Nutraceuticals: Science and Practice” demonstrates how they are both complementary and useful, while also mitigating any confusion between the two.

Peer Review Process

What is Peer Review?

Peer review is a central part of publishing quality articles. The purpose of peer reviewing is to have reviewers help a submitted article become stronger by evaluating its quality and relevance to the field, and providing suggestions and advice to authors. Reviewer ethics and responsibilities are posted in our Editorial Policies page. The following peer-review process applies for all journals published by the Functional Food Center/Food Science Publisher.

DSN’s Peer Review Process
Dietary Supplements and Nutraceuticals: Science and Practice has a single blind closed review process. Single blind review means that the author is unaware of the reviewer’s identity. This process helps reviewers make impartial decisions and give better criticism to the author, because the reviewer will not be unnecessarily influenced by the author. Closed review means that the reviewers will remain anonymous and the pre-publication history will not be made available.

Submission of a manuscript is first reviewed by a Chief Editor. If the manuscript meets all the basic requirements, the manuscript will be assigned two peer reviewers. The review process takes approximately 2-4 weeks. The reviewers will evaluate the manuscript based on its ability to serve the scientific community, its relevance to the journal, its originality, its technical aspects (such as formatting), as well as its coherence and understandability.

After analysis by reviewers it will be returned to the Chief Editor for last detail checks such as grammar and language, and then sent to the author for revisions. Several correspondences between author, editor-in-chief, and reviewers occur before final manuscript is ready. After all necessary revisions have been made and publication fees have been paid, the manuscript is published. All decisions are ultimately made by Editors-in-Chief and are whom any appeals against rejection should be addressed to.

Peer Reviewers

Authors may suggest peer reviewers via their submission’s cover letter if they wish, however, decisions about whether or not to invite the suggested reviewer(s) is ultimately up to the Editor-in-Chief. Suggested reviewers should not be people whom the author(s) have recently collaborated with or currently work with as colleagues in the same institution. All suggested peer reviewers should have contact information included.

A request for exclusion of certain individuals as peer reviewers is also acceptable, but an explanation must be provided via the submission’s cover letter. Extensive listing of individuals is not acceptable as it may impede the peer review process.

Any intentionally false information (i.e. false reviewer names and/or e-mail addresses) will result in immediate rejection of the manuscript.

Authors wishing to submit a manuscript should also read over all the Editorial Policies under the link “About the Journal”. 

Open Access Policy

Our journal provides immediate open access for our content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The Journal of Dietary Supplements and Nutraceuticals: Science and Practice (DSN) considers publication ethics to be of the utmost importance. In order to uphold the scientific integrity of our journal, we are committed to maintaining high standards of honesty and accuracy in each and every one of our publications. Unethical practices such as plagiarism and falsification of data are not tolerated.

We have outlined below the duties and responsibilities of each major party in the publication process including: editors, authors, and reviewers. This statement was based on the Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement by the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE).

References

"Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement." AACE. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), 2013. Web. 27 May 2015. 

Editors’ Responsibilities

1. Publication Decisions: After reading comments by the editorial review board, the editor may accept, reject, or suggest changes to the manuscript.
2. Review of Manuscripts: He/she must perform an initial review of the manuscript in order to check for originality. Then, the editor should send the manuscript in blind peer review form to the editorial board, who at this point, may accept, reject, or suggest changes to the manuscript.
3. Unbiased Review: The editor must review manuscripts based solely on intellectual and scientific content, and not be swayed by authors
4. Confidentiality: Prior to publication, manuscripts and related information must be kept confidential.
5. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: DSN editors may not publish and/or submit manuscript material as his or her own work without the author(s)’ written consent.

Author’s Responsibilities

1. Reporting Standards: Author’s manuscripts should be an accurate account of their research methods, results, followed by an objective empirical discussion. Manuscripts should follow the guidelines dictated on the DSN website: http://www.ffhdj.com/
2. Originality: Authors must take care to describe only their original work in their manuscripts.
3. Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publications: Authors should not submit identical manuscripts or descriptions of the same research to more than one journal simultaneously.
4. Acknowledgment of Sources: Authors should acknowledge and/or cite all sources that contributed to the manuscript, influenced its research, or helped with its completion.
5. Authorship: Individuals should be named authors only if they made significant contributions to manuscript conception, design, completion, or analysis. Other significant contributors must be named as co-authors.
6. Data Access and Retention: Authors should provide original data to DSN as well as keep copies of this data for reference.
7. Fundamental Errors in Published Works: If the author(s) discovers a significant error in their submitted manuscript, he/she must report the error to the DSN editor.

Reviewers’ Responsibilities

1. Confidentiality: Reviewers must keep all manuscript information confidential prior to publication.
2. Acknowledgement of Sources: Reviewers should ensure that authors acknowledge all relevant sources used in the study. If reviewers notice suspicious similarity of information between current or prior manuscripts, it must be reported to DSN's editor.
3. Objectivity: Manuscript feedback should be scientifically objective, without bias, clear, and supported by arguments.
4. Promptness: If a reviewer believes that he/she will not be able to thoroughly read a manuscript within the required time frame, he/she must reported this to the DSN editor so that the editor can find a replacement reviewer.

Ethics Regarding Research, Human and Animal Rights

When submitting a manuscript to our journal, all authors are expected to have read and agreed to all our author’s guidelines. In particular, any experimental research reported in the manuscript should have been performed with the approval of an appropriate ethics committee. Research carried out on humans must be in compliance with the Helsinki Declaration. Any experimental research on animals must follow internationally recognized guidelines. 

A statement to this effect must be included in the Methods section of the manuscript. This statement should include the name of the body which gave approval, with a reference number where appropriate. Informed consent must also be documented. A manuscript may be rejected if the editorial office considers that the research has not been carried out within an ethical framework. For example, if the severity of the experimental procedure is not justified by the value of the knowledge gained.

Competing interests

Our official Conflict of Interest or Competing Interests policy is defined as the following. A competing interest exists when your interpretation or presentation of information may be influenced by personal or financial interests with other people or organizations. Accordingly, authors should disclose any personal or financial interests that may influence their scientific judgment and the manuscript. Conflicts of interest will undermine the credibility of the authors, the journal, and the research they are trying to present.

Advertising Policy

Withdrawal, Cancellation and Late Payment Policy

If the author withdraws their article within the first week of submission, there is no cancellation fee. However, if an author still desires to withdraw their article after the initial stage of submission, there will be a cancellation fee of 50% of the article publication fee. If the author withdraws after the peer review process has concluded and we have sent the general article acceptance letter, they will have to pay the full article publication fee.

Once the corresponding author receives the final galley proof of their article with page numbers, the article cannot be withdrawn. There also should be no more significant changes or edits to the content of the manuscript. 

If we do not receive payment for the article and the article has not been withdrawn, a late fee will be added on top of the publication fee. The late fee amount depends on the length of time in which we do not receive a payment.

If we provide the authors with the reviewer’s comments but do not receive the final draft or any reply, then we may publish the article as is (following editing and formatting to fit our journal guidelines). Further action will be taken if the article has been published and we still do not receive payment. We will send the authors reminder emails and the details of the steps we are taking throughout this entire process to ensure that they have multiple chances of rectifying the situation. As a peer-reviewed, open access journal, we are supported by the funds provided by publishing authors. These funds are necessary to allow us to continue publishing excellent articles as well as providing discounts to authors from developing countries.

Digital Archiving Policy

The DSN journal uses the Public Knowledge Preservation Network (PKP PN) as our digital archiving policy.

The PKP PN digitally preserves OJS jounrals. The PKP PN ensures that journals can be preserved using the LOCKSS program, which offers decentralized and distributed preservation, continual open access, and preservation of original content. For more details, visit the following link. 

Copyright policy

©FFC 2022.  All publications are Open Access articles distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)

Handling cases requiring corrections, retractions, and editorial expressions of concern

Once an article has been published, no significant changes should be made to the article. Grammatical errors, typographical errors, and other small similar edits will be considered, but any changes related to the content of the article would violate the ethics of the peer-review processes. For any small edits mentioned, we require authors to notify us within 48 hours of publication. 

Once the corresponding author receives the final galley proof of their article with page numbers, the article cannot be withdrawn or retracted. There also should be no more significant changes or edits to the content of the manuscript. 

Per the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), in the event an article meets the criteria for any of the points mentioned below, an editorial expression of concern (EEoC) will be indicated for the article in question.

Criteria for an EEoC:

1. We receive inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors
2. There is evidence that the findings are unreliable but the authors’ institution will not investigate the case
3. We believe that an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been, or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive
4. An investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time.”

Plagiarism/Similarity Policy

To maintain the integrity of our journal. Each submission will be checked via the iThenticate Plagiarism Detection Software. We will share these PDF results with you if there are any sections that need to be re-written. Our editorial team pays close attention to any complete sentences or paragraphs taken word for word from another source.

Informed Consent

All authors must follow the practices of informed consent as outlined in local and or international policies when conducting their research. Informed consent must be documented. Failure to do so will result in rejection for submission/publication.

Data Sharing Policy

At the FFHD journal, we encourage data sharing from authors. This is also why we are an open-access journal. We want the information published in our journal to reach as many people as possible. Additionally, we want transparency in the research presented in our journal. This helps push the field of food science/functional food science further.

Sponsors

• Functional Food Center Inc.