Our publication ethics and publication malpractice statement is mainly based on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors [1] and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing [2].
The publisher, editors, reviewers and authors must follow the following ethical guidelines to ensure the delivery of research material of the highest quality.
Authorship
Authors must have substantial intellectual contributions to the conception, design, acquisition of data, analysis of results and/or interpretation of the work. All authors must be included in drafting, critically revising and approving the final version of the work. Therefore, they are expected to agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Non-author contributors should be acknowledged. All author information must be added to the submission system during manuscript submission. Additionally, individual contributions of each author should be clearly specified.
Conflicts of interest
Authors are required to disclose any conflict of interest that might bias or be seen to bias their submission. Such conflicts may stem from financial relationships, personal relationships, rivalries, beliefs, etc. Authors must reveal any conflict including 1) financial interests or arrangements with a company whose product was used in a study or is referred to in a manuscript, 2) any financial interests of arrangement with a competing company, 3) any direct payment to an author(s) from any source for the purpose of writing the manuscript, and 4) any other financial connections, direct or indirect, or other situations that might raise the question of bias in the work reported or the conclusions, implications, or opinions stated – including pertinent commercial or other sources of funding for the individual author(s) or for the associated department(s) or organization(s), personal relationships, or direct academic competition. Authors may be asked to provide additional details about the interest. Depending on the details, the article may be prevented from publication. If the manuscript is published, such information must be communicated in a note following the text, before the references.
Funding
Funding sources of the study should be clearly stated. The funder can be a person, a commercial company or a government institution, such as a research council or a university. If the funder is involved in the design or fabrication of the article, details should be clearly defined.
Ethical conduct of research using human subjects
Authors must ensure that all research works submitted to the journal comply with applicable laws and regulations of the affiliated institutions and governing bodies. If the study involves the participation of human subjects, authors are asked to obtain and document institutional ethics committee approvals, informed participant consents, and other legal permissions related to the study.
Consent of publication
In order to comply with all applicable laws and regulations, appropriate signed consents and permissions must be obtained to include any participant information. Authors should not send the signed consent forms to the journal since they include confidential participant information. Instead, authors must include a statement to the journal that informed consent was obtained from the participants and that the original forms are held by the treating institution.
Vulnerable groups and individuals
Groups or individuals that may be incapable of anticipating, coping with or recovering from the impact of the research setting must receive special consideration. They may be unable give an informed consent and are susceptible to coercion. Research may involve vulnerable groups and individuals if and only if it is impossible to carry out the research without their involvement, and the vulnerable group benefits from the outcomes of the research.
Handling confidential data
Right of privacy of the persons or organizations that are included in the work is of utmost importance and should not be violated without their informed consent. Authors must take all necessary precautions to protect participant information. Whenever necessary, authors must take measures to minimize any potential physical and psychological harm to the participants of the study.
Data sharing and reproducibility
Manuscript submissions must be accompanied by data sharing statements that include whether data of the study will be shared, what data will be shared, whether additional documents such as study protocols will be available, when and for how long the data will be available, and by what access criteria data will be shared. Authors may use Mendeley Data to store and share the research data.
Intellectual property
In line with related laws and regulations, authors are required to obtain written permissions from the copyright holders for any copyrighted material used in the study. Additionally, the original source must be properly cited.
Ethical oversight
All related persons and establishments are expected to strictly follow ethical principles throughout the publication process. COPE guidelines states that “Ethical oversight should include, but is not limited to, policies on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, handling confidential data and ethical business/marketing practices.” Accordingly, editors, editorial staff, and publisher of the journal constantly observes the compulsory compliance with ethical principles and regulations.
Complaints and appeals
Editors have large discretion in managing the editorial processes and in determining which article to be published in the journal. Editors take into account many factors including article quality, priority of the topic of interest, author/topic/geographical diversity, etc. to reach their final decisions. In some cases, authors may be dissatisfied with the editorial process and/or outcome. In these cases, complaints and appeals may be directed to [email protected]. Description of the concerns, and additional information supporting the concern, should be concise and comprehensive. Complaints and appeals will be investigated in line with relevant guidelines and flowcharts provided by COPE.
Post-publication corrections and retractions
Although all articles undergo rigorous peer review and production stages, honest errors may still be present in the published content. When detected, these errors must be corrected by publishing a correction notice that include detailed changes to the original publication. Errors that are serious enough to invalidate the results and conclusions of the original study may lead to retraction notice.
Editors’ responsibilities
Publication decisions
The editor is responsible for deciding which of the papers submitted to the journal will be published. The editor will evaluate manuscripts without regard to the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy. The decision will be based on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance to the journal’s scope. Current legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism should also be considered.
Confidentiality
The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
Disclosure
Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author’s explicit written consent.
Reviewers’ responsibilities
Contribution to editorial decisions
The peer-reviewing process assists the editor and the editorial board in making editorial decisions and may also serve the author in improving the paper.
Promptness
Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and withdraw from the review process.
Confidentiality
Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be disclosed to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
Standards of objectivity
Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
Acknowledgement of sources
Reviewers should identify cases in which relevant published work referred to in the paper has not been cited in the reference section. They should point out whether observations or arguments derived from other publications are accompanied by the respective source. Reviewers will notify the editor of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
Disclosure and conflict of interest
Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the papers.
Authors’ duties
Reporting standards
Authors of original research reports should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
Data access and retention
Authors could be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the paper for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least ten years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.
Originality, plagiarism and acknowledgement of sources
Authors will submit only entirely original works, and will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should also be cited.
Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication and copyrights
In general, papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
We apply the Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license to articles that we publish. Authors are required to transfer the copyright on acceptance of the article. Anyone can reuse these articles in whole or part for non-commercial purposes. Papers must be submitted on the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere and are not currently under consideration by another journal. The submitting author is responsible for ensuring that the article’s publication has been approved by all the other coauthors. It is a condition of submission of a paper that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
All authors should include a statement disclosing any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that may be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
Fundamental errors in published works
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and to cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper in form of an erratum.
References
[1] Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (March 2011). Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. Retrieved from http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf
[2] Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (January 2018 ). Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. Retrieved from https://publicationethics.org/files/Principles_of_Transparency_and_Best_Practice_in_Scholarly_Publishingv3_0.pdf