Anti-plagiarism policy and publication bad practices

ORIGINALITY AND PLAGIARISM

Authors must ensure that the data and results included in the manuscript are original and have not been copied, fabricated, falsified or manipulated. Plagiarism in all its forms, multiple or redundant publication, and fabrication or manipulation of data constitute serious ethical misconduct and are considered scientific fraud.

Authors should not submit any manuscript that is being considered for publication simultaneously by another journal, and should not submit their manuscript to another journal until they are notified that it has been rejected or have voluntarily withdrawn it from publication.

RESPONSIBILITY OF AUTHORS

  • Manuscripts submitted to the journal for publication must be based on original and unpublished research. They should include the data obtained and used, as well as an objective discussion of the results. They should provide sufficient information to allow any specialist to reproduce the research and confirm or refute the interpretations defended in the manuscript.
  • Authors should be aware of and refrain from engaging in scientific misconduct and violating editorial ethics.
  • Authors should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate manipulation of data.
  • All authors must ensure that the data and results reported in the manuscript are original and have not been copied, fabricated, falsified or manipulated.
  • Plagiarism in all its forms, multiple or redundant publication, as well as invention or manipulation of data constitute serious ethical misconduct and are considered scientific fraud.
  • Authors must provide appropriate authorship and acknowledgement. Authors should refrain from deliberately underrepresenting their relationship to the published work. All authors must have contributed significantly to the research.
  • In case of any direct or indirect conflict of interest with the editors or members of the Editorial Team, the author should inform the journal.
  • No significant part of the article will have been previously published as an article or chapter, nor will it be considered for publication elsewhere.
  • In the event that the author discovers a serious error in his or her manuscript, he or she should inform the journal editors as soon as possible to modify the manuscript, withdraw it, retract it, or publish a correction or errata notice.
  • If the Editorial Team detects the possible error, authors must demonstrate that their manuscript is error-free.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE EDITOR

  • The Editorial Team will be impartial in handling manuscripts submitted for publication and must respect the intellectual independence of the authors, who should be given the right of reply if they receive a negative review.
  • The members of the Editorial Team are obliged to maintain confidentiality about the manuscripts submitted and their content until they have been accepted for publication. Only then can their title and authorship be communicated.
  • In addition, no member of the Editorial Team may use the data, lines of inquiry, or interpretations in unpublished work for his or her own research, except with the express written consent of the author.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF REVIEWERS

  • Reviewers should be aware of and consider the editorial policy and the statement of ethics and malpractice in publishing.
  • Reviewers should have significant scientific expertise or work experience in their field recognized by their peers. Prospective reviewers should provide accurate personal and professional information about their experience.
  • All reviewers must reject the proposal to review a manuscript if they consider that they are not qualified to review it, if they consider that their evaluation will not be objective, or if they think that they may have a conflict of interest.
  • Reviewed articles are treated confidentially by the reviewers and members of the journal's Editorial Team.

 

 

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Any business, financial or personal relationship that may influence the results and conclusions of the study, or its review process, must be declared at the time of manuscript submission. In addition, all sources of financial support for the study should be reported. This information will be included in the article if it is accepted for publication.

Manuscripts that have a conflict of interest as a result of competitive, collaborative, or any other type of relationship or connection with the institutions related to the paper will not be considered.

Members of the Editorial Team and reviewers will withdraw in the event of any conflict of interest in relation to an author(s) or the content of a manuscript to be reviewed.

The journal will avoid any conflict of interest between authors, reviewers and members of the Editorial Team.

 

PUBLICATION MALPRACTICES

Members of the journal's Editorial Team do not encourage misconduct of any kind and will attempt to prevent malpractice by informing authors and reviewers of the ethical conduct required of them.

Editorial staff members and reviewers are requested to be aware of any possible malpractice in order to identify manuscripts in which malpractice has occurred or appears to have occurred in research of any kind, in order to address actions accordingly.

In the event of malpractice, it shall be documented accordingly and all related questions shall be sought. All relevant documents, in particular manuscripts and disputed evaluation reports, shall be retained.

In case of malpractice, the members of the Editorial Team are responsible for solving the problem. They will contact the author or publications involved. The author has the opportunity to respond and substantiate the allegation.

In the event that a malpractice has occurred or appears to have occurred, or in the event that some corrections are needed, the Editorial Team will deal with the different cases following COPE's recommendations in this regard. Great care will be taken to distinguish cases of simple human error from deliberate intent to defraud.

The Editorial Team will consider withdrawal of a publication in cases of misconduct, issuing a note of expression of concern if there is any inconclusive evidence of malpractice; or it may write a request for correction of any misleading part of the text.

 

CORRECTION AND RETRACTION POLICIES

WITHDRAWAL OF AN ARTICLE

An article may be withdrawn at any time before it is formally published online in its final form with full information about volume, issue, page numbers, etc. If the article withdrawal request has been initiated by the author, the author must send a signed letter to the Editorial Team prior to article withdrawal. The Editorial Team may withdraw an article if it violates the ethical guidelines for publication, as a result of duplicate publication, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, multiple submissions, false claims of authorship. In both cases, the PDF of the article will be removed and a note that the article has been withdrawn will be displayed.

CORRECTION OF AN ARTICLE

If an error is discovered in an article already published, an erratum will be published afterwards. Only significant corrections (e.g., incorrectly published information) will be published, but minor corrections, such as spelling or grammatical errors that do not alter the understanding of the paper, will not be corrected. When a correction is published, the reference of the original article will be provided in the corrected PDF and vice versa. In any case, only corrections will be mentioned.

The original article will remain unchanged, but the correction link will be available on the article page. This will help readers to download the PDF files. An erratum will be published only when errors are recognized in the published article that went unnoticed during editing and layout in figures, tables, etc.

The correction of the article will be published when the authors realize that errors in the published article could affect the validity of the scientific content or its accuracy. If a reader detects an error in a published article, he or she may send a letter to the Editorial Coordinator. The author, the editor and a reviewer would evaluate the validity of the error reported. The correction of the article will be published with reference to the letter received and the answers provided by the author.

In the event that the authors have inadvertently omitted important information during the submission of the manuscript, an Addendum may be published if they wish to add this content to the article after publication of the article. The information provided for this addendum will undergo external peer review prior to acceptance by the journal. In any case, the publication of an addendum is very rare and the Editorial Team will only allow it if the information is very essential to understand an important part of the already published article.

RETRACTION OF ARTICLES AND EXPRESSIONS OF CONCERN

The journal reserves the right to retract articles that, subsequent to publication, are determined to be unreliable due to unintentional error, scientific fraud or misconduct: fabrication of data, manipulation or appropriation, plagiarism of text and redundant or duplicate publication, omission of references to sources consulted, use of content without permission or without justification, etc. The purpose of the retraction is to correct the scientific publication record and, therefore, to ensure its integrity.

In case there is a conflict regarding duplicate publication caused by simultaneous publication of the same article in two different journals, the date on which the manuscript was received by each journal will be used to decide which of the two versions should be withdrawn.

The journal will publish the notice of retraction in the volume in which the article in question was published and the notice will mention the reasons for the retraction, in order to differentiate between misconduct or unintentional error. The journal will notify the authorities responsible for the authors' institution of the retraction. The decision to retract an article should be reached as soon as possible to prevent other researchers from citing the article without knowing the doubts about its reliability.

The retracted article will remain available in the electronic edition of the journal and will be clearly and unambiguously identified as retracted to distinguish retractions from other corrections or comments.

Prior to the final retraction, the journal may issue an expression of concern providing the necessary information with the same wording as that used for a retraction. The expression of concern will be used for as short a period as possible and will be withdrawn or replaced, if appropriate, by the formal retraction of the article.