Publication Ethics
Our publication ethics is mainly based on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011) (https://publicationethics.org).
Duties of Editors
- Editors should actively seek the views of authors, readers, reviewers and editorial board members about ways of improving their journal’s processes
- Editors should ensure that all published reports and reviews of research have been reviewed by suitably qualified reviewers (including statistical review where appropriate)
- Editors should adopt processes that encourage accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting including technical
- Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance to the remit of the journal.
- Editors should encourage reviewers to comment on the originality of submissions and to be alert to redundant publication and plagiarism
- Editors should strive to ensure that peer review at their journal is fair, unbiased and timely.
Duties of Reviewers
- Reviewers should give comments and opinions based solely on their expertise and without any conflicts of interest.
- Reviewers should decline the review request if the manuscript’s research area is not within their expertise.
- Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of the peer review process and refrain from using information obtained during the peer review process for their own or another’s advantage, or to disadvantage or discredit others.
- Reviewers shoul remain unbiased by considerations related to the nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender or other characteristics of the authors, origins of a manuscript or by commercial considerations.
- Reviewers should inform the editor if they suspect that a manuscript contains duplicated works of other published articles.
Duties of Authors
- Authors of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed and the results, followed by an objective discussion of the significance of the work.
- Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable.
- Authors should ensure that they have written and submit only entirely original works, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited.
- Authors should not submit for consideration a manuscript that has already been published in another journal. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unethical publishing behavior and unacceptable.
- Authors should ensure that they have properly acknowledged the work of others, and should also cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately (from conversation, correspondence or discussion with third parties) must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source.
- Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, and proof of ethics approval, patient consents and copyright permissions.
