Publication ethics and malpractice statement
1. Publication and authorship:
-SCDS is committed to ensuring ethics in publication and quality of articles.
-Conformance to standards of ethical behavior is expected of all parties involved: Authors, Editors, and Reviewers.
- It is forbidden to publish same research in more than one journal.
-Misconduct and unethical behavior may be identified and brought to the attention of the editor and publisher at any time and by anyone. Whoever informs the editor of such conduct should provide sufficient evidence in order for an investigation to be initiated. All allegations will be taken seriously and treated in the same way until a successful decision is reached.
-Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
-Readers should be informed about who has funded research or the scholarly work.
-In case of suspected or alleged research or publication misconduct, editors should first seek a response from those suspected of misconduct.
-Journal is prepared to publish corrections or retractions when honest errors are admitted.
2. Author’s responsibilities:
-The authors should ensure that their work is entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, this has been appropriately cited or quoted.
-Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
- Authors are required to provide a statement that all data in article are real and authentic.
- All authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
-The corresponding author should ensure that there is a full consensus of all co-authors in approving the final version of the paper and its submission for publication.
Other authors' responsibilities are:
-To maintain accurate records of data associated with their submitted manuscript;
-To confirm that the manuscript as submitted is not under consideration or accepted for publication elsewhere;
-To confirm that all the work in the submitted manuscript is original and to acknowledge and cite content reproduced from other sources;
-To ensure that any studies involving human or animal subjects conform to national and international laws;
-To declare any potential conflicts of interest that could be viewed as exerting an undue influence on his or her duties;
-To notify promptly the journal editor or publisher if a significant error in their publication is identified;
-To cooperate with the editor and publisher to publish an erratum or addendum.
3. Peer review / responsibility for the reviewers:
-To review only manuscripts for which they have the subject expertise required to carry out a proper assessment in a timely manner;
-To respect the confidentiality of peer review and not reveal any details of a manuscript or its review.Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents.
-Be objective and constructive in their reviews and refraining from being hostile.Reviews should be conducted objectively, and observations should be formulated clearly with supporting arguments, so that authors can use them for improving the paper.
-Not allow their views to be influenced by the nationality, religious, political views or other characteristics of the authors;
-To contribute to the decision-making process and to assist in improving the quality of the published paper by reviewing the manuscript objectively;
-Reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited;
-To maintain the confidentiality of any information supplied by the editor or author;
-To be aware of any potential conflicts of interest and to alert the editor to these and if necessary withdrawing their services for that manuscript.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 connected to the papers.
- To respond in a reasonable time-frame especially if they cannot do the review;
-Decline to review if they feel unable to provide a fair and unbiased review;
-Not involved anyone else in the review of a manuscript;
-Not suggest that authors include citations to the reviewers’ work merely to increase the reviewers’ citation count; suggestions must be based on valid academic or technological reasons.
-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 excuse himself/herself from the review process.
4. Editorial responsibilities:
-To strive to meet the needs of readers and authors;
-To strive to constantly improve the journal.Editors should take all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the published material.
-To maintain the integrity of the academic record. Editors should have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept.
-Always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed;
-To ensure that peer review is fair, unbiased and timely;
-To act in a balanced, objective and fair way while carrying out their expected duties without any discriminations.Editors should evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
-To adopt and follow reasonable procedures in the events of complaints of an ethical or conflict nature. Editors should take reasonable responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper.
-To ensure that all published papers have been reviewed by suitably qualified reviewers;
-To publish guidance to authors on everything that is expected of them;
-To ensure that appropriate reviewers are selected for submissions;
-Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity.
-To ensure that peer reviewers’ identities are protected;
-To encourage reviewers to comment on the originality of submissions and to be alert toredundant publication and plagiarism;
-To identify potential new reviewers using a wide range of sources;
-To follow the COPE flowchart in case of suspected reviewer misconduct.
5. Publishing ethics issues
- Monitoring/safeguarding publishing ethics by editorial board;
- Guidelines for retracting articles;Journal should be prepared to issue retractions or corrections when provided with findings of misconduct arising from appropriate investigations.Journal editors would consider retracting a publication if they have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct or honest error.
- No plagiarism, no fraudulent data.
-Publisher and editor would take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication.
-Authors of criticized material should be given the opportunity to respond.
-Editors should make decisions on which articles to publish based on quality and suitability for the journal.
-The relationship of editors to publisher should be based firmly on the principle of editorial independence.
-In the event that the editor or publisher are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article, COPE’s guidelines would be followed in dealing with allegations.
|