Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Abstract

The publication of a peer reviewed journal requires continuous work, responsibility, liability and collaboration from all involved parties: authors, reviewers, chief editor, managing editors, associate editors, editors and board members. The chief editor/ editors have the responsibility of keeping/monitoring the publishing ethics and maintaining the academic record. The Editorial Board assume their responsibility on verifying the articles of fraudulent data or plagiarism. The editorial team’s goal is to maintain the publication at the highest publication standards, implying: good quality, original, research based articles, but also corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies, if needed. We appreciate the contributions of every involved party to the work that we publish.

 

Publication and Authorship:

• All submitted papers are subject to strict blind peer review process by at least two national and international reviewers;
• The rejected articles are not being resent for reviewing;
• The papers before being sent for reviewing are first checked by anti-plagiarism software. Authors should provide all sources of data used in the research. Plagiarism in all its forms is unethical and it is unacceptable.

Authors' responsibilities:

• Authors must ensure that the submitted article is their original work, which has not been previously published;
• Authors must ensure that the submitted article has not been considered for publication elsewhere;
• Authors must state that all data in the paper are real and authentic;
• Authors must report any errors in their published paper to the Chief Editor/ Editors;
• Authors should provide revised version of their article, according to the reviewers' recommendations.

Reviewers' responsibilities:

• Any manuscript received for reviewing will be treated as confidential document;
• Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors;
• Reviews should be conducted objectively, and observations should be formulated clearly with supporting arguments, so that authors can use them for improving the paper;
• Reviewers should inform the Chief editor/editors on any substantial similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper;
• 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.

Chief Editor/ Editors' responsibilities:

• Editors decide which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published;
• Editors are responsible for the contents and overall quality of the publication;
• Editors should evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit;
• Peer review assists the editors in making editorial decisions. Editors should publish only peer reviewed accepted articles;
• Editors should have a clear picture of a research's funding sources;
• An editor must not use unpublished information in the editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.

Plagiarism Policy:

      Whether intentional or not, plagiarism is a serious violation. Plagiarism is the copying of ideas, text, data and other creative work (e.g. tables, figures and graphs) and presenting it as original research without proper citation. We define plagiarism as a case in which a paper reproduces another work with at least 25% similarity and without citation.

      If evidence of plagiarism is found before/after acceptance or after publication of the paper, the author will be offered a chance for rebuttal. If the arguments are not found to be satisfactory, the manuscript will be retracted and the author sanctioned from publishing papers for a period to be determined by the responsible Editor(s).