Ethical oversight
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
The journal provides authors with information about the journal, submission criteria, manuscript preparation, and the submission process:
- clear definition of authorship;
- responsibilities of authors and correspondent author;
- copyright policy;
- research and publication ethics, including conflicts of interest;
- review process.
The journal provides reviewers with information about the article review process, review criteria, how to review, and the process of submitting an article for possible further publication:
- how reviewers are selected and how many reviewers review each manuscript;
- duties of reviewers;
- review ethics, including conflicts of interest, process confidentiality policies, and copyrighted materials;
- how to conduct the inspection and the allotted time;
- what reviewers should do if they suspect research or publication misconduct;
- how to prepare a review report;
- how decisions on acceptance, revision and rejection are made;
- procedures for consideration of submitted reviews.
The journal adopts and publishes clear guidelines for the ethical conduct of research. The journal's discipline rules and regulations should be consulted to ensure that the journal's policies reflect these standards. The journal scrutinizes submitted papers to ensure they comply with research ethics guidelines. The implementation and documentation of processes on the website and links to relevant COPE resources are reviewed:
- practices such as informed consent, prior ethical approval and adherence to international research guidelines are used;
- investigating concerns raised about the ethics of any research;
- prevention of potential cases of misconduct — for example, review procedures: plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, citation manipulation, peer review manipulation, authorship violations.
A key element of the ethical management of the journal is transparency. The magazine has a unique name; the website identifies the publisher and also shows online numbers, has an ISSN, contact information, publication frequency, peer review model, and a clear statement of purpose and scope. The journal ensures ethical and effective governance, for example: the website is non-misleading, showing the names and affiliations of all editorial board members.
For more details see “Ethical oversight” in “Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing” (COPE), published 15 September 2022 (https://publicationethics.org/node/19881).
