Publication ethics and malpractice statement

(based on the Publishing Ethics Resource Kit by Elsevier and COPE Code of Conduct)

Duties and responsibilities of Editors

Editors should be responsible for everything published in their journals. They should strive to meet the needs of readers and authors; constantly improve the journal; ensure the quality of the material they publish; maintain the integrity of the academic record; always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

Editors should take all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the material they publish. Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based only on the paper’s importance, originality, and clarity, and the study’s relevance to the remit of the journal.

Editors should ensure that research material they publish conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines, should protect the confidentiality of individual information.

Whenever it is recognised that a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distorted report has been published, it must be corrected promptly and with due prominence. An editor must not use unpublished information in the editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.

Duties and responsibilities of Authors

Authors should present an objective discussion of the significance of research work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Review articles should also be objective, comprehensive, and accurate accounts of the state of the art. The authors should ensure that their work is entirely original, and if the work and/or words of others have been used, this has been appropriately acknowledged. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Authors should not submit articles describing essentially the same research to more than one journal. 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.

Duties and responsibilities of Reviewers

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviews should be conducted objectively, and observations should be formulated clearly with supporting arguments, so that authors can use them for improving the paper. 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 from the review process. 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.