Ethics & Malpractice Statement

 

General Overview

 

Duties of Editors

Accountability and Plagiarism: The editors of a peer-reviewed journal are accountable and responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. It is our routine procedure to run all submissions through plagiarism detection software. The result of manuscript screening should be 25% of the maximum similarity. Also, the Editorial Board has the right to decline the submission when it is found that the manuscript is detected with plagiarism.

Fair play: An editor should evaluate manuscripts for those intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Confidentiality: The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. 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.

 

Duties of Reviewers

Peer-reviewers must keep information pertaining to the manuscript confidential. Reviewers must bring to the attention of the Editor-in-Chief any information that may be a reason to reject the publication of a manuscript. Reviewers must evaluate manuscripts only for their intellectual content.

 

Duties of Authors

Reporting standards: Authors should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate data manipulation. Authors should describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed by others.

Originality, plagiarism, and acknowledgment of sources: Authors should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarized, and has not been published elsewhere - fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. If an author has used the work and/or words of others, this original is been appropriately cited or quoted and accurately reflects individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting.

Authorship of the Paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.