Ethics in Publishing :

Professional and Ethical Standards for Publishing in the this Journal. 
 
1. Ethics : As implicit conditions for publishing in this Journal, authors and Researchers are expected to adhere to basic standards of professional ethics and conduct that are common across all areas of scholarly publishing. In the publication agreement authors warrant that their work is original and has not been published elsewhere, nor under consideration for publication. All parties are also expected to conform to common standards of professional respect and civility. 

Fortunately, in Scientific Community these standards are upheld in the overwhelming majority of instances. However, misunderstandings and lapses in professional conduct do occur, including instances (or accusations) of plagiarism, inadequate attribution, conflicts of interest, or personally abusive behavior toward referees, authors, editors, or journal staff members. This document summarizes the expected standards of professional and ethical conduct, with specific application to publication in this Journal.  


2. Authorship : When determining the credit for a piece of work, authors should ensure that all those who have made a significant contribution are given the opportunity to be cited as authors. Other individuals who have contributed to the study should also be acknowledged, but not cited as authors. Corresponding author is supposed to have this responsibility. Some co-authors may be accountable for the entire article, for example those who provide critical data, write the manuscript, present the findings at conferences or provide leadership for junior colleagues. Other co-authors may be responsible for specific contributions to a paper. Authors may wish to include a statement in the acknowledgments to describe the actual contribution of each co-author. 

All authors should receive the final version of the submitted manuscript, agree to its submission and take appropriate responsibility for it. Any individual unwilling or unable to accept appropriate responsibility for a manuscript should not be a co-author. 

All authors should be consulted about changes to authorship (e.g. the list of authors) during the publication process, and it should be clear to the journal that they have given their consent. 

It is unethical to publish articles describing essentially the same studies or results in more than one primary research journal. Submitting the same article to more than one journal concurrently is unethical and unacceptable. Exceptions to this rule may be made for review articles or conference papers, in which case authors should consult with journal Editor before submission.  

3. Plagiarism and Republication : “Plagiarism” is the act of reproducing text or other materials from other papers / published sources without properly crediting the source. Such material is regarded as being plagiarized regardless of whether it is cited literally or has been modified or paraphrased. Plagiarism represents a serious ethical breach, and may constitute legal breach of copyright if the reproduced material has been previously published. Plagiarism constitutes unethical scientific behavior and is never acceptable. Plagiarism ranges from the unreferenced use of others’ ideas to submission of a complete paper under ‘new’ authorship. ‘Self-plagiarism’ is the production of many papers with almost the same content by the same authors. Therefore all sources for the work should be disclosed and permission sought for using large amounts of other people’s material.  

Authors who wish to quote directly from other published work must fully cite the original reference, and include any cited text in quotation marks. They should also take the necessary permission. Authors are discouraged from including such direct quotations in papers, apart from rare instances. Figures and Tables may only be reproduced with permission and must be fully cited in the figure caption. Necessary permission for reproduction should be taken by authors from respective authorities / copyright owners. This will be normally apply to Review articles and Book Chapters. However, we do not expect authors to reproduce / re-use Figures and Tables previously published by other authors / researchers in “Research Articles” and for “Letters”.  

If a possible breach of policy or misconduct is brought to our attention we will ask the authors to respond. Whilst journals do not have the resources or legal legitimacy fully to investigate scientific misconduct, we will seek advice from an article’s referees or the journal’s Editorial Board. If there is then evidence that trust has been significantly compromised by an author’s or referee’s actions, we will attempt to redress the matter by : 

1. Appropriate corrections in the printed and online journal;
2. Refusing to consider an author’s future work, for a given period;
3. Retracting the authors work as a punishment;
4. Communications to employers or funding agencies or Government Authorities (Rarely);

In all cases we will also contact affected authors and editors of other journals.