Publication Ethics
The Publication Ethics Policy includes the following major sections:
Foundational Elements: The preamble establishes the journal's commitment to integrity, transparency, and ethical conduct, with alignment to international standards from COPE.
Core Ethical Principles: Six fundamental values guide the journal's operations integrity, transparency, fairness, accountability, originality, and excellence.
Author Responsibilities: Comprehensive guidelines covering originality, proper authorship attribution, source acknowledgment, data retention, conflict of interest disclosure, ethical approval requirements, responsible research conduct, and prevention of duplicate publication.
Editor Responsibilities: Standards for maintaining editorial independence, managing conflicts of interest, ensuring fair peer review, providing transparent decision-making, investigating ethical concerns, handling corrections and retractions, and collaborating with the editorial board.
Peer Reviewer Responsibilities: Guidelines for maintaining confidentiality, providing impartial reviews, disclosing conflicts, offering constructive feedback, conducting ethical reviews, and meeting publication timelines.
Misconduct Management: Clear definitions of misconduct types (plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, duplicate publication, and others) with established investigation and resolution procedures, including appropriate sanctions.
Post-Publication Policies: Frameworks for handling corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern to maintain the integrity of the scientific record.
Additional Policies: Sections on open access and copyright, diversity and inclusion commitments, appeal processes, and periodic policy review procedures.