Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

The publication ethics and publication malpractice statement is primarily created on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2011).

Editors' accountabilities Publication judgments

The editor is accountable for determining which of the papers submitted to the journal will be published. The editor will appraise manuscripts without respect to the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy. The judgment will be grounded on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s legitimacy and its importance to the journal's scope. Current legal requirements regarding defamation, copyright infringement, and plagiarism should also be considered.

Confidentiality

The editor and any editorial staff must not release 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

Unpublished materials released in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's clear written consent.

Reviewers' accountabilities Contribution to editorial judgments

The peer-reviewing process supports the editor and the editorial board in making editorial decisions and may also assist the author in refining the paper.

Promptness

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should inform the editor and withdraw from the review process.

Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review must be preserved as confidential documents. They must not be released to or discussed with others excluding as authorized by the editor.

Standards of objectivity

Reviews should be steered objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should prompt their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Acknowledgement of sources

Reviewers should recognize cases in which relevant published work referred to in the paper has not been cited in the reference section. They should point out whether observations or arguments derived from other publications are convoyed by the respective source. Reviewers will inform the editor of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under deliberation and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Disclosure and conflict of interest

Advantaged information or ideas gained 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 links with any of the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the papers.

Authors' liabilities Reporting standards

Authors of original research reports should present an accurate account of the work performed, as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should comprise sufficient detail and references to let others to replicate the work. Falsified or knowingly inaccurate statements create unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

Data access and retention

Authors could be asked to offer the raw data of their study together with the paper for editorial review and should be ready to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should warrant accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least ten years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning exclusive data do not prohibit their release.

Originality, plagiarism and acknowledgement of sources

Authors will submit only wholly original works, and will properly name or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been powerful in determining the nature of the reported work should also be named.

Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication

In general, papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal creates unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

Manuscripts which have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted. In addition, manuscripts under review by the journal should not be resubmitted to copyrighted publications.

However, by submitting a manuscript, the author(s) preserve the rights to the published material. In case of publication, they permit the use of their work under a CC-BY license [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/], which allows others to copy, distribute and transmit the work, as well as to adapt the work and to make commercial use of it. 3