The journal follows the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers.
Duties of Editors
Publication decisions
The editorial board is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published.
The editorial board will be guided by the policies of the journal and constrained by legal requirements related to libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. Members of the editorial board will confer and refer to reviewers recommendations in making this decision.
Review of Manuscripts
Editor must ensure that each manuscript is initially evaluated by the editor for originality, making use of appropriate software to do so. After passing this test, the manuscript is forwarded to two reviewers for single-blind peer review, each of whom will make a recommendation to accept, reject, or modify the manuscript. The review period will be up to 40 days.
Equality
An editor, member of the editorial board or reviewer must evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, political philosophy, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, citizenship, or religious belief of the authors.
Confidentiality
The review process takes place in two stages. In the first stage the editor must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, and other editorial advisers. This stage concludes with an agreement between the author and reviewers about the continuation of their cooperation in the open reviewing forum in which issues of confidentiality do not arise.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's, reviewer’s or any other reader’s own research without the express written consent of the author.
Duties of Reviewers
Contribution to Editorial Decisions
Reviewers assist the editorial board in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications during the open review process with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.
Qualification of Reviewers
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. The editorial board is responsible for ensuring the competence of the reviewers
Promptness
Authors will normally receive feedback about the acceptance of his/her paper for the reviewing process within three weeks and in another three weeks s(he) will normally receive the first response from the reviewers.
The editorial board is responsible for ensuring the promptness of responses in the open review process.
Confidentiality
Any manuscripts received for review in the open review process are subjected to the criteria of enhancing their rationality through the mutual rational controls of critical discussion.
Establishing Standards of Objectivity through Critical Discussion
Reviews should be conducted objectively. Authors are encouraged to make explicit the internal criteria they use to evaluate the validity of their contributions to knowledge. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments in the spirit of enhancing the quality of the paper through the mutual rational controls of critical discussion.
Acknowledgement of Sources
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. References to the ideas of others should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
Disclosure and Conflict of Interest
Information or ideas obtained through peer review must only be used with the explicit agreement of the participants in the peer review. 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 Authors
Reporting standards
Authors of original research 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 contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to judge the validity of the contributions to knowledge. Authors are asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for at least two years after publication. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
Originality and Plagiarism
Authors will submit only entirely original works, and will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should also be cited. Plagiarism takes many forms, from "passing off" another's paper as the author's own, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another's paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
Multiple Publication and Concurrent Publication
Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently, constitutes unethical publishing behaviour 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) retain 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. An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
Authorship of the Paper
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to conception, design, execution or interpretation of the reported study. Others who have made significant contribution must be listed as co-authors. Authors also ensure that all the authors have seen and agreed to the submitted version of the manuscript and their inclusion of names as co-authors. 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.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
Fundamental errors in published works
When an author or reader discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in the published work, it is the author's obligation to promptly notify the journal editor and work with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
Acknowledgement of Sources
Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.
Duties of the Publisher
Handling of unethical publishing behaviour
In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism the publisher, in close collaboration with the Editors-in-Chief, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum or, in the most severe cases, the complete retraction of the affected work. The publisher, together with the editors, shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances encourage such misconduct or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.
Equality
The Publisher does not discriminate on the basis of age, color, religion, creed, disability, marital status, veteran status, national origin, race, gender, genetic predisposition or carrier status, or sexual orientation in its publishing programs, services and activities.
Access to journal content
The publisher is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility by partnering with organizations/institutions and maintaining the digital archive.