Publication Ethics and Malpractice Policy

Duties / Responsibilities of Authors:

• All manuscripts must be the original work of authors and not evidence plagiarism.
• Authorship of a manuscript should be limited to authors who have made significant contributions.
• Authors must not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently.
• Authors must properly and accurately acknowledge the work of others.
• Authors should disclose any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript and acknowledge individuals or organisations that have provided financial support for research.
• Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with manuscripts for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data if possible.

Duties / Responsibilities of Editors:

• Editors are responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal should be reviewed or published.
• Editors should ensure the integrity of the publication review process. As such, editors should not reveal either the identity of authors of manuscripts to the reviewers, or the identity of reviewers to authors.
• Editors must treat received manuscripts for review as confidential documents and must not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher.
• Editors and any editorial staff must not use materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript (published or unpublished) for their own research without the author’s written authorization.
• Editors shall conduct proper and fair investigation into ethical complaints.

Responsibility of Reviewers:

• Reviewers should keep all information regarding papers confidential and treat them as privileged information.
• Reviews should be conducted objectively, with no personal criticism of the author.
• Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
• Reviewers should complete their reviews within a specified timeframe.
• Reviewers should not review 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.