Policy and Ethics

Guidelines on Publication Ethics

SciPress Ltd. is committed to ensuring ethics and quality of the publication. Conformance to standards of ethical behaviour is therefore expected of all parties involved: Authors, Editors, Reviewers, and the Publisher.

Guidelines for Authors

Authors should present an objective discussion of the significance of research work as well as sufficient details and references allowing others to replicate the experiments. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable. Review papers should also be objective, comprehensive, and accurate accounts of the state of the art. The Authors should ensure that their work is entirely original. If the work and/or wording of others have been used, it should be appropriately acknowledged. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable. Authors should not submit papers describing essentially the same research to more than one journal. The people who have made a significant contribution to the work through the development of the design and concept of the research, data processing and analysis, writing or revising the manuscript and who can be considered accountable for all aspects of the work should be identified as Authors. The corresponding Author should ensure that all co-authors have approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. Acknowledge contributors who does not qualify for authorship separately (attraction of funding or general administrative support; writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, proofreading, etc.)

Guidelines for Editors

Editors are accountable for the materials published in their journals. They are expected to act according to the moral obligation of commitment to the constant improvement of the journal while meeting the needs of readers and Authors. Editors should evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit. Editors must not use unpublished information in their own research without a written consent of the Author concerned. Editors should take reasonable responsive measures in case of complaints concerning submitted manuscripts or published papers.

All Editors have to follow the COPE’s Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Guidelines for Reviewers

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviews should be conducted objectively, and observations should be formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that Authors can use them for improving the paper. 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. 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

All Reviewers have to follow the Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Retraction Policy

By the decision of the Editors of the journals the papers published by SciPress can be retracted on demand of the Author(s), journal Editors or representatives of the publisher. Starting a retraction procedure the Editors should follow the COPE’s Retraction Guidelines.

The Editors may consider retracting a publication for the following reasons:

- unreliable research results, in case an Author, reader, editor or publisher claims that the data or conclusions presented in the paper should not be relied upon and the concerns are proved true by subsequent investigations.

- plagiarism, if a significant part of the text represents materials that were adopted from works of other Authors but not cited in a proper way.

- redundant publication, in case the paper in its entirety has been published by another publisher and the date of publication and/or signing of the license to publish by the precedence comes after the date of publication and/or signing the similar documents between the Authors and the other publisher.

- text recycling, in case a significant part of the research results overlaps previously published materials without proper crossreferencing, permission or justification.

- citation manipulation, in case an Author uses citations with the purpose of increase of the number of citations to a given work, or to papers published in a particular journal.