Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
International Journal of Ethics and Society (IJES) is an international, quarterly, peer reviewed, open access journal that aims to receive and publish high quality scientific papers involved in Ethics in Biology and Medical Science, Ethics in Environmental & Ecological Sciences, Ethics in Social Sciences, Ethics in Philosophical Sciences, Ethics in Technical Sciences, Ethics in Economic Sciences from the scientist around the world. This academic journal published in online form and welcomes manuscripts that meet the general criteria of novelty and scientific importance. One of the most important objectives of the IJES is to ensure that the papers reflect a wide range of topics regarding journal scopes; perform a fair, scientific, fast, as well as high quality peer review process; providing a wide and varied geographical coverage of articles worldwide; and publishing articles that have a reliable source of scientific information for the audience. Acceptable types of submissions include original article, review articles, short communication, case report, letter to the editor and editorial on the journal's scopes research areas. IJES is an official journal owned by Iranian Association of Ethics in Science & Technology.
Ethics and security
International Journal of Ethics and Society editor may seek advice about submitted papers on any aspect of a paper that raises concerns, for example, ethical issues or issues of data or materials access. It is important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer, etc. All research must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework.
1. Responsibility of the Author
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 contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
Data access and retention
Authors could be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the paper for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure 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 proprietary data do not preclude their release.
Originality
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.
Authors should express their primary ideas and tasks explicitly even if they have been revised and quoted objectively. If precise sentences or paragraphs are seen in a research article, which seems it is an extract from an essay or a citation from another author, this sentence should be put in quotation marks. The essay ought to specify the origin of each applied datum and also all data. If specific data collection is applied by another author or this author, it should inform the other published or unpublished tasks. Authors should not submit an article that has been previously submitted to this journal, assessed, and finally disapproved by the editor. If the first version was disapproved and the author is willing to submit a modified version for assessment, the essay resubmission justification should be clearly explained to the author or the editor. The permission for essay resubmission for the second time is possible in a particular situation.
Originality and Duplicate Publication
Manuscripts under review or published by other journals will not be accepted for publication in International Journal of Ethics and Society, and articles published in this journal are not allowed to be reproduced in whole or in part in any type of publication without permission of the Editorial Board in English, Persian or any other language. Figures and tables can be used freely if original source is verified according to Creative Commons Non-Commercial License. It is mandatory for all authors to resolve any copyright issues when citing a figure or table from a different journal that is not open access.
Plagiarism
The article registration will inform all authors by sending an e-mail to the journal website. It is evident that inserting the author’s name in the article is considered as his/her main role in writing the essay if the essay authors have no role in writing the essay and their name has not been mentioned. It is necessary to inform the received information by e-mail immediately. All the authors of the article are responsible for the origin of the work. All assessment rights for plagiarism checking in the journal are reserved.
Plagiarism has a variety of forms:
- To insert the authors and researchers’ names who have no role in the article;
- To copy or repeat the most significant part of another article (even if the copied article is related to the author of a new essay);
- To show the outcome and results of other research to his/her own;
- To express false results, in contrast with scientific findings or distort the outcomes of the research;
- Continuous publishing by a single author in some journals;
- To apply unreliable data or manipulate research data.
The journal editors will study plagiarism items for preserving the validity and the efforts of researchers without any overlook or indulgence based on the level of plagiarism then legally pursued as follows:
- The article will be disapproved, and in case of publishing, it will be disappeared from the site;
- The name of the authors will be inserted in the blacklist journals of the publisher;
- It will be prosecuted by qualified legal and judicial references;
- By writing an official letter, the plagiarism file is shared with other related domestic and foreign journals;
- By writing an official letter to the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, databases, universities, institutes, and journals or wherever the author has used the printing rate of this article, they are informed of the procedure.
Multiple, redundant, or concurrent publications
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 constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Manuscripts that have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted. In addition, manuscripts under review by one journal should not be submitted to other publications while the manuscript is under review. For the publication of creative works, the journal may make exceptions to the previously published rule; please consult the editor.
Acknowledgment 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. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission of the author of the work involved in these services.
Authorship and Author’s Responsibility
The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest statements, are properly completed. The corresponding author should respond to editorial queries throughout the submission and peer review process in a timely manner, and should cooperate with any requests from the journal after publication. International Journal of Ethics and Society does not allow adding authors or changing the first or the corresponding authors after the final acceptance of the article. If any author wishes to be removed from the byline, he or she should submit a letter signed by the author, as well as all other authors, indicating his or her wish to be deleted from the list of authors. Any change in the name order in the byline requires a letter signed by all authors indicting agreement with the same.
Authorship of the paper
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where others have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included in 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.
All the mentioned authors should work seriously in a research article to be responsible for the results. The authorship should be shared in proportion to the different supporting. Authors should accept the responsibility and validity of the task, which includes the authorship validity or compilation, only for the task, which they have done practically, or they have helped. Faculty members should list the student’s name as the main author if the article is derived from a dissertation or thesis of a student. The corresponding author who submits the article to the journal should send one sheet or one version of the article to all shared co-authors to satisfy them by article submission and publishing.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts 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. Examples of potential conflicts of interest which should be disclosed include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed to the editor at the earliest stage possible. Readers should be informed about who has funded the research and the role of the funders in the research.
Fundamental errors in published works
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, the author must promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper. If the editor or the publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error, the author must promptly retract or correct the paper or provide evidence to the editor of the correctness of the original paper.
Conflict of Interests
Authors are required to disclose all relationships or interests in relation to their work. All submitted manuscripts must include a ‘Conflict of Interest’ section at the end of the manuscript listing all financial and non-financial conflict of interests. Where authors have no conflict of interests, the statement should read “The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.” A competing interest exists when the authors’ interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by their personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations.
Authors should disclose any financial competing interests but also any non-financial competing interests that may cause them embarrassment if they were to become public after the publication of the article. Financial competing interests include (but are not limited to):
- Research grants from funding agencies (The research funder and the grant number are required)
- Financial support for educational programs
- Employment or consultation
- Position on advisory board or board of directors or other type of management relationships
- Financial relationships, for example Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the article, either now or in the future.
- Intellectual property rights (e.g. patents, copyrights and royalties from such rights)
- Holdings of spouse and/or children that may have financial interest in the work
In addition, non-financial interests that may be important to readers should be disclosed. These may include but are not limited to political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, and intellectual competing interests.
Editors may ask for further information relating to competing interests. Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any competing interests and will be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists.
Double-blind peer-review
The journal follows a double-blind peer review in which the authors do not know the reviewers and vice versa. The authors should respect the confidentiality of the assessment process and not reveal their identity to reviewers and vice versa. For instance, the article should not include any information like self-revelation so that the reviewer can identify the author. Authors should not publish their submitted articles on personal or social websites (either articles or first versions), because authors can be identified easily by reviewers on the Web. Authors should not mention the people as reviewers where previously the manuscript or a copy has been studied and suggested his/her recommendations because this awareness or knowledge is contrary to the double-blind peer-review process.
Precision
The authors are finally responsible for the whole content of the submitted article to the journal of Geography and Development (GD). Authors are in charge of representing a precise perspective of the done research as well as an objective debate, especially for the study’s importance. Authors should report their findings thoroughly, not eliminating data relevant to the text or structure of research questions. Regardless of supporting the expected outcomes or being in contrast, results should be reported. Authors should present the features or relevant characteristics of their research, their findings, and their interpretation precisely. Fundamental suggestions, theories, methods, and research schemes relevant to findings and their interpretations should be revealed and subjected.
The article should contain all the necessary details and resources in a way that researchers access the same data collection to repeat the research. If an author discovers a mistake or an important carelessness, he/she is responsible for informing the editor-in-chief and the procedure immediately to cooperate with the article modification or revision. If the author or publication, by a third person or party, understands that the published article is suffering from a monumental error, the author is responsible for applying the article modification or revision as well as providing the evidence for the editor based on the precision and correction of the main article.
Human rights
Authors are in charge of preserving and supporting privacy, human munificence, human freedom, and welfare, as well as research participants. The articles involved in human affairs (field studies, simulations, interviews) should be done according to human rights regulations.
Being up to date
Authors should act quickly and appropriately to revise and modify the articles. If an author cannot act before the deadline (maximum one month), he/she should contact the editor-in-chief for an extension or refusal from the assessment process at once.
2. Responsibility of the Editor
The editor’s chief responsibility is to determine which submissions to the journal will be published. He/she must ensure that decisions are made based on the manuscript’s merit and that the author’s race, gender, religious or political beliefs, ethnicity, or citizenship are not considered.
Dealing with Possible Misconduct
- Editors have a duty to act if they suspect misconduct or if an allegation of misconduct is brought to them. This duty extends to both published and unpublished articles.
- Editors should not simply reject manuscripts that raise concerns about possible misconduct. They are ethically obliged to pursue alleged cases.
- Editors should follow the COPE flowcharts where applicable.
- Editors should first seek a response from those suspected of misconduct. If they are not satisfied with the response, they should ask the relevant employers, or institution, or some appropriate body (perhaps a regulatory body or national research integrity organization) to investigate.
- Editors should make all reasonable efforts to ensure that a proper investigation into alleged misconduct is conducted; if this does not happen, editors should make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem. This is an onerous but important duty.
Confidentiality
Information concerning a submitted manuscript should only be revealed to the corresponding author, reviewers, editorial board members, or the publisher as required or otherwise appropriate.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Reviewers will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their research purposes without the author’s explicit written consent. Reviewers will recuse themselves from reviewing manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers. Editors should follow the procedure set out in the COPE flowchart. Editors should respond promptly to complaints and should ensure there is a way for dissatisfied complainants to take complaints further.
Process to Manage Research and Publication Misconduct
The editorial board will incessantly work towards observing publication misconduct such as redundant (duplicate) publication, plagiarism, fraudulent or fabricated data, changes in authorship, undisclosed conflict of interest, ethical problem with a submitted manuscript, a reviewer who has appropriated an author’s idea or data, complaints against editors, and etc. When the journal faces suspected cases of research and publication misconduct, the resolving process will be followed by guidelines provided by the "Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)". The complete guidelines appear on COPE website: http://www.publicationethics.org.uk.
Independence
Editors should preserve their pen and paper independence to work and make sure that authors are free to write. The editors are responsible for accepting or refusing the articles, which typically depend on the idea, and recommendations of reviewers; by the way, the articles which are inappropriate from the point of view of editors are probably refused without reviewers’ assessment.
No biases
Editors should improve their position score and circumstances confidentially, constructively, and unbiasedly. Editors carry the essay review duty only based on scientific merits. Editors should act unbiased, without personal or ideological advocacy.
Conflict of Benefits
Editors should avoid any action, which increases conflicts of benefits with its unreasonable aspect. For instance, to avoid potential conflict of benefits, the editor is not allowed to publish an article, which is not clearly identified, reviewed, or partly reviewed. Liability, writing authority, and editing each article by the editor, submitted to the journal of Geography and Development (GD), should be submitted by the editor to another qualified person like the previous editor or one of the members of the editorial boards. Editors should avoid any article study, which is in contrast with their real or potential conflict of benefits. The contrast may be due to the competitive, partnership, financial or other relations with any other companies, organizations, or institutes related to the article. The examples related to the relations, which show conflicts of benefits of the editor or author are:
- Both the author and editor have been employed by one institute;
- The editor has been one member of the dissertation committee of the author or vice versa;
- The editor and the author are currently co-workers and co-authors in another article or have been co-authors in an article in the past two years.
Double-Blind Peer-Review
The journal follows a double-blind peer-review in which authors do not know the reviewers and vice versa. Assessment standards should be expressed clearly and concisely.
Confidentiality
Editors and their editorial boards are not allowed to reveal relevant information about the article to anyone but reviewers and authors. Official and formal procedures should be determined to preserve the confidentiality of the assessment process. Editors are expected to make sure the confidentiality of the double-blind peer-review process and lack of information revelation, which may reveal the author’s identity to reviewers and vice versa. Reviewers’ anonymity can be breached only when reviewers permit editors to reveal their identities. Editors should make sure that their editorial boards are compatible and coordinated with them. Some parts of a submitted article, which has not been published, are not allowed to be used in the personal research of an editor without the author’s written permission. Confidential ideas or information, which has been got by article assessment, should be preserved privately, not to be used for private benefits.
Assessment Quality
Typically, two reviewers are invited to express their idea about an article. The editor should evaluate all assessments qualitatively. The editor may rarely edit an assessed article before submitting it to the author (for example, eliminating an expression, which reveals the reviewer’s identity or not sending the assessed article in case it is not constructive or appropriate. Rankings and scores of assessment quality, as well as other functional features, are assessed periodically by the editor to make sure of the optimized operation of the JOURNAL. These scores and rankings should help decision-making in the field of reappointment of reviewing teams and continuous requests. Individual operation data should be accessible to editors and kept confidential.
Being up to date
To guarantee the article’s assessment and quick response to the authors’ requests about assessment status by a determined deadline (maximum one week after receiving the article) editors should apply primary assessment and reviewer selection.
Quality of decision
Editors are responsible for describing the decisions of the editorial boards for authors and their articles. Editors should write high-quality letters where these letters represent the combination of the reviewers’ recommendations and extra suggestions for another author. Editors should not attach the result of the decision in the letter format without an explanation of the advice and suggestions of the reviewer.
Precision
As the editor receives convincing evidence from the reviewer based on false concepts or results of an unpublished article, he should inform procedure to the author. If similar evidence about an article were published, the editor should apply an emergency modified publishing, return the previous one, and express relevant matters with other notes appropriately.
Authority
The Editor is responsible for the final authority and responsibility of the journal. They should respect the journal formation (such as readers, authors, reviewers, editors, and staff of the editorial boards) and try his/her best for the truthful and honest content of the journal as well as continuous improvement. The Editor should select members of the editorial boards based on the written assessment board, determine their responsibilities and evaluate their actions regularly.
Operation
The Editor should design the operation in full operational detail, taking account of all policy, technical, economic, financial, institutional, management, environmental, socio-cultural, and gender-related aspects. The journal is going to be published based on annual auditing related to admission level, publishing intervals, submitted articles percentage for revision and foreign revision as well as the operation data. Operation indexes ought to improve the journal operation for assessing the revolution of articles along with publishing processes.
3. Responsibility of Reviewers
Purpose of Peer-Review
The peer-review process is a crucial component in helping the editor and/or editorial board reach editorial or publishing decisions and may also serve the author in improving the quality of the submission.
Promptness
A potential reviewer should withdraw from the review process if he/she feels unqualified to assess the contribution or cannot provide an assessment in a timely manner as defined by the editor.
Confidentiality
Manuscripts for review must be considered confidential documents. Information concerning the manuscripts should not be discussed with others without the approval of the editor.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Editors and editorial board members will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their research purposes without the author’s explicit written consent. Editors will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers; instead, they will ask another member of the editorial board to handle the manuscript.
Reviewers should abstain from assessing the articles, which they think are involved in conflicts of benefits such as shared financial, organizational, and personal benefits or any connections with other companies, institutes, or related individuals with the essay, the reviewers who may have conflicts of benefits in the field of a special article. This conflict should be clarified for the editor to determine the appropriate level of assessment. For instance, there is a situation where the reviewer is editing and evaluating a similar article in that journal or another along with a similar research article, keep in mind that under the process of double-blind peer-review, as reviewers do not know the authors, it is unlikely that reviewers are aware of the involved conflicts of benefits among authors. Thus, they are not limited by these conflicts. If reviewers become aware of such conflicts, they should inform the editor of the journal.
Objectivity
Reviewers should strive to be objective in their assessments. Reviewers’ comments should be clearly expressed and supported by data or arguments. Personal criticism of the author(s) is not appropriate.
Acknowledgment of sources
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported 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.
Reciprocal communication
Evaluation and studying are professional activities for journals, which have valued the whole profession to be encouraged. It is usually expected that the researchers who submit their articles to a journal accept the journal’s invitation for their article assessment.
Right to refuse and rejection
Abstinence or rejection of the assessment of an article based on time or status is essential. For example, a reviewer who is not qualified enough to review a research article should refrain from assessing the article. By potential conflicts of benefits, reviewers should abstain from their assessment. If the reviewers are asked to assess an article, which has been previously assessed, they should inform the editor of primary evaluation details unless they are asked to reassess.
Double-Blind peer-review
The publication has a process of double-blind peer-review. Reviewers should abstain from assessing the articles, in which they have previously provided written suggestions in the first version. If a reviewer is aware of the author’s identity or co-author’s identity, is involved naturally in assessing the article. Reviewers are also responsible for avoiding writing, telling, and doing whatever reveals their identity for the author.
No biases
Reviewers should assess articles objectively, fairly, and professionally. They are recommended to avoid any personal bias in their reviews.
Confidentiality
Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of the assessment process. It is important to recognize whether this article is confidential or not. Reviewers should not discuss with anyone except the editor about the article and they are not allowed to transfer the essay information to someone else. If reviewers are suspected of a wrong deed should inform the editor confidentially, not expressing their worries to other departments till the official announcement.
Precision
To assess the article and say recommendations to the author (authors), reviewers should always know that the assessment influences the publishing process. Reviewers should be honest with authors about their relevant article worries. Reviewers ought to define and support their scientific review sufficiently and, it means they should provide details and ample information for the editor to justify their advice to the author. Reviewers cannot be bipolar, for instance, on the one hand, very friendly and intimate assessments facing the author and on the other hand, very sharp assessments in-person discussion with the editor.
Punctuality
Reviewers should act quickly in their assessments and reviews. If a reviewer cannot act on his/her task by a determined deadline (maximum one month) he/she ought to contact the editor for extending the reviewing time or new reviewer selection.
4. Copyright and License
All content of the Journal is published with open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) This license allows users to copy and redistribute the article under the following conditions:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Notices:
You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.
No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.
5. Informed Consent
For all research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants. For all manuscripts that include details, images, or videos relating to individual participants, written informed consent for the publication of these must be obtained from the participants. A statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. Identifying details (names, dates of birth, identity numbers and other information) of the participants that were studied should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and genetic profiles unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the participant (or parent or guardian if the participant is incapable) gave written informed consent for publication. The final decision on whether consent to publish is required lies with the Editor.
6. Plagiarism Policy
The journal adheres to the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). We accept all terms and conditions of COPE about plagiarism and in case, any attempt of plagiarism is brought to our attention accompanied by convincing evidence, we act based on flowcharts and workflows determined in COPE.
The Editorial Boards of the journal take the necessary measures to examine the incoming articles on their originality, reliability of contained information, and correct use of citations. The Editorial Board of the journal acknowledges that plagiarism is unacceptable and therefore establishes the following policies that state-specific actions (penalties) if plagiarism is identified in a manuscript submitted for publication in the journal.
Authors should ensure that they submit only entirely original works. If they have used the work and/or statements of others, this must be appropriately cited or referenced. Plagiarism in any form, including quotations or paraphrasing of substantial parts of another’s article (without attribution), “passing off” another’s article as the author’s own, or claiming results from research conducted by others, constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Manuscripts that are a compilation of previously published materials of other authors (without their own creative and authoring interpretation) are not accepted for publication. It is unacceptable to use “unfair” text borrowing and assigning research results not belonging to the authors of the submitted manuscript. The authors must ensure that the submitted manuscript:
- describes completely the original work;
- is not plagiarism;
- has not been published before in any language;
- the information used or words from other publications are appropriately indicated by reference or indicated in the text.
Existing copyright laws and conventions must be observed. Materials protected by copyright (for example, tables, figures, or large quotations) should only be reproduced with the permission of their owner. The journal takes responsibility to assist the scientific community in all aspects of publication ethics policy, particularly in the case of multiple submissions/publications and plagiarism. The editors reserve the right to check the received manuscripts for plagiarism. The manuscript submitted to the journal must have a similarity level of less than 10%. Similarity per each detected reference also must be a maximum of 1%. The textual similarity in the amount of more than 10% is unacceptable.
7. The Policy of Screening for Plagiarism
All authors are strongly recommended to check their manuscripts content before its submission to the journal for publication. The Authors may use trustable valid "Plagiarism Checking software’s" to make sure that their manuscripts are Plagiarism free. Anyway, all submitted papers to the journal will be checked against Plagiarism upon receiving and also before publishing finally using iThenticate & other Plagiarism Detection Software’s. According to the suggestion of the editor-in-chief of the journal, articles with more than 30% plagiarism will be rejected. If the Reviewers, Editor-in-Chiefs, Readers or Editorial Staffs suspect or notice any types of plagiarism at any stage of publication process, the manuscript will be rejected and all authors including the corresponding author will be notified then. Self-plagiarism is also considered & managed accordingly.
COPE’s code of conduct and flowcharts will be used if any Plagiarism detected in a submitted manuscript or if it is found in a published paper.
Definition of Plagiarism:
"Plagiarism is the use of others’ published and unpublished ideas or words (or other intellectual property) without attribution or permission, and presenting them as new and original rather than derived from an existing source. The intent and effect of plagiarism are to mislead the reader as to the contributions of the plagiarizer. This applies whether the ideas or words are taken from abstracts, research grant applications, Institutional Review Board applications, or unpublished or published manuscripts in any publication format (print or electronic). Plagiarism is scientific misconduct and should be addressed as such. Self-plagiarism refers to the practice of an author using portions of their previous writings on the same topic in another of their publications, without specifically citing it formally in quotes. This practice is widespread and sometimes unintentional, as there are only so many ways to say the same thing on many occasions, particularly when writing the Methods section of an article. Although this usually violates the copyright that has been assigned to the publisher, there is no consensus as to whether this is a form of scientific misconduct, or how many of one’s own words one can use before it is truly "plagiarism." Probably, for this reason, self-plagiarism is not regarded in the same light as plagiarism of the ideas and words of other individuals. If journals have developed a policy on this matter, it should be clearly stated for authors." (WAME, 2020). Direct plagiarism is the plagiarism of the text. Mosaic plagiarism is the borrowing of ideas and opinions from a source and a few verbatim words or phrases without crediting the author. Plagiarism is committed when one author uses another work (typically the work of another author) without permission, credit, or acknowledgment. Plagiarism takes different forms, from literal copying to paraphrasing the work of another.
Authors can adhere to the following steps to report plagiarism:
- Inform the editor of the journal where a plagiarized article is published.
- Send original and plagiarized articles with plagiarized parts highlighted.
- If evidence of plagiarism is convincing, the editor should arrange for a disciplinary meeting.
- The editor of the journal where the plagiarized article should communicate with the editor of the journal containing the original article to rectify the matter.
- The plagiarist should be asked to explain.
- In case of nonresponse in the stipulated time or an unsatisfactory explanation, the article should be permanently retracted.
- The author should be blacklisted and debarred for submitting an article to a particular journal for at least 5 years.
- The concerned head of the institution has to be notified.
The author bears the responsibility for checking whether the material submitted is subject to copyright or ownership rights, e.g., figures, tables, photographs, illustrations, trade literature, and data. The author will need to obtain permission to reproduce any such items and include these permissions with their final submission. Where use is so restricted, the editorial office and Publisher must be informed of the final submission of the material. Please add any necessary acknowledgments to the typescript, preferably in the form of an Acknowledgments section at the end of the article. Credit the source and copyright of photographs, figures, illustrations, etc. in the supplementary captions.
Plagiarism is an act intentionally or unintentionally in obtaining or trying to obtain credit or value for scientific work, by quoting part or all of the work and/or scientific work of other parties that are recognized as scientific works, without expressing the source appropriately and adequately. Therefore, manuscripts must be original, never published, and not in the process of waiting for publication elsewhere. Material taken verbally from other sources needs to be clearly identified so that it is different from the original text. If plagiarism is identified, the Editor-in-Chief is responsible for reviewing the manuscript and will approve the action according to the level of plagiarism detected, with the following guidelines.
Plagiarism Level
- Tracing a portion of a short sentence from another article without mentioning the source.
Action: Authors are given warnings and requests to change the text and quote correctly.
2. Tracing most of the other articles without the right quote and not mentioning the source.
Actions: The submitted manuscript is rejected for publication in the journal and the Author can be sanctioned for not being allowed to publish in the journal.
- All manuscript writers are responsible for the content of manuscripts they submit to the journal. If the manuscript is classified as plagiarism, then all authors will be subject to the same action.
- If the author is proven to submit the manuscript to the journal by simultaneously sending it to another journal, and this overlap is found during the reviewer process or after publication, then the action according to point 2 above is given.
- If plagiarism is found outside the rules above, the editor of the journal has the right to give sanctions according to the editor’s team policy.
- In the case of multiple borrowing Editorial Board acts according to the rules of COPE.
There are several indicators of plagiarism that all authors must be aware of:
- The most easily identifiable plagiarism is that of repeated content when an author copies another author’s work by reciting words, sentences, or paragraphs without citing sources. This plagiarism model can be easily identified by our plagiarism checker software.
- The second type of plagiarism occurs when an author reproduces a substantial part of another writer’s work, without citing him/her. The term "reproducing substance" here can be understood as copying another’s ideas, both in terms of quantity and quality, which potentially eliminates the original author’s rights, in the context of intellectual property.
- The third type of plagiarism is when an author takes ideas, words, or phrases in paraphrased sentences or paragraphs, without citing the source. This type of plagiarism often cannot be checked through plagiarism software, as it is idea-based. Yet, this practice becomes unethical when the author does not cite, nor acknowledge the source from the original writer.
8. Responding to Allegations of Possible Misconduct
Definitions of Misconduct
Deception may be deliberate, by reckless disregard of possible consequences, or by ignorance. Since the underlying goal of misconduct is to deliberately deceive others as to the truth, the journal’s preliminary investigation of potential misconduct must take into account not only the particular act or omission but also the apparent intention (as best it can be determined) of the person involved. Misconduct does not include unintentional errors. The most common forms of scientific misconduct include:
- Falsification of data: ranges from fabrication to deceptive selective reporting of findings and omission of conflicting data, or willful suppression and/or distortion of data.
- Plagiarism: The appropriation of the language, ideas, or thoughts of another without crediting their true source, and representation of them as one’s original work (see prior section).
- Improprieties of authorship: Improper assignment of credit, such as excluding others, misrepresentation of the same material as original in more than one publication, the inclusion of individuals as authors who have not contributed to the work published; or submission of multi-authored publications without the concurrence of all authors.
- Misappropriation of the ideas of others: an important aspect of scholarly activity is the exchange of ideas among colleagues. Scholars can acquire novel ideas from others during the process of reviewing grant applications and manuscripts. However, improper use of such information can constitute fraud. Wholesale appropriation of such material constitutes misconduct.
- Violation of generally accepted research practices: Serious deviation from accepted practices in proposing or carrying out research, improper manipulation of experiments to obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, or improper reporting of results.
- Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting research: Including but not limited to serious or substantial, repeated, willful violations of applicable local regulations and law involving the use of funds, care of animals, human subjects, investigational drugs, recombinant products, new devices, or radioactive, biologic, or chemical materials.
- Inappropriate behavior in relation to misconduct: this includes unfounded or knowingly false accusations of misconduct, failure to report known or suspected misconduct, withholding or destruction of information relevant to a claim of misconduct, and retaliation against persons involved in the allegation or investigation. This includes qualifications, experience, or research accomplishments to advance the research program, to obtain external funding, or for other professional advancements.
9. Responses to Possible Misconduct
A committee consisting of the editor-in-chief and editorial board members, as determined by the editor-in-chief, who has specific expertise in the area being investigated, will investigate misconduct allegations. The suitable actions were taken based on the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
The journal follows the policies and guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and abides by its Code of Conduct in dealing with potential cases of misconduct.
Allegations of misconduct
Dealing with possible misconduct
- Editors should follow the COPE flowcharts where applicable.
- Editors have a duty to act if they suspect misconduct or if an allegation of misconduct is brought to them. This duty extends to both published and unpublished papers.
- Editors should not simply reject papers that raise concerns about possible misconduct. They are ethically obliged to pursue alleged cases.
- Editors should first seek a response from those suspected of misconduct. If they are not satisfied with the response, they should ask the relevant employers, or institution, or some appropriate body (perhaps a regulatory body or national research integrity organization) to investigate.
- Editors should make all reasonable efforts to ensure that a proper investigation into alleged misconduct is conducted; if this does not happen, editors should make all reasonable attempts to persist in obtaining a resolution to the problem. This is an onerous but important duty.
10. Open Access Policy
All articles published in INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ETHICS AND SOCIETY are fully open access; immediately freely available to read, download and share. Articles are published in the IJES Journal title is under the terms of a Creative Commons license 4.0 (CC-By) which permits users to read, print and download, redistribute or republish the article (e.g. display in a repository), translate the article, download for text and data mining purposes, reuse portions or extracts from the article in other works, sell or re-use for commercial purposes. All submitted manuscripts are checked for similarity through a trustworthy software named iThenticate to be assured about its originality and then rigorously peer-reviewed by the international reviewers.
- The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
- A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.
11. Data Sharing Policy
The journal uses the Basic Data Sharing Policy. The journal is committed to a more open research landscape, facilitating faster and more effective research discovery by enabling reproducibility and verification of data, methodology, and reporting standards. The journal encourages authors to cite and share their research data including, but not limited to: raw data, processed data, software, algorithms, protocols, methods, and materials. Authors are encouraged to share or make open the data supporting the results, or analyses presented in their article where this does not violate the protection of human subjects or other valid privacy or security concerns.
The journal encourages authors to share the data and other artifacts supporting the results in the article by archiving it in an appropriate public repository. Authors should include a Data Accessibility Statement, including a link to the repository they have used so that this statement can be published alongside their article. The journal requires authors of Original Investigations, Case Reports, and Special Paper articles to (1) place the de-identified data associated with the manuscript in a repository; and (2) include a Data Availability Statement in the manuscript describing where and how the data can be accessed.
The journal defines data as the digital materials underlying the results described in the manuscript, including but not limited to spreadsheets, text files, interview recordings or transcripts, images, videos, output from statistical software, and computer code or scripts. Authors are expected to deposit at least the minimum amount of data needed to reproduce the results described in the manuscript.
Data can be placed in any repository that makes data publicly available and provides a unique persistent identifier, including institutional repositories, general repositories (e.g., Figshare, Open Science Framework, Zenodo, Dryad, Harvard Dataverse, OpenICPSR), or discipline-specific repositories. The Data Availability Statement should be placed in the manuscript at the end of the main text before the references. This statement must include (1) an indication of the location of the data; (2) a unique identifier, such as a digital object identifier (DOI), accession number, or persistent uniform resource locator (URL); and (3) any instructions for accessing the data, if applicable. At the point of submission, you will be asked if there is a data set associated with the article. If you reply yes, you will be asked to provide the DOI, pre-registered DOI, hyperlink, or other persistent identifier associated with the data set(s). If you have selected to provide a pre-registered DOI, please be prepared to share the reviewer URL associated with your data deposit, upon request by reviewers. Where one or multiple data sets are associated with a manuscript, these are not formally peer-reviewed as a part of the journal submission process. It is the author’s responsibility to ensure the soundness of the data. Any errors in the data rest solely with the producers of the data set(s). Please note: As you are submitting your manuscript to the journal where submissions are double-blind peer-reviewed, the main text file should not include any information that might identify the authors (i.e., Author Name, Address, Conflict of Interest, and fund-related information). As a data availability statement could reveal your identity, we recommend that you remove this from the anonymized version of the manuscript.
Exceptions to this policy will be made in rare cases in which de-identified data cannot be shared due to their proprietary nature or participant privacy concerns. Exceptions to policy and restrictions on data availability are granted for reasons associated with the protection of human privacy, issues such as biosafety, and/or to respect terms of use for data obtained under license from third parties. Confidential data, e.g., human subjects or patient data, should always be anonymized, or permission to share should be obtained in advance. If in doubt, authors should seek counsel from their institution’s ethics committee. Authors should include a data accessibility statement, including a link to the repository they have used so that this statement can be published alongside their article. Below are a few examples:
Data Availability Statement:
- Data associated with this article are available in the Open Science Framework at.
- The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at http://doi.org/[doi], reference number [reference number].
- The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in [repository name] at [URL], reference number [reference number].
- The data that support the findings of this study are available in [repository name] at [URL/DOI], reference number [reference number]. These data were derived from the following resources available in the public domain: [list resources and URLs]
Benefits of Sharing Data:
There are several benefits to sharing data:
- Data deposition supports the preservation of data long term.
- Depositing data in a repository that mints a permanent identifier such as a DOI, allows authors and others to cite the data set, allowing researchers to get appropriate credit for their work.
- Sharing data can lead to re-use and discovery, with greater opportunities for carrying out meta-analyses and the extraction of new knowledge.
- Sharing data publicly improves the robustness of the research process, supporting validation, research transparency, reproducibility, and replicability of results. This can, in turn, advance discovery and knowledge.
- Wider public availability of research data supports the translation of research into practice.
The journal offers the following standardized data-sharing policies across our journals:
- Basic– The journal encourages authors to share and make data open where this does not violate the protection of human subjects or other valid subject privacy concerns. Authors are further encouraged to cite data and provide a data availability statement.
- Share upon reasonable request – Authors agree to make their data available upon reasonable request. It is up to the author to determine whether a request is reasonable.
- Publicly available – Authors make their data freely available to the public, under a license of their choice.
- Open data – Authors must make their data freely available to the public, under a license allowing re-use by any third party for any lawful purpose. Data shall be findable and fully accessible.
- Open and fully FAIR (Findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-usable) – Authors must make their data freely available to the public, under a license allowing re-use by any third party for any lawful purpose. Additionally, data shall meet the FAIR standards as established in the relevant subject area.
12. Data Citation
Data should be cited in the same way as article, book, and web citations, and authors are required to include data citations as part of their reference list. Data citation is appropriate for data held within institutional, subject-focused, or more general data repositories. It is not intended to take the place of community standards such as in-line citation of GenBank accession codes. When citing or making claims based on data, authors must refer to the data at the relevant place in the manuscript text and in addition provide a formal citation in the reference list. The journal follows the format proposed by the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles:
Authors; Year; Dataset title; Data repository or archive; Version (if any); Persistent identifier (e.g., DOI)”.
Please send questions, concerns, or comments to the journal office at info ijethics.com
Appeals and Complaints process
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