ETHICS, GOOD PRACTICE AND RESPONSIBILITIES

 

CIIE and its ESC journal are committed to ensuring the highest ethical standards at all stages of the publication process and adopt the principles and recommendations for good practice in publishing of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, www.publicationethics.org).

Agreement on standards of ethical behaviour is required from all parties involved in the publishing process (management, editorial board members, authors, reviewers and the editors).

ESC does not publish research that is conducted for profit, or in a way that may affect the dignity or the human rights of the subjects under investigation. No texts will be published that are identified as plagiarism or whose content is fraudulent.

In order to guarantee that all published content is unpublished and does not incur plagiarism, ESC submits the manuscripts received for analysis by the Turnitin software, which may be carried out before the initial scrutiny phase. Depending on the degree of similarity (excluding references or citations subject to analysis), the article may be rejected a priori. Despite greater tolerance when submitting to Turnitin, articles originating from dissertations, theses and other academic works must include references to the original work.
In the event of plagiarism and/or dishonest statements, authors will be notified to submit a disclaimer or withdraw the submission within 10 days. If plagiarism is detected, the ESC will remove the text by indicating in the bibliographic record (if any) "Excluded for plagiarism".

 

AUTHORSHIP CRITERIA

ESC adheres to the following authorship criteria recommended by ICMJE (available at http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf):

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or data collecting, analysis and interpretation of the results; and
• Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; and
• Final approval of the version to be published; and
• Taking responsibility for the work and ensuring that all questions relating to its integrity and accuracy have been properly investigated and resolved.

These 4 criteria should cover all elements that are designated as authors, and all those who meet these 4 criteria should be designated as authors. All elements that have contributed in some way to the manuscript but do not meet the 4 criteria for authorship should be mentioned in the Acknowledgements section.

 

RESPONSIBILITIES AND DUTIES

The most important guidelines, responsibilities and duties of the main ESC actors are set out below.

Responsibilities and duties of editors

• Editors should adopt editorial policies that encourage maximum transparency.
• Editors should provide objective and timely publication decisions based on reviewers' opinions.
• Editors should keep information about the submitted manuscript confidential and may discuss the manuscript only with authors, reviewers, and other members of the editorial board if necessary and appropriate.
• Editors must act against any unethical procedure of the reviewers or other members of the editorial board.
• Editors should, in case of a report or self-detection of fraud in research, investigate the submission or duplicate publication, and take appropriate action, including: removal of the article from the journal's website; suspension of publication; in the case of dual publication, notification of the journal that published the article; in the case of plagiarism, possible notification of the original author.
• Editors must act in a fair and balanced manner in the performance of their duties, without discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religious or political beliefs.
• Editors shall take all steps to ensure the high quality of the published works.

Responsibilities and duties of reviewers

• Reviewers should assist editors in making editorial decisions and help authors improve their work.
• Reviewers should notify the editor if they are unable to review a manuscript within the expected time frame.
• Reviewers should not accept reviews of manuscripts where there is a potential conflict of interest. If reviewers have knowledge of the research project giving rise to the article or the authorship of the article, they must inform the journal and refrain from performing the review.
• Reviewers must notify the editor if they consider that they are not qualified to review the research described in the manuscript.
• Reviewers must review articles objectively and argumentatively.
• Reviewers must inform the editors about the possible overlap of a manuscript and an already published article.
• The reviewers may never use information from the manuscripts for their research, except with the express written permission of the author.
• The reviewers must treat the manuscript as a confidential document.
• The reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of the information and ideas presented in the manuscripts.

Responsibilities and duties of authors

• Authorship should be limited to persons who have significantly contributed to the work: its concept, design, execution, or interpretation of the research.
• Articles submitted to ESC must be original work, not previously published elsewhere, and not under review in any other publication.
• Permission for any copyrighted material must be acquired before submission.
• All works of others that have influenced the article must be properly cited.
• All authors must have seen and approved the final version of the article and agreed to its publication.
• All authors must clearly disclose any financial or other conflict of interest that could distort the results or interpretation of the work.
• If authors discover an error or inaccuracy in the paper, even after publication, they must immediately notify the editors and cooperate to correct or withdraw the paper.
• Authors should use the official PDF of the article published in the journal and the link to the journal pages whenever possible to distribute their work.