Ethical guidelines

 

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.

To ensure that all published content is unpublished and free of plagiarism, ESC submits incoming manuscripts to the iThenticate software for review, which may be conducted prior to the initial scrutiny phase. Depending on the degree of similarity (excluding references or citations subject to review), the article may be rejected a priori. Despite greater tolerance in the submission to iThenticate, articles originating from dissertations, theses, and other academic works must present a reference to the original work.

The most important guidelines and responsibilities of the main ESC actors are as follows:

 

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 own 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 prior to 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 own work.