IUT Scientific Journals
Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement
This bye-law is a charter which specifies some ethical limits and responsibilities related to scientific research and its publication in the IUT Scientific Journals. The purpose is to preclude authors' conscious or unconscious violation of research and publication principles.
This bye-law has been derived from "The Charter and Regulations of Research Ethics" enacted by the research and technology deputy of the ministry of science, research and technology of Iran, the agreed-upon international publication regulations, and the experiences gained through IUT Scientific Journals as well as other national journals. The references used for this bye-law are listed in the end.
1- Introduction
Authors, reviewers, the editorial board, and the editor in-chief are obliged to know and abide by all the principles of publication ethics and responsibilities. The submission of articles by authors, reviewing of articles by reviewers, and the decision of accepting or declining them by the editorial board as well as the editor in-chief are tantamount to knowing and following the rules.
In case of the breach of principles, the journal has the right to take legal actions against violators. "The Charter and Regulations of Research Ethics" enacted by the research and technology deputy of ministry of science, research and technology of Iran, should be taken as the guideline for authors, and all parties involved in review and publication of the articles.
2- Authors’ Responsibilities
The submitted articles should be related to the specialized fields of the journal and be prepared scientifically and coherently according to the journal standards.
The articles should be the original research of the authors, with any use of other studies properly documented. The research should be carried out precisely and the data should be reported accurately.
Authors are responsible for the accuracy and precision of the content. Publishing the articles does not mean the journal is confirming the content of the articles.
Authors should avoid "Research and Publication Misconduct" as mentioned in section 3.
Authors cannot duplicate the submission of one article. In other words, their article or a part
of it should not have been published in another national or international journal or should not be in the process of reviewing or publication.
Authors are not permitted to have overlapping publications, which means publishing data and findings of their previous article/s with slight changes as another article with a different title.
If using other studies is necessary, authors have to precisely cite them and, if necessary, receive the explicit written permission from the author of the original study. When the exact words of another researcher are used, methods and symbols of quoting such as quotation marks should be used.
The corresponding author should ensure that the article contains names and other information of all authors, but not others who did not contribute to the research and writing of the article. In other words, adding the gift authorship and omitting the ghost authorship should be avoided.
The corresponding author should ensure that all authors read the article and agree upon its submission and also on the order of their names as authors.
Submitting an article means that authors have satisfied and introduced all financial or local supporters.
Whenever any error or inaccuracy is found in their article, authors should inform the journal, try to correct it, or withdraw the article..
Any risk likely to be posed by the research to people or the environment should be mentioned clearly in the article.
3. Research and Publication Misconduct
If the occurrence of the following cases was confirmed at any stages of submission, review, revision, or publication of the article in the journal, it will be considered Research and Publication Misconduct and the journal has the right to act according to the law.
Fabrication of data: It means reporting unreal issues, fabricated data and findings as personal experimental results, empirical studies or findings. The unreal record of what has not happened or misplacing the results of different studies are some examples of this violation.
Falsification of data: It means recording and presenting the findings of the study so that the details of its procedure or the process of data collection are manipulated, data is omitted or changed, or some less important findings are exaggerated to conceal the more important ones (juicy quotes) in such a way that the results of the study serve specific purposes or the presented findings are not doubted.
Plagiarism: It means the close adopting of other authors' ideas or words, copying other people ideas, similarity in the style of writing, and attributing others' ideas and findings without proper citation or introducing them as one’s own original scientific research.
Scientific Hiring: It is related to the time when the author (authors) employs another person for doing the research and in the end, with few changes, publishes that study in his/her own name.
Unreal affiliation: It means the false affiliation of the author (authors) to an organization, center, or educational /research department which did not contribute to the research.
Duplicate submission, overlapping publication, adding the "gift author" or omitting the
"ghost author"
4. Reviewers
Reviewers assist the editor in-chief and the editorial board in reviewing the quality, content and scientific characteristics of the articles. Through the journal office, they assist in enriching the quality and the content of the articles.
The reviewer should not accept the articles with which he/she has principal disagreement which may affect fairness of his/her decision.
The reviewer should not accept reviewing articles to which include interests of people, institutes and specific organizations, or personal relations.
The reviewer should not accept reviewing the articles which he/she contributed to their conduct, analyses or writing.
Review of the article should be based on scientific documents and enough argument. It should be without the interference of personal, vocational, racial, religious or other preferences.
The reviewer is expected to offer to the editor in-chief and the author (authors) his/her evaluation on the strong and weak points of the article in an effective, clear, academic manner, and assess the strong and weak points as well as suggest solutions for revising the article.
If the article does not suffer from principal shortcomings, the reviewers should not rewrite or revise it based on their own personal interests and preferences. Reviewers should keep in mind that the journal needs their scientific expertise not their editing skill.
The reviewer is expected to inform the author of the related published studies not mentioned
in the article.
The reviewer should keep all the information in the article confidential and avoid revealing to or discussing its details with others.
Before the article gets published, the reviewer has no right to use its data or its new concepts for or against his own or other studies, or to criticize or discredit the author. After the article is published, the reviewer will not be allowed to reveal more details than what the journal presents.
The reviewer is not allowed to devolve his own responsibility to another person such as his colleagues or graduate students except with the editor in-chief's permission. Anybody assisting in reviewing the article should be mentioned in the review report and the journal documents.
The reviewer is not permitted to contact the author on the articles being reviewed. Any contact with the authors is made through the journal office.
Reviewers are expected to be serious and effortful in reporting the Research and Publication Misconduct and sending the related documents to the editor in-chief.
5. Editor in-Chief and Editorial Board
The editor in-chief and the editorial board have the authority of accepting or declining an article after having the reviewers' decisions, and in this way:
The editor in-chief and the editorial board try to choose proper reviewers based on their specific field, their competence, scientific and professional experience, as well as ethical commitment. They are expected to respect the authors' reasonable and rational requests for not wishing special reviewers to review their article.
The editor in-chief welcomes profound and logical reviews, avoids shallow and weak judgments, and confronts biased, nonsense, or contemptuous judgments.
The decision on accepting or declining articles should be based on evaluating the reviewers' professional opinions and assessing their opinion accuracy. Moreover, scientific documentations and enough reasons should be provided and personal, stylistic, vocational, racial, religious, and decisions should be avoided.
The editor in-chief and the editorial board should keep all information in the article confidential and avoid revealing to or discussing its details with others.
Before the article gets published, the editor in-chief and the editorial board have no right to use its data or its new concepts for or against his own or other studies, or to criticize or discredit the author. After the article gets published, the reviewer will not be allowed to reveal more details than what the journal presents. The exceptions involve cases related to the authors' Research and Publication Misconduct if there is any acceptable reason to do so.
The editor in-chief and the editorial board have to avoid any conflict of interests in reviewing process with respect to any personal, business, academics, or financial relations which may potentially affect the acceptance and the publication of the submitted article.
The editor in-chief should carefully and seriously examine those articles suspected of breaching the publication and research ethics reported by reviewers and if needed, act to sue for “publication and research misconduct".
The editor in-chief should provide enough time to the authors accused of publication and research misconduct to respond.
The journal editor in-chief has to immediately remove the published articles proved to include publication and research misconduct and clearly inform the readers and the indexing data bases.
The editor in-chief and the editorial board are expected to welcome reasonable and acceptable criticisms of the published articles.
6. Office of Scientific Journals
Isfahan University of Technology Office of Scientific Journals is responsible for editing and formatting the accepted articles and finally getting the electronic and printed versions published. Along with its general responsibilities, this office considers the following cases:
Determining and clearly announcing its publication policies especially about the independence of editorial board's decisions, publication ethics, intellectual property and copyright, interests (or conflict of interests) of the authors, reviewers, editor in-chief, and editorial board, the process of reviewing and decision-making, reconsideration and complaints requests, safeguarding the scientific documents of the decision-making process, revising or removing the accepted articles, and settling the conflicts between the complainant and the person suspected of Publication and Research Misconduct
Protecting the authors' personal information, content, and details of the articles in the review process and after making decisions about the articles, except what will be published in the journal after acceptance. The exceptions involve cases related to the authors' Research and Publication Misconduct if there is any acceptable reason to do so.
Protecting the editor in-chief and the editorial board's independence
Attempting to give necessary training to the authors of the journal to improve the journal format and content as well as the proper consideration of publication and research ethics principles
Cooperating with the editor in-chief to keep the highest level of publication and research ethics in the journal and ensuring that the journal is without any format and content errors
Cooperating with the editor in-chief in investigating the reports on Publication and Research Misconduct and giving expert consultation to the complainants and the accused if needed
Considering the requests related to using the materials published in the journal in other publications with proper citation
7. Confronting the Publication and Research Misconduct
Upon observing “Publication and Research Misconduct” cases, the journal reserves its right to stop the review process before publication or removal of the article from the publication list. After careful examination by the editorial board, these cases will be revealed to the authors and at the same time will be subjected to further legal procedure.
References
1. "The Charter and Regulations of Research Ethics" enacted by the Research and Technology Deputy, Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, Iran.
2. Ethical Charter of Scientific Publications, 1st edition, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies.
3. Scientific Ethics Bye-law of the Physics Society of Iran.
4. Journal of Advanced Materials in Engineering Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement.
5. Ethical principles of article publication, Urban Landscape Research, Specialized Journal of Landscape Architectures and Urban Design.
6. Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE Code of Conduct, www.publicationethics.org.
7. Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers, www.publicationethics.org.
8. S. Rockwell, Ethics of Peer Review: A Guide for Manuscript Reviewers, http://www.wame.org/ethical_issues_in_peer_review.pdf/view.
9. Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, www.publicationethics.org.
10. Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers, www.publicationethics.org.