7. Ethics and malpractice statement is available in English at journal’s website
7.1 Editor and Editorial Board
- Journals has editorial boards or other governing bodies whose members are recognized experts in the field and it’s clearly confirmed
- The full names and affiliations of the members, their roles are provided on the journal’s web site
7.2 Publication Ethics: A journal shall also have policies on publishing ethics. These should be clearly visible on its website, and should refer to:
i) Journal policies on authorship and contributorship;
ii) How the journal will handle complaints and appeals;
iii) Journal policies on conflicts of interest / competing interests;
iv) Journal policies on data sharing and reproducibility;
v) Journal’s policy on ethical oversight;
vi) Journal’s policy on intellectual property;
vii) Journal’s options for post-publication discussions and corrections.
7.3. Process for identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct
- Publishers and editors shall take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including but not limited to plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.
- In no case shall a journal or its editors encourage such misconduct, or knowingly allow such misconduct to take place.
- In the event that a journal’s publisher or editors are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in their journal, the publisher or editor shall follow COPE’s guidelines (or equivalent) in dealing with allegations
7.4. Copyright and licensing information is clearly described on the journal’s website
- The policy for copyright shall be clearly stated in the author guidelines and the copyright holder named on all published articles.
- Licensing information shall be clearly described in guidelines on the website, and licensing terms shall be indicated on all published articles, both HTML and PDFs.
- If authors are allowed to publish under a Creative Commons license then any specific license requirements shall be noted.
- Any policies on posting of final accepted versions or published articles on third party repositories shall be clearly stated.
7.5 Author fees
- Any fees or charges that are required for manuscript processing and/or publishing materials in the journal shall be clearly stated in a place that is easy for potential authors to find prior to submitting their manuscripts for review or explained to authors before they begin preparing their manuscript for submission.
- If no such fees are charged that should also be clearly stated.
7.6 Access: The way(s) in which the journal and individual articles are available to readers and whether there are associated subscription or pay per view fees shall be stated
7.7 Archiving: A journal’s plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content (for example, access to main articles via CLOCKSS or PubMedCentral) in the event a journal is no longer published shall be clearly indicated.
7.8 Information about the ownership and/or management of a journal is clearly indicated on the journal’s website (organizational names that would mislead potential authors and editors about the nature of the journal’s owner are not used in information about the ownership)
7.9 Journals shall provide the full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors on the journal website as well as contact information for the editorial office, including a full address.
7.10 Revenue sources
- Business models or revenue sources (e.g., author fees, subscriptions, advertising, reprints, institutional support, and organizational support) shall be clearly stated or otherwise evident on the journal’s website.
- Publishing fees or waiver status should not influence editorial decision making.
7.11 Advertising
- Journals shall state their advertising policy if relevant, including what types of adverts will be considered, who makes decisions regarding accepting adverts and whether they are linked to content or reader behavior (online only) or are displayed at random.
- Advertisements should not be related in any way to editorial decision making and shall be kept separate from the published content.
7.12 Direct marketing
- Any direct marketing activities, including solicitation of manuscripts that are conducted on behalf of the journal, shall be appropriate, well targeted, and unobtrusive.
- Information provided about the publisher or journal is expected to be truthful and not misleading for readers or authors.