ETHICAL PRINCIPLES Editors of the "Journal of Water and Land Development" pay attention to maintain ethical standards in scientific publications and undertake any possible measure to counteract neglecting the standards. Papers submitted for publication are evaluated with respect to reliability, conforming to ethical standards and the advancement of science. Principles given below are based on COPE's Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, which may be found at:
https://publicationethics.org/files/u2/Best_Practice.pdf Authors’ duties Authorship Authorship should be limited to persons, who markedly contributed to the idea, project, realization and interpretation of results. All of them have to be listed as co-authors. Other persons, who affected some important parts of the study should be listed or mentioned as co-workers. Author should be certain that all co-authors were enlisted, saw and accepted final version of the paper and agreed upon its publication.
Disclosure and conflict of interests Author should disclose all sources of financing of his/her study, the input of scientific institutions, associations and other subjects and all important conflicts of interests that might affect results and interpretation of the study.
Standards in reporting Authors of papers based on original studies should present precise description of performed work and objective discussion on its importance. Source data should be accurately presented in the paper. The paper should contain detailed information and references that would enable others to use it. False or intentionally not true declarations are not ethical and are not accepted by the editors.
Access to and storage of data Authors may be asked for providing raw data used in the paper for editorial assessment and should be prepared to store them within the reasonable time period after publication.
Multiple, unnecessary and competitive publications As a rule, author should not publish papers describing the same studies in more than one journal or primary publication. Submission of the same paper to more than one journal at the same time is not ethical and prohibited.
Confirmation of sources Author should cite papers that affected the creation of submitted manuscript and every time he/she should confirm the use of other authors’ work.
Important errors in published papers When author finds an important error or inaccuracy in his/her paper, he/she is obliged to inform Editorial Office about this as soon as possible.
Originality and plagiarism Author may submit only original papers. He/she should be certain that the names of authors referred to in the paper and/or fragments of their texts are properly cited or mentioned.
Ghostwriting Ghost writing/guest authorship are manifestation of scientific unreliability and all such cases will be revealed including notification of appropriate subjects. Signs of scientific unreliability, especially violation of ethical principles in science will be documented by the Editorial Office.
Duties of the Editorial Office Editors’ duties Editors know the rules of journal editing including the procedures applied in case of uncovering non-ethical practices.
Decisions on publication Editor-in Chief is obliged to apply present legal status as to defamation, violation of author’s rights and plagiarism and bears the responsibility for decisions. He/she may consult thematic editors and/or referees in that matter.
Selection of referees Editorial Office provides appropriate selection of referees and takes care about appropriate course of peer –reviewing (the review has to be substantive).
Confidentiality Every member of editorial team is not allowed to disclose information about submitted paper to any person except its author, referees, other advisors and editors.
Discrimination To counteract discrimination the Editorial Office obeys the legally binding rules.
Disclosure and conflict of interests Not published papers or their fragments cannot be used in the studies of editorial team or referees without written consent of the author.
Referees' duties
Editorial decisions Referee supports Editor-in-Chief in taking editorial decisions and may also support author in improving the paper.
Back information In case a selected referee is not able to review the paper or cannot do it in due time period, he/she should inform secretary of the Editorial Office about this fact.
Objectivity standards Reviews should be objective. Personal criticism is inappropriate. Referees should clearly ex-press their opinions and support them with proper arguments.
Confidentiality All reviewed papers should be dealt with as confidential. They should not be discussed or revealed to persons other than the secretary of the Editorial Office.
Anonymity All reviews should be made anonymously and the Editorial Office does not disclose names of the authors to referees.
Disclosure and conflict of interests Confidential information or ideas resulting from reviewing procedure should be kept secret and should not be used to gain personal benefits. Referees should not review papers, which might generate conflict of interests resulting from relationships with the author, firm or institution involved in the study.
Confirmation of sources Referees should indicate publications which are not referred to in the paper. Any statement that the observation, source or argument was described previously should be supported by appropriate citation. Referee should also inform the secretary of the Editorial Office about significant similarity to or partial overlapping of the reviewed paper with any other published paper and about suspected plagiarism.
Corrections, retractions and updates after publication Sometimes after an article has been published it may be necessary to make a change. This will be done after careful consideration by Editors to ensure any necessary changes are made in accordance with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE):
https://publicationethics.org/postpublication Retraction is executed in accordance with the procedure presented by the European Association of Science Editors (EASE):
https://ease.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/EASE-Standard-Retraction-Form-2022.pdf Complaints and appeals A complaint may arise over the conduct of editors and/or peer reviewers. Some possible reasons for complaints are:
- intentional delay of reviewing process,
- undisclosed conflicts of interest,
- breach of confidentiality,
- misuse of confidential information,
- practical issues, such as unresponsive journal staff.
An appeal is a formal request to reconsider a decision taken by the journal. It might be related to decisions in regular journal operation (e.g. a manuscript being rejected) or to a verdict taken by a team investigating a particular situation (e.g. a published manuscript being retracted due to suspected data manipulation).
The authors submit a formal complaint/appeal to the journal principal contact by email or post (
journal@itp.edu.pl). Within a week, the journal will form an investigation group consisting of at least three Editorial Team members (not previously involved in handling the manuscript in question) and report back their names and how they can be contacted.
The actual investigation time may vary depending on the complexity of the case. The investigation team provides fair opportunities to all parties involved to explain their motives and actions. The purpose of the investigation is to establish whether misconduct took place (as reported or in the light of new circumstances discovered), whether it was performed deliberately or as a genuine mistake, and to estimate the scale of its negative consequences.
Based on the facts collected, the investigation team decides on the corrective actions to be taken as well as whether some penalty is to be applied to the person who performed the misconduct. Depending on the misconduct severity, the penalty may range from a reprimand to an expulsion from the reviewer pool/editorial board and a report being sent to the institution to which the person in question is affiliated.
The authors are informed about the investigation outcome upon its completion.
In its work, the investigation group relies on the recommendations and guidelines provided by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE):
https://publicationethics.org/appeals In complex cases, an external ethical advisor might be called for.
Guidance from COPE ( https://publicationethics.org/ ): Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers (English) DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.9 Sharing of information among editors-in-chief regarding possible misconduct
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.7 How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2018.1.1 Text recycling guidelines for editors
URL:
http://publicationethics.org/text-recycling-guidelines A short guide to ethical editing for new editors
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.8 Guidelines for managing the relationships between society owned journals, their society, and publishers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2018.1.2 Retraction guidelines
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.4
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