To reach the highest standards in the Publication Ethics, Transactions of the Institute of Fluid Flow Machinery have implemented the Core Practices recommended by Committee on Publication Ethics. While the most extensive elaboration of COPE Core Practices can be found at:
https://publicationethics.org/
https://publicationethics.org/files/editable-bean/COPE_Core_Practices_0.pdf
the purpose of this note is to remind all members of the publication process, including Authors, Reviewers and Editors of their responsibilities to abide by all the principles of publication ethics and illustrate below some important points in our editorial day-to-day practice.
- The submitted papers should fall within the journal scope and should be prepared according to the standards specified at the journal home page.
- The submitted papers should describe the original research of the authors. The authors are responsible for the accuracy and precision of the content.
- Submission of a manuscript implies that the work is not copyrighted, published elsewhere, except in abstract form. The submitted paper or part of it should not have been published in another journal nor should be considered for publication elsewhere. Also publishing a previously published material subject to small changes under a different title is not allowed.
- Any use of other studies should be properly documented and referenced. For exact citing of sentences of other authors quotation marks should be used. To reproduce pictures and tables from other works, an explicit written permission from the author of the original study is necessary.
- The authors of a paper are all who contributed to the research or writing of the paper, but not others.
- The corresponding author is responsible for providing all necessary information for all authors of the paper. The corresponding author should ensure that all authors agree on its submission and accept the order of their names as authors.
- The statements that appear in a paper are those of the authors not journal board members.
- If an inaccuracy or error is found in a paper, the authors should make efforts to correct it and immediately inform the journal.
- In case of Research and Publication Misconduct detected at any stage of the publication process, the journal has the right to take legal actions against violating authors.
The corresponding author grants the journal rights for commercial use of the paper such as reproduction, distribution and selling to customers.
When authors submit a manuscript, they are responsible for recognizing and disclosing financial and/or other conflicts of interest that might bias their work and/or could inappropriately influence his/her judgment. If no specified acknowledgement is given, the journal assumes that no conflict of interest exists.
Below are examples of cases that will be considered by the journal Research and Publication Misconduct:
- fabrication or falsification of data,
- plagiarism (note that the journal routinely screens article submissions for plagiarism),
- duplicate submissions and overlapping publication,
- manipulating authorship by adding false or gift authors and hiding true authors,
- manipulating affiliation by adding false affiliation of an author.
The journal will take seriously any allegation of misconduct. If an occurrence of misconduct is confirmed at any stage of the publication process, including submission, review or revision, the journal reserves its right to stop the review process before publication or removal of the article from the publication list and will act according to the law.
Reviewers assist Editor in-Chief and the editorial board in reviewing the content of the submitted papers to increase their quality.
- Reviewers are free to deny the evaluation process, which subsequently is gratuitous.
- Reviewers have 7 days to decide whether they are willing to review the paper or not. Reviewers who accept to review the paper are given one month to send their comments to Editor in-Chief. If comments are not received within this time, the editorial office sends reminders to Reviewer. In case Reviewer does not respond to two reminders, Editor in-Chief assigns a new reviewer.
- Reviewers should not accept reviewing papers with which he/she has principal disagreement which may affect fairness of his/her decision. Reviewer should not accept reviewing papers whenever there is a conflict of interests between the reviewers and authors or institutions they represent or personal relations. Reviewer should not accept reviewing papers to which he/she contributed either in writing, giving ideas, acquiring experimental evidence, analyzing etc.
- Review of the paper should be based on scientific argumentation, free from emotions and personal, racial, religious or other preferences. Reviewer points out strong and weak points of the paper.
- If a paper does not meet the journal standards or is otherwise lacking in scientific content or contains major deficiencies, Reviewer will attempt to provide constructive solutions for thorough revision of the paper to assist the authors in ultimately improving their work. If a paper is potentially acceptable for publication but needs to be improved, it is invited for minor revision assuming that the authors will fully address Reviewer’s suggestions.
- Reviewer should keep all the information in the paper confidential and can not disclose its content to others. Before publication of the paper, the reviewer can not use its ideas for or against his own or other studies, or to criticize the author. After publication, the reviewer can not reveal his/her dispute with the authors beyond what is presented in the journal.
- Any case of Research and Publication Misconduct detected by Reviewer should be immediately reported to Editor in-Chief and backed up by sending the related documents.
- Reviewer is not allowed to commission his/her task to anyone such as his/her assistant or graduate student without a written permission of the Editor in-Chief. Anyone assisting in reviewing the article should be mentioned in the review report and the journal documents.
- Reviewer is not permitted to contact the authors of the reviewed paper unless it is made through the editorial office.
- Editor in-Chief appoints reviewers based on their competence, scientific and professional experience, as well as ethical commitment. Editor in-Chief also respects the authors' requests for not having a particular reviewer to review their paper.
Editor in-Chief should take care to avoid any conflict of interests in reviewing process to exclude any personal, business, academic and financial relations which may bias the decision about the publication of the submitted paper.
- Editor in-Chief accepts or declines a paper upon having the reviewers' reports and decisions after evaluating the reviewers' opinions and their relevance. Editor in-Chief can consult his/her judgement as to accept or decline a paper with Editorial Board member or members.
- Editor in-Chief and Editorial Board members should keep all the information in the paper confidential and can not disclose its content to others. Before publication of the paper, Editor in-Chief and Editorial Board members can not use its ideas for or against his own or other studies, or to criticize the author. After publication, the reviewer can not reveal his/her dispute with the authors beyond what is presented in the journal.
- Editor in-Chief should seriously treat any allegations of Research and Publication Misconduct concerning papers submitted to the journal at any stage of review process or already published in the journal. The allegations should be initially assessed and the accused authors should be provided a chance to respond.
- In case Research and Publication Misconduct is found to be well documented Editor in-Chief acts to immediately stop the publication process or if the paper has already been published to remove it from open space, inform the readers and the data bases where the paper is indexed. Editor in-Chief is expected to start the legal procedure against authors who perpetrated the misconduct.