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PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT


Here we are publishing "Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement". Visitors are requested to visit our Author Guidelines page (http://www.iaees.org/publications/journals/nb/author-guidelines.asp) for more information.

General ethics and statement

1. All submitted manuscripts are subject to double blind peer review process. All IAEES journals followed the blind review policy to ensure evaluation. During this review process identity of both the authors and reviewers are kept hidden to ensure unbiased evaluation.

2. The factors that are taken into account in review are relevance, soundness, significance, originality, readability and language. IAEES believes that no manuscript should be rejected only on the basis of lack of novelty, provided the manuscript is sufficiently robust and technically sound. Too often a journal's decision to publish an article is dominated by what the Editor/reviewer think is interesting and will gain greater readership 〞 both of which are subjective judgments and lead to decisions which are frustrating and delay the publication. IAEES journals will rigorously peer-review your submissions and publish all articles that are judged to be technically sound. Judgments about the importance of any particular article are then made after publication by the readership (who are the most qualified to determine what is of interest to them).

3. With the help of the reviewers＊ comments, final decision (accepted or accepted with minor revision or accepted with major revision or rejected) will be sent to the corresponding author. Reviewers are asked if they would like to review a revised version of the manuscript. The editorial office may request a re-review regardless of a reviewer's response in order to ensure a thorough and fair evaluation. Reviewers who may have offered an opinion not in accordance with the final decision should not feel that their recommendation was not duly considered and their service not properly appreciated. Experts often disagree, and it is the job of the editorial team to make a final decision.

4. If authors are encouraged to revise and resubmit a submission, there is no guarantee that the revised submission will be accepted.

5. Rejected articles are given the opportunity for a formal appeal. Appeal requests should be made in writing, not by telephone, and should be addressed to publications@iaees.org with the word "Appeal" in the subject line. If an author remains unsatisfied, he or she can write to the editorial office, citing the manuscript reference title. In all these cases, it is likely that some time will elapse before IAEES can respond, and the article must not be submitted for publication elsewhere during this time. Authors should provide detailed reasons for the appeal and point-by-point responses to the reviewers' and/or Editor's comments. Authors should also be aware that priority is given to new submissions to the journal and so the processing of the appeal may well take longer than the processing of the original submission. If an appeal is rejected, further appeals of the decision will not be considered and the article may not be resubmitted.

6. Articles may be rejected without review if the editor considers the article obviously not suitable for publication.

7. The editor of the journal is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published.

8. The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

9. The editor confers with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

10. The reviewers evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

11. The editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

12. Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. IAEES believes in constructive criticism. Reviewers are encouraged to be honest but not offensive in their language (Unnecessarily harsh words may be modified or removed at the editors' discretion). It is expected that the reviewers should suggest the authors on how they can strengthen their article to make it acceptable. Comments of the reviewers should be sufficiently informative and helpful to reach an editorial decision. We strongly advise that a negative review should also explain the weaknesses of any manuscript, so that the concerned authors can understand the basis of rejection and he/she can improve the manuscript based on those comments. Authors also should not confuse straightforward and true comments with unfair criticism.

13. Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions. Additionally we believe that one of the main objectives of peer review system is ＆to improve the quality of a candidate manuscript＊.

14. Manuscripts received for review are treated as confidential documents.

15. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention for any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published article of which they have personal knowledge.

16. Authors of contributions and studies research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance.

17. Sufficient details of the methods/process should be provided inside the manuscript so that another researcher is able to reproduce the experiments described. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

18. The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted. IAEES strongly opposes any type of plagiarism. If you suspect any unethical practice in this manuscript, kindly write it in the report with some proof/web links. Studies which are carried out to reconfirm / replicate the results of any previously published article with new data-set, may be considered for publication. But these types of studies should have a clear declaration of this matter. Self-plagiarism, also referred to as "text recycling", is a topical issue and is currently generating much discussion among editors. Opinions are divided as to how much text overlap with an author＊s own previous publications is acceptable. We normally follow the guidelines given in COPE website. Editors, reviewers and authors are also requested to strictly follow this excellent guideline (Reference: Text Recycling Guidelines: http://publicationethics.org/text-recycling-guidelines).

We use the software Plagiarisma and Dupli Checker to check plagiarism. Plagiarized manuscripts would not be considered for publication. If plagiarism is found in any published article after internal investigation, a letter would be immediately sent to all the authors, their affiliated institutes and funding agency, if applied and subsequently the article will be retracted.

19. Authors should not publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication.

20. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

21. Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. Submission of an article to this journal indicates that the author(s) have agreed the content of the article. One author should be indicated as corresponding author for all publication related communications. All correspondence and proofs would be sent to the corresponding author, who will be treated as final representative voice for all authors regarding any decision related to manuscript, unless otherwise requested during submission. This journal would not be responsible for any dispute related to authorship of a submitted article. Any change in the authorship (such as addition or deletion of author(s) or change in the sequence of author list) should be intimated to the editorial office through a letter signed by all authors before publication of the article. In absence of any signed letter, approval of galley proof by corresponding author will work as certificate of final agreement of authorship. Generally any change in the authorship after final publication, is not entertained and COPE guidelines are followed for any dispute.

22. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

23. When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author＊s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the article.

24. All IAEES journals are published in ONLINE only. Authors should note that no hard copy will be published in order to minimize the additional carbon footprint, resulting from printing on articles.

25. The study has not been published (partly or as a whole) before or is not under consideration for publication elsewhere (except as an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis); We will consider manuscripts that have been deposited in preprint servers such as arXiv or published in institutional repositories. We will also consider work that has been presented at conferences (Significant amount of changes should be made before submission to the journal and proper citation of the conference article is required).

26. It is compulsory for the authors to ensure that no material submitted as part of a manuscript infringes existing copyrights, or the rights of a third party.

27. IAEES is determined to promote integrity in research publication. We have great respect and we generally follow the guidelines, given by COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION ETHICS (COPE) for any publication disputes, authorship disputes, etc. For these kinds of disputes, we generally visit and follow the COPE website and author(s) are also requested to do so. Excellent guidelines, related to COPE＊s Code of Conduct and its advice to tackle cases of suspected misconduct, are available in this link (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts).

28. The copyrights of all articles published in this journal are retained by the respective authors as per the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode). The author(s) should be the sole author(s) of the article and should have full authority to enter into agreement and in granting rights to IAEES, which are not in breach of any other obligation. The author(s) should ensure the integrity of the article and related works. Authors should mandatorily ensure that submission of manuscript to IAEES would result into no breach of contract or of confidence or of commitment given to secrecy.

29. As one of the pre-publication steps, some articles will be archived in the archive for open comment/review, and subsequent formal publishing. An article is removed from the archive once it is formally published or charged of the serious violation of "Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement" (http://www.iaees.org/publications/journals/nb/ethics.asp) and "Author Guidelines" (http://www.iaees.org/publications/journals/nb/author-guidelines.asp).

30. For an pre-published article online, as a final guarantee, it should be generally noted that before formal publication, a period is left for receiving comment/review from readers (open review). Comment/review to charge the serious violation of "Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement" (http://www.iaees.org/publications/journals/nb/ethics.asp) and "Author Guidelines" (http://www.iaees.org/publications/journals/nb/author-guidelines.asp) of the pre-published article will be carefully examined and the article will be retreated from the formal publication if the fact in comment/review is confirmed. Comment/review for suggesting substantial revisions on the article will be sent to the authors to revise their article before formal publication. Comment/review continues after an article has been formally published.

31. The research must meet all applicable standards for the ethics of experimentation and research integrity.

Conflict of interest

We requires authors to declare all competing interests in relation to their work. All submitted manuscripts must include a ＆competing interests＊ section at the end of the manuscript listing all competing interests (financial and non-financial). Where authors have no competing interests, the statement should read ※The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.§ Editors may ask for further information relating to competing interests. Editors and reviewers are also required to declare any competing interests and will be excluded from the peer review process if a competing interest exists.

Competing interests may be financial or non-financial. A competing interest exists when the authors＊ interpretation of data or presentation of information may be influenced by their personal or financial relationship with other people or organizations. Authors should disclose any financial competing interests but also any non-financial competing interests that may cause them embarrassment if they were to become public after the publication of the article.

Financial competing interests include (but are not limited to):
每 Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the article, either now or in the future.
每 Holding stocks or shares in an organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the article, either now or in the future.
每 Holding, or currently applying for, patents relating to the content of the manuscript.
每 Receiving reimbursements, fees, funding, or salary from an organization that holds or has applied for patents relating to the content of the manuscript.
每 Non-financial competing interests
每 Non-financial competing interests include (but are not limited to) political, personal, religious, ideological, academic, and intellectual competing interests. If, after reading these guidelines, you are unsure whether you have a competing interest, please contact the Editor.

Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical trials, should declare these as competing interests on submission. They should also adhere to the Good Publication Practice guidelines for pharmaceutical companies, which are designed to ensure that publications are produced in a responsible and ethical manner. The guidelines also apply to any companies or individuals that work on industry-sponsored publications, such as freelance writers, contract research organizations and communications companies. Longdom Publishing will not publish advertorial content.

Human and animal rights

All research must have been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. If there is suspicion that work has not taken place within an appropriate ethical framework, Editors will follow the Misconduct policy and may reject the manuscript, and/or contact the author(s)＊ institution or ethics committee. On rare occasions, if the Editor has serious concerns about the ethics of a study, the manuscript may be rejected on ethical grounds, even if approval from an ethics committee has been obtained.

Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and must have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing this, including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate, must appear in all manuscripts reporting such research. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption). Further information and documentation to support this should be made available to Editors on request. Manuscripts may be rejected if the Editor considers that the research has not been carried out within an appropriate ethical framework. In rare cases, Editors may contact the ethics committee for further information.

If a study has not been submitted to an ethics committee prior to commencing, retrospective ethics approval usually cannot be obtained and it may not be possible to consider the manuscript for peer review. How to proceed in such cases is at the Editor(s)＊ discretion.

Authors reporting the use of a new procedure or tool in a clinical setting, for example as a technical advance or case report, must give a clear justification in the manuscript for why the new procedure or tool was deemed more appropriate than usual clinical practice to meet the patient＊s clinical need. Such justification is not required if the new procedure is already approved for clinical use at the authors＊ institution. Authors will be expected to have obtained ethics committee approval and informed patient consent for any experimental use of a novel procedure or tool where a clear clinical advantage based on clinical need was not apparent before treatment.

Informed consent

For all research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained from participants (or their parent or guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript.

For all manuscripts that include details, images, or videos relating to individual participants, written informed consent for the publication of these must be obtained from the participants (or their parent or legal guardian in the case of children under 16) and a statement to this effect should appear in the manuscript. If the participant has died, then consent for publication must be sought from the next of kin of the participant. This documentation must be made available to Editors on request, and will be treated confidentially. In cases where images are entirely unidentifiable and there are no details on individuals reported within the manuscript, consent for publication of images may not be required. The final decision on whether consent to publish is required lies with the Editor.

Experimental research on vertebrates or any regulated invertebrates must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. The Basel Declaration outlines fundamental principles to adhere to when conducting research in animals and the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS) has also published ethical guidelines.

A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines (e.g. the revised Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 in the UK and Directive 2010/63/EU in Europe) and/or ethical approval (including the name of the ethics committee and the reference number where appropriate) must be included in the manuscript. If a study has been granted an exemption from requiring ethics approval, this should also be detailed in the manuscript (including the name of the ethics committee that granted the exemption and the reasons for the exemption). The Editor will take account of animal welfare issues and reserves the right to reject a manuscript, especially if the research involves protocols that are inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of animal research. In rare cases, Editors may contact the ethics committee for further information.

For experimental studies involving client-owned animals, authors must also document informed consent from the client or owner and adherence to a high standard (best practice) of veterinary care.

Field studies and other non-experimental research on animals must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. A statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines and/or appropriate permissions or licences must be included in the manuscript. We recommend that authors comply with the Convention on the Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and the IUCN Policy Statement on Research Involving Species at Risk of Extinction.

Authors are strongly encouraged to conform to the Animal Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines, developed by the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs), for reporting animal studies.

For studies reporting livestock trials with production, health and food-safety outcomes, authors are encouraged to adhere to the Reporting Guidelines for Randomized Controlled Trials in Livestock and Food Safety (REFLECT).


Network Biology (ISSN 2220-8879)
Editorial Office: networkbiology@iaees.org

Publisher: International Academy of Ecology and Environmental Sciences
E-mail: office@iaees.org
International Academy of Ecology and Environmental Sciences. E-mail: office@iaees.org
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