Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

IARIA journals offer extended versions of a selected number of papers among those presented to various IARIA conferences.  Both conference and journal versions obey to the publication ethics referred to as IARIA Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statements. The collection of responsibilities and expectations presented below are mainly based on the guidelines and standards developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and are enforced during each phase of processing a contribution for publication.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF AUTHORS

IARIA policies stress out the ownership and ownership fairness. Therefore, it is understood that, by submitting a manuscript to a IARIA journal, the author(s) guarantee that the manuscript is their own, contains original work and that, in its current form, it has neither been previously published, nor is currently being considered for publication elsewhere (journal or conference). Additionally, the journal papers, as extensions of conference contributions, must observe all the editorial and ethics rules detailed at http://www.iariajournals.org/. The author(s) must carefully refer to all the sources of any ideas and/or words in the manuscript and use appropriate citations and/or quotes to correctly identify the original owners and accurately locate the source.

IARIA journal polices do not encourage the publication of manuscripts based on the same research, but with slightly different variations, in multiple publications. The special IARIA journal publishing rules are set to avoid this unethical aspect. Similar publication is viewed as unethical publishing behavior, and trigger wither rejection or retraction of a contribution, when discovered, depending on the phase of acceptance and publishing process.

Scientific and technical original achievements must be accurate and supported by an objective discussion of their significance. Limitations, drawbacks, trade-offs and failures are expected to be presented, too. Underlying data, either measurements or imported from disclosed sources should be accurately represented in the manuscript. The manuscript should contain sufficient details, references, and environmental/system requirements to allow replicating the work. It is expected that all previous publications are carefully, correctly and fully disclosed. The fabrication of results and the making of fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and will cause the rejection or retraction of a manuscript or published article. Unintended errors discovered after a given processing phase must be immediately reported to the Editor-in-Chief.

When a manuscript reports on commercial software, hardware, or other products, the authors must include a declaration at the beginning of the manuscript in which they must either state that no conflict of interest exists, or describe the nature of any potential conflict. This helps the reader to balance the statements and the conclusions of a publication.  To avoid biased conclusions, all sources of financial support for the research should also be disclosed in the manuscript.

The author(s) of a manuscript agree that, if the manuscript is accepted for publication in IARIA journals, the published article will be copyrighted using a Creative Commons "Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike" license. This license allows the author(s) to retain the copyright, but also allows others to freely copy, distribute, and display the copyrighted work, and derivative works based upon it, under certain specified conditions.

It is mandatory that the authors get a written permission to include or to adapt any images or artwork for which they do not hold copyright in their articles. Following the above rules, the copyright holder must be made explicitly aware that the image(s) or artwork will be made freely available online as part of the article under a Creative Commons "Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike" license.

It is understood that the authors’ names are to be listed in the article authorship part in order of their contribution to the article; all authors take responsibility for their own contributions. Only those individuals who have made a substantive contribution should be listed as authors; those whose contributions are indirect or marginal (e.g., colleagues or supervisors who have reviewed drafts of the work or provided proofreading assistance, and heads of research institutes/centers/labs) should be named in an “Acknowledgments” section at the end of the article, immediately preceding the Reference List. It is mandatory that the corresponding author ensures that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the article; all co-authors have to see and approve the final version of the article and agree to its publication.

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in an article of his/hers that has been published in IARIA journal, he/she has an obligation to promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief and cooperate with the Editors to correct the article or retract it, as appropriate. The ultimate decision on retract versus correct belongs to the Editor-in-Chief.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF REVIEWERS

All IARIA journals reviewers are scientific volunteers; papers are allotted based on specific list of topics mentioned by a reviewer, when accepting the invitation.  Reviewers can decline an invitation to review a particular manuscript at their discretion, based on their availability, the unfit topic, or undisclosed reasons. They should not accept manuscript review assignments for which they feel unqualified, or in ethical conflict (e.g., partners, colleagues, relatives, competitive work, collaborative work).

Once accepted, they are expected to submit their reviews within the required deadlines, explicitly mentioned in the invitation for review. They must decline if any of the conflict mentioned above is potentially identified.

The reviewers are the first to be aware of the original content of a submission. Original content is considered as privileged information or ideas that obtained by reviewers through the peer review process; these must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage, in a direct or post-processed way. Any manuscript received for review must be treated as confidential document, and must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the IARIA Journals Editor-in-Chief and IARIA Journals Board Chairs.

A professional and scientific attitude is expected from reviewers. Reviewers must be as objective as possible, avoiding engaging in personal criticism of the author(s). They are encouraged to express their views clearly, explaining and justifying all recommendations made. Reviewers are expected to provide feedback in terms of corrective actions. They should always attempt to provide detailed and constructive feedback to assist the author(s) in improving their work, even if the manuscript is, in their opinion and in its current form, not publishable. An additional round of corrections might implement those corrective actions and the manuscript might become a publishable one.

When possible, it is suitable that the reviewers identify relevant published work (the most recent one) that has not been cited by the author(s), together with any instances in which proper attribution of sources has not been provided. The reviewers must indicated what other work should be considered for state-of-the-art as well. They should inform the Editor-in-Chief [in the special committee-elated window in the evaluation system] on the ethical acceptability of the research reported in the manuscript.

RESPONSIBILITIES OF EDITORS

The IARIA Journal Editor-in-Chief has ultimate responsibility for deciding if a manuscript submitted to a IARIA journal can be published, following the journal’s policies as determined by the IARIA Journal Editorial Board and obeying to all legal requirements referring to libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. The Editor-in-Chief may consult with the IARIA Journals Board Chairs and with the Editorial Advisory Board, or with any member of the Editorial Board, as well as with reviewers, in making publication decisions.

The editors must evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to the race, color, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the author(s). The editors will not disclose any information about a manuscript under consideration to anyone other than the author(s), reviewers and potential reviewers. Additionally, the editors will make every effort to ensure the integrity of the review process by not revealing the identity of the reviewers of a manuscript to the authors of that manuscript.

Two sets of criteria are observed when evaluating a manuscript for publication; one set is related to the normal standard criteria pertaining to the scientific rigor of the manuscript, the quality of its presentation, including editorial standards, and its contribution to the progress of the state-of-the-art; the other one relates to the editors’ effort for minimizing the ethical, unintended harms. They will trade-off the benefits versus any harm in any case study, or social or technical experiment. Since IARIA journals invites the submission of manuscripts from any country, it is necessary to recognize that laws and regulations regarding research ethics and ethical approval vary worldwide. Therefore, the editors may need to clarify and harmonize the policy with the author(s) and, ultimately, request that the authors provide a written endorsement from the relevant institutional ethics committee or board that approved the research.

The IARIA Journals Editors-in-Chief and the IARIA Journals Board Chairs are guided by COPE's Guidelines for Retracting Articles when considering retracting, issuing an expression of concern about, or issuing corrections pertaining to articles that have been published in a IARIA journal. They are committed to work closely with all universities, industry research centers and, in general, with all research organizations and institutions in line with COPE’s advice on Cooperation between Research Institutions and Journals on Research Integrity Cases.