Duties of the Editors and Editorial Board
- The editors and the editorial board are responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published.
- The editors should be guided by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
- The editors and the editorial board evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
- The editors and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
- Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.
Duties of reviewers
- A peer reviewer assists in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.
- Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.
- Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
- Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.
- Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
- Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation.
- A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
- Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.
- Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
Duties of authors
- 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.
- Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
- 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 paper.