Publication Ethics

Ethical Guidelines for Publication of Nanochemistry Research

Preface

The Iranian Chemical Society (ICS) serves the chemistry profession in Iran and also in the world since 1982. Among of many activities, this society presents the results of scientific research in ICS journals. Every editor, author and reviewer of the journal of this society has a responsibility to obey the Ethical guidelines of this journal, which is Based on ethical guidelines for publication suggested by Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE). These policies will be reviewed periodically particularly with respect to new recommendations from the COPE.

 Although these ethical guidelines are obvious for scientists, we will outline them in more detail in the following.

Guidelines

A-   Ethical Obligations of Editors of Scientific Journals

1- An editor should give impartial consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication regardless of race, sex, seniority, religion, nationality, or institutional affiliation of author(s).  An editor may take into account relationships of manuscript immediately under consideration to others previously or concurrently offered by the same author(s).

2- An editor should consider the submitted manuscript for publication with reasonable speed.

3- Editor is the only person who has a responsibility to accept or reject a manuscript according to reviewer’s recommendation. The editor must choose appropriate reviewers very close to the manuscript in order to reach the correct judgment. However, the manuscript can be rejected by the editor without external review, if it is not appropriate for the journal. Such rejection may be due to out of the scope of the journal, manuscript prepared very badly, results are not enough to prove the issue in manuscript, unacceptable English, ethical violation by the author, or other reasons.

4- The editor and members of the editor’s staff should not disclose any information about a manuscript under consideration to others than reviewers, except to whom to solicit (the person selected by the editor to judge between reviewer and author).

5- An editor should respect the intellectual independence of authors. The editor must quickly send the manuscript to reviewers.

6- If an editor is the author of submitted a manuscript, editor-in-chief has a responsibility to choose another qualified editor for this manuscript.

7- Any editor must not use any unpublished information, argument or interpretations disclosed in any submitted manuscript in editor’s own research, unless by written permission of the author. If it has happened, the editor should be ethically discontinued the work. This editor has not qualification for editorial work. Editor-in-chief must assign another editor for this manuscript.

8- If some convincing erroneous were found in the published manuscript, the editor should facilitate reporting the error by author or by the editor whom find the error.

9- An author may ask the editor not to send the manuscript to certain reviewers. However, the editor may decide to use these reviewers to get important opinions in the fair consideration of a manuscript.

10- Editors should follow COPE guideline and flowchart in case of any research misconduct including plagiarism, data fabrication/falsification and citation manipulations.

B-   Ethical Obligations of Authors

The ethical guidelines of the authors are as follows:

1- An author should present accurate and complete accounts of the research performed, including the data collected or used, as well as an objective discussion of the significance of the research. The research and the reported data should contain sufficient detail and reference to public sources of information for a trained professional to reproduce the experimental observations.

2- An author, therefore, has an obligation to use the journal space wisely and economically because it is a precious resource created at considerable cost.

3- An author is responsible for providing data, methods, and samples of unusual materials unavailable elsewhere. Authors are encouraged to submit their data to a public database, where available.

4- An author is obligated to perform a literature search to find earlier work that is essential for understanding the present investigation, and then cite the original publications. Except in a review, citation of work that will not be referred to in the reported research should be minimized.

5- Authors should identify any unusual hazards inherent in the chemicals, equipment, or procedures used in the investigation. Authors should inform the editor if a manuscript could be considered to report research that can be reasonably expected to provide knowledge, products, or technologies that could be directly misapplied by others to pose a threat to public health and safety, agricultural crops and other plants, animals, the environment, or materiel.

6- An author who has done extensive work on a system or group of related systems should organize publication so that each report gives a well-rounded account of a particular aspect of the general study. Fragmentation should be avoided because it consumes journal space and complicates literature searches. It is better to publish the reports on related studies in the same journal, or in a small number of journals.

7- During the submission process, an author, should inform the editor of related manuscripts that the author has under editorial consideration. Moreover, copies of related manuscripts should be supplied to the editor.

8- Submitting the manuscript describing essentially the same research to more than one journal is forbidden unless it is a resubmission of a manuscript rejected for or withdrawn from publication. It is permissible to submit a manuscript for a full paper expanding a previously published brief preliminary account (a “communication” or “letter”) of the same work. However, at the time of submission, the author should inform the editor of the earlier communication, and the preliminary communication should be cited in the manuscript.

9- The source of all information, except that which is common knowledge, should be quoted or offered by the author. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, should not be used or reported in the author’s work without explicit permission from the investigator with whom the information originated.

10- The co-authors of a paper are those persons who have made significant scientific contributions to the work reported and who share responsibility and accountability for the results. Other contributions should be indicated in a footnote or an “Acknowledgments” section. An administrative relationship to the investigation does not of itself qualify a person for co-authorship. Deceased persons who meet the criterion for inclusion as co-authors should be so included, with a footnote reporting date of death. No fictitious name should be listed as an author or coauthor. The author who submits a manuscript for publication accepts the responsibility of having included as co-authors all persons appropriate and none inappropriate.

11- The corresponding author must indicate any potential and/or relevant competing for financial or other interest (of all authors) that might be affected by publication of the results contained in the authors’ manuscript. The corresponding author must inform the editor at the time of submission either that there is no conflict of interest to declare, or should disclose potential conflicts of interest that will be acknowledged in the published article.

It’s suggested that authors use the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Conflict of Interest form which is available online at http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/ and send the completed form during submissions process.

12- Plagiarism is not acceptable in Nanochemistry Research (NCR). Authors should not engage in plagiarism - verbatim or near-verbatim copying, or very close paraphrasing, of text or results from another’s work. Authors should not engage in self-plagiarism (also known as duplicate publication) - unacceptably close replication of the author’s own previously published text or results without acknowledgment of the source. If one or two identical sentences previously published by an author appear in a subsequent work by the same author, this is unlikely to be regarded as a duplicate publication. Material quoted verbatim from the author’s previously published work must be placed in quotation marks. In contrast, it is unacceptable for an author to include significant verbatim or near-verbatim portions of his/her own work, or to depict his/her previously published results or methodology as new, without acknowledging the source.

C-   Ethical obligations of Reviewers of Manuscripts

1- Since the reviewing is the essential step for publication process, any reviewer must only judge it by scientific merit not by prejudice (race, sex, seniority, religion, institutional affiliation of author(s), or nationality).

2- If the reviewer feels that he (she) is not enough qualified (or has not enough experiences in the field of the manuscript), the manuscript should be promptly returned to the editor by the reviewer.

3- A reviewer of a manuscript should be qualified for complete (supporting data, experimental and theoretical parts) or some parts of the manuscript. For example, if the article is about quantum mechanical calculation on a drug, the editor can assign a reviewer for drug and a reviewer for quantum mechanical calculation.

4- A reviewer must respect the intellectual independence of the authors; otherwise, the editor must omit that reviewer.

5- A reviewer must not sign or write his (her) name in his (her) comments. He (she) must avoid by no means revealing his (her) name to the author(s). 

6- The manuscript is as a confidential document, and a reviewer must not give or show it to others without editor permission.

7- If a reviewer feels this work resembles of his (her) personal current research after reading the abstract, or if he (she) has a personal or professional connection with the author(s), he (she) must return the manuscript promptly to the editor by pressing on decline option.

8- If a reviewer accepts or rejects a manuscript, his (her) comment of judgment about observation, derivation, or argument must be clear and scientifically understandable for editor and author(s) according to enough reasoning and relevant citations. Unsupported comments are not acceptable.

9- A reviewer must be sensitive for any part of the manuscript from other scientists with a relevant citation. Copying from other scientists or substantial similarity between the present work and other works (even written by the present author(s) in other publications) are absolutely forbidden, and the reviewer must report it to editor and author(s).

10- A reviewer should check the references as much as possible to for unnecessary citation or too much self-citation or unnecessary self-citation, and report them to editor and author(s).

11- Reviewers must not disclose or publish any part of the manuscript under their consideration, unless by written permission of authors.      If they do, the editor must discontinue their reviewing for that reviewer(s). If the reviewer action makes a loss for the author, the reviewer can be prosecutable in court by author and journal.

12- Reviewer must inform the editor that the report in the manuscript can provide a product or technologies that may be misapplied by other to make harm for people, animal, plant, material or environment.

13- Reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.

14- Reviewers should not review 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.

15- Reviewers should inform the editor of ethical questions and possible research and publication misconduct raised by submissions; Including unethical research design, insufficient detail on patient consent or protection of research subjects, inappropriate data manipulation and presentation.