In the review process, CBSJ will strictly consider whether or not the manuscript raises some ethical issues in accordance with the COPE international standards. It is therefore important to ensure that the expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the roles of journal editors, reviewers, and author(s) have honored those responsibilities.
Duties of Editors
Editors Shall:•
Publish guidelines for manuscript preparation and any other necessary steps that the authors must follow to be readily available to all author(s) and the public.
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Guarantee neither page charges nor publication fees.
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Check for duplication and plagiarism of submitted manuscript.
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Ensure that the peer review process is fair, unbiased and timely. Reviewers should be qualified experts in the relevant field.
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Not disclose the information of the author(s) and the reviewers to third parties during the review process nor disclose the content of or any information contained in the manuscript while unpublished.
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Select a manuscript to be published based on its merits.
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Not take part in deciding to accept or reject manuscript that they authored or have any vested interests or involvement.
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Not request the author(s) to include any references with the intention to increase the journal’s citation count or impact factor or to increase the citation count of their work or that of their associates.
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Establish mechanisms for appeal against editorial decisions and for complaints in relation to manuscript published in the journal.
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Establish a mechanism to rectify serious errors in published manuscript such as the violation of research ethics or the suspicion of misconduct related to the published manuscript.
Duties of Reviewers
Reviewers Shall:•
Treat a submitted manuscript as a confidential document and shall not disclose any information contained in the manuscript while unpublished.
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Evaluate the quality of a manuscript without any subjective prejudice.
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Not suggest that the author(s) include any references with the intention to increase the citation count of their work or that of their associates.
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Submit the review result on time.
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Declare any conflicts of interest they may have with the author(s) to the editorial team.
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Inform the editorial team of any ethical issues in the manuscript including plagiarism and potential data fabrication or falsification.
Duties of Author(s)
Author(s) Shall:•
Not submit for consideration of publication in a journal a manuscript that has previously been published or is being considered for publication elsewhere.
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Not submit the manuscript for consideration of publication that contains any parts that constitute plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) with an accurate and complete list of references.
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Not fabricate or falsify data in the research report.
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Strictly comply with the authorship principle. Authorship shall be exclusive for those who have made a significant contribution to the manuscript, none of whom should be left out or excluded from list of authors.
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Seriously consider that the manuscript, which involves the use of human participants/volunteers as correspondent subjects, should ensure that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines to be certain that there is no abuse or physical enforcement on those participants in the research or the review article.
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Include a statement in the manuscript of approval from an ethics committee obtained for any experiment/clinical trials involving human subjects. Author(s) must state the approval code in the manuscript.
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Disclose all funding sources of the manuscript.
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The acknowledgments and any conflicts of interest must be stated in the manuscript.
Bibliography: Elsevier. 2017. Publishing Ethics. Retrieved from https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/publishing-ethics.
The Committee on Publication Ethics. 2008. COPE Code of Conduct. Retrieved from http://publicationethics.org/files/2008%20Code%20of%20Conduct.pdf
