Due to the current situation, the Journal of Water and Land Development has suspended scientific cooperation with Russian and Belarusian institutions as of February 24, 2022. Unfortunately, manuscripts from these countries will not be accepted for publication in our journal until further notice.
ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
Editors
of the "Journal of Water and Land Development" pay attention to
maintain ethical standards in scientific publications and undertake any
possible measure to counteract neglecting the standards. Papers submitted for
publication are evaluated with respect to reliability, conforming to ethical
standards and the advancement of science. Principles given below are based on
COPE's Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, which may be found at:
Authors’ duties
Authorship
Authorship
should be limited to persons, who markedly contributed to the idea, project,
realisation and interpretation of results. All of them have to be listed as
co-authors. Other persons, who affected some important parts of the study
should be listed or mentioned as co-workers. Author should be certain that all
co-authors were enlisted, saw and accepted final version of the paper and
agreed upon its publication.
Disclosure
and conflict of interests
Author
should disclose all sources of financing of his/her study, the input of
scientific institutions, associations and other subjects and all important
conflicts of interests that might affect results and interpretation of the
study.
Standards
in reporting
Authors of
papers based on original studies should present precise description of
performed work and objective discussion on its importance. Source data should
be accurately presented in the paper. The paper should contain detailed
information and references that would enable others to use it. False or
intentionally not true declarations are not ethical and are not accepted by the
editors.
Access
to and storage of data
Authors may
be asked for providing raw data used in the paper for editorial assessment and
should be prepared to store them within the reasonable time period after
publication.
Multiple,
unnecessary and competitive publications
As a rule,
author should not publish papers describing the same studies in more than one
journal or primary publication. Submission of the same paper to more than one
journal at the same time is not ethical and prohibited.
Confirmation
of sources
Author
should cite papers that affected the creation of submitted manuscript and every
time he/she should confirm the use of other authors’ work.
Important
errors in published papers
When author
finds an important error or inaccuracy in his/her paper, he/she is obliged to
inform Editorial Office about this as soon as possible.
Originality
and plagiarism
Author may
submit only original papers. He/she should be certain that the names of authors
referred to in the paper and/or fragments of their texts are properly cited or
mentioned.
Ghostwriting
Ghost
writing/guest authorship are manifestation of scientific unreliability and all
such cases will be revealed including notification of appropriate subjects.
Signs of scientific unreliability, especially violation of ethical principles
in science will be documented by the Editorial Office.
Duties
of the Editorial Office
Editors’
duties
Editors
know the rules of journal editing including the procedures applied in case of
uncovering non-ethical practices.
Decisions
on publication
Editor-in
Chief is obliged to apply present legal status as to defamation, violation of
author’s rights and plagiarism and bears the responsibility for decisions.
He/she may consult thematic editors and/or referees in that matter.
Selection
of referees
Editorial
Office provides appropriate selection of referees and takes care about
appropriate course of peer –reviewing (the review has to be substantive).
Confidentiality
Every
member of editorial team is not allowed to disclose information about submitted
paper to any person except its author, referees, other advisors and editors.
Discrimination
To
counteract discrimination the Editorial Office obeys the legally binding rules.
Disclosure
and conflict of interests
Not
published papers or their fragments cannot be used in the studies of editorial
team or referees without written consent of the author.
Referees'
duties
Editorial
decisions
Referee
supports Editor-in-Chief in taking editorial decisions and may also support
author in improving the paper.
Back
information
In case a
selected referee is not able to review the paper or cannot do it in due time
period, he/she should inform secretary of the Editorial Office about this fact.
Objectivity
standards
Reviews
should be objective. Personal criticism is inappropriate. Referees should
clearly ex-press their opinions and support them with proper arguments.
Confidentiality
All
reviewed papers should be dealt with as confidential. They should not be
discussed or revealed to persons other than the secretary of the Editorial
Office.
Anonymity
All reviews
should be made anonymously and the Editorial Office does not disclose names of
the authors to referees.
Disclosure
and conflict of interests
Confidential
information or ideas resulting from reviewing procedure should be kept secret
and should not be used to gain personal benefits. Referees should not review
papers, which might generate conflict of interests resulting from relationships
with the author, firm or institution involved in the study.
Confirmation
of sources
Referees should indicate publications which are not referred to in the paper. Any statement that the observation, source or argument was described previously should be supported by appropriate citation. Referee should also inform the secretary of the Editorial Office about significant similarity to or partial overlapping of the reviewed paper with any other published paper and about suspected plagiarism.
Referees should indicate publications which are not referred to in the paper. Any statement that the observation, source or argument was described previously should be supported by appropriate citation. Referee should also inform the secretary of the Editorial Office about significant similarity to or partial overlapping of the reviewed paper with any other published paper and about suspected plagiarism.
Corrections, retractions and updates after
publication
Sometimes
after an article has been published it may be necessary to make a change. This
will be done after careful consideration by Editors to ensure any necessary
changes are made in accordance with guidance from the Committee on Publication
Ethics (COPE): https://publicationethics.org/postpublication
Retraction
is executed in accordance with the procedure presented by the European
Association of Science Editors (EASE): https://ease.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/EASE-Standard-Retraction-Form-2022.pdf
Complaints and appeals
A complaint
may arise over the conduct of editors and/or peer reviewers. Some possible
reasons for complaints are:
- intentional delay of reviewing process,
- undisclosed conflicts of interest,
- breach of confidentiality,
- misuse of confidential information,
- practical issues, such as unresponsive journal staff.
An appeal
is a formal request to reconsider a decision taken by the journal. It might be
related to decisions in regular journal operation (e.g. a manuscript being
rejected) or to a verdict taken by a team investigating a particular situation
(e.g. a published manuscript being retracted due to suspected data
manipulation).
The authors
submit a formal complaint/appeal to the journal principal contact by email or
post (journal@itp.edu.pl). Within a week, the journal will form an
investigation group consisting of at least three Editorial Team members (not
previously involved in handling the manuscript in question) and report back
their names and how they can be contacted.
The actual
investigation time may vary depending on the complexity of the case. The
investigation team provides fair opportunities to all parties involved to
explain their motives and actions. The purpose of the investigation is to
establish whether misconduct took place (as reported or in the light of new
circumstances discovered), whether it was performed deliberately or as a
genuine mistake, and to estimate the scale of its negative consequences.
Based on
the facts collected, the investigation team decides on the corrective actions
to be taken as well as whether some penalty is to be applied to the person who
performed the misconduct. Depending on the misconduct severity, the penalty may
range from a reprimand to an expulsion from the reviewer pool/editorial board
and a report being sent to the institution to which the person in question is
affiliated.
The authors
are informed about the investigation outcome upon its completion.
In its
work, the investigation group relies on the recommendations and guidelines
provided by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): https://publicationethics.org/appeals
In complex cases,
an external ethical advisor might be called for.
Guidance from COPE (https://publicationethics.org/):
Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers (English)
Sharing of information among editors-in-chief regarding possible misconduct
How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers
Text recycling guidelines for editors
A short guide to ethical editing for new editors
Guidelines for managing the relationships between society owned journals, their society, and publishers
Retraction guidelines