Ethics & Malpractice

ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT 

 

1) THE RESPONSIBILITIES AND RIGHTS OF EDITORS  

SUBMISSIONS

Editors should:

- Ensure that the papers published are consistent with the journal’s scope and mission
- Protect the academic standard of the journal by only publishing content of highest quality
- Provide as transparent a review and publication process as possible
- Request the author obtain permission for any third party material to be included in the submission
- Publish regularly updated guidance to authors as well as reviewers on what is expected of them 
- Accept papers based on their scholarly originality and quality of their content
- Decide on accepting or rejecting manuscripts submitted to the journal 

 

REVIEW PROCESS

Editors should:

- Carry out thorough and confidential peer review for article submissions, in adherence with COPE guidelines
- Assign papers to reviewers who have the subject expertise for blind evaluation
- Ensure that the review process is completed in a timely way and that authors receive constructive feedback about their submitted work
- Monitor the quality of the reviews prepared
- Detail and justify any article types which will not be peer reviewed (e.g. editorials, opinion pieces, review essays etc.)
- Provide advice to authors during the review process and once a decision has been made
- Remain in good communication with the author(s) and reviewers
- Allow authors the right to appeal any editorial decision

 

ETHICAL POLICIES OF SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING

Editors should:

- Identify and address any ethical breaches of conduct by authors and reviewers
- See that the authors are treated with courtesy, fairness, and honesty
- Be ready to publish corrections and clarifications when necessary, as well as retract articles that s/he deems unethical or damaging 

 

2) RESPONSIBILITIES AND RIGHTS OF REVIEWERS 

Reviewers should: 

- Be aware that HJEAS operates with a confidential, double-blind peer review system and the editors are looking to them for subject knowledge and honest and fair assessment of the work
- Only accept invitations to review work that is relevant to their own expertise
- Decline an invitation for review when potential conflicts of interest exist
- Return the review within the proposed, or mutually agreed time-frame (preferably within six weeks), and inform the editors if they require an extension.
- Carry out their assessment in a responsible manner, evaluating the paper’s importance, originality, professional standards, and clarity, and the study’s relevance to the remit of the journal
- Provide as objective and constructive criticism as possible, refraining from the use of offensive or derogatory language
- Report any suspected ethical misconduct
- Be ready to review further versions of the work and provide further advice to the editors, if requested

 

3) RESPONSIBILITIES AND RIGHTS OF AUTHORS

Authors should:

- Ensure they have submitted exclusively their original and previously unpublished research that is not submitted or under review or in print elsewhere, and the submission does not contain earlier published sections, and as such does not infringe upon anyone’s copyright nor violate any proprietary rights (see Author’s Declaration)
- Submit their manuscript with correct and due referencing, citations, and identification of any third-party material in accordance with the HJEAS Stylesheet and Submission Guidelines
- In the case of copyright materials request and upon submission present written permission from the copyright holder(s)
- Expect and accept that the originality of the submission will be checked by a plagiarism detection software before double blind peer-review
- In case of detection, be obliged to provide retractions
- If necessary and requested by the editors, provide corrections of mistakes in a timely manner and responsibly
- Ensure that all authors, co-authors of the submission who have significantly contributed to the research are represented and duly acknowledged
- Co-operate and communicate with the editor and publisher in a timely manner and expect the same conduct
- Have a fair, objective, transparent and due conduct during the publication process setting and requiring high professional standards
- Be assured the journal has an objective, confidential, and rigorous blind peer-review procedure with selection criteria be solely based on the paper’s importance, originality, professional standards, and clarity, and the study’s relevance to the remit of the journal
- Have correct, reliable, and up-to-date information with regard to the submission guidelines, the blind review procedure, and the publication process (see website)
- Enjoy the guarantee that editors should not reverse decisions to accept submissions unless serious issues, unethical or damaging, are identified with the submission, and new editors should not overturn decisions to publish submissions made by the previous editor unless serious problems are identified
- Provide information on financial support
- Have the right to appeal against editorial decisions and in the event of potential disputes or complaints by the author, the case is to be referred to the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial board for consideration and resolution.

 

4) ETHICAL MISCONDUCT 

Our policy is one of prevention and not persecution. 

If ethical misconduct is suspected in work submitted to or published by HJEAS, it is the editors’ duty to ensure that a fair and transparent investigation of the matter is carried out. It is their ethical obligation to pursue alleged cases, first by seeking a response from those involved. Editors will follow the COPE flowcharts (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts) to address each specific case and will make all reasonable efforts to ensure that a proper investigation is conducted. HJEAS recommends that authors read these flowcharts in order to avoid unintentional ethical misconduct. Prior to the peer-review process, HJEAS scans submissions in iThenticate for plagiarism and reserves the right to request information from the authors to verify their originality. If it is established that an author, a reviewer or a member of the advisory board is in breach of the COPE, their contribution to the journal will no longer be accepted. The discovery of ethical misconduct in content that has already been published by HJEAS will lead to the retraction of the article.

 

5) RETRACTING OR CORRECTING ARTICLES 

In order to maintain the scholarly integrity of HJEAS, editors – based on input from blind reviewers – are responsible for decisions whether to publish a submitted article. While editors place great importance on the authority of published material, there might be cases in which already published articles, either due to honest errors, copyright infringement, plagiarism, etc. need to be corrected or retracted. Our policy regarding correcting and retracting articles is based on best practice in the academic publishing community and draws heavily on COPE Guidelines.

In case HJEAS detects honest errors, it will publish a notification and correction either in the form of an Erratum (publisher correction), a notification describing errors or omissions made by the journal staff in the production process, or a Corrigendum (author correction) that notify readers of any important errors made by the author(s) which has a negative impact on the scientific integrity of the article or the reputation of the author(s). The corrected article is not removed from the online version of the article and the Erratum/Corrigendum is made freely available to all readers and is linked to the corrected article. Minor errors that do not affect the integrity of the metadata or a reader’s ability to understand an article and that do not involve a scientific error or omission will be corrected at the discretion of the Publisher and, if possible, the digital version of the original article will be removed and replaced with a corrected version, and the date of the correction noted on the corrected article.

HJEAS retracts articles in cases when editors believe that a paper should not be regarded as part of the scientific literature because of infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, etc. Based on investigation, editors of HJEAS shall determine whether a retraction is required and in such cases shall act in accordance with COPE’s Retraction Guidelines. Retraction can be made with or without the unanimous agreement of the author(s).

HJEAS strongly discourages the withdrawal of articles and agrees to it only in exceptional circumstances for early versions of articles which have been accepted for publication but which have not yet been published as part of the printed issue or online.