Academic ethics are the necessary fundamental principle of research and the foundation for scientists’ and engineers’ reputation. To promote academic integrity and publish high-quality scientific works, Journal of Electronic Science and Technology (JEST) issues the following Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement about the expected ethical behavior for all parties related to JEST publication, including the author, the peer reviewer, the JEST editor, and the publisher.
1. Publication and authorship
• All the published papers should list the references and financial support according to JEST style (refer to JEST template)
• Forbidden plagiarism and fraudulent date.
• Forbidden to publish the same research in more than one journal
• Forbidden to publish the same research in different languages
2. Author’s duty
• Reporting standards: Before preparing the manuscript for submitting, it is suggested to read the JEST Information for Authors, JEST Submission check list, and JEST template. Original papers should report the work performed and the experiment data accurately, discuss its significance objectively, give experiment details enough to reproduce the research or experiment by others, and cite and list the references exactly according to the JEST requirement and JEST reference style (refer to JEST template).
• Data access and retention: The raw data of the research should be available even after the paper’s publication for at least ten years.
• Originality and plagiarism: Only entirely original papers can be submitted to JEST. All the work or words of others should be cited or quoted appropriately. Plagiarism and fraudulent date papers will not be considered for publication by JEST.
• Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication: Papers should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same research in different languages and the under-review manuscripts to different journals are also unethical behavior, which are unacceptable by JEST.
• Sign the JEST Copyright Form and statement that all data in article are real and authentic.
• Authorship of the paper: All authors should have significantly contributed to the research.
• Participate in the peer review process
• Ethics of experimentation: Approval from the relevant body is required for the studies, such as humans, animals, cell lines, field sampling, and potential biosafety implications.
• Disclosure and conflicts of Interest: All the financial support for the research should be disclosed.
• All authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.
• Acknowledgement of sources
3. Reviewers’ responsibility
• Judgments should be objective.
• Reviewers’ views should be expressed clearly with supporting arguments.
• Promptness is necessary. If the selected reviewer feels inadequate to review the paper or cannot promptly review the paper, the reviewer should inform the editor and drop out of the peer review process of the paper.
• Reviewers should have no conflict of interest with respect to the research, the authors, and/or the research funders.
• Reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.
• Reviewed articles should be treated confidentially.
4. Editorial responsibilities
• Publication decisions: Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article. But this decision should only be based on the paper’s relevance to the journal’s scope and its academic quality, including the reviewers’ judgments, the research’s innovation, the experiment’s validity, etc. And only accept a paper when reasonably certain.
• Confidentiality: Editors and the editorial staff should guarantee the confidentiality of the submitted papers which should be only disclose to the authors, the reviewers, the potential reviewers, the adviser from the JEST Editorial Committee, and the publisher if necessary before publication. And the submitted papers should not be used for the editors’ and the editorial staff’s own research without the authors’ written authorization.
• Editors should have no conflict of interest with respect to articles they reject/accept.
• Adhere to the double-blind review in the peer review process.
• Preserve anonymity of reviewers.
• When errors are found, promote publication of correction or retraction.
5. Publishing ethics issues
• No plagiarism and no fraudulent data.
Plagiarism and fraudulent data are forbidden. When a case of plagiarism and fraudulent data is exposed after the paper’s publication in JEST, a preliminary investigation will be conducted by JEST. JEST will also inform the author. The author could state the situation through JEST official e-mail: journal@intl-jest.com. If the plagiarism is confirmed, JEST will contact the author’s institute and funding agencies. And JEST will mark the plagiarism paper obviously on the PDF of this paper or formally retract the paper.
• Monitoring/safeguarding publishing ethics by editorial board.
Crosscheck and double-blind peer review should be conducted for each paper to avoid academic misconduct. And all the files related to each paper should be kept properly, at least including the JEST Registration Form, the Review Decision Form, and the Copyright Form.
• Guidelines for retracting articles.
(a) Retracting article will be considered if there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error), or if the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper crossreferencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication), or if the paper constitutes plagiarism, or if the paper reports unethical research.
(b) The main purpose of retractions is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity rather than to punish authors who misbehave.
(c) The retracted paper will not be removed from the JEST online archives. But notices of retraction will be promptly published and linked to the retracted article, accurately stating the information of the retracted article, the reason(s) for retraction, and who retracts the article, which will be freely available to all readers.
(d) Articles may be retracted by their author(s) or by JEST. In some cases, retractions are issued jointly. And JEST has the final decision about retracting articles. JEST will retract publications even if all or some of the authors refuse to retract the publication themselves if the unethical behavior is confirmed.
• Maintain the integrity of the academic record.
All the authors will make a commitment of the integrity of the academic record, including the integrity of the data and figures in the paper, when they sign the JEST Copyright Form. And the crosscheck and peer review will help the editors to verify the originality and integrity of the submitted paper.
• All the business needs should be precluded from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.
• Dealing with the fundamental errors.
When an author discovers fundamental errors in the published works, it is the author’s obligation to notify the editor promptly by e-mail. The editors and the editorial stuff should always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
6. Open access policy
JEST is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
These terms and conditions shall be accepted by anyone granted access to JEST’s website (http://www.journal.uestc.edu.cn/).
• Open access is provided to subscribers only for noncommercial research purposes.
• Outputs of anything generated directly by open access must be licensed by the user under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
• Output can include snippets of up to a maximum of 200 characters from the original text, excluding text entity matching or bibliographic metadata.
• The selection and refinement of desired articles can be conducted by using existing search methods and tools, such as CrossRef and Springer’s Metadata API. Full-text contents can be accessed easily and programmatically at URLs based on the articles’ DOIs.
References
[1] Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (2011, March). Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. [Online]. Available: http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_ conduct_for_ journal_ editors_Mar11.pdf
[2] Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (2009, Sep). Retractions: Guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). [Online]. Available: http://publishing.aip.org/sites/ default/files/aippub/ files/ retractions-cope.pdf
