COPE – COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION ETHICS

COPE Code of Conduct

Duties of Editors

1. Editors determine and decide which articles submitted to the journal will be published after careful scrutiny and evaluation of their quality, clarity, originality, significance and consistency in accordance with the policies of the journal.

2. Editors must respect the confidentiality of authors and reviewers. They should not disclose any details or information about the research and its review to anyone during or after the peer-review process. 

3. Editors must not publish previously published articles. 

4. When editors find any form of plagiarism in a research article, they must inform the respective author that the mistake needs to be rectified or that the research article has been rejected for publication completely.

5. Editors must not have any conflict of interest with authors, reviewers and the editorial board. 

6. Editors must check the validity of a research article as well as look for any signs of plagiarism by using a reliable program before deciding to publish it. 

7. Editors should not simply reject research articles due to the suspicion that certain publication policies have been broken. They need to objectively evaluate them first and prove that policies have indeed been broken before rejecting them.  

 

Duties of Authors

1. Authors must certify that their manuscripts have not been previously published in whole or in part and must be original pieces of work. 

2. Authors must honestly report facts according to the results of their research without any form of fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation.

 3. If authors need to cite references from other published studies or materials, they must write the references according to the specified format of the journal.

 4. Authors must write research articles correctly according to the specified format of the journal.

 5. Authors should properly acknowledge the people who have significantly contributed to their research by including their names on a list upon submission of their work.

6. Authors must specify their sources of funding who helped support their research. 

7. Authors must specify any relevant conflicts of interest.

 

Duties of Reviewers

1. Peer reviewers must respect and uphold confidentiality. They should not disclose any details contained in a manuscript or its review during or after the peer-review process beyond those that are released by the journal.

 2. If a peer review would benefit an author, the reviewer should inform their editor that they are unable to evaluate the article they have been tasked to review and also unable to comment on it. They also need to clearly state the reason for their decision. 

3. Peer reviewers must have expertise in the field of research that they are asked to review, Considering the significance of content and quality of analysis for every research, it is paramount that peer reviews are free of personal and subjective opinions. 

4.  If peer reviewers find any part of the research article they are working on similar to another article without appropriate reference citations, they are to inform their editor immediately.