Publication Ethics

Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

(http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf)

  1. The Editors of the CIVIL ENGINEERING INFRASTRUCTURES JOURNAL (CEIJ) should have the full authority to reject/accept a manuscript.
  2. The Editors of the journal should maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts under review or until they are published.
  3. The Editor-in-Chief should take a decision on submitted manuscripts, whether to be published or not with other editors and reviewers
  4. The Editors of the journal should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
  5. The Editors of the journal should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.
  6. The Editors of the journal should maintain academic integrity and strive to meet the needs of readers and authors.
  7. The Editors of the journal should be willing to investigate plagiarism and fraudulent data issues and willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
  8. The Editors of the journal should have the limit themselves only to the intellectual content.
  9. The Editors of the journal must not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
  10. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.
  11. Guest editors play a vital role in acquiring content and leading the review process for special issue publications.

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

(http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Peer%20review%20guidelines.pdf)

  1. The Reviewers of the journal should assist the Editors in taking the decision for publishing the submitted manuscripts.
  2. The Reviewers should maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts, which they are invited to review.
  3. The Reviewers should provide comments in time that will help editors to make decision on the submitted manuscript to be published or not.
  4. The Reviewers are bound to treat the manuscript received for peer reviewing as confidential, and must not use the information obtained through peer review for personal advantage. 
  5. The Reviewers comments against each invited manuscript should be technical, professional and objective.
  6. The Reviewers should not review the manuscripts in which they have found conflicts of interest with any of the authors, companies, or institutions.
  7. The Reviewers should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.

 Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

  1. Manuscripts must be submitted only in English and should be written according to sound grammar and proper terminology.
  2. Manuscripts must be submitted with the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis) and are not currently under consideration by another journal published by or any other publisher.
  3. The submitting (corresponding) author is responsible for ensuring that the manuscript article's publication has been approved by all the other coauthors.
  4. In order to sustain the peer review system, authors have an obligation to participate in peer review process to evaluate manuscripts from others. 
  5. It is also the authors' responsibility to ensure that the manuscripts emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution.
  6. It is a condition for submission of a manuscript that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.
  7. Authors are requested to clearly identify who provided financial support for the conduct of research and/or preparation of the manuscript and briefly describe the role of the funder/sponsor in any part of the work.
  8. A copy right release and conflict of interest disclosure form must be signed by the corresponding author in case of multiple authorships, prior to the acceptation of the manuscript, by all authors, for publication to be legally responsible towards the Journal ethics and privacy policy.
  9. Under open access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly.
  10. All authors have agreed to allow the corresponding author to serve as the primary correspondent with the editorial office, to review the edited manuscript and proof.
  11. When author(s) discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript. 
  12. All authors must know that the submitted manuscripts under review or published with C.E.I.J are subject to screening using Plagiarism Prevention Software. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. 

 Publication Ethics

The ethical policy of Civil Engineering Infrastructures Journal is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with International Committee of C.E.I.J Editorial Board codes of conduct. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with C.E.I.J. The ethical policy of C.E.I.J is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or articles submitted to the journal should be published in the concerned issue. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit www.publicationethics.org. All accepted papers in this journal are checked for plagiarism by “Ithenticate” software and only those with less than 20% similarity can be published.

 

Conflict of Interest

Public trust in the peer-review process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how well conflict of interest is handled during writing, peer review, and editorial decision making. Conflict of interest exists when the authors, affiliated institutions, reviewers or editors have financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence their actions. The potential for conflict of interests can exist regardless of whether an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment.

All participants in the journal’s peer-review process of all submissions must disclose any relationship that could be potential conflicts of interest. Editors may use the disclosure statements as the basis for making editorial decisions. The journal editors should publish this information if they believe it is important in judging the manuscripts. Incidence of potential conflicts of interest may include, but not limited to, the following:

1. Authors’ Commitment: Authors are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias their submissions.  They must state explicitly whether potential conflicts exist. Authors should identify Individuals who provided writing or other assistance and disclose the funding source(s).
2. Source of Funding: Studies may receive funding from sources, including commercial firms, non-profit foundations and/or government. The conditions of funding may have the potential to bias or discredit the studies. The journal’s editors may choose to reject an article if a sponsor has asserted control over the authors’ right to publish.

3. Reviewers: Authors may provide the names of individuals they feel should, or should not be asked to review their manuscripts, because of potential conflicts of interest. In such cases, authors should justify their concerns. Such information is important to editors in deciding whether to honor the authors’ request. The journal reviewers must disclose to the journal editors any conflicts of interest that could bias their opinions about specific manuscript(s). In such cases, they should refuse from reviewing the manuscripts in question.

4. Editors: The editors who make the final decisions about manuscripts must have no personal, professional or financial involvement in any of the issues they might judge. Other members of the editorial board must provide the editors with a clear and current description of their financial interests.  These individuals may refuse from making any editorial decisions in which a conflict of interest exists. Editorial staff must not use information gained through the review process for private gains. The journal’s Editor-in- Chief should regularly publish on the policies and guidelines regarding conflict of interests for authors, reviewers, editors and other journal staff.

You can download the Conflict of Interest Form from here.

 

Principles of Transparency

(http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Principles_of_Transparency_and_Best_Practice_in_Scholarly_Publishing.pdf)

1. Peer review process: C.E.I.J is a double blind peer reviewed electronic and print quarterly publication concerned with all aspects of environmental science and management. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, is clearly described on the journal’s Web site (https://ceij.ut.ac.ir/journal/process).

 It is worthy to mention that the following criteria are considered at the time of selection of reviewers and receiving their review:

- The judgments should be objective.

- Reviewers should have no conflict of interest.

- Reviewers should point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.

- Reviewed articles should be treated confidentially.

2. Governing Body: C.E.I.J has a very strong editorial board, whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors are provided on the journal’s Web site (https://ceij.ut.ac.ir/journal/editorial.board).

3. Contact information: Journal is provided the contact information for the editorial office of C.E.I.J( www.ceij.ut.ac.ir/journal/contact.us )

4. Author fees / Access: The Journal database is fully open access and full text of published articles are available for everyone who can get access to the Journal website free of cost. Besides, the authors never pay any charges for submission, article processing and publication.

5. Copyright:  Journals made clear the type of copyright under which authors work will be published.  Upon acceptance of manuscript, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement'.  The CEIJ has no charges either for the article processing or article submission.

6. Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct:  Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.

7. Web site: A journal’s Website (https://ceijournal.com) contains that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.

8. Name of journal:  The Journal name of Civil Engineering Infrastructure Journal (C.E.I.J) has unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal.

9. Conflicts of interest:   Authors are requested to evident whether impending conflicts do or do not exist while submitting their articles to C.E.I.J through Conflict of Interest Disclosure form

10. Publishing schedule:  It has been mentioned in the main page of Journal that the Frequency is Semiannual.

11. Archiving:  The archives of all published issues are accessible at journal official site (https:// https://ceijournal.com)

Violation of Publication Ethics

(http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Full%20set%20of%20flowcharts.pdf)

  1. Plagiarism: Plagiarism is intentionally using someone else’s ideas or other original material as if they are one's own. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation is considered by CEIJ Journals as plagiarism. All manuscripts under review or published with CEIJ are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software. Thus, plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. The development of CrossCheck is a service that helps editors to verify the originality of papers. CrossCheck is powered by the Ithenticate software from iParadigms, known in the academic community as providers of Turnitin.  For a searchable list of all journals in the CrossCheck database, please visit: www.ithenticate.com/search
  2. Data Fabrication and Falsification: Data fabrication and falsification means the researcher did not really carry out the study, but made up data or results and had recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.
  3. Simultaneous Submission: Simultaneous submission occurs when a manuscript (or substantial sections from a manuscript) is submitted to a journal when it is already under consideration by another journal.
  4. Duplicate Publication: Duplicate publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions.
  5. Redundant Publications: Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, most often consequent to the desire to plump academic vitae.
  6. Improper Author Contribution or Attribution: All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. Don’t forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.
  7. Citation Manipulation: Citation Manipulation is including excessive citations, in the submitted manuscript, that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely for the purpose of increasing citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal. This leads to misrepresenting the importance of the specific work and journal in which it appears and is thus a form of scientific misconduct.
  8. Sanctions: In the event that there are documented violations of any of the above mentioned policies in any journal, regardless of whether or not the violations occurred in a journal, the following sanctions will be applied: (i) Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript, (ii)Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submitted to any journal published by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript, (iii) Prohibition will be imposed for a minimum of 36 months against all of the authors for any new submissions to any journal, either individually or in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript, and (iv) Prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the Editorial Board of any journal.

Handling Cases of Misconduct

(http://publicationethics.org/files/Sharing%20_of_Information_Among_EiCs_guidelines_web_version.pdf)

Once CEIJ confirms a violation against CEIJ’s publication ethics, CEIJ addresses ethical concerns diligently following an issue-specific standard practice as summarized below.

  1. The first action of the journal Editor is to inform the Editorial Office of CEIJ by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner.
  2. If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and it seems that serious unethical conduct has taken place, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via Editorial Office.  After deliberation, the Committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions. 
  3. If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Publication Committee, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the author of CEIJ publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the Editor may request the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.
  4. Notification will be sent to corresponding author and any work by the author responsible for the violation or any work these persons coauthored that is under review by CEIJ journal will be rejected immediately.
  5. The authors are prohibited from serving on CEIJ editorial board and serving as a reviewer for CEIJ Journal. CEIJ reserves the right to take more actions.
  6. In extreme cases, notifications will be sent to the affiliations of the authors and the authors are prohibited from submitting their work to CEIJ for 5 years.
  7. In serious cases of fraud that result in retraction of the article, a retraction notice will be published in the journal and will be linked to the article in the online version. The online version will also be marked “retracted” with the retraction date.