Ethical Guidelines

ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS

  • The articles which are sent for publication must fulfil the condition of originality, that is to say, that intellectual property of the article must belong exclusively to the author(s), who takes the responsibility for its content
  • The use of pre-existent material must be properly credited.
  • Authors must guarantee the exclusivity of the article, it means, that it has not been published before and that, once sent, it will not be submitted to any other publication, unless it has been rejected by the journal’s Editorial Board.
  • Author(s) must declare any potential conflict of interest.
  • Author(s) must clearly state the funding sources of the research which gave origin to the article.

ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR EDITORS

  • The editors, in compliance with their mission of safeguarding the ethics and the scientific and academic quality of the publication, share with the authors and the reviewers the responsibility of the compliance of the above mentioned conditions and of the existent legislation regarding defamation, copyright, infraction and plagiarism.
  • If the Editorial Board is to decide on the publication of an article (for instance, in case of disagreement between the reviewers, as stated in the description of the selection and peer review process), which will ultimately follow the criteria of quality and interest for the scientific community
  • The articles, as a result, will be evaluated based only on their content, regardless of commercial interests and without any kind of ethnic, racial, ideological, religious, gender or any other type of discrimination.
  • The editors will guarantee the anonymous peer review process and they commit themselves not to make public the information related to that process. 
  • According to the confidentiality criterion, rejected articles will be neither divulged, nor used as a source in future researches carried out by ENCATC.

ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR REVIEWERS

  • Reviewers will also safeguard the originality of the article, being obliged to inform if they detect a non-compliance of this condition.
  • The peer review task must be accepted with honesty, acknowledging ones own ability to carry out this task properly and on time. 
  • The review will be aimed at improving the article in terms of scientific quality.
  • Reviewers will abstain from personal criticisms to the author.
  • Reviewers commit themselves to safeguard anonymity and confidentiality.
  • Reviewers must also declare any potential conflict of interest.

MORE INFO

Readers and authors can consult more in-depth info regarding publishing ethics proper to Frontiers, the Journal's publisher, by access the dedicated guidelines available here.