Publication Ethics
PUBLICATION ETHICS AND PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT
These guidelines (Code of Conduct and Best-Practice) as enacted by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in 2011 are adopted and cherished by Benchmark Journals to define the responsibilities of Authors, Editors and Reviewers.
Responsibilities of Authors
By Submitting Manuscripts, authors attest that the manuscript, wordings and ideas are their original work and not lifted from other sources without appropriate citation or quote.
Authors are responsible for writing and obtaining permission for images or other artworks used in the research. The copyright holder must be made explicitly aware that the image(s) or artwork will be made freely available online as part of the article under a Creative Commons license. This license allows the author(s) to retain the copyright, but also allows others to freely copy, distribute and display the copyrighted work.
Authors should not submit manuscripts that have already been published or being reviewed for publication.
An author should not submit manuscript with same research in multiple journals. If such behavior is discovered, the manuscript under consideration will be rejected, or if already published, such article will be retracted.
If an author discovers an error or inaccuracy in an article that has been published in Benchmark Journals, he or she is obliged to notify the editors and work closely with them till the error is correctly. If the error is significant and cannot be corrected without altering the entire work, the article should be retracted.
Authors’ names should be listed on the article and each author should take responsibility for his contribution.
All sources of financial support should be listed in the manuscript.
Authors must clearly state references in the manuscript with the explicit permission for others to replicate the work.
Responsibilities of Editors
The Editor is responsible for deciding which article will be published based on objective review without recourse to the author’s race, religion, political affiliation or sexual orientation.
The Editor should consult associate editors, reviewers and other members of the editorial board in making publication decisions.
The Editor should evaluate manuscripts based on the importance, clarity and relevance to the publisher’s scope.
The Editor should not disclose any confidential information about a manuscript to persons other than the editorial advisers, the author, reviewers or potential reviewers.
Unpublished materials should not be used by the editor to further his or her own work without due written permission by the author.
When retracting or sending corrections for published articles, the Editor should be guided by COPE’s guidelines.
Responsibilities of Reviewers
The reviewer is to assist the editor and other members of the editorial board in making editorial decisions.
Any selected reviewer who feels reviewing assigned paper will be impossible within reasonable timeframe should inform the editor and withdraw from the review process.
Review should be done objectively without recourse to personal perception about the author or research area.
All assigned manuscripts must be treated as confidential and no aspect of same should be disclosed to others or used to further personal publication without a written permission from the editor.
Privileged information obtain as a result of peer review should be treated as confidential and not used for personal advantage.
References
Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (2011, March 7). Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. Retrieved from http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf