Publication Ethics

Introduction

-          The Iranian Journal of Mechanical Engineering follows the recommendations of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

-          The journal is free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.

-          Correction of articles is performed by authority of authors and the authors are responsible for the accuracy of the content of the articles.

-          The written article will be on loan to the journal until its publication.

-          The peer review process in Iranian journal of mechanical engineering is single-blinded in which reviewer’s name is unknown to the author.

 

  Authors’ responsibilities:

 

-          The submitted articles should be in the specialized field of mechanical engineering and the authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, this should be appropriately cited or quoted.

 

-          An author should not in general publish the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. However, manuscript which has been briefly published in congresses, symposiums and national/ international conferences, may be completed and submitted as a research manuscript. For this reason, they must ensure that the manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full) or is not under consideration for publication either inside or outside Iran.

 

-          The authors are responsible for the accuracy and reliability of the contents of the articles and they are obliged to ensure the validity of the articles. The publication of an article does not reflect the verification of the contents by the journal.

 

-          The authors are obliged to refrain from “research and publication misconduct”, the following misconducts has been established beyond reasonable doubt, it is considered unethical ‘research and publication misconduct’ and the journal reserves the right to pursue legal action.

 

-          Falsification: defined as recording and presenting the results of a research in a way that the details of the conducted research or the process of data collection is manipulated, or some data is removed or modified, or some insignificant results are magnified to cover more important facts (juicy quotes) so that the results of the research follow a certain aim or the presented results are not questioned.

-          Plagiarism: defined as quotes that are taken near-verbatim from others’ thoughts and words, copying the expression of ideas, similarity in the structure of writing or presenting others’ ideas and results without proper citation, or introducing it as an authentic scientific research.

-          Academic ghostwriting: which means hiring one or several authors to conduct the research and having it published under one’s own name after minor modifications.

-          Unauthorized affiliation: defined as unfounded affiliation claim of the author(s) to an institute, organization, and educational research center or group which has not had a direct role in the research.

-          Resubmission of an article, duplicate submission, including an honorary author or removing an original author

 

-           The authors are obliged to immediately inform the journal at any time they become aware of any errors or inaccuracy in their article and either modify or withdraw their article.

 

-           Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.

 

-          The author in charge has to ensure that all the authors have studied the article and unanimously agree with the presentation of the article and their contribution.

 

-          Submission of an article means that the authors have been granted the consent of the financial or venue sponsors and have introduced all the sponsors of the article.

 

-          The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

 

Reviewers’ responsibilities:

 

-          Reviewers assist the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper.

 

-          Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

 

-          Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others.

 

-          The review of the articles must be based on scientific study and reasoning and imposing personal, professional, racist, religious, etc. tastes and interests must be avoided.

 

-           The reviewer has to be an expert in the field of the article. The reviewer should not accept peer review of articles outside his/her field of expertise. It is also advisable that the reviewer does not accept articles with subjects on which he/she has major disagreement and may not be able to provide a fair assessment.

 

-          The reviewers are responsible to ensure that referencing to all of the researches, subjects, citations and quotations is done thoroughly and accurately. They are also expected to notify the authors of the related published researches that have not been referred to in the article.

 

-          The reviewer is not allowed to be in direct contact with the authors regarding the articles under review. Any form of contact with the authors will be done through the journal office.

 

Editorialboard responsibilities:

 

-          Editor-in-Chief can take the final decision for any publication-oriented issue.

 

-          The editor-in-chief is responsible to select and assign the manuscripts to editors considering their expertise, eminence, professional and scientific experience, and ethics.

 

-          Editorial board is responsible for selecting the reviewers as well as accepting or rejecting on article after reviewers' comments.

 

-          Editors return manuscripts in which interest of certain individual, institutions and companies, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the papers are observed.

 

-          Editorial board is responsible for a fast and transparent peer review process.

 

-          Editorial board is responsible to keep the article's contents confidentially and do not disclose its information to others.

 

-          The editor-in-chief and the editorial board are obliged to prevent any conflict of interests in the review process regarding any personal, business, academic, and financial contact that can potentially affect the acceptance and publication of the submitted articles.

 

-          Editor-in-chief should check each type of research and publication misconduct which reviewers report seriously.

 

-          If a research and publication misconduct occurs in an article, editor-in-chief should omit it immediately and inform indexing databases or audiences.

 

References

1. “Standard Ethics”, approved by Vice-Presidency for Research & Technology, the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology.

2. Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE Code of Conduct, www.publicationethics.org.