PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT
It is necessary to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer and the publisher. This ethics statement is based on COPE's Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) provides resources for journal editors, peer reviewers, and authors on the topic of professional publishing standards at publicationethics.org.
The OTB Forum Editorial Board is committed to high standards of both critical scholarly review and professional publishing judgment. The OTB Forum is under the editorial direction of the editor-in-chief or, if so invited, guest editor(s). The editor, in consultation with the editorial board, makes decisions regarding the content published; the editor ensures the accuracy, completeness, and originality of every published article. The OTB Forum Editorial Board supports our journal editor(s) in their efforts to manage their journals ethically and transparently, while adhering to established editorial principles and practices in their fields.
EDITORIAL PUBLICATION DECISIONS
The editor of the journal is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.
The editor will evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
The editor and any editorial staff shall not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, or other editorial advisers, as appropriate.
Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript shall not be used by an editor, the editorial board members, or reviewers.
DUTIES OF PEER REVIEWERS
Peer review of manuscripts assists 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 reviewer 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 or herself from the review process. In principle, the reviewer should be a disinterested party with respect to the author(s) of the manuscript. Best practice is guided by an "arm's length" principle. It is incumbent upon reviewers to inform the journal editor if they become aware of or suspect the possibility of a conflict of interest which might include prior co-authorship, close professional relationship, or personal relationship.
Any manuscripts received for review shall be treated as confidential documents. They shall not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
Reviews shall be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously formulated should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
Please note that the scholarly peer review process applies to original research articles. Other genres of scholarly publication which regularly appear in scholarly journals such as book and media review submissions, political reviews, dialogue, editorial commentary, and resource pieces, among others, are not generally subject to peer review.
AUTHORSHIP OF THE PAPER
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 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.
All authors shall disclose any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for a project should be disclosed.
Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Evidence and underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficiently detailed references to permit others to reconstruct its argument. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
Authors must guarantee that their submitted work contains no content that may be construed as libelous or as infringing in any way on the copyright of another party. If the authors have used the work and/or words of others, it has been appropriately cited or quoted.
Authors may be asked to provide their raw evidence and data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such evidence (consistent with the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases), if practicable, and should in any event be prepared to retain such evidence and data for a reasonable time after publication.
An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially 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. The journal editor will make every effort to process and evaluate submissions in a timely fashion. Should an author decide to submit the manuscript to another journal, he/she must request the journal editor to withdraw the manuscript from consideration.
Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the scholarly understanding of the question under study.
FUNDAMENTAL ERRORS IN PUBLISHED WORKS
When an author 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 and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
In instances where an editor finds that a significant error has been published for which a correction needs to be made, and in all cases where there is reason for concern about such matters as plagiarism, fabrication of research, duplicate publication, or failure to disclose conflicts of interest, the editor will review and resolve the matter in consultation with the OTB Forum Editorial Board. In all instances, the OTB Forum Editorial Board is committed to preserving the integrity of the scholarly version of record.