All authors of any work submitted to ScienceIn journals are required to understand and follow the best ethical practices for publishing of research. The ScienceIn is providing the essential services for dissemination of quality science and research contents for the scientific fraternity. Central to this service is the responsibility that editors, authors and reviewers maintain the high ethical standard relating to the publication of manuscripts. The ScienceIn endorses that all authors should follow the core practices and best practice guidelines defined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In addition, following excerpted guidelines need to be referred:
Manuscript Contents
All authors are responsible for the contents included in any of the manuscripts submitted to ScienceIn Journals. Submission of a manuscript to ScienceIn journal is considered a presumption that submission is being made with the approval of all listed authors and all authors have read the contents and approved the submission. Submission also marks that the same work has not been submitted to any other journal not under processing/evaluation in any other journal.
Authorship
The corresponding author must ensure that all the researchers/person who has contributed significantly in the work being submitted for publication, have been listed as coauthors of the work and/or others may have been acknowledged in the acknowledgement section. The authorship should balance intellectual contributions to the conception, design, analysis and writing of the study against the collection of data and other routine work. If there is no task that can reasonably be attributed to a particular individual, then that individual should not be credited with authorship. Authors have a responsibility to give due acknowledgement to all workers contributing to the work, including technical staff and data professionals.
During the submission of the manuscript, the submitting/corresponding author will have to attest to the fact that those named as co-authors have agreed to its submission for publication and accepts the responsibility for having properly included all (and only) co-authors. Also the submitting/corresponding author approves a ‘license to publish’ on behalf of all the authors. Any change in authorship after initial submission must be approved by all authors and justified to the editor.
In the case of authorship disputes, authors are encouraged to reach a mutual agreement. If this is not possible, unresolved disputes should be referred to the responsible research institution(s) for mediation.
The submitting author/corresponding author will have to add each authors’ details during the submission metadata step. In the authors metadata, the submitting author needs to carefully check the spelling, format of all author names, affiliations, sequence of authors and funding information. On publication, this metadata will be transferred to indexing services/databases, so this information should be accurate to ensure that the article is correctly indexed, which may affect citations and future funding evaluation.
Conflicts of interest
There could be a diverse area of shared and vested interests for any published article contents. Any individual (Author, reviewer, editors) having vested or intriguing interest that may give rise to any ‘conflict of interest’ for any published work or under editorial processing should inform the relevant party immediately, however, it is difficult to define a single factor possible for ‘conflict of interest’. The respective journal concerned should be informed about any significant conflict of interest that editors, authors or reviewers may have. Conflicts of interest are almost inevitable, however, these should be disclosed/declared, the authors may include declaration of any potential ‘conflict of interest’ in the article (before or after the acknowledgement section) to be published. The conflict of interest may arise or involve multiple factors such as financial benefits or liabilities, shared piece of information, authorship dispute or similar ones.
Financial
The authors of a manuscript should declare or inform the relevant journal about any significant financial interest – recent, present or anticipated – in any organization that may in any way gain or lose financially from the publication of the piece (for example, employment by such an organization; funds for research; funds for a member of staff; fees for consulting; stock or share holdings; patent interests). If any author has such an interest (which constitutes ‘conflict of interest’) then it should be declared.
Other interests
The other conflict of interest may be personal links (with reviewers, editors or other staff) which may affect or influence the editorial processing/outcome/quality of contents, then it should be brought to the editor/journal. Similar other examples may be an academic link or rivalry, or a strong antipathy to an individual whose interests may be affected by publication of a manuscript, and/or the author/s may like to disclose the statement/interest that would be embarrassing if it became publicly known.
Recommended reviewers
The respective ScienceIn journal may ask authors to recommend suitable reviewers on submission of their manuscript (mostly in cover letter to editor). The recommended reviewers should be expert in the field of work included in the article, and should not have conflict of interest to authors or closely related to authors such as collaborators or colleagues. All recommended reviewers should be from different institutes and countries than that of authors. There should be a diversity of recommended reviewers like geographic location, race/ethnicity, gender and career stage and preferably institutional email id of reviewers should be provided.
Conflict of interest statement
Authors should include a Conflicts of interest statement in the manuscript under the heading Conflict of Interests placed after the ‘acknowledgements’ section. If there is no conflict of interest the same should be mentioned in the statement.
Authors may refer: F van Kolfschooten, ‘Conflicts of interest: Can you believe what you read?’, Nature, 28 March 2002, vol. 416, pp. 360-363; DOI: 10.1038/416360a. for a description and discussion on conflicts of interest.
Plagiarism
Authors should work towards publishing their research in a plagiarism free way. Many different aspects constitute ‘plagiarism’; the most daunting would be questionable originality of work/content. Authors must ensure and understand that they include only their original findings and data (figures, images, graphs) in their article.
The text similarity may be unintended, authors should check the text similarity using the digital/online software subscribed/available in their institute to avoid any rejection/retraction.
All relevant and related reference work referred to should be cited in the manuscript.
Type of Plagiarism
Self Plagiarism/text-recycling: When author uses a substantial portion of their previous published work and reproduces as such claiming as new findings, then it constitutes self plagiarism. Authors may refer COPE document for detailed information on text-recycling: https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/text-recycling
Text-similarity/cloning: When a substantial text/paragraph from any published work is reproduced as such or with minor alteration by authors and without proper referencing, then it comes under plagiarism. Best way to avoid this type of plagiarism is to write the text in your own sentences (not consulting any documents at the time of phrasing, while all available sources may be referred to understand the concepts) and citation of relevant references. Authors may refer https://kavita-ganesan.com/what-is-text-similarity (accessed on 25-Oct-2021) for understanding the text-cloning/text-similarity plagiarism. The authors should check their manuscript for any plagiarism before submission; for which authors may use the text plagiarism checking software available in their institute/library.
Concept Plagiarism: When someone else’s idea or concept is reproduced claiming as their own idea/concept, it constitutes a conceptual plagiarism. The peer-reviewing of the manuscript is an important activity in publishing good science; the experts of respective fields can identify and track conceptual plagiarism.
ScienceIn policy on Plagiarism
The ScienceIn and associated editors/journals take plagiarism as an offense on the advancement of intellectual knowledge and science. Any allegations of any sort of plagiarism (self-plagiarism/text-recycling; text-similarity; conceptual plagiarism) that are brought to the notice of a journal/editors are investigated as suggested in COPE guidelines.
In case the plagiarism allegations are found to be valid, then authors (all named authors of a published work) are approached by editors / journal for their explanation / reasons for text/material overlap. In this regard, the editorial board members and authors institute may be consulted for the case of plagiarism. Also the plagiarism of concepts/ideas can be brought in light by the screening and reviewing scholars. This type of plagiarism may further be validated by involving independent experts / reviewers / editorial board members of the journal and author’s institution may also be involved in validating the case.
The ScienceIn journal / editors take appropriate action on validation of case plagiarism by following the guidelines/ flowchart of actions developed by COPE. Depending upon the level of plagiarism, the journal may take action on published works as:
- In case the article is already published and a case of plagiarism has been validated, the article will be marked ‘Retracted’ with placing a note for reason of retraction.
- The institute of authors may also be informed about such retraction.
- In case the text similarity is minor and unintended or lacking the relevant citation, then a correction may be published, however, this should not be considered an effective fix of text-plagiarism.
- In case the article is still under peer-review processing, then authors are asked to rewrite the text of manuscript along with insertion of appropriate citation. If text similarity is more than 40% on checking with text-similarity software, then the article is rejected/declined.
The ScienceIn journal submissions are peer-reviewed (single/double blind/open) by experts in the field for fair evaluation of quality and authenticity of the work under consideration. The manuscript text is subjected to similarity check using the online software (Urkund / Turnitin ) and a report of the same is forwarded to authors for appropriate updates/corrections. Authors are encouraged to perform the similarity check by the software available in their institute/library. The similarity report (if any) provided by reviewers, then same is also forwarded to authors for introduction of necessary updates.
Page History
Created: March 24, 2020
Revised (major): Dec 20, 2020
Last Updated: Oct 27, 2021
Minor corrections (text): April 23, 2022