PUBLICATION ETHICS AND PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

GUIDELINES FOR EDITORS

General Responsibilities

  • Editors are accountable for all content published in their journal. Editors must be ready to publish corrections and apologies when necessary.

Conflict of Interest

  • Editors require authors, reviewers and editorial board members to disclose potential conflicts of interest.
  • Editors make decisions to accept or reject submissions based on the quality of the submission and its suitability for the proceedings. Editors must make sure that commercial considerations do not interfere with their editorial decisions.

Peer-Review Practice

  • Editors must ensure that all research submissions are peer-reviewed.
  • Editors are accountable for recruiting qualified reviewers. Editors must strive to obtain highly competent reviewers and discontinue using reviewers who consistently deliver poor quality reviews.
  • Editors must ensure that reviews are relevant, courteous and timely. Reviewers should judge the quality of the research and not comment on the researcher's gender, race, beliefs and the like.

Academic Integrity

  • Editors and reviewers must treat all submissions under reviews confidential.
  • Editors must protect the identity of reviewers and the identity of authors.
  • Editors must ensure that all submissions comply with ethical research standards, particularly in research involving human or animal subjects.
  • Editors must ensure that all submissions comply with ethical integrity standards, particularly with respect to plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation and the like. Suspicions of scientific misconduct must be promptly investigated and response from authors suspected of misconduct must be sought.

GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS

General Responsibilities

  • Authors are accountable for all aspects of their research submitted for publication to these proceedings. Authors of a multi-author submission have joint responsibility for their research, unless stated otherwise.
  • Authors must promptly notify editors if they discover any errors in their research. This applies to research that has been submitted, is under review or has been published. Authors must cooperate with editors to rectify any errors.
  • Authors must comply with submission guidelines and requirements published by the editors. Authors are aware that failure to meet these requirements may result in rejection of their research for publication.

Conflict of Interest

  • Authors must disclose potential conflicts of interest.
  • Authors must publish all sources of their research funding, including both financial and non-financial support.

Peer-Review Process

  • Authors must cooperate with editors at all stages of the publication process. Authors must notify editors if they choose to withdraw their submission at any stage of the peer-review and publication process.
  • Authors must respond to the comments of reviewers in a relevant and timely manner. Authors must carefully check proofs supplied by editors before authorising them.

Academic Integrity

  • Authors must not seek publication of their research in more than one journal concurrently, unless all parties agree on co-publishing.
  • Authors are accountable for the soundness and honesty of their research. Authors must use appropriate methods for reporting their research and provide sufficient detail for other researchers to repeat their experiments. Authors must publish the complete results of their research and not withhold findings that are inconsistent with their hypothesis.
  • Authors must comply with ethical research standards, particularly in research involving human or animal subjects, and must be prepared to provide sufficient proof on request.
  • Authors must comply with academic integrity standards, particularly with respect to plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation and the like. Authors must appropriately quote and cite all sources used in their research and refrain from including indirect quotations from sources that they have not consulted.
  • Authors must obtain permission to use any third party images, figures and the like from the respective copyright holders.