Publication Ethics

Sons and Daughters Publishing House Inc. is committed to ensuring ethics in publication, quality of articles, fair and professional dealing in all aspects of our publishing operations. Our role is to publish original work of value to the intellectual community in the best possible form and to the highest possible standards. We expect similar standards from our reviewers and authors. Honesty, originality and fair dealing on the part of authors, and fairness, objectivity and confidentiality on the part of editors and reviewers are among the critical values that enable us to achieve our aim.

Our publication ethics and publication malpractice statement is mainly based on the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers.  (Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE, 2011).

These ethics include the editor following certain rules on relations with readers, authors, and reviewers as well as procedures for handling complaints.  Conformance to standards of ethical behavior is therefore expected of all parties involved: Authors, Editors, Reviewers, and the Publisher.

In particular, the following are the edited expectations from editors, Reviewers, Authors and Publishers extracted from COPE documents.

Editors’ Responsibilities

Fairness

The Editors are responsible for the acceptance or rejection of the paper being considered for publication. All submitted manuscripts are evaluated exclusively for their academic merit and intellectual content without regard to the authors’ gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, race, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy. They are required to make fair and unbiased decisions independent of commercial considerations, and should ensure that papers have undergone a fair and appropriate peer review process. They are required to comply with editorial policies that encourage maximum transparency and complete, honest reporting

Publication Decisions

The decision is based on the manuscript’s importance, originality and clarity, and it’s validity and relevance to the scope of the journal. Editors should be guided by the policies set by the Editorial Board and current legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism should be considered at all time. The Editor-in-Chief may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

Retraction Decisions

Editors should guard the integrity of the published record by issuing corrections and retractions when needed and pursuing suspected or alleged research and publication misconduct. They should take reasonable responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper.

Confidentiality

The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest 

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author’s explicit written consent.

Reviewers’ Responsibilities

Contribution to Editorial Decisions 

The peer-reviewing process assists the editor and the editorial board in making editorial decisions and may also serve the author in improving the paper.

Confidentiality 

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be disclosed to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.

Standards of Objectivity 

Reviews should be conducted objectively, and observations should be formulated clearly with supporting arguments, so that authors can use them for improving the paper.  Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate.

Promptness 

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 withdraw from the review process.

Acknowledgement of Sources 

Reviewers should identify cases in which relevant published work referred to in the paper has not been cited in the reference section. They should point out whether observations or arguments derived from other publications are accompanied by the respective source. Reviewers will notify the editor of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Disclosure and Conflict of Interest 

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 associated with the papers.

Authors’ Responsibilities

Reporting Standards

Authors should present an objective discussion of the significance of research work as well as sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the experiments. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the manuscript.  Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Review articles should also be objective, comprehensive, and accurate accounts of the state of the art.

Originality and Plagiarism

The authors should ensure that their work is entirely original works, and if the work and/or words of others have been used, this has been appropriately acknowledged. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication 

In general, papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. The corresponding author should ensure that there is a full consensus of all co-authors in approving the final version of the paper and its submission for publication.

Manuscripts which have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted. In addition, manuscripts under review by the journal should not be resubmitted to copyrighted publications. However, by submitting a manuscript, the author(s) retain the rights to the published material. In case of publication they permit the use of their work under a CC-BY-NC license [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/], which allows others to copy, distribute and transmit the work as well as to adapt the work and to make commercial use of it.

Acknowledgement of Sources

Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should also cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.

Data Access and Retention 

Authors could be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the paper for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least ten years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.

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 named in an Acknowledgement section.

The corresponding author ensures that all contributing co-authors and no uninvolved persons are included in the author list. The corresponding author will also verify that all co-authors have approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Hazards and Human or Animal Subjects

If the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the authors must clearly identify these in the manuscript.

Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest 

All authors should include a statement disclosing any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that may be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

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 to cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper in form of an erratum.

Publishers’ Responsibilities

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the Editors-in-Chief, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum or, in the most severe cases, the complete retraction of the affected work.

The Publisher and the Journal do not discriminate on the basis of age, color, religion, creed, disability, marital status, veteran status, national origin, race, gender, genetic predisposition or carrier status, or sexual orientation in its publishing programs, services and activities.