Ethical Guidelines

In order to warrant high-quality scientific publications, public confidence in scientific findings, and appropriate credit for published ideas, all parties that are involved in the act of publishing an article must adhere to the Ethical Guidelines.

The journal is committed to following the ethical behavior outlined in COPE's Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (https://publicationethics.org/). 

Authorship: Those who have made important intellectual contributions to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study, approve all claims of the study, and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the study should be listed as authors. In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their 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.

Originality and plagiarism: Authors must ensure that they have written original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, they must be appropriately cited or quoted. Authors are obliged to publish only original material, i.e., material that has neither been published elsewhere, nor is under review elsewhere. All manuscripts under review are checked against plagiarism using a plagiarism detection software. Papers that are found to have been plagiarized from a manuscript by other authors, whether published or unpublished, will incur plagiarism sanctions. Review process of such unpublished manuscripts will be terminated and the manuscripts will be rejected immediately. Plagiarism sanctions of such published articles include complete retraction of the articles and reporting related legal entities about the details of this case.

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

Funding sources: Funding sources for the research reported in the manuscript should be duly acknowledged. 

Conflicts of interest:  All sources of financial support for the project or any substantive conflict of interest that might be interpreted to influence the results of the paper should be disclosed. Authors should clearly state whether such potential conflicts do or do not exist.

Protection of human and animal rights: For experimental, clinical, and drug research an ethics committee report consistent with international agreements and regulations on human and animal rights is required.

Statement of informed consent: Analytical investigations on human participants must include a statement that participants gave their informed consent. It is journal policy that participant anonymity must be preserved in all cases. 

Confidentiality: Authors are obliged to protect any protected information of the participants and must not disclose them without prior informed consent. Manuscripts received for review are treated as confidential documents. Information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. 

Data access and retention: Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such, if practicable, and should in any event, be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

Honest play: Manuscripts shall be exclusively evaluated based mainly on their intellectual quality and significance.  The journal will not give any consideration on authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy.

Complaints and appeals: Editors are responsible for handling the editorial process and deciding which articles will be accepted for publication. In cases where authors are not satisfied with the editorial process and/or the outcome, they may send the detailed description of their complaints or appeals to contact@bastas.co.uk. Any complaint or appeal will be thoroughly investigated according to COPE flowcharts and guidelines.

Fundamental errors in published works: Authors should promptly notify the editor if they discover a significant error or inaccuracy in the published work. Such errors or inaccuracies must be corrected with an erratum that includes the proposed changes to the original document. Errors that are so critical and violate the foundations of the study may result in the retraction of the published work.

Duties/Responsibilities of Authors

• Only persons who meet authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript.
• All authors must be entered into the submission system during manuscript submission. Once the manuscript is accepted for publication, no addition, removal, or modification is allowed to the author list.
• Authors must prepare the manuscript according to ethical guidelines of the journal.
• All manuscripts must be previously unpublished and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal or publishing the same work again is an unethical behaviour and subject to sanctions.
• All manuscripts must be the original work of authors and not plagiarized. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes an unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable. Therefore, a zero-tolerance approach will be taken to plagiarized manuscripts.
• Authors must properly and accurately cite the work of others.
• Authors must disclose any financial or other conflict of interest that might influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript and acknowledge individuals or organizations that have provided financial support for research reported in the manuscript.
• Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with manuscripts for editorial review, and should prepare to provide public access to such data if possible.
• Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests. In the case of an adjustment of revision request, authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner.
• If the work involves the use of animals or human participants, the authors should ensure that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines.
• When authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the editors and cooperate with them to either correct the article in the form of an erratum or to retract it.

Duties/Responsibilities of Editors

• Editors has full authority over the entire editorial content of the journal and the timely publication of that content. 
• Editors evaluate submitted manuscripts solely on the basis of their academic merit and its relevance to the journal’s scope, without regard to the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, citizenship, religious belief, political philosophy or institutional affiliation.
• The journal utilizes a double-blind peer review process. Editors must ensure the integrity of the publication review process by not revealing either the identity of authors of manuscripts to the reviewers, or the identity of reviewers to the authors.
• Editors receive all manuscripts for review in confidence and do not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to any third parties.
• Privileged information or ideas obtained by editors and editorial board members as a result of handling the manuscript will be kept confidential and not used for their personal advantage.
• Editors are responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal will be published based on the journal policies reflecting scientific rigor and legal requirements.
• Editors shall conduct proper and fair investigation into ethical complaints. 

Duties/Responsibility of Reviewers

• Any invited referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should immediately notify the editors and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.
• Reviewers must keep all information regarding manuscripts confidential and treat them as privileged information. This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.
• Reviewers conduct their business of review objectively, with no personal criticism of the author.
• Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments that will constructively guide the editorial decision by the editors.
• Reviewers should complete their reviews within the journals’ stipulated timeframe.
• Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
• A reviewer should notify the editors of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other work (published or unpublished) of which they have personal knowledge. 

Duties/Responsibilities of the Publisher

• The publisher will be fully committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility by partnering with organizations and maintaining the digital archives of the journal.
• In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question.

Plagiarism and Malpractice Policy

An author must not publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Manuscripts that are found to have been published elsewhere, or to be under review elsewhere, will incur duplicate submission/publication sanctions. If authors have used their own previously published work, or work that is currently under review, as the basis for a submitted manuscript, they are required to cite the previous work and indicate how their submitted manuscript offers novel contributions beyond those of the previous work. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Authors will be required to clarify the plagiarism issue in their manuscript within one week if it is found to be suspected of plagiarism during any stages even after publication. Without a timely and reasonable explanation, the manuscript will be automatically rejected and removed from the journal’s system. Any manuscript submitted by the same author – even as a co-author – will not be considered for publication.

By submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors confirm that:

• They understand that plagiarism is against the professional ethics.
• Their manuscript is free from plagiarism and has not been published previously.
• No copyrighted materials have been used in their manuscript without proper permission.
• They will take the full responsibility for the opinion expressed in the manuscript and for settling in all disputes arising from using any copyrighted materials in the manuscript without appropriate permission.
• The manuscript is free from unethical and misconduct behaviour including: plagiarism, fraud authorship, data fabrication, breaching of copyrights, undisclosed conflict of interests, citation manipulation, redundant/concurrent/multiple publication.
• Editors will take responsive measures when ethical concerns are raised with regard to a submitted manuscript or published article. Every reported act of unethical publishing behaviour will be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication.

Sanctions

In the event that there are documented violations of any of the above-mentioned policies, one or more of the following sanctions will be incurred:

• Immediate rejection of the manuscript.
• Immediate rejection of all manuscripts submitted to the journal by any of the authors.
• Prohibition of all co-authors for any new submissions to the journal for a minimum of five years.
• Prohibition of all co-authors from serving on the Editorial Board.
• Publisher reserves the right to impose additional sanctions.

If you have additional questions or concerns that are not addressed here, please contact contact@bastas.co.uk.