Publication Ethics

 Publication Ethics

The policy of Mycologia Iranica (MI) journal is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Readers, authors, reviewers, and editors should follow these ethical policies. For more information please visit http://publicationethics.org.

 

Ethical guidelines of Mycologia Iranica (MI)

  • The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal is an essential building block in the development of a coherent and respected network of knowledge. It is a direct reflection of the quality of the work of the authors and the institutions that support them. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. It is therefore important 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, the publisher and the society-owned or sponsored journals.
  • Iranian Mycological Society (IMS) presents the results of scientific research in the field of mycology in Mycologia Iranica (MI) journal. Thus, editors, authors and reviewers must maintain high ethical standards relating to the publication of manuscripts published by MI. Although these ethical guidelines are obvious for scientists, we will outline them in more detail in the following. 

 

Responsibilities of authors and authorship policies

 

  • Authors should present accurate and complete accounts of the research performed, including the data collected or used, as well as an objective discussion of the significance of the research. The research and the reported data should contain sufficient detail and reference to public sources of information for a trained professional to reproduce the experimental observations.
  • An author is responsible to provide data, methods, and samples of unusual materials unavailable elsewhere. Authors are encouraged to submit their data to a public database, where available.
  • Manuscripts published or currently under review elsewhere are ineligible for submission. If a submitted manuscript is based on previous works of the authors, authors are required to cite the previous works and explain how their recent manuscript offers novel contributions and insights beyond those of the previous works.
  • Authors should identify any unusual hazards inherent in the chemicals, equipment, or procedures used in the investigation. Authors should inform the editor if a manuscript could be considered to report research that can be reasonably expected to provide knowledge, products, or technologies that could be directly misapplied by others to pose a threat to public health and safety, agricultural crops and other plants, animals, the environment, or materiel.
  • The corresponding author is the author responsible for the communication between the journal and the authors as well as ensuring that all co-authors are listed on the manuscript. The corresponding author must inform other authors of changes to the manuscript and make sure that they have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and have stated their agreement to its submission for publication.
  • By submitting a manuscript, authors, in particular, the corresponding author have agreed to be an active and responsive participant of the peer-review process. Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a manuscript for editorial review. Authors are encouraged to respond to the journal’s requests in a timely manner to facilitate the review process.
  • In case of discovering fundamental errors in the manuscript after submission, it is the responsibility of the authors to urgently inform the editor-in-chief so that the journal can retract or correct the paper as quickly as possible.
  • Authorship must be privileged to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution or interpretation of the reported study. All individuals who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors.
  • The co-authors of a paper are those persons who have made significant scientific contributions to the work reported and who share responsibility and accountability for the results. Other contributions should be indicated in a footnote or an “Acknowledgments” section. An administrative relationship to the investigation does not of itself qualify a person for co-authorship. Deceased persons who meet the criterion for inclusion as co-authors should be so included, with a footnote reporting date of death. No fictitious name should be listed as an author or coauthor. The author who submits a manuscript for publication accepts the responsibility of having included as co-authors all persons appropriate and none inappropriate.
  • Authors should disclose all sources of financial support or other substantive conflicts of interest.
  • Authors encouraged to revise and resubmit their manuscript should not take the acceptance of their revised manuscript for granted.

 

Responsibilities of editors and editorial policies

 

  • The editorial team commits itself to be impartial and maintain the scientific integrity of the academic records.
  • An editor should give impartial consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication regardless of race, sex, seniority, religion, nationality, or institutional affiliation of the author(s).
  • Received manuscripts under review will be evaluated based on authenticity, clarity, originality, relevance and English fluency. MI will never discriminate against authors based on non-scientific issues.
  • Editors enjoy the complete authority to reject/accept an article based on their discretion in determining which manuscripts are best suited for publication. The editor is the only person who has the responsibility to accept or reject a manuscript according to the reviewer’s recommendation. The editor must choose appropriate reviewers very close to manuscript in order to reach the correct judgment. However, manuscript can be rejected by the editor without external review, if it is not appropriate for the journal. Such rejection may be due to out of the scope of the journal, manuscript prepared very badly, results are not enough to prove the issue in manuscript, unacceptable English, ethical violation by author, or other reasons.
  • If an editor is the author of a submitted manuscript, the editor-in-chief has a responsibility to choose other qualified editors for this manuscript.
  • Any editor must not use any unpublished information, argument or interpretations disclosed in any submitted manuscript in editor’s own research, unless by written permission by the author. If it has happened, the editor should be ethically discontinued the work. This editor has no qualification for editorial work. The editor-in-chief must assign another editor for this manuscript.
  • Publication of manuscripts suspected of duplication and plagiarism will be put on hold and the editor-in-chief will be notified for further considerations. Suspicious cases will be rejected only with proof of misconduct.
  • Editors should not overrule the decisions of previous editors without communication between them and convincing reasons.
  • Editors should not reveal the identity of reviewers to authors and vice versa. Identifying information should be stripped from submitted manuscripts so that reviewers and authors cannot access any information about each other.
  • Editors should consider the submitted manuscript for publication with reasonable speed.
  • Citation of published works with the primary purpose of increasing the number of citations to the cited author or to articles published in a particular journal is considered the manipulation of citations and constitutes unethical behavior.
  • Rejected articles will not be reviewed again.

 

Responsibilities of reviewers and review policies

 

  • All submitted manuscripts are subjected to a rigorous peer-review process by at least two international reviewers who are experts in the area of the manuscript assigned to them.
  • Any reviewer must only judge the manuscript by scientific merit, not by prejudice (race, sex, seniority, religion, institutional affiliation of the author(s), or nationality).
  • Reviewers who feel unqualified to review an assigned manuscript or in shortage of time to provide a prompt review should notify the editor-in-chief to be exempted from the review process.
  • Information or ideas obtained through peer review are confidential and should not be used for personal advantage.
  • It is the duty of the authors to cite relevant sources. However, reviewers should identify relevant published material not cited by the authors.
  • Reviewers should notify the editor-in-chief of considerable similarities or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and other published works.
  • If a reviewer accepts or rejects a manuscript, his (her) comment of judgment about observation, derivation, or argument must be clear and scientifically understandable for editor and author(s) according to enough reasoning and relevant citations. Unsupported comments are not acceptable.
  • A reviewer should check the references as much as possible to for unnecessary citation or too much self-citation or unnecessary self-citation, and report them to editor and author(s).
  • In case of conflicts of interest between a reviewer and an assigned manuscript, the editor-in-chief should be informed immediately to excuse the reviewer from the review process. Instances of conflicts of interest include competitive, collaborative or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions.
  • A reviewer must not sign or write his (her) name in his (her) comments. He (she) must avoid by no means revealing his (her) name to author(s).
  • The manuscript is as a confidential document, and a reviewer must not give or show it to others without editor permission.
  • Reviewers must not disclose or publish any part of the manuscript under their consideration, unless by written permission of authors. If they do the editor must discontinue their reviewing for that reviewer(s). If the reviewer action makes a loss for the author, the reviewer can be prosecutable in court by author and journal.
  • The reviewer must inform the editor that the report in the manuscript can provide a product or technologies that may be misapplied by others to make harm for people, animal, plant, material or environment.

 

General responsibilities of the publisher

 

  • The editor-in-chief of MI is responsible for editorial content and managing content-related processes.
  • It is the publisher’s responsibility to promptly release corrections or retractions after the discovery of a significant error or scientific inaccuracy in a published work.
  • It is the publisher’s responsibility to handle the cases of misconduct and ensure that publication ethics of the journal are obeyed.

 

Plagiarism

 

  • Plagiarism is not acceptable in Mycologia Iranica journal. Authors should not engage in plagiarism - verbatim or near-verbatim copying, or very close paraphrasing, of text or results from another’s work. Authors should not engage in self-plagiarism (also known as duplicate publication) - unacceptably close replication of the author’s own previously published text or results without acknowledgement of the source. If one or two identical sentences previously published by an author appear in a subsequent work by the same author, this is unlikely to be regarded as duplicate publication. Material quoted verbatim from the author’s previously published work must be placed in quotation marks. In contrast, it is unacceptable for an author to include significant verbatim or near-verbatim portions of his/her own work, or to depict his/her previously published results or methodology as new, without acknowledging the source.