Mathematics for Applications follows the standards for Ethics and Publication Malpractice set by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and available at https://publicationethics.org. Any kind of unethical behaviour is not acceptable, plagiarism is not tolerated in any of its forms. The relevant duties and responsibilities of editors (first of all the Editor-in-Chief who also represents the publisher of the journal), reviewers, and authors include:
Duties of Editors
Fairness and independence
Editor-in-Chief evaluates, in collaboration with Editorial board members and with the help of reviewers, submitted manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit (importance, originality, significancy, clarity) 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. Decisions to publish or reject submissions are not determined by the policies of governments or any other agencies outside of the journal itself. The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over the entire editorial content of the journal and the timing of publication of that content.
Confidentiality
Editors will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, and other editorial advisers, as appropriate. Editors and Editorial board members will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Privileged information or ideas obtained by editors as a result of handling the manuscript will be kept confidential and not used for their personal advantage.
Conflicts of interest
Editors will recuse themselves from considering 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 connected to the papers. Instead, they will ask another member of the Editorial board to handle the manuscript.
Decision about publication
Editor-in-Chief ensures that all submitted manuscripts considered for publication undergo peer-review by at least two reviewers who are experts in the field. Editor-in-Chief is responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal will be published, based on the validation of the work in question, its importance to researchers and readers, the reviewers’ comments, and such legal requirements as copyright infringement or plagiarism.
Unethical behaviour
Editors will take responsive measures when ethical concerns are raised with regard to a submitted manuscript or published paper. Every reported act of unethical publishing behaviour will be looked into, even if it is discovered after publication. Editors will follow the COPE Flowcharts (see https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts-new/translations) when dealing with cases of suspected misconduct.
Handling of unethical behaviour
In cases of proven scientific misconduct, fraudulence or plagiarism, Editor-in-Chief is responsible for taking all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, clarification or, in the most severe case, the retraction of the affected work. Editor-in-Chief is also responsible for taking steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, and under no circumstances encourages such misconduct or knowingly allows such misconduct to take place.
Access to journal content and archiving
Editor-in-Chief is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and ensures accessibility of the journal content in the digital form. If it is decided that the journal will no longer be published, then Editor-in-Chief will immediately ensure maintaining the digital archive in order that the accessibility to the journal content be continued.
Duties of Reviewers
Qualified and prompt publication recommendation
Reviewers help editors to make publicaton decisions by recommending acceptance or rejection of submitted papers. Through editorial communications with authors, they may stimulate authors to improve their manuscripts. 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.
Confidentiality and objectivity
All manuscripts received for review are confidential documents and must be treated as such; they must not be shown to or discussed with others except if authorized by the Editor-in-Chief (who would only do so under exceptional and specific circumstances). This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation. Reviews should be conducted objectively and observations formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can use them for improving the manuscript. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate.
Acknowledgement of sources
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that is an observation, derivation or argument that has been reported in previous publications should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also notify the editors of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other manuscript (published or unpublished) of which they have personal knowledge.
Conflicts of interest
Any invited referee who has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript and the work described therein should immediately notify the editors to declare their conflicts of interest and decline the invitation to review so that alternative reviewers can be contacted.
Unpublished material disclosure
Unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the authors. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for the reviewer’s personal advantage. This applies also to invited reviewers who decline the review invitation.
Duties of Authors
Reporting standards
Authors should submit original work with an objective discussion of significance of the results. Underlying data should be represented accuraetely in the manuscript. The paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Review articles should be accurate, objective and comprehensive, while editorial opinion or perspective pieces should be clearly identified as such. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.
Data accessibility
Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript 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 10 years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data centre), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.
Plagiarism and other unethical publishing behaviour
Authors should ensure that they have written and submited only entirely original works and, if they have used the work or phrases of others, that this has been appropriately cited. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the work reported in the manuscript should also be cited. Plagiarism takes many forms, from pronouncing another’s paper as the author’s own, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another’s paper (without citation), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable. Papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal or primary publication. Hence, authors should not submit for consideration a manuscript that has already been published in another journal. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unethical publishing behaviour and unacceptable.
Authorship of the manuscript
Only persons who meet the following authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content: (1) made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study; (2) drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) have seen and approved the final version of the paper and agreed to its submission for publication. All persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript but who do not meet the criteria for authorship must not be listed as an author, but should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements subject their written permission to be named. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate coauthors and no inappropriate ones are included in the author list and verify that all coauthors have approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication.
Conflicts of interest
Authors should, at the earliest stage possible, disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. The potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include financial ones (honoraria, educational grants or other funding, membership, employment, consultancies or patent-licensing arrangements) as well as non-financial ones (personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript). All sources of financial support for the work should be disclosed including the grant number or other reference number if any.
Acknowledgement of sources
Authors should ensure that they have properly acknowledged the work of others, and should also cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately (from conversation, correspondence or discussion with third parties) must not be used or reported without explicit written permission from the source. Authors should not use information obtained in the course of providing confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, unless they have obtained the explicit written permission of the author(s) of the work involved in these services.
Peer review
Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, proof of ethics approval, and copyright permissions. In the case that the first decision requires necessary revisions, authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal by the deadline given.
Discovering errors in published papers
When authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal’s editors or publisher and cooperate with them to either correct the paper in the form of an erratum or to retract the paper. If the editors or publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the authors’ obligation to promptly correct or retract the paper or provide evidence to the journal editors of the correctness of the paper.