Publication Policies

Open Access: All articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND license. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Attribution must take the form of a link (using the article DOI) to the published article on the journal's website. Authors may enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Exception: Accepted articles by authors funded by UKRI are published under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license (CC-BY 4.0). The authors are obliged to state UKRI funding during a submission procedure.

Editorial Policies

The editorial policies of the journal follow recommendations of the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guidelines (see https://publicationethics.org/).

Author contributions
All authors have to consent with publication by approving manuscript submission. Author’s contribution to a research paper is clearly credited. Authorship criteria should follow the COPE recommendations.

Competing interests
Authors, peer reviewers, and editors are required to disclose any competing interests that might influence their decisions and conclusions around a particular piece of content.

Confidentiality
All correspondence between editors, authors and peer reviewers is treated as confidential by default.

Corrections and retractions
It is our responsibility to maintain the integrity of the published article and to act quickly to address any challenges or questions around the work that we publish.

Corresponding authors
The corresponding author is empowered to act on behalf of all co-authors during the manuscript assessment and publication process.

Editorial independence
Our editorial decision-making process is independent of all commercial concerns.

Fraud and malpractice
We have a responsibility to investigate any suspected instances of fraud or malpractice, including falsification or fabrication of data.
We comply with the COPE guidelines for editors. When a paper is suspected or discovered to be based on fraudulent results or to contain images that have been inappropriately manipulated, the editor will take prompt steps to investigate and notify readers. If fraud is confirmed, the paper is retracted and its corresponding author is banned from submitting to the journal for a period of 3 years.

Institutional affiliations
Authors should link their publication to their institution, for readers to unequivocally understand the affiliation, and for institutions to see the works that have been published by their past and current employees.

Peer-review
All of the primary research papers, brief communications, review articles and hypotheses that we publish are peer reviewed by appropriate experts in the field in the single blind regime. Peer reviewers may choose to reveal their identity and/or the content of their peer review report.

Personal data
Personal data might be disclosed only with the full permission of the individual to whom the data pertains.

Plagiarism
Plagiarism, including duplicate publication of the authors’ own work in whole or in part without proper citation, and misappropriation of the work of others, such as omission of qualified authors or of information regarding financial support, are not acceptable. Submissions are checked for plagiarism using appropriate software. If plagiarism is confirmed, the manuscript is rejected without peer review. In cases of major plagiarism, the corresponding author is banned from submitting to the journal for a period of 3 years (this information may be shared with other journals). In especially severe cases, the author´s institution may be notified.

Third-party permissions
It is essential to secure the correct rights to third-party content in order that it can legally be published and re-used.

Guidance from COPE (https://publicationethics.org/):

Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers (English): DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.9

Sharing of information among editors-in-chief regarding possible misconduct: DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.7

How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers: DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2018.1.1

Text recycling guidelines for editors: URL: http://publicationethics.org/text-recycling-guidelines

A short guide to ethical editing for new editors: DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.8

Guidelines for managing the relationships between society owned journals, their society, and publishers: DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2018.1.2

Retraction guidelines: DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.4

Online Advertising

Our online advertisements offer an essential source of information on coming events and for making investment decisions for your further research.

Choose your favorite format from the advertising media provided (product data, banners, textlinks, deeplink-generator, etc.).

Include the URL on your website.