JMECS is committed to upholding standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process and we recommend the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines

Publication Ethics for Journal Editors

• Editors should be accountable for everything published in JMECS: this includes having measures in place to assess the quality of the accepted material for JMECS and a willingness to publish corrections and clarifications when required.
• Editors should act in a fair and balanced way when carrying out their duties, without discrimination on grounds of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religious or political beliefs.
• Editors should provide guidance to authors and reviewers on everything that is expected of them.
• JMECS ensures that commercial considerations do not affect editorial decisions, and editors should handle submissions for funded issues in the same way as for standard issues, so that articles are accepted entirely on their academic merit and without commercial influence.

Peer Review
Editors should make decisions on which articles to publish based on quality and suitability for the journal and without interference from the journal owner/publisher.

A description of peer review processes should be published, and editors should be ready to justify any important deviation from the described processes.

Editors should handle submissions in a fair, unbiased and timely manner and treat all manuscripts as confidential, for distribution to others for purposes of peer-review only.

Editors should have systems to ensure that peer reviewers’ identities are protected unless they use an open review system that is declared to authors and reviewers.

Editorial Board
Editors should provide new editorial board members with guidelines on everything that is expected of them and should keep existing members updated on new policies and developments.

Conflicts of Interest
Editors should manage their own conflicts of interest as well as those of their staff, authors, reviewers and editorial board members.

Publication Ethics for Journal Authors

Authors should declare that all work in their submitted piece is original, and cite content from other sources appropriately to avoid plagiarism.

Authors must ensure their contribution does not contain any libelous matter or infringe any copyright or other intellectual property rights or any other rights of any third party.

Every author listed on a journal article should have made a significant contribution to the work reported. The listing of authors should accurately reflect who carried out the research and wrote the article, and the order of authorship should be jointly determined by all of the co-authors.
What to avoid:
1. Gift (guest) authorship: where someone is added to the list of authors who has not been involved in writing the paper.
2. Ghost authorship: where someone has been involved in writing the paper but is not included in the list of authors.
All authors should be aware of the submission of their paper to the journal and agree to the main author signing a copyright transfer agreement form on their behalf.

Authors should ensure that their manuscript as submitted is not under consideration (or accepted for publication) elsewhere. Where sections of the manuscript overlap with published or submitted content, this should be acknowledged and cited.

Authors should obtain permission to reproduce any content from third-party sources (text and images). Authors should be fully responsible for the violation of this rule.
When citing others’ (or your own) previous work, please ensure you have:
• Clearly marked quoted verbatim text from another source with quotation marks.
• Attributed and referenced the source of the quotation clearly within the text and in the Reference section.
• Obtained permission from the original publisher and rightsholder when using previously published figures or tables.
It is essential that all data is accurate, and representative of your research. If requested, authors should submit raw and supplemental data with the article.
The source of funding for a research project should be listed on all funded research papers.

Authors should declare any potential conflicts of interest relating to a specific article. It is very important to be honest about any conflicts of interest, whether sources of research funding, direct or indirect financial support, supply of equipment or materials, or other support. 

Authors should inform the editor or publisher if there is a significant error in their published piece, and work with the editor to publish an erratum, addendum or retraction where necessary.

 

Publication Ethics for Journal Article Reviewers

Reviewers should assist in improving the quality of a submitted article by reviewing the manuscript with care, consideration and objectivity, in a timely manner.

Reviewers should inform the journal editor of any published or submitted content that is similar to the material under review, or any suspected plagiarism.

Reviewers should declare any potential conflicts of interest relating to a specific article or author.

Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of any information or material supplied during the review process.