Publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal is bonded to many ethics. First of all the article must be original & it should be direct work of the authors. Peer-reviewed articles should be supported by scientific method. It should be noted that ethics of publication must be followed by all parties including the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer and finally the publisher.
AUTHORSHIP, CHANGES TO AUTHORSHIP & CRITERIA FOR AUTHORSHIP
Credit and responsibility of contents of papers belong to authors. Criteria for authorship includes print and electronic publications of words, data, and images. Therefore, the responsibility of published work is on the shoulders of authors. Therefore, authors ought to understand their role in taking responsibility and being accountable for what is published. In this direction, Editors should develop and implement a contributor-ship policy, as well as a policy that identifies who is responsible for the integrity of the work as a whole. However, it should be pointed out that quantity and quality of contribution is responsibility of both Editor as well as all authors. Once the manuscript is accepted for publication, the corresponding author should send a request through the official email of journal about any change of authorship or to rearrange the author names of the accepted manuscript. Everyone who has made contributions to the the article could be considered as an author. In many cases such as translating text, providing laboratory facilities and funds or administrative backups, should not be considered as authors and these may be thanked in acknowledgement section of the manuscript. One author should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole. Often this is the corresponding author, the one who sends in the manuscript and receives reviews, but other authors can have this role. All authors should approve the final version of the manuscript. It is preferable that all authors be familiar with all aspects of the work. However, modern research is often done in teams with complementary expertise so that every author may not be equally familiar with all aspects of the work. Therefore, some authors’ contributions may be limited to specific aspects of the work as a whole.
NUMBER OF AUTHORS, ORDER OF AUTHORSHIP & DISPUTES
Editors should not limit the number of authors. There are ample reasons for multiple authors in some kinds of research.. If Editor of "POLLUTION" believe that the number of authors is too large when compared with the scope of the work, he/she can ask for a detailed description of each author’s contributions to the work. If some do not meet criteria for authorship, Editors can ask for removal of some names as a condition of publication. The authors themselves should decide the order in which authors are listed in an article. No one else knows "as good as they" do their respective contributions and the agreements they have made among themselves. Many different criteria are used to decide order of authorship. Among these are relative contributions to the work and, in situations where all authors have contributed equally, alphabetical or random order. Readers cannot know, and should not assume, the meaning of order of authorship unless the approach to assigning order has been described by the authors. Authors may want to include with their manuscript a description of how order was decided. If so, editors should welcome this information and publish it with the manuscript. Disputes about authorship are best settled at the local level, before journal begins the processes of reviews the manuscript. However, at their discretion editors may become involved in resolving authorship disputes. Changes in authorship at any stage of manuscript review, revision, or acceptance should be accompanied by a written request and explanation from all of the original authors.
AUTHOR AGREEMENT & USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
In order to disseminate the authors’ research work, the publishers need publishing rights. For open access journals such as "Pollution" where articles are freely accessible by anyone, the publisher uses an exclusive licensing agreement in which authors retain copyright in their manuscript. Pollution provides access to archived material through the journal archives. All articles published open access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read and download. Permitted reuse is defined by Creative Commons user license called "Creative Common Attribution" (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)).
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
Authors are requested to evident whether impending conflicts do or do not exist through their note to the editor. The credibility of published articles depend in part on how clearly conflicts of interest are handled during various processes of article publishing. Financial relationships are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and can adversely affect the credibility of the journal, the authors, and ethics of science itself. Conflicts may also raise for other reasons (personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual beliefs, etc.). All authors should strictly follow the journals’ policies on conflict of interest. Not only authors but also peer reviewers, editor, and editorial board members of journals must consider their conflicts of interest when carrying out their roles in the process of article review and publication. They should disclose any relationships that could be considered as potential conflicts of interest.
- Authors are responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias their work.
- Reviewers should disclose to Editor any conflicts of interest that may bias their judgement about manuscript before they begin to review the manuscript. Reviewers should somehow recuse themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if the potential for bias exists. Reviewers must not use any part of manuscript before its publication for any possible reason.
- Editor as the final person for making decision as well as staff members of "POLLUTION" who may be somehow involved in the processes of decision should rescue themselves if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that pose potential conflicts related to articles. Editor and editorial staff members should not use information given in manuscripts for any private gain. Guest editors should follow these same procedures.
Reporting Conflicts of Interest
Articles should be published with statements (such as the POLLUTION conflict of interest form), declaring:
- Authors’ conflicts of interest; and
- Sources of financial and other supports for their research (including sponsor names along with explanations of the role of those sources). Authors should be clear about collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the report; and
- Authors should clearly state about the data sources and accessibility to these data that they might have used in the manuscript.
If Editor ask the authors (for any reason) to show evident of having access to data used in the manuscript; then authors should provide a letter or statement from sponsor of data/finance to convince Editor.
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