PUBLICATION ETHICS AND PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

The ethical policy of WES is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with International Committee of WES Editorial Board codes of conduct. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with WES . The ethical policy of WES is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or articles submitted to the journal should be published in the concerned issue. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit http://publicationethics.org

Duties and Responsibilities of Publishers

(https://publicationethics.org/core-practices)

  1. WES is committing to ensure that editorial decisions on manuscript submissions are the final.
  2. WES is promising to ensure that the decision on manuscript submissions is only made based on professional judgment and will not be affected by any commercial interests.
  3. WES is committing to maintain the integrity of academic and research records.
  4. WES is monitoring the ethics by Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
  5. WES is always checking the plagiarism and fraudulent data issues involving in the submitted manuscript.
  6. WES is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications and retractions involving its publications as and when needed.

Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

(https://publicationethics.org/core-practices)

  1. The Editors of the journal should have the full authority to reject/accept a manuscript.
  2. The Editors of the journal should maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts under review or until they are published.
  3. The Editor-in-Chief should take a decision on submitted manuscripts, whether to be published or not with other editors and reviewers
  4. The Editors of the journal should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
  5. The Editors of the journal should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.
  6. The Editors of the journal should maintain academic integrity and strive to meet the needs of readers and authors.
  7. The Editors of the journal should be willing to investigate plagiarism and fraudulent data issues and willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
  8. The Editors of the journal should have the limit themselves only to the intellectual content.
  9. The Editors of the journal must not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
  10. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

(https://publicationethics.org/core-practices)

  1. The Reviewers of the journal should assist the Editors in taking the decision for publishing the submitted manuscripts.
  2. The Reviewers should maintain the confidentiality of manuscripts, which they are invited to review.
  3. The Reviewers should provide comments in time that will help editors to make decision on the submitted manuscript to be published or not.
  4. The Reviewers are bound to treat the manuscript received for peer reviewing as confidential, and must not use the information obtained through peer review for personal advantage. 
  5. The Reviewers comments against each invited manuscript should be technical, professional and objective.
  6. The Reviewers should not review the manuscripts in which they have found conflicts of interest with any of the authors, companies, or institutions.
  7. The Reviewers should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.

Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

(https://publicationethics.org/core-practices)

  1. Manuscripts must be submitted only in English and should be written according to sound grammar and proper terminology.
  2. Manuscripts must be submitted with the understanding that they have not been published elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis) and are not currently under consideration by another journal published by or any other publisher.
  3. The submitting corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the manuscript article's publication has been approved by all the other coauthors.
  4. To sustain the peer review system, authors have an obligation to participate in peer review process to evaluate manuscripts from others. 
  5. It is also the authors' responsibility to ensure that the manuscripts emanating from a particular institution are submitted with the approval of the necessary institution.
  6. It is a condition for submission of a manuscript that the authors permit editing of the paper for readability.
  7. Authors are requested to clearly identify who provided financial support for the conduct of research and/or preparation of the manuscript and briefly describe the role of the founder/ sponsor in any part of the work.
  8. A copy right release form must be signed by the corresponding author in case of multiple authorship, prior to the acceptation of the manuscript, by all authors, for publication to be legally responsible towards the Journal ethics and privacy policy.
  9. Under open access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly.
  10. All authors have agreed to allow the corresponding author to serve as the correspondent with the editorial office, to review the edited manuscript and proof.
  11. When author(s) discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript. 
  12. All authors must know that that the submitted manuscripts under review or published with WES are subject to screening using Plagiarism Prevention Software. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. 
  13. All authors must ensure that all authors have read the submission final checklist before being submitted to the WES .  For more details kindly see the link: Click here.

Principles of Transparency

(https://publicationethics.org/core-practices)

  1. Peer review process: WES is a double blind peer reviewed electronic and print quarterly publication concerned with all aspects of environmental science and management. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, is clearly described on the journal’s Web site (Click here).
  2. Governing Body: WES has very strong editorial board, whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors is provided on the journal’s Web site (Click here).
  3. Contact information: Journal is provided the contact information for the editorial office of WES (Click here).
  4. Author fees / Access: The Journal database is fully open access and full text of published articles is available for everyone who can get access to the Journal website free of cost. Besides, the authors never pay any charges for submission, article processing and publication.
  5. Copyright: Journals made clear the type of copyright under which authors work will be published.  Upon acceptance of manuscript, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement'.
  6. Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct: Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.
  7. Web site: A journal’s Web site (http://www.journalwes.com) contains that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.
  8. Name of journal: The Journal name of Water and Environmental Sustainability (WES) has unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal
  9. Conflicts of interest: Authors are requested to evident whether impending conflicts do or do not exist while submitting their articles to WES through Conflict of Interest Disclosure form (Download).
  10. Publishing schedule: The periodicity at which a journal publishes is clearly indicated (Click here).
  11. Archiving: A journal’s plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content is clearly indicated (http://www.journalwes.com).

Violation of Publication Ethics

(https://publicationethics.org/core-practices)

  1. Plagiarism: Plagiarism is intentionally using someone else’s ideas or other original material as if they are one's own. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation is considered by WES Journals as plagiarism. All manuscripts under review or published with WES are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software. Thus, plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. The development of CrossCheck is a service that helps editors to verify the originality of papers. CrossCheck is powered by the Ithenticate software from iParadigms, known in the academic community as providers of Turnitin.  For a searchable list of all journals in the CrossCheck database, please visit: www.ithenticate.com/search
  2. Data Fabrication and Falsification: Data fabrication and falsification means the researcher did not really carry out the study, but made up data or results and had recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.
  3. Simultaneous Submission: Simultaneous submission occurs when a manuscript (or substantial sections from a manuscript) is submitted to a journal when it is already under consideration by another journal.
  4. Duplicate Publication: Duplicate publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions.
  5. Redundant Publications: Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, most often consequent to the desire to plump academic vitae.
  6. Improper Author Contribution or Attribution: All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. Don’t forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.
  7. Citation Manipulation: Citation Manipulation is including excessive citations, in the submitted manuscript, that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely for the purpose of increasing citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal. This leads to misrepresenting the importance of the specific work and journal in which it appears and is thus a form of scientific misconduct.
  8. Sanctions: In the event that there are documented violations of any of the above mentioned policies in any journal, regardless of whether or not the violations occurred in a journal, the following sanctions will be applied: (i) Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript, (ii)Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submitted to any journal published by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript, (iii) Prohibition will be imposed for a minimum of 36 months against all of the authors for any new submissions to any journal, either individually or in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript, and (iv) Prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the Editorial Board of any journal.

Handling Cases of Misconduct

(https://publicationethics.org/core-practices)

Once WES confirms a violation against WES publication ethics, WES addresses ethical concerns diligently following an issue-specific standard practice as summarized below.

  1. The first action of the journal Editor is to inform the Editorial Office of WES by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner.
  2. If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and it seems that serious unethical conduct has taken place, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via Editorial Office.  After deliberation, the Committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions. 
  3. If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Publication Committee, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the author of WES publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the Editor may request the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.
  4. Notification will be sent to corresponding author and any work by the author responsible for the violation or any work these persons coauthored that is under review by WES journal will be rejected immediately.
  5. The authors are prohibited from serving on WES  editorial board and serving as a reviewer for WES Journal. WES reserves the right to take more actions.
  6. In extreme cases, notifications will be sent to the affiliations of the authors and the authors are prohibited from submitting their work to WES for 5 years.
  7. In serious cases of fraud that result in retraction of the article, a retraction notice will be published in the journal and will be linked to the article in the online version. The online version will also be marked “retracted” with the retraction date.

For studies involving human subjects, authors must obtain approval from their institutional ethics committee and confirm that recognized standards, such as the Declaration of Helsinki. 

Click Here

Have been followed to minimize harm to participants. Authors must obtain informed consent from human participants. They must also ensure the information they collect from participants does not contain any identifiable information and mitigate the risk of being able to assign data to specific individuals.
Children participating in research have a particular right to protection. Therefore, authors must obtain parental or guardian consent before data collection. They must also gain informed consent of other vulnerable individuals, i.e., the disadvantaged, prisoners, and minorities. 
Research ethics policies for studies involving the participation of human subjects (e.g., consent, participant anonymity, etc.) and vulnerable populations (i.e., children – parent/guardian consent) are also expected to be present on the journal website, in line with accepted standard practices in the field.
Authors must ensure that all participants in their study have given informed consent for publication.
According to the WMA Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, “Some groups and individuals are particularly vulnerable and may have an increased likelihood of being wronged or of incurring additional harm. All vulnerable groups and individuals should receive specifically considered protection”.

Click Here

Accordingly, authors must consider issues arising from working with potentially vulnerable people and must address how such risks to these participants are minimized and how they are protected from risks.

 

Submission Final Checklist

Prior to acceptance of the manuscript, the corresponding author is responsible to adjust the whole manuscript according to the following items and then the marked final checklist should be attached along with the covering letter:

General Considerations

  1. Read the Journal’s Guide for Authors and make sure that the manuscript (text, tables, figures, and photographs) meets Journal requirements.
  2. The manuscript contains the main sections outlined in Journal’s Guide for Authors, e.g., Title, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusion, Appendices, Acknowledgments, Conflict of interest and References.
  3. Spell-check the manuscript.
  4. All authors must read the Ethics in publishing, Plagiarism prevention, Violation of publication ethics and Handling cases of misconduct before being submitted to the WES.
  5. The Manuscript has been read and approved by all listed authors.
  6. Not only the Corresponding Author, but also the whole contributors of the manuscript are advised to be registered at the journal website in order to keep their names in the manuscript bio-sketches.
  7. A copy right release and conflict of interest disclosure form must be signed by the corresponding author in case of multiple authorships, prior to the acceptation of the manuscript, by all authors, for publication to be legally responsible towards the Journal ethics and privacy policy. 

Title Page

  1. The title of the manuscript is short and descriptive and does not contain abbreviation.
  2. Names of all authors and their affiliations and complete addresses are included.
  3. Name of corresponding author with affiliation, complete address and email address is included.
  4. Provide 5-7 indexing keywords preferably not mentioned in the title. 

Text Format

  1. The manuscript is in single column (not double column) format.
  2. Abstract is brief (one paragraph of between 150 to 250 words), descriptive (a summary of the major findings in the manuscript) and accessible (jargon-free and clear to the readers).
  3. No references and abbreviations cited in the Abstract.
  4. The pages are numbered consecutively beginning from the title page.
  5. Document has continuous line numbers from start to finish.
  6. The same data are not presented in both Tables and Figures.
  7. Terms that are abbreviated are written out completely the first time they are used, and then abbreviated thereafter.
  8. Introduction states the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.
  9. Results should be clear and concise.
  10. Discussion should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.
  11. Conclusions of the study may be presented the outcome of the research work.
  12. Appendices should be identified as A, B, etc. Formulae and equations in appendices should be given separate numbering: Eq. (A.1), Eq. (A.2), etc.; in a subsequent appendix, Eq. (B.1) and so on. Similarly for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.
  13. The author(s) are appealed to provide the source(s) of financial support along with the grand number for the study in the acknowledgements section.

References

  1. References should contain article titles.
  2. References must be arranged in alphabetical order.
  3. All references referred to in the text are included in the list of references.
  4. The references cited are current and up-to-date.
  5. All references are formatted according to the style of the journal (Harvard style).
  6. The volume and issue numbers of references must be mentioned, accurately.
  7. The number of pages of each reference must be calculated and added at the end of each reference as the "Total Pages" in bold character.
  8. The number of references in the review paper preferred to be not contain less than 100; for original research paper or case report not less than 30 and for short communication 20 references are required.
  9. The majority of manuscript references must not be extracted from a single journal. The acceptable average can be indicated at most 4 to 6 references from each journal. 

Tables and Figures

  1. All Tables and Figures are numbered consecutively in the order of their initial citation in the text.
  2. All Tables and Figures are prepared according to the journal format.
  3. All Tables and Figures referred to or mentioned are within the text.
  4. Figure Legends are written in the ordinary manuscript and not on the Figures.
  5. All symbols and abbreviations are defined in the Figure Legends.
  6. All Figures preferred to be provided in excel format.
  7. All Figures that are graphs and maps (not photos) are supplied as EPS - encapsulated postscript (or PDF): Vector drawings, embed all used fonts. TIFF (or JPEG): Colour or grayscale photographs (halftones), Bitmapped (pure black & white pixels) line drawings and  combinations bitmapped line/half-tone keep to a minimum of 700-1000 dpi.
  8. All provided maps are shown with scales and cardinal direction. 

Handling Cases of Misconduct

(http://publicationethics.org/files/Sharing%20_of_Information_Among_EiCs_guidelines_web_version.pdf)

Once WES confirms a violation against WES’s publication ethics, WES addresses ethical concerns diligently following an issue-specific standard practice as summarized below.

  1. The first action of the journal Editor is to inform the Editorial Office of WES by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner.
  2. If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and it seems that serious unethical conduct has taken place, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via Editorial Office.  After deliberation, the Committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions. 
  3. If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Publication Committee, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the author of WES publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the Editor may request the author to publish an apology in the journal to correct the record.
  4. Notification will be sent to corresponding author and any work by the author responsible for the violation or any work these persons coauthored that is under review by WES journal will be rejected immediately.
  5. The authors are prohibited from serving on WES editorial board and serving as a reviewer for WES Journal. WES reserves the right to take more actions.
  6. In extreme cases, notifications will be sent to the affiliations of the authors and the authors are prohibited from submitting their work to WES for 5 years.
  7. In serious cases of fraud that result in retraction of the article, a retraction notice will be published in the journal and will be linked to the article in the online version. The online version will also be marked “retracted” with the retraction date.