This section addresses publication ethics, excluding plagiarism, which is discussed separately. Cases of publication misconduct will be handled following the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines. The corresponding author will be contacted for an explanation, and corrective actions, including correction or retraction, will be determined based on the severity of the misconduct. If authors provide no or unsatisfactory response, unpublished manuscripts may be dropped from consideration and published ones retracted. Retraction notices will be issued in print and online. Authors may face a potential lifetime ban from submitting to the journal, and their institutional head could be informed. Strict measures apply to plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, salami slicing, duplicate submissions, redundant publication, selective and misleading reporting, and referencing.
Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) GUIDELINES ON GOOD PUBLICATION PRACTICE