Ethical Principles and Publication Policy

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

The ZeroBuild Journal (ZBJ) complies with the ethical rules in the editorial processes and publication of manuscripts. Similarity software is used to check plagiarism and manuscripts with inappropriate overlapping with other publications and/or containing other detected malpractices are not processed and are immediately rejected.

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Guidelines are part of the journal publication ethics practices and will be used to handle any related issues as the guiding documents. More information about these guidelines can be found on the COPE's website.

The attitude and rules of our journal followed in the editorial and publishing processes are given below for all involved parties (inline and in addition to aforementioned COPE guidelines):

Responsibilities of Editors

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Editors and editorial board members will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Privileged information or ideas obtained by editors as a result of handling the manuscript will be kept confidential and not used for their personal advantage. Editors will recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers; instead, they will ask another member of the editorial staff to consider the manuscript.

Confidentiality

Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, potential reviewers, reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Fair play and editorial independence

Editors evaluate submitted manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit (importance, originality, study’s validity, clarity) and their relevance to the journal’s scope, without regard to the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, citizenship, religious belief, political philosophy or institutional affiliation. Decisions to edit and publish are determined by the scientific and ethical quality of the submitted study, and its relevance to the scope of the journal. Editorial decisions are not affected by the policies of other agencies outside of the journal itself. The Editor-in-Chief has full authority over the entire editorial content of the journal and the timing of publication of that content.

Publication decisions

The editors ensure that all submitted manuscripts being considered for publication, undergo peer review by generally at least two expert reviewers in the related field. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal will be published, based on the validation of the work in question, its importance to researchers and readers, the reviewers’ comments, and such legal requirements as are currently in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The Editor-in-Chief may seek advice from other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

Involvement and cooperation in investigations

Editors (in conjunction with the publisher and/or society) will take responsive measures when ethical concerns are raised with regard to a submitted manuscript or published paper. Every reported act of unethical publishing behavior will be looked into, even if it is discovered years after publication. If on the investigation, the ethical concern is well-founded, a correction, retraction, expression of concern or other note as may be relevant will be published in the journal.

Responsibilities of Reviewers

Contribution to editorial decisions

The peer-reviewing process assists the editor and the editorial board in making editorial decisions and may also serve the author in improving the paper. ZBJ defines Peer-review as getting the opinions of expert reviewers in the field for individual manuscripts.

Promptness

All ZBJ papers must be treated confidentially by reviewers prior to publication. Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and withdraw from the review process.

Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be disclosed to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor in chief who may not give approval without author consent.

Standards of objectivity

Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

Acknowledgement of sources

Reviewers should identify cases in which relevant published work referred to in the paper has not been cited in the reference section. They should point out whether observations or arguments derived from other publications are accompanied by the respective source. Reviewers will notify the editor of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

Disclosure and conflict of interest

Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the papers.

Responsibilities of Authors

Reporting standards

Authors of original research reports should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Review articles should be accurate, objective, and comprehensive.

Authorship of a manuscript

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be named in an Acknowledgement section. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the author list of the manuscript and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Data access and retention

Authors could be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the paper for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least ten years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.

Originality, plagiarism, and acknowledgment of sources

Authors will submit only entirely original works, and will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publishing a paper in more than one journal is strictly forbidden. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should also be cited. The list of references should be provided by authors for ten years. Also, authors are expected to disclose any project supports/incentives provided by others in the acknowledgment.

Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication and licensing

In general, papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Manuscripts that have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted. In addition, manuscripts under review by the journal should not be resubmitted to copyrighted publications. However, by submitting a manuscript, the author(s) retain the rights to the published material. In case of publication author(s) permit(s) the use of the work under a CC-BY-NC license [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0] which allows others to copy, distribute and transmit the work as well as to adapt the work.

Ethics committee approval (if necessary)

Ethics committee approval must be obtained for research conducted in all disciplines including social sciences and for clinical and experimental studies on humans and animals, requiring ethical committee decision, and this approval should be stated and documented in the article.

Hazards and human or animal subjects

If the work involves chemicals, procedures, or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the authors must clearly identify these in the manuscript.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

All authors should include a statement disclosing any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that may be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Fundamental errors in published works

When an author 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 and to cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper in the form of an erratum.

Responsibilities of Publisher

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism the publisher, in close collaboration with the Editors-in-Chief, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum or, in the most severe cases, the complete retraction of the affected work.

The Publisher and the Journal do not discriminate on the basis of age, color, religion, creed, disability, marital status, veteran status, national origin, race, gender, genetic predisposition or carrier status, or sexual orientation in its publishing programs, services and activities.