Our Code of Ethics

Our ethic statements are based on COPE's (Committee On Publication Ethics) Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

Ethical standards for publishing are very important to ensure authors to receive credit for their work. Our Institute, ROCYS journal, its editors and members of the editorial team are strongly committed to fair double-blind peer reviews of the submitted manuscripts.

Manuscripts are assessed for their scientific content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, political philosophy, ethnic origin or citizenship.

Authors submitting their manuscripts must attest that it is their original work and has not been plagiarized. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently is unethical and unacceptable. Our authors, editors, and reviewer must comply with our Code of Ethics in all respects.

Code Of Ethics for AUTHORS

• The author should not submit a manuscript being reviewed elsewhere in view of being published, nor submit the manuscript somewhere else while being under reviewed in ROCYS journal. It is also unethical to submit a manuscript which is essentially the same research to other place of publication, except if it is a resubmitted manuscript which has been rejected or withdrawn from the previous publication.
• If the manuscript includes resources overlapping with the previously published works, in press, or under assessment for publication somewhere else, the author must quote the respective work in the submitted text.
• The manuscript must not have been previously published or accepted for publication elsewhere, either as a complete book including chapters or a section of a paragraph, a presentation or a manuscript in another language.
• Authors must not resubmit a manuscript to ROCYS journal in case it was previously submitted to ROCYS journal, advanced for review and it was rejected after review, excepting that the authors have done extensive improvements of the form/content.
• Authors must precisely cite their previous personal ideas/works. If the same statements appeared in other work/s of the Author(s) which are included in the manuscript, the sentence or paragraph should be put in quotation marks and accurately cited in a way that does not affect in any way the double-blind review process.
• Authors should not be involved in any conflicts of interest during the entire research process.
• The manuscript must not exhibit any sort of plagiarism, appropriation or falsification. Moreover, self-plagiarism is not at all tolerated except there is a strong reason. Also, authors should reduce recycling their previous works. If recycling is considered unavoidable, the author should reference the previous writings in the manuscript. In this case, self-referencing should be phrased discreetly to avoid compromising the double-blind review process.
• ROCYS journal holds the copyright of all published articles.
• ROCYS journal imposes a double-blind review process, wherein the reviewers’ identity is not disclosed to the authors and vice versa. Authors must respect the confidentiality of the review process and should not reveal themselves to reviewers and vice versa. For example, the manuscript should not include any author's personal information like name, address, affiliation etc.
• The co-author who submits a manuscript to ROCYS journal should keep all the co-authors informed about the submission process and the results of the reviewing.
• All co-authors of the research paper should have made relevant contributions to the manuscript and shared accountability for the scientific results.

Code Of Ethics for EDITORS

• The editor and members of the editorial team should not reveal any information about a manuscript under consideration to anyone else than those from whom professional counsel is asked for. (However, an editor who solicits, or otherwise arranges beforehand, the submission of manuscripts may need to reveal to a proposed author the fact that a relevant manuscript by another author has been received or is in preparation.) After a decision has been made about a manuscript, the editor and members of the editorial team may disclose or publish manuscript titles and authors' names of papers that have been accepted for publication, but only if the author has given permission. If a decision has been made to reject a manuscript for ethical transgressions, the editor and members of the editorial staff may disclose the manuscript title and authors' names to other ROCYS journal editors.
• Editors should impartially take into consideration all manuscripts submitted for publication, assessing each one on its merits without regard to nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, affiliation or country of the author(s). The editor may, nonetheless, examine the relations of a manuscript immediately under consideration to others previously or concurrently offered by the same author(s). All manuscripts should be treated within a reasonable timeframe and at a reasonable pace.
• The exclusive responsibility for accepting or rejecting a manuscript pertains to the editor. Liable and careful exercise of this task usually requires that the editor seek counsel from reviewers, selected for their expertise and reasonable judgment, relating to the quality and reliability of manuscripts submitted for publication. However, manuscripts may be rejected without external review if considered by the editors to be inappropriate for the journal. This kind of rejections may be grounded on the fact that the manuscript is outside the scope of the journal, not of sufficiently broad interest or, not providing satisfactory depth of content, not written in proper English, or other reasons.
• Editorial responsibility for any manuscript authored by an editor and submitted to the editor's journal should be delegated to some other qualified person, such as another editor of that journal or a member of its Editorial Advisory Board. Editorial consideration of the manuscript in any way or form by the author-editor would constitute a conflict of interest, and is therefore considered inadmissible.
• Unpublished information, interpretations or arguments disclosed in a submitted manuscript should not be used in an editor's own research unless the consent of the author is given. However, if such information indicates that some of the editor's own research is unlikely to be profitable, the editor could cease the work on moral grounds. When a manuscript is very closely related to the present or past research of an editor as to create a conflict of interest, the editor should arrange for some other qualified person to take editorial responsibility for that manuscript. In certain cases, it may be appropriate to tell an author about the editor's research and plans in that field.
• If an editor is presented with convincing evidence that the main substance or conclusions of a report published in an editor's journal are false, the editor should ease the publication of an appropriate report pointing out the error and, ideally, correcting it. The report may be written by the person who discovered the error or by an original author.
• An editor should respect the intellectual autonomy of authors.

Code Of Ethics for REVIEWERS

• To assess the manuscript objectively and in an acceptable timeframe. The reviews should not resort to personal criticism.
• To respect the intellectual autonomy of authors.
• To announce the editor if there is a conflict of interest. Concretely, referees should not review manuscripts authored or co-authored by a person with whom the referee has a close personal or professional relationship, if this relationship could be reasonably thought to bias the review.
• The manuscript is to be treated as confidential. The manuscript (or its existence) should not be shown to, disclosed to, or discussed with others, except in special cases, where specific scientific advice may be sought; in that case the editor must be informed and the identities of those consulted disclosed.
• To destroy/erase the manuscript and to inform the editor should they be unqualified to review the manuscript, or lack the time to review the manuscript, without undue delay.
• To inform the editor if a manuscript contains or seems to contain plagiarised, falsified or manipulated material and information.
• Not to retain or copy the submitted manuscript in any form; to comply with data protection regulations, as appropriate.
• To explain and support their judgements so that editors and authors may understand the grounds of their comments, and to provide reference to published work, where considered appropriate.
• To inform the editor of any similarity between the submitted manuscript and another another journal, published or in prospect of publication.
• To announce any conflicts of interest that might arise.
• To ensure that all unpublished data, arguments and information in a submitted article remain confidential and not to use reported work in unpublished, submitted articles.