Publication Ethics & Malpractice Statement
Journal policies on authorship and contributorship
Authorship credit should be based on any or all of the following:
1) Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
2) Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
3) Final approval of the version to be published.
All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.
The contributions of all authors must be described. The submitting author is responsible for providing the contributions of all authors at submission. We expect that all authors will have reviewed, discussed, and agreed to their contributions ahead of this time. Contributions will be published with the final article and should accurately reflect contributions to the work. This elaboration is based on COPE's principle of Authorship and contributorship.
Contributor Role
Role Definition
Conceptualization
Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
Data Curation
Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data, and maintain research data for initial use and later re-use.
Formal Analysis
Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
Funding Acquisition
Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
Investigation
Conducting a research and investigation process, explicitly performing the experiments or data/evidence collection.
Methodology
Development or design of methodology; creation of models
Project Administration
Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
Supervision
Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
Validation
Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
Visualization
Preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
Writing – Original Draft Preparation
Creation and/or presentation of the published work, explicitly writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
Writing – Review & Editing
Preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages.
How will the journal handle complaints and appeals?
Biology and Education Journal (BaEJ) follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines on appeals to journal editor decisions and complaints about a journal's editorial management of the peer review process.
If you wish to appeal a journal editor's decision, please submit an appeal letter to the journal's online editorial office. Please address this to the Editor and explain the basis for an appeal. You should:
Detail why you disagree with the decision. Please provide specific responses to any of the Editor's and/or reviewers' comments that contributed to the rejection decision.
- Provide any new information or data you would like the journal to consider.
- Provide evidence if you believe a reviewer has made technical errors in their assessment of your manuscript.
- Include evidence if a reviewer may have a conflict of interest.
This elaboration is based on COPE's principle of Complaints and appeals
Journal policies on conflicts of interest / competing interests
A competing interest — often called a conflict of interest — exists when professional judgment concerning a primary interest (such as patients' welfare or the validity of research) may be influenced by a secondary interest (such as financial gain or personal rivalry). It may arise for the authors of an article in Biology and Education Journal (BaEJ) when they have a financial interest that may influence, probably without their knowing, their interpretation of their results or those of others. We believe that to make the best decision on how to deal with an article, we should know about any competing interests that authors may have and that if we publish the article, readers should know about them too.
Biology and Education Journal (BaEJ) Policies on Data Sharing and Reproducibility
Biology and Education Journal (BaEJ) Editors strongly encourage authors to include additional material data sets and codes that demonstrate the results shown in their final article. Biology and Education Journal (BaEJ) journal editors may set their policies based on this broad principle, and authors may request a waiver for reasons of confidentiality or security.
Biology and Education Journal (BaEJ)is also introducing a basic data-sharing policy across all its journal titles. This policy will encourage authors to share and make the data underlying their published article publicly available when it does not violate the protection of human subjects or other valid subject privacy concerns.
Authors will be further encouraged to cite any data referenced in their paper. Whether this has been created by the author or someone else, cited data sets should be included in the reference list. Finally, authors will be encouraged to include a data availability statement. Data-sharing policies will be set at the journal level in consultation with editors, relevant societies, or other stakeholders.
Journal's policy on ethical oversight
The journal is committed to upholding the highest ethical standards in research publication. The journal attaches particular importance to ethical values such as honesty, excellence in research practice, transparency, open communication, and respect. It follows the guidelines the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) set. The authors agree to follow its ethical guidelines by submitting a manuscript to the journal.
Authorship: Anyone who has made a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data; drafts the work or revises it critically; approves the final version of the work; agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work should be listed as an author of the manuscript. Anyone who contributed to the work but failed to meet the authorship criteria should be acknowledged. The corresponding author is the person who handles the correspondence during the publication process and has the authority to act on behalf of all co-authors in all matters related to the publication of the article. The corresponding author continues to serve as the main point of contact for any inquiries after the article is published.
Conflict of Interest: To ensure that the articles published in the journal are free from inappropriate external influence, authors must declare any potential conflict of interests that may affect the objectivity or integrity of the article. These conflicts may be financial, non-financial, professional, or personal in nature.
Funding: Authors must provide details of the source of funding received during the manuscript preparation as required by the funding and grant-awarding bodies.
Studies Involving Human or Animal Subjects: Studies involving human or animal subjects must abide by institutional and national policies for ethical conduct and include proper documentation such as ethical committee approvals, informed consent, and other legal permissions.
Ethical Oversight: Research works that include potentially hazardous chemicals or procedures must clearly state the details. If necessary, the submission must be accompanied by the appropriate ethical documentation.
Data Sharing and Availability: The journal expects the authors to be open and transparent about the data, code, or other materials related to the published content. To ensure that the findings of the study are reproducible and reliable, authors are encouraged to deposit data in a suitable repository and describe where the data may be found.
Advertising: The journal allows limited and targeted advertising on its website to exclusively promote selected research content published by the journal publisher.
Complaints and Appeals: Anyone who may be concerned that publication ethics guidelines or principles are not followed should raise their complaints and appeals with details and documents about the case. Complaints and appeals should be directed to [email protected]. All complaints and appeals will be handled rigorously according to the best practices of COPE.
Corrections and Retractions: The journal will publish a corrigendum or an erratum if an error is found during post-publication. Retractions are issued if the errors are significant and results and conclusions are no longer reliable. Suppose serious ethical malpractices such as plagiarism and duplication are discovered in a published article. In that case, the journal reserves the right to retract the article and take up the matter with relevant academic bodies or institutions.
Intellectual Property, Copyright, and Licensing Policy
Intellectual Property and Copyright
Authors certify that their submitted manuscript (and any supporting items) are their own intellectual property, and the copyright has not been transferred to others.
Authors certify that the manuscript contains no plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, or manipulated citations and that the manuscript conforms to Biology and Education Journal (BaEJ) authorship policies.
Authors certify that for any copyrighted tables, figures, data, text, etc., permission has been obtained from the copyright holders to reproduce.
All manuscripts, revisions, drafts, and galleys remain the intellectual property of the author(s). Except as stated in the agreed license, the author(s) retain the copyright to their work.
Authors retain the full right to modify, reshare, repost, or archive any version of their copyrighted work.
All review comments and reports remain the intellectual property of the reviewer or Editor. Except as stated in the agreed license, the author(s) retain the copyright to their work.
Authors, reviewers, and editors agree to keep all communications, comments, or reports from reviewers or editors confidential.
Reviewers and editors agree to keep all manuscripts, revisions, and drafts confidential, except the final published galley(s).
License
Authors agree that all accepted manuscripts, galleys, and submitted supporting documents are immediately and irrevocably released under a Creative Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.
The license will be indicated on the front page of each online article galley. The license will also be indicated within each issue of the print edition.
Reporting
Suspicion of violations of this policy should be made to the editor-in-chief via the Complaints and Appeals process.
Journal's options for post-publication discussions and corrections
Biology and Education Journal (BaEJ) recognizes the significance of Post Publication Discussions on published research, and our journals are open to such discussions.
Post-Publication Discussions may be published online after review and are usually accompanied by a response from the original authors.
Instructions to Authors, available at individual journal's website, may be referred to for details of submission criteria and peer review process for post-publication discussions.
Handling Post-Publication Matters:
To maintain the integrity of scientific research, Biology and Education Journal (BaEJ) carries out investigations regarding the concerns raised by authors and/or readers. However, authors are always allowed to respond to all complaints/ comments. We may require reviewers to go over the original data and consult with experts involved in order to solve and conclude the investigation. The following actions may be taken depending on Post-publication discussions and corrections severity of the issue:
A Corrigendum may be published.
An Editor's Note and/or Editorial Expression of Concern may be published; a second notification might also be published once the investigation is complete.
The article may be retracted.
If the outcome of the investigation highlights some serious issues, such as fraud or academic misconduct, then the author's institution may be informed about the matter.
Biology and Education Journal (BaEJ) does not intend to target any individual as its goal is to ensure transparency. The readers may, instead, be referred to the concerned reports of the institutional investigation, but only if these are publicly made available. While the investigation is in progress, which usually takes time to conclude, an Editor's Notes and/or Editorial Expressions of Concern (EEoC) is published to notify the readers about the criticism received in respect of the published article as recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Editor's Notes and EEoCs are replaced by publishing a revision―such as a corrigendum or retraction―once a decision is finalized after a complete investigation.
An Editor's Note is a message for the readers if the journal has launched an investigation in case of concerns raised on the published content. It is just an online update and is not indexed.
An Editorial Expression of Concern (EEoC) is a declaration by the Editor notifying readers about any serious concerns shadowing the probity of the published article. EEOC's is linked to the published paper, assigned with a DOI, and are listed in scholarly databases, such as PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, etc.