Publication ethics and publication malpractice statement

Publication ethics and publication malpractice statements are the policies and practices publisher need, to reach the highest standards in publication ethics. For all parties involved in the act of publishing it is necessary to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior. The ethics statements for the FTS Scientific Publishing journals are mainly based on the guidelines of Committee on publication ethics (COPE) and the ELSEVIER publishing ethics resource kit.

There are three critical roles in the reviewing of manuscripts at the FTS Scientific Publishing journals in addition to the role of the FTS Scientific Publishing staff. These are (1) the authorial role, (2) the reviewer role, and (3) the editor(s) role.

(1) The Authorial Role

Reporting standards

Authors have a special role in manuscript handling at FTS Scientific Publishing journals and it will make the entire process much smoother if you are clear about your role, namely its benefits, privileges, responsibilities, and procedures. Authors of reports of original research 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. All articles, published in the FTS Scientific Publishing journals have to comprise a list of references which correspond with the journal’s instructions to authors for paper preparation.

Originality and plagiarism

The authors of FTS Scientific Publishing journals should ensure that the manuscript includes appropriate citations, whether these words/expressions, figures, and tables are from someone else or the author(s)’ prior work (i.e., the manuscript contains no plagiarism, including self-plagiarism).

According to the Merriam-Webster (https://www.merriam-webster.com/) dictionary:

Plagiarism is using off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own; use (another's production) without crediting the source.

Self-plagiarism is the reuse of one's own words, ideas, or artistic expression (as in an essay) from preexisting material especially without acknowledgment of their earlier use.

If authors also include a string of 8 or more words in sequence taken from the source, or paraphrase without citation. This is still word-for-word plagiarism if quotation marks are missing or the full in-text citation is missing which must include a specific locator (e.g., page number).

The authors of FTS Scientific Publishing journals explicitly cite others' work and ideas, including their own, even if the work or ideas are paraphrased or not quoted verbatim.

Provenance issues

Authors have an obligation to assure the journal that their work is not being considered for publication at another venue. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. This ethical violation is known as “double submission”. The primary reasoning behind this ethical stance is that reviewer time is a precious resource and double submissions flagrantly waste that resource.

Acknowledgement of sources

Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.

Authorship of the paper

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 acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the paper and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Corresponding author role

The corresponding author is responsible for the manuscript throughout the submission, peer review, and production stages. All communication, from submission to publication, will be conducted exclusively with the corresponding author. They need not be the first or senior author, and author order can be arranged during submission. Only one corresponding author is allowed per article to streamline communication and ensure a single point of contact for rapid manuscript progress.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. The author should also take care that their nominees for the review team do not have a professional or personal conflict of interest with the author or any of the co-authors.

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 cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

Selection of FTS Scientific Publishing journals as the journals to Review Your Work

We believe that you would be making a good choice if you ask FTS Scientific Publishing journals to review your work. Whatever the eventual outcome, we will do our best to provide you with constructive, timely feedback. If your work is accepted for publication, it will be placed in a journal.

Authorship and AI tools

FTS Scientific Publishing's position statement on Authorship and AI tools, such as ChatGPT, clarifies that AI tools should not be listed as author as they cannot take responsibility for submitted work, and their use should be fully transparent. Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.

Thank you for sending your research to FTS Scientific Publishing journals!

(2) The Reviewer Role

Contribution to editorial decisions

Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper. Reviewer role is to carefully read the appointed paper, to determine its strengths and weaknesses and indicate overall conclusion about the publishability of the paper.

Promptness

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 excuse himself from the review process.

Procedure for handling papers

For each round of reviewing, reviewer should make a recommendation about the manuscript to the Editor. Each round reviewer will be asked to make a recommendation on the disposition of the manuscript. The range of these decisions is: (1) reject, (2) major revisions, (3) minor revisions, and (4) accept. We rely very much on reviewers exercising their knowledge, experience, and wisdom in reaching their own, independent decisions. Upon reading the manuscript the reviewer will fill up the evaluation form report and send it to the Editor.

Privacy

Please understand that FTS Scientific Publishing is giving you access to submissions and all other review documents solely for the purpose of evaluation. You may not share them with any other parties. The manuscript under review is not citable, and its contents remain the intellectual property of the authors until such time that it would be accepted for publication and the authors sign a copyright transfer to FTS Scientific Publishing journals. Clearly, the paper may have influenced your general thinking about a particular phenomenon and that is all to the good. But unique intellectual innovations in submissions are sacrosanct and may not be referenced, adapted, or reused without express permission from the authors. Unfortunately, since the review process is a double-blind process, we cannot share with you the names of the authors. Until a paper is accepted for publication, it may not be cited.

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 relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention 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 connected to the papers.

Your Selection as Reviewer

You have been asked to assist because we believe that you have the ability to accurately assess the quality of our manuscript and can provide a constructive, timely review. Although a volunteer activity, it is still an honor to have been selected to review. The entire industrial engineering and management community owes a debt of gratitude to those such as yourself who readily volunteer to take on this critical set of tasks.

Thank you for your service to FTS Scientific Publishing!

(3) The Editor(s) Role

Publication decisions

The Editor-in-Chief (EIC) is the final decision maker in reviewing submissions for all FTS Scientific Publishing journals. EIC, after considering the recommendation and the input from reviewers, make the sole determination about which papers are published, which papers will be returned for revision, and which papers will not move forward in the review cycle. The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

Fair play

An editor at any time evaluates manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Confidentiality

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

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent of the author.