ETHICS POLICY ”Archives of Civil Engineering” respects and promotes the principles of publishing ethics. Being guided by COPE’s Guidelines (
https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) we ensure that all participants of the publishing process comply with these rules, the journal pays special attention to:
Editor Responsibilities 1. Qualifying individual manuscripts for publication only on the basis of: (a) compliance with the guidelines provided to the authors, (b) substantive value, (c) originality, (d) transparency of presentation
2. Deciding whether the paper fulfills all requirements i.e. formal and scientific and which articles submitted to the journal should be published. In making these decisions, the editor may be guided by the policies of the journal’s editorial board as well as by legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism.
3. Evaluating manuscripts for intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the author(s).
4. Ensuring scientific accuracy and complying with the principle of authorship; making sure that individual authors who contribute to the publication accept its form after the scientific editing
5. Providing a fair and appropriate peer review process.
6. Withdrawing manuscripts from publication, if any information about its unreliability appeared, also as a result of unintentional errors, features of plagiarism or violation of the rules of publishing ethics were identified.
7. Requiring all contributors to disclose relevant competing interests and publish corrections if competing interests are revealed after publication. If needed, other appropriate action should be taken, such as the publication of a retraction or expression of concern.
8. Maintaining the integrity of the academic record, precludes business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards, and is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
9. Not disclosing any information about a manuscript under consideration to anyone other than the author(s), reviewers and potential reviewers, and in some instances the editorial board members, as appropriate.
Reviewer Responsibilities 1. Cooperating with the scientific editor and / or editorial office and the authors in the field of improving the reviewed material;
2. Being objective and expressing the views clearly with appropriate supporting arguments.
3. Assessing of the entrusted works in a careful and objective manner, if possible with an assessment of their scientific reliability and with appropriate justification of the comments submitted;
4. identifying relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors
5. calling to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published data of which they have personal knowledge
6. Maintaining the principle of fair play, excluding personal criticism of the author (s)
7. Maintaining confidentiality, which is not showing or discussing with others except those authorized by the editor. Any manuscripts received for review are treated as confidential documents.
8. Performing a review within the set time limit or accepting another solution jointly with ACE in the event of failure to meet this deadline.
9. Notifying the editor if the invited reviewer feels unqualified to review the manuscript or knows that its timely review will be impossible.
10. identifying relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors
11. Not considering evaluating 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 submission.
Author Responsibilities 1. Results 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 manuscript. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.
2. The authors should follow the principle of originality, which is submitting only their own original works, and in the case of using the works of other authors, marking them in accordance with the rules of quotation, or obtaining consent for the publication of previously published materials from their owners or administrators;
3. An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Parallel submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
4. Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study and phenomena such as ghostwriting or guest authorship in the event of their detection must be actively counteracted.
5. All authors should report in a Reliable manner the sources they used to create their own study and their inclusion in the attachment bibliography;
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
9. 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’s editor or publisher and cooperate with them to either retract the paper or to publish an appropriate erratum.
Publisher’s Confirmation In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, 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.