Ethical Standards

To attain the highest standards in Publication Ethics, the Journal of Plant Protection Research (JPPR) has implemented the Core Practices recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics, especially the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (https://publicationethics.org/files/u2/Best_Practice.pdf).

The purpose of this note is to remind all members of the publication process, including Authors, Reviewers and Editors of their responsibility to abide by all the principles of publication ethics, and to illustrate below some important points in our editorial day-to-day practice.

To prevent plagiarism, the journal’s editorial team relies on an anti-plagiarism iThenticate software (http://www.ithenticate.com/) by Turnitin – a global provider of technology services for science and education. iThenticate is the most trusted plagiarism checker by the world's top researchers, publishers, and scholars.

Plagiarism constitutes an infringement of personal copyrights whereby a person is appropriating someone else's work in its entirety or in part and publishing it under their own name. Copying one’s own work in order to expand the author’s scientific output represents an act of autoplagiarism. Plagiarism is a punishable act. If plagiarism is detected, the editorial board will notify the institution with which the author is affiliated, the reviewers and the person(s) whose rights have been infringed. In addition, the editorial board will withdraw the published text and post information of the fact on the journal’s website and/or in the printed version.

Authors’ duties:

1. The Authors must read very carefully all information about the Journal before submitting the manuscript.
2. The Authors are expected to be aware of and comply with the best practices in publication ethics, especially with regard to authorship, contributorship, duplicate submission, plagiarism, figure manipulation, competing interests, and compliance with the standards of research ethics.
3. The Authors warrant that submitted manuscripts fall within the journal’s scope and are prepared according to the standards specified in the Instruction for Authors.
4. The Authors warrant that submitted manuscripts describe the original research of the Authors. The Authors are responsible for the accuracy and precision of the content.
5. The Authors warrant that the article is written by the stated Author/s.
6. The corresponding Authors must provide a short description of the contributions made by each listed Author (please use initials). This will be published in a webpage of JPPR in the Author information section.
7. The Corresponding Author is responsible for providing all necessary information for all Authors of the manuscript. The Corresponding Author should ensure that all Authors agree on its submission and accept the order of their names as Authors.
8. The Authors warrant that the submitted manuscript is original and has not been published elsewhere in any form or language (partially or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work. To avoid any self-plagiarism or any other plagiarism the journal uses iThenticate for checking all submitted manuscripts.
9. The Authors warrant that any use of other studies is properly documented and referenced. To reproduce pictures and tables from other works, explicit written permission from the author of the original study is necessary.
10. The Authors are welcome to suggest suitable reviewers and/or request the exclusion of certain individuals when they submit their manuscripts. When suggesting reviewers, the Authors should make sure they are totally independent and not connected to the work in any way. It is strongly recommended to suggest a mix of reviewers from different countries and different institutions. When suggesting reviewers, the Corresponding Author must provide an institutional email address for each suggested reviewer. Please note that the journal is not obliged to use the suggestions, but suggestions are appreciated and may help facilitate the peer review process.
11. The Authors are required to accurately acknowledge the funding sources related to the submitted manuscript (written in the Acknowledgement section of the manuscript).
12. All Authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Examples of potential conflicts of interest include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding. Authors must disclose any interests during the submission of the article.

Acting against the above rules, especially every discovered case of scientific misconduct (ghostwriting, guest authorship, etc.), will be treated seriously by the Editors. They will inform scientific bodies and/or employers of dishonest authors about any such misconduct.

Please notice that every case of withdrawn manuscript after reviewer proccess will be treated as scientific misconduct and will be treated seriously by the Editors.

12. The Authors are required to carefully read all the conditions included in the License to Publish form and to accept the License during the submission process.
13. If any errors are found in a paper, the Authors should attempt to make necessary corrections and immediately inform the journal.
14. If Research and Publication Misconduct is detected at any stage of the publication process, the journal has the right to take legal action against violating Authors.

Editor-in-Chief and Editors’ duties:

1. The Editor-in-Chief has the responsibility and authority to approve the submitted manuscript or reject it. The Editor-in-Chief may delegate this responsibility to the Associate Editor.
2. The Editor-in-Chief and Editors are required to check all submitted manuscripts.
3. The Editor-in-Chief and Editors appoint reviewers based on their competence, scientific and professional experience, as well as ethical commitment.
The Editor-in-Chief and Editors should take care to avoid any conflict of interests in the reviewing process to exclude any personal, business, academic and financial relations which may bias the decision about the publication of the submitted manuscript.
4. The Editor-in-Chief accepts or rejects a manuscript after evaluating the revised manuscript based on reviewers' reports and decisions.
The Editor-in-Chief uses his/her judgment as to whether to accept or reject a manuscript with the Editorial Board members or Editors.
5. The Editor-in-Chief and Editors should keep all the information in the manuscript confidential and are not allowed to disclose its content to others. Before publication of the manuscript, the Editor-in-Chief and Editors are not allowed to use their own ideas for or against his own or other studies, or to criticize the author.
6. The Editor-in-Chief should seriously treat any allegations of Research and Publication Misconduct concerning a manuscript submitted to the journal at any stage of the review process or one that has already been published in the journal. The allegations should be initially assessed and the accused authors should be provided a chance to respond.
7. If Research and Publication Misconduct is found to be well documented the Editor-in-Chief will act to immediately to stop the publication process or if the manuscript has already been published to remove it from open space, inform the readers and the data bases where the paper is indexed. The Editor-in-Chief is expected to start the legal procedure against authors who perpetrated the misconduct.
8. The Editors are responsible for checking if a submitted manuscript is prepared according to the Instructions for Authors.
9. The Editors are required to make sound editorial decisions within a reasonable period of time and communicate them in a clear and constructive manner.

Reviewer duties:

Because the Journal practices double-blind review, the Reviewer must not sign a review. In the event of a Reviewer having questions (minor or major revision) the Editor will send reviews with a decision letter to the author. The author must answer the Reviewer point by point and resend a revised manuscript to the Editorial Office.

1. Reviewers should not review a manuscript with which he/she has principal disagreement that may affect the fairness of his/her decision. A Reviewer should not accept reviewing manuscripts whenever there is a conflict of interests between the Reviewers and Authors or institutions they represent or have personal relations. A Reviewer should not accept reviewing manuscripts to which he/she contributed either in writing, giving ideas, acquiring experimental evidence, analyzing etc.
2. Reviews of the manuscript should be based on scientific argumentation, free from emotions and personal, racial, religious or other preferences. Reviewers are to point out strong and weak points of the manuscript and suggest solutions for revision of the manuscript.
3. A Reviewer should keep all the information in the manuscript confidential and must not disclose its content to others. Before publication of the manuscript, the reviewer must not use its ideas for or against his own or other studies, or to criticize the author. After publication, the reviewer must not reveal his/her dispute with the authors beyond what is presented in the journal.
4. Any case of Research and Publication Misconduct detected by a Reviewer should be immediately reported to the Editor-in-Chief and supported by sending the related documents.
5. A Reviewer is not allowed to commission his/her task to anyone such as his/her assistant or graduate student without written permission from the Editor-in-Chief. Anyone assisting in reviewing the article should be mentioned in the review report and the journal documents.
6. A Reviewer is not permitted to contact the authors of the reviewed paper unless it is made through the Editorial Office.


Procedure with allegation of misconduct

The Journal will take seriously any allegation of misconduct: fabrication or falsification of data, plagiarism, duplicate submissions and overlapping publication, manipulating authorship by adding false or gift authors and hiding true Authors, or manipulating affiliation by adding false affiliation of an Author. If an occurrence of misconduct is confirmed at any stage of the publication process, including submission, review or revision, the journal reserves its right to stop the review process before publication or removal of the article from the publication list and will act according to the law.