Publication Ethics

At the Iranian Journal of Materials Forming (IJMF), we highly value maintaining the integrity of our academic content and publishing process. This section outlines the best practice principles that we apply to our journal. We hope these guidelines will be useful to many different groups, including authors, peer reviewers, editors, societies, publishing partners and funders.

IJMF is following the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and complies with the highest ethical standards in accordance with ethical laws. Our application for COPE membership is now being reviewed. COPE primarily provides guidelines and resources for journal editors, so we reference them throughout this document.

 

1. Research Integrity

We uphold the same high standards as other prominent journals, and expect research published by our journal to abide by the following principles:

  1. Honesty in all aspects of research.
  2. Scrupulous care, thoroughness and excellence in research practice.
  3. Transparency and open communication.
  4. Care and respect for all participants in and subjects of research.
  5. Accountability both for one’s own research integrity and that of others when behaviour falls short of our standards.

Anyone who believes that research published by IJMF has not been carried out in line with these academic research publishing ethics guidelines, or the above principles, should raise their concern with Editor-in-Chief or email ijmf@shirazu.ac.ir. Concerns will be addressed by following COPE guidelines where possible and/or by escalating the matter to the Publishing Ethics Committee of Shiraz University if necessary.

 

2. Editorial Process

We are committed to editorial independence and strive in all cases to prevent this principle from being compromised through conflicts of interest, fear, or any other influence. We do not discriminate against authors, editors or peer reviewers based on personal characteristics or identity. Submitted articles to our journal are assessed by our independent Editorial Boards and decisions are made based on independent peer review reports. The editorial office staff are not involved in decisions to accept manuscripts. When making a decision, we expect the academic Editor (the Editor-in-Chief or a Regional Editor) to make it based solely upon:

  • The suitability of selected reviewers
  • Adequacy of reviewer comments and author response
  • Scientific excellence and originality
  • Overall scientific quality of the paper.

IJMF operates a rigorous single-blind peer review with at least two independent reviewers, followed by a final acceptance/rejection decision by the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the academic quality of the publication process, including final decisions and approval of guest Editors, Special Issue topics, and new Editorial Board members.

We do not tolerate abusive behavior or correspondence towards our staff and others involved in the publishing process on our behalf. If anyone involved in this process engages in such behavior we have the right to take action to protect others from this abuse. This may include, for example, withdrawal of a manuscript from consideration, or challenging clearly abusive peer review comments.

 

 3. Peer Review Policy

Peer review is critical to maintaining the standards of our publication:

  1. We encourage our editors and peer reviewers to familiarize themselves with and act in accordance with relevant best practice guidelines on peer review. Interested individuals may read the basic principles and standards of the peer review process in the guidelines provided by COPE at COPE’s ethical guidelines for peer reviewers.
  2. We expect those who oversee the peer review process to be able review recognise warning signs of fraudulent or manipulated peer review, and to raise any concerns by emailing ijmf@shirazu.ac.ir.
  3. We support our editors and peer reviewers in investigating and acting on any suspected cases of manipulated or fraudulent peer review.
  4. We protect the confidentiality of participants in the peer review process where anonymity forms part of that publication’s peer review process. We also expect our authors and peer reviewers to uphold any relevant confidentiality arrangements and to provide necessary information to support this.
  5. We are committed to protecting all information of submitted articles from untrusted ones.
  6. A selected peer reviewer who feels unqualified to review a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself/herself from the review process.
  7. Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate, as are defamatory/libelous remarks.
  8. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments and references.
  9. Reviewers should declare any potential competing interests.
  10. Reviewers should decline to review manuscripts with which they believe they have a competing interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
  11. Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of material supplied to them and not discuss unpublished manuscripts with colleagues or use the information in their own work.
  12. Any reviewer who wants to pass a peer review invitation onto a colleague must contact the journal in the first instance.

More information on the IJMF’s peer review process can be found here.

 

 4. Authorship Principles

IJMF assumes that all authors agreed with the content and that all gave explicit consent to submit and that they obtained consent from the responsible authorities at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out before the work is submitted.

It is recommended that authors adhere to the following guidelines:

All authors whose names appear on the submission

  1. made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis or the creation of new software used in the work;
  2. drafted the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content
  3. approved the version to be published
  4. agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section in the publication. We integrate with established and emerging industry standards to increase transparency in authorship.

IJMF recommends authors to include contribution statements in the work that specifies the contribution of every author in order to promote transparency. These contributions should be listed at the end of the submission. Different roles that authors may have contributed to include but not limited to: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing-original draft, Writing-review & editing.

An example of such statement is shown below:

Example:

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name] and [full name]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

 

4.1 Corresponding Author

The corresponding author is the person who handles the manuscript and correspondence during the publication process. The corresponding author should confirm that he/she has the authority to act on behalf of all co-authors in all matters pertaining to publication of the manuscript including supplementary material. The corresponding author is responsible for obtaining such agreements and for informing the co-authors of the manuscript’s status throughout the submission, review, and publication process. In addition, the corresponding author also acts as the main point of contact for any enquiries (including those relating to the integrity of the work) after the paper is published. The corresponding author should make sure that disclosures, declarations and transparency on data statements from all authors are included in the manuscript as appropriate.

 

4.2 Affiliation

The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. Addresses will not be updated or changed after publication of the article.

 

4.3 Changes to authorship

Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, the corresponding author, and the order of authors at submission. Changes of authorship by adding or deleting authors, and/or changes in corresponding author, and/or changes in the sequence of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.

Adding and/or deleting authors at revision stage are generally not permitted, but in some cases, it may be warranted. Reasons for these changes in authorship should be explained. Approval of the change during revision is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.

 

4.4 Authorship issues or disputes

In the case of an authorship dispute during peer review or after acceptance and publication, IJMF will not be in a position to investigate or adjudicate. Authors will be asked to resolve the dispute themselves. If they are unable to do so, the Journal reserves the right to withdraw a manuscript from the editorial process or in case of a published paper raise the issue with the authors’ institution(s) and abide by its guidelines.

 

4.5 Editors and journal staff as authors

The Editorial Office staff or Editorial Board members (including Editors-in-Chief) are not involved in the processing of their own academic work. Their submissions are assigned and revised by at least two independent reviewers. Decisions are made by other Editorial Board members who do not have a conflict of interest with the authors.

 

5. Citation

Authors should ensure that where material is taken from other sources (including their own published writing), the source is clearly cited and that where appropriate permission is obtained.

Authors should not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work.

Authors should not copy references from other publications if they have not read the cited work.

Authors should not preferentially cite their own or their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications.

Authors should not cite advertisements or advertorial material.

In accordance with COPE guidelines, we expect that “original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations”. This condition also applies to an author’s own work. COPE have produced a discussion document on citation manipulation with recommendations for best practice.

 

6. Availability of Full-Text Articles and Article Processing Charges

IJMF is an open-access without any publication/submission charges. The open-access policy of the journal means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. IJMF allows all versions of the published manuscripts to be deposited in an institutional or other repository of the author’s choice without embargo.

 

7. Conflicts of Interest

As an academic we are responsible to maintain the transparency and credibility of the research publication. Improving the transparency and legitimacy of the publishing system allows us to effectively share important information, thereby improving our understanding of academic knowledge. IJMF tries to ensure that our publication is free from undue influence. Authors, employees, editors, and reviewers are required to declare any potential conflicts of interest that could interfere with the objectivity or integrity of a publication. Conflicts of interest are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the presentation, review or publication of a piece of work. These may be financial, non-financial, professional, contractual or personal in nature. All authors must disclose any financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work. Authors should complete the declaration of interest statement using this template and upload to the submission system at the Attach/Upload Files step. We also expect that anyone who suspects an undisclosed conflict of interest regarding a work published or under consideration should inform the Editor-in-Chief or email ijmf@shirazu.ac.ir.

 

8. About Licensing

IJMF adopts open-access publishing model and distributes content under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License that clearly states that you can share, copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format as long as you follow the license terms. The license terms are as follow:

Attribution: You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

NonCommercial: You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

NoDerivatives: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material.

More information on the terms and conditions of this license can be found here

 

9. Copyright

Upon acceptance of an article, authors will be asked to complete the Copyright Transfer Form which should be returned to the editorial office. Thereby, authors grant IJMF, which identifies itself as the original publisher, exclusive rights to publish their articles, and grants any third party the right to use the articles freely as long as the integrity is maintained and the original authors, citation details and publisher are identified. Copyright and publishing rights are retained by authors without any restrictions. Please make sure that you are well aware of these policies.

 

10. Publication Misconduct and Handling Policies

Misconduct includes but is not limited to data fabrication, plagiarism, authorship impropriety, breach of ethical and legal regulations, misappropriation of others' ideas, etc. Some most common forms of misconduct were summarized in order to help authors avoid those inappropriate behaviors.

Data falsification: It ranges from fabrication to deceptive selective reporting of findings and omission of conflicting data, or willful suppression and/or distortion of data.

Plagiarism: Plagiarism is defined as ‘using someone else’s ideas, words, data, or other material produced by them without acknowledgment’. Plagiarism can occur with respect to all types of sources and media, including:

  1. Text, illustrations, musical quotations, extended mathematical derivations, computer code, etc.
  2. Material downloaded from websites or drawn from manuscripts or other media
  3. Published and unpublished material, including lectures, presentations, and grey literature

Image manipulation: It refers to the changes to images that can create misleading results when research data are collected as images. Inappropriate image manipulation is one form of fabrication or falsification. We recognise that there can be legitimate reasons for modifying images, but we expect authors to avoid modifying images where this leads to the falsification, fabrication, or misrepresentation of their results.

Authorship impropriety: It refers to the improper assignment of credit, such as excluding other authors, including individuals as authors who have not made a definite contribution to the work, or submitting multi-authored manuscript without the concurrence of all authors.

Breach of ethical and legal regulations: It includes but is not limited to serious or substantial, repeated, willful violations of applicable local regulations and laws involving the use of funds, new devices, or radioactive, biologic, or chemical materials.

Misappropriation of others' ideas: Scholars can acquire novel ideas from others during the process of reviewing grant applications or manuscripts. Improper use of such information can constitute fraud. Substantial appropriation of such material constitutes misconduct.

Violation of generally accepted research practices: Serious deviation from accepted practices in proposing or carrying out research, improper manipulation of experiments to obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, or improper reporting of results.

Inappropriate behavior related to misconduct: It includes unfounded or knowingly false accusations of misconduct, failure to report known or suspected misconduct, withholding or destruction of information relevant to a claim of misconduct and retaliation against persons involved in the allegation or investigation.

We do not tolerate plagiarism in any of our papers, and we reserve the right to check all submissions through the iThenticate plagiarism detection software. Submissions containing suspected plagiarism, in whole or part, will be rejected. If plagiarism is discovered post-publication, the paper may be retracted. The publisher and editor of the journal take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others. In the event that the journal’s publisher or editor is made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in the journal, the publisher or editor shall follow COPE’s guidelines in dealing with allegations. We expect our readers, reviewers and editors to raise any suspicions of plagiarism, either by contacting the Editor-in-Chief or by emailing ijmf@shirazu.ac.ir.

 

11. General Guidelines for Handling Allegations

IJMF takes all allegations of potential misconduct seriously and deals with them case-by-case on the basis of the COPE Guidelines. The Editor-in-Chief will handle complaints and appeals regarding issues on plagiarism, scientific procedures, context of dispute, and prior reported research. The author about whom a complaint has been made, will be contacted and the author will be given the opportunity to respond/comment. The Editor-in-Chief may decide on the basis of the author's response (e.g. if the author is responsive, articulates a clear and convincing position - and may draw inferences from the opposite as well). If there is misconduct suspicion, it may be necessary for the Editors to contact and share the content of the manuscript with third parties, such as authors' institutions and ethics committees.
1. For the suspected misconduct identified by the plagiarism detecting system, the Editor-in-Chief will send the detecting results to the parties concerned and seek a formal response from them. After the investigation of relevant institutions or departments, the Editor-in-Chief will take the following appropriate measures to handle irrefutable academic misconduct. Handling results for reference (with the punishment degree from mild to severe, one or more handling methods can be adopted in accordance with specific conditions):

  1. Inform and educate the parties concerned.
  2. Give warnings to the parties concerned.
  3. Publicize the academic misconduct.
  4. Inform the affiliations of the parties concerned or the persons in charge.
  5. Reject or withdraw the manuscript and inform the relevant database administrator to withdraw the publication records.
  6. Within a certain period of time, the parties concerned are forbidden to submit manuscripts, publish articles, or participate in other relevant academic activities in the journal and other journals subordinate to the same publishing house.
  7. If the circumstance is severe, the Editor-in-Chief will inform the relevant departments or institutions, which will permanently record their misconduct on publication ethics.
  8. When the Editor-in-Chief, an Editorial Board member or the Editorial Office receives a written report against academic misconduct, one or more of the following are performed:
  9. Contact the informant to provide sufficient evidence and information.
  10. Seek a direct response from the parties accused.
  11. Contact relevant organizations or regulatory agencies to assist in the investigation in the case of receiving an insufficient response.
  12. If necessary, on the premise of avoiding conflicts of interest with the parties concerned, an investigation team composed of the Editor-in-Chief and at least two Regional Editors in cooperation should be established to carry out an investigation.
  13. The investigation team will inform the parties accused to start the investigation officially.
  14. Adopt different handling methods according to different situations:
  15. formally informing both parties if it is not identified as misconduct;
  16. proposing relevant suggestions to the Editors according to the severity of circumstances if it is identified as misconduct, and formally informing both parties of the handling results.

12. Duplicate and Redundant Publication

Manuscripts submitted to IJMF must be original and should not be published or under consideration for any other journals. Authors are required to declare it clearly in the cover letter in any case where there is the potential for overlap or duplication. Any overlapping publications should be cited.

Duplicate or redundant publication, or ‘self-plagiarism’, occurs when a work, or substantial parts of a work, is published more than once by the author(s) of the work without appropriate cross-referencing or justification for the overlap. This can be in the same or a different language. We do not support substantial overlap between publications, unless:

  1. It is felt that editorially this will strengthen the academic discourse; and
  2. We have clear approval from the original publication; and
  3. We include citation of the original source.

We expect our readers, reviewers and editors to raise any suspicions of duplicate or redundant publication, either by contacting Editor-in-Chief or by emailing ijmf@shirazu.ac.ir. When authors submit manuscripts to our journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, or similar entity. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication.

 

13. Retractions, Corrections, Withdrawals, and Expressions of Concern

Journal editors will consider retractions, corrections or expressions of concern in line with COPE’s Retraction Guidelines: https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines. If an author is found to have made an error, the journal will issue a corrigendum. Retractions are usually reserved for articles that are so seriously flawed that their findings or conclusions should not be relied upon.

 

13.1 Corrections

The Editor-in-Chief of IJMF encourages readers and authors to notify him if they find errors, especially errors that could affect the interpretation of data or information presented in an article. When an error is identified:

  • The Editorial Office will work with authors and the publisher to correct important published errors.
  • The Editorial Office will consider retraction when errors are so fundamental that they invalidate the findings.
  • Corrections arising from errors within an article should be distinguishable from retractions and statements of concern relating to questionable research practices.
  • Corrections should be included in indexing systems and linked to the original article.
  • Corrections should be free to access.

For those articles which have been published in an issue, a corresponding correction statement should be published and linked to the original article. In these cases, the changes should usually not be made directly to the article.

 

13.2 Retractions

IJMF is committed to playing its part in maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record, therefore on occasion, it is necessary to retract articles. Articles may be retracted if:

  • There is major scientific error which would invalidate the conclusions of the article, for example where there is clear evidence that findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error).
  • Where the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication).
  • Where there are ethical issues such as plagiarism (appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit including those obtained through confidential review of others' manuscripts) or inappropriate authorship.
  • Where unethical research has been reported.

IJMF follows the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for retraction. Potential retractions are thoroughly investigated by the Editorial Office with the support of the Editorial Board and final approval by the Editor-in-Chief. Other persons and institutions will be consulted as necessary, including university authorities, or experts in the field.

 

13.3 Withdrawals

Accepted Articles

An accepted article is the uncorrected, unedited, non-typeset version of an article published on IJMF website. While an accepted article will have been allocated a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), it does not constitute the version of record as it will not yet have been formally published and does not yet carry complete bibliographic information. Therefore, where an accepted article is to be retracted because, for example, it contains errors, has been accidentally submitted twice or infringes a professional ethical code of some type, it may be deleted and replaced with a withdrawal statement.

Even in the above circumstances, bibliographic information about the deleted article should be retained for the scientific record, and an explanation given, however brief, about the circumstances of its removal.

Online Version

The deletion of the online version of an article is rare, and IJMF will only consider it in limited circumstances, such as the following:

  • Where there has been a violation of the privacy of a research subject; or
  • Where there are errors to which a member of the general public might be exposed and if followed or adopted, would pose a significant risk to health; or
  • Where a clearly defamatory comment has been made about others in the relevant field or about their work.

13.4 Expressions of Concern

The Editor-in-Chief may consider issuing an Expression of Concern if he has well-founded concerns and feels that readers should be made aware of potentially misleading information contained in an article. However, Expressions of Concern should only be issued if an investigation into the problems relating to the article has proved inconclusive, and if there remain strong indicators that the concerns are valid.

On very rare occasions, an Expression of Concern may be issued while an investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time. However, in such cases there must be well-founded grounds to suggest that the concerns are valid.

In all cases, editors should be aware that an Expression of Concern carries the same risks to a researcher's reputation as a retraction, and it is often preferable to wait to publish a retraction until a definitive judgement has been achieved by an independent investigation.

 

14. Appeals and Complaints

If authors do not agree with any decision made in editorial handling, they can submit a formal appeal to the editorial office, explaining their reasons. The issue will be soon dealt with according to the COPE Guidelines.

 

15. Transparency

We strive to follow COPE’s Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing and encourage our publishing partners to uphold these same principles.

 

16. Data and Supporting Evidence

We support transparency and openness around data, code, and other materials associated with research. We expect authors to maintain accurate records of supporting evidence necessary to allow others to understand, verify, and replicate new findings, and to supply or provide access to this supporting evidence, on reasonable request. Where appropriate and where allowed by employer, funding body or others who might have an interest, we encourage authors to:

  1. Deposit data in a suitable repository or storage location, for sharing and further use by others; and
  2. Describe where the data may be found in a Data Availability Statement which authors can include in their publication.

17. Third-Party Copyrighted Materials

The third-party copyrighted material reproduced in a paper should as a general rule be cleared for use by the rights holders, with special attention being paid to creative works, including images. However, it is the custom and practice in academic publishing that the reproduction of short extracts of text (excluding poetry and song lyrics) and some other types of material on a very limited basis for the purposes of criticism or review may be possible where full acknowledgement is given.

 

18. Revenue Sources/Advertising/Marketing

We do not accept advertisements in any form.

 

19. Publication Schedule/Archiving Policy

We publish four issues per year, with occasional special issues coming in addition. All the contents of the journal are available forever on the IJMF’s website. Contents published in IJMF are also actively deposited in the National Library and Archives of I. R. IRAN. The archived contents can be accessed here.