The Editorial Board of the Journal «Underwater Investigations and Robotics » applies the principles of «The Code of Publication Ethics» developed and approved by the Committee of Publication Ethics.
Ethical Principles for Editors.
An editor of a peer-reviewed journal is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. This makes him apply the following guiding principles in his work:
- When making his decision the editor should rely on valid data and evaluate the scientific urgency of the study in question.
- The editor should evaluate the intellectual meaning of a manuscript without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, social or political status of authors.
- Unpublished data of manuscripts submitted shouldn’t be used for one’s own purposes or passed to the third party without written consent of the author. Either information or ideas obtained in the process of reviewing must be kept confidential and not used for anyone’s benefit.
- An editor should be alert to intellectual property issues and prevent the manuscript from being published if there are reasons to think that it is plagiarism.
- Both an editor and a publisher should respond to complaints concerning a peer-reviewed manuscript or a published paper. They should take measures to resolve a conflict and to restore the violated rights.
Ethical Principles for Reviewers.
A reviewer performs peer review of manuscripts submitted therefore he should have an unbiased approach basing on the following principles:
- Any manuscript received for review must be treated as a confidential document not to be passed to or discussed with the third unauthoritative party.
- Reviews should be objective and argumentative. Personal criticism is inappropriate.
- Unpublished data of manuscripts submitted must not be used for reviewer's benefit.
- If an expert feels not qualified enough to evaluate the manuscript or there is a conflict between him and the author he should ask an editor to have him suspended from reviewing the manuscript in question.
- Privileged information or ideas obtained in the process of peer reviewing must be kept confidential and not used for anyone’s personal benefit. Experts must not perform review of manuscripts if there is a conflict of interests due to competing relations of authors, companies or institutions relevant to studies or manuscripts.
Ethical Principles for Authors
Authors should realize that they are responsible for novelty and faithfulness of research results thus should follow the principles:
- Authors of manuscripts must provide valid research data. Either false or fabricated data is unacceptable.
- Authors must ensure that the research data provided in the manuscript is totally original. If the author refers to somebody’s statements, quotations should be keyed to the specific source. Too much citing as well as plagiarism in all its forms including unquoted statements, paraphrasing or appropriating somebody’s scientific property are unethical and unacceptable.
- Authors should admit the contribution made by all those who has influenced the investigation process and cite the studies important for their investigation.
- Authors must neither submit a manuscript to two journals at the same time nor submit the article that has already been published in the other journal.
- All those who have made significant contributions to the investigation should be listed as co-authors. Persons who did not take part in the study are prohibited for including in the list of co-authors.
- If an author discovers any significant errors or omissions in the article at the stage of its peer-reviewing or after publishing he should inform editors of the journal about it within the shortest possible time.
The Editorial Board employs independent experts for peer review of manuscripts submitted for publication. Persons selected should have adequate experience and no conflict of interest.
Editorial conflicts of interest should be announced. Editors should avoid taking decisions about papers concerning a conflict of interest.
