The ethical policy of Forscher Publication is based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines and complies with International Committee of journal Editorial Board codes of conduct. Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with journal. The ethical policy of journal is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or articles submitted to the journal should be published in the concerned issue. The publishing decision is based on the suggestion of the journal's reviewers and editorial board members. The ethical policy insisted the Editor-in-Chief, may confer with other editors or reviewers in making the decision. The reviewers are necessary to evaluate the research papers based on the submitted content in confidential manner. The reviewers also suggest the authors to improve the quality of research paper by their reviewing comments. Authors should ensure that their submitted research work is original and has not been published elsewhere in any language. Applicable copyright laws and conventions should be followed by the authors. Any kind of plagiarism constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit http://publicationethics.org.
1. Authorship Criteria
To ensure authorship for the submitted manuscripts, the contributors should meet the following three conditions:
2. Study Design and Ethical Approval
Good research should be well justified, well planned, appropriately designed, and ethically approved. To conduct research to a lower standard may constitute misconduct. The authors are responsible for the whole scientific content as well as the accuracy of the bibliographic information.
3. Data Analysis
Data should be appropriately analyzed, but inappropriate analysis does not necessarily amount to misconduct. Fabrication and falsification of data do constitute misconduct.
4. Conflicts of Interest
Conflicts of interest comprise those which may not be fully apparent and which may influence the judgment of author, reviewers, and editors. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived. They may be personal, commercial, political, academic or financial. “Financial” interests may include employment, research funding, stock or share ownership, payment for lectures or travel, consultancies and company support for staff.
5. Data Fabrication and Falsification
Data fabrication and falsification means the researcher did not really carry out the study, but made up data or results and had recorded or reported the fabricated information. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or results from the research findings.
6. Duplicate Publication
Duplicate publication occurs when two or more papers with essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions are published without full cross-referencing.
7. Citation Manipulation
Excessive citations in a submitted manuscript that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and were included solely to increase citations to a given author's work or articles published in a particular journal are referred to as citation manipulation. This is a form of scientific misconduct since it misrepresents the importance of the specific work and publication in which it appears.
8. Peer-review
This Publisher journals uses Double-blind peer review, which means that both the reviewer and author identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa, throughout the review process. To facilitate this, authors need to ensure that their manuscripts are prepared in a way that does not give away their identity. Authors have the right to communicate to the editor if they do not wish their manuscript to be reviewed by a particular reviewer because of potential conflicts of interest. No article is rejected unless negative comments are received from at least two reviewers.
9. Redundant Publication
Redundant publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross reference, share the same hypothesis, data, discussion points, or conclusions. In such cases, the manuscript will be rejected.
10. Plagiarism
Plagiarism ranges from the unreferenced use of others’ published and unpublished ideas, including research grant applications to submission under “new” authorship of a complete paper, sometimes in a different language. It may occur at any stage of planning, research, writing, or publication: it applies to print and electronic versions. All the manuscript submitted to journal are checked by authenticate for possible plagiarism. The authors are expected to check their manuscript for plagiarism before submission.
If plagiarism is detected during peer review, the submission can be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication we reserve the right, as necessary, to issue a correction or retract the article. We reserve the right to notify the institutions of authors about the plagiarism that was found before or after publication.
11. Corrections and Retractions
To maintain the integrity of academic record, journal may have to publish correction or retraction of paper published in journal. According to agreed academic community norms, corrections or corrections of published articles are made by publishing an Erratum or Retraction article, without altering the original article in any other way than by adding a prominent connection to the Erratum / Retraction article. The original article remains in the public domain and should be commonly indexed to the subsequent Erratum or Retraction. We may have to delete the material from our website and archive sites in the exceptional event the material is considered to infringe those rights or is defamatory.
It may be necessary for the original author(s) to make minor corrections to published articles by making a comment on the published Article. It will only be acceptable if the modifications do not affect the article's results or conclusions.
12. Corrections
Changes to published articles that affect the article's meaning and conclusion but do not invalidate the article in its entirety may be corrected, at the discretion of the editor(s), by publishing an Erratum indexed and linked to the original article. Changes in authorship of published articles are corrected through an Erratum.
13. Retractions
If the scientific information in an article is significantly compromised on rare occasions it may be appropriate to retract published articles. In these cases Journal must comply with the COPE guidelines. Retracted papers are indexed and the original article is referred to.
14. Privacy and Confidentiality
All manuscripts must be reviewed with the utmost regard for the authors' confidentiality. Authors entrust editors with the results of their scientific work and creative effort when they submit manuscripts for review, and their reputation and career may be at stake. Disclosure of confidential details during the review of an author's manuscript may be a violation of their rights. Reviewers have the right to confidentiality, which the editor must respect. If there is a suspicion of dishonesty or fraud, confidentiality may have to be breached, but it must be honored otherwise. Besides the authors and reviewers, editors are prohibited from disclosing information about manuscripts (including their receipt, content, status in the reviewing process, reviewer criticism, or ultimate fate). Requests to use the materials in legal proceedings are included in this category.
Editors must clarify to reviewers that manuscripts sent for review are privileged communications and the authors' private property. As a result, reviewers and editorial staff must respect the authors' rights by refraining from publicly discussing or appropriating the authors' work before the manuscript is published. Reviewers should not be allowed to make copies of the manuscript for their files, and they should not be allowed to share it with others except if the editor permits them. After submitting reviews, reviewers should return or destroy copies of the manuscripts. Editors should not keep copies of manuscripts that have been rejected. Without the permission of the reviewer, author, and editor, reviewer comments should not be published or otherwise made public.
15. Authorship and Author’s Responsibility
During the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, the corresponding author is typically responsible for communicating with the journal and ensuring that all of the journal's administrative requirements, such as authorship details, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and conflict of interest statements, are properly completed. Throughout the submission and peer review process, the corresponding author should promptly respond to editorial queries and cooperate with any requests from the journal after publication.
After an article has been accepted for publication in the Journals , no additional authors or changes to the first or corresponding authors are allowed. If an author wishes to be removed from the byline, he or she must submit a letter signed by the author and all other authors indicating their wish to be removed from the list of authors. Any change in the authors' order in the byline requires a letter signed by all authors indicating their agreement.
16. Human and Animal Studies
All manuscripts reporting the results of experimental investigations involving human subjects should include a statement confirming the informed consent was obtained from each subject or subject’s guardian. All animal or human studies should be used after approval of the experimental protocol by a local ethics committee.
The submitted manuscripts that are not as per the “Instructions to Authors” would be returned to the authors for technical correction, before they undergo editorial/peer-review. Generally, the manuscript should be submitted in the form of two separate files.
All manuscripts submitted to Journals are scrutinised for plagiarism using tools including but not limited to iThenticate. This is necessary to protect the reputation of our journal as well as the reputation of genuine authors who might transgress without fraudulent intent. Articles which are found to be plagiarised, will be rejected, and appropraite action will be initiated.
journal, its editors, reviewers and staff take reasonably sufficient steps to avoid any untoward incident. However, authors should take the following steps to prevent any charges of ethical misconduct:
Action taken if ethical misconduct is found post publication:
17. Website
A journal’s Website (www.journalwes.com) contains that care has been taken to ensure high ethical and professional standards.
18. Name of Journal
The Journal of Water and Environmental Sustainability is Journal of Environmental sciences has unique and not be one that is easily confused with another journal.
19. Peer Review Process
Journal is a Double-blind peer-review electronic and print quarterly publication concerned with all aspects of Researches in Civil Engineering This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, is clearly described on the journal’s Web site (www.journalwes.com).
20. Ownership and Management
Forscher Publication (www.forscherpub.com)
21. Governing Body
Journal has very strong editorial board, whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors is provided on the journal’s Web site (http://journalwes.com/single.php?type=menu&id=3)
22. Editorial Team/Contact Information
Journal is provided the contact information for the editorial office of journal (http://journalwes.com/single.php?type=menu&id=7).
23. Copyright and Licensing
On the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge, this journal provides immediate open access to its content.
All journal papers are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits for non-commercial use, sharing, adaption, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format as long as the original author(s) and source are properly credited. Authors have copyright but license exclusive rights in their article to the publisher*.
Authors have the right to:
* This includes the right to make and authorize commercial use.
** Personal use rights
Authors can use their articles for scholarly, non-commercial purposes in whole or in part, such as:
24. Author Fees/ Revenue Sources
As Forscher Publication has supported all of the publishing costs of the Water and Environmental Sustainability, article processing charge and any other publication fees in the journal are free for authors.
25. Process for Identification of and Dealing with Allegations of Research Misconduct
Editor-in-Chief takes 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.
26. Publication Ethics
Details of the journal publication ethics consideration, codes, terms, and rules are mentioned at this page.
27. Publishing Schedule
Semi-annual
28. Access
The Journal database is fully open access and full text of published articles is available for everyone who can get access to the Journal website free of cost.
29. Archiving
The plan for electronic backup and preservation of access to a journal's content (www.journalwes.com) are clearly indicated.
30. Advertising
The policy of the Water and Environmental Sustainability is not to have advertising.
31. Direct Marketing
The policy of the Water and Environmental Sustainability is not to have direct marketing.
32. COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts
Water and Environmental Sustainability is committed to follow and apply guidelines and flowcharts of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in its reviewing and publishing process and issues.
33. COPE’s Code of Conduct and Best Practices
33-1. Editors
Everything published in the journal is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief. This means that the editors must:
1.1 Strive to meet the needs of readers and authors;
1.2 Strive to constantly improve their journal;
1.3 Have processes in place to assure the quality of the material they publish;
1.4 Champion freedom of expression;
1.5 Maintain the integrity of the academic record;
1.6 Preclude business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards;
1.7 Always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
Best Practice for Editors would include:
33-2. Readers
2.1. Readers should be informed about who has funded research or other scholarly work and whether the funders had any role in the research and its publication and, if so, what this was.
Best practice for editors would include:
33-3. Relations with authors
3.1 Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance to the remit of the journal.
3.2 Editors should not reverse decisions to accept submissions unless serious problems are identified with the submission.
3.3 New editors should not overturn decisions to publish submissions made by the previous editor unless serious problems are identified.
3.4 A description of peer review processes should be published, and editors should be ready to justify any important deviation from the described processes.
3.5 Journals should have a declared mechanism for authors to appeal against editorial decisions.
3.6 Editors should publish guidance to authors on everything that is expected of them. This guidance should be regularly updated and should refer or link to this code.
3.7 Editors should provide guidance about criteria for authorship and/or who should be listed as a contributor following the standards within the relevant field.
Best practice for editors would include:
33-4. Relations with reviewers
4.1 Editors should provide guidance to reviewers on everything that is expected of them including the need to handle submitted material in confidence. This guidance should be regularly updated and should refer or link to this code.