1. Introduction
The ethical policies of the journal are based on the principles of the International Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) and compliance with the ethics charter of the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, which the editor of the journal, readers, writers, referees and scientific teachers are committed to. In addition, authors, reviewers, scientific secretaries and editors must observe these ethical principles when working with the journal. The description of the principles of the International Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) can be accessed at http://publicationethics.org.
Authors, reviewers, editorial board and the editor-in-chief of the journal are obliged to be aware of the best practices and codes of conduct in publishing an article and act in accordance with them. Submission of an article by the authors, peer review by the reviewers and acceptance or rejection of the article by the editorial board suggest being aware and dedicated to the ethics policy and in cases that misconduct on behalf of any of these parties is proved, the journal is entitled to any legal action. The publication ethics guide approved by the research and technology office of The Ministry of Science, Research and Technology should be the authors’, reviewers’ and publishing officials’ guideline.
2. Duties and Responsibilities of Authors:
- Policies on authorship and contributorship: Only persons who meet authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content including: (i) made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study; (ii) drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content; and (iii) have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication. All persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (such as technical help, writing and editing assistance, general support) but do not meet the criteria for authorship must not be listed as an author, but in the "Acknowledgements" should be after their written permission. to be named has been obtained. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate coauthors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate coauthors are included in the author list and verify that all coauthors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication.
- Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Authors should at the earliest stage possible (generally by submitting a disclosure form at the time of submission and including a statement in the manuscript) disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation. Examples of potential conflicts of interest that should be disclosed include financial ones such as honoraria, educational grants or other funding, participation in speakers’ bureaus, membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest, and paid expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements, as well as non-financial ones such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs in the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the work should be disclosed (including the grant number or other reference number, if any).
- Data access and sharing: Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least 10 years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.
3. Duties and Responsibilities of the journal and publisher
- Identification of and Dealing with Allegations of Misconduct:
- The process of investigating “research and publication misconduct”:
In cases where the magazine proves any violation of ethical principles, the following actions should be taken:
4. Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers:
Professional responsibility: When asked to review, agree to review only if you have the necessary expertise to assess the manuscript and can be unbiased in your assessment. Potential reviewers should provide journals with personal and professional information that is accurate and a fair representation of their expertise, including verifiable and accurate contact information.
Conflict of Interest: Any invited reviewer who has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript, should immediately declare, so that alternative reviewers can be invited. For example, If you are currently employed at the same institution as any of the authors or have been recent (eg, within the past 3 years), you should not agree to review.
Timeliness: It is courteous to respond to an invitation to peer review within a reasonable time frame, even if you cannot undertake the review. You should agree to review only if you are able to return a review within the proposed or mutually agreed time frame. Always inform the journal promptly if your circumstances change and you cannot fulfil your original agreement or if you require an extension.
Confidentiality: Respect the confidentiality of the peer review process and refrain from using information obtained during the peer review process for your own or another’s advantage, or to disadvantage or discredit others. Do not involve anyone else in the review of a manuscript without first obtaining permission from the journal.
Fair Reviews: It is important to remain unbiased by considerations related to the nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender or other characteristics of the authors, origins of a manuscript or by commercial considerations.. If you discover a competing interest that might prevent you from providing a fair and unbiased review, notify the journal and seek advice
Suspicion of ethics violations: If you come across any irregularities with respect to research and publication ethics do let the journal know. For example, you may have concerns that misconduct occurred during either the research or the writing and submission of the manuscript, or you may notice substantial similarity between the manuscript and a concurrent submission to another journal or a published article.
Transferability of peer review: Publishers may have policies related to transferring peer reviews to other journals in the publisher’s portfolio. Reviewers may be asked to give permission for the transfer of their reviews if that is journal policy. If a manuscript is rejected from one journal and submitted to another, and you are asked to review that same manuscript, you should be prepared to review the manuscript afresh as it may have changed between the two submissions and the journal’s criteria for evaluation and acceptance may be different. In the interests of transparency and efficiency it may be appropriate to provide your original review for the new journal (with permission to do so from the original journal), explaining that you had reviewed the submission previously and noting any changes.
5. Duties and Responsibilities of Editor in chief and Editorial board:
6. Journal’s policy on intellectual property
All intellectual property policies, including copyright and publishing licenses, are described below:
- License terms
All Journal of Applied Chemistry articles are published under the License of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). "This License allows others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation and their contributions distribute under the same license as the original.
- Copyright Policy
This journal holds rights related to the publication of the articles and the this right are transfered to the journal by submitting the articles to the journal. In addition, the journal will be fully in charge for publication of the article in print, online, as a CD, in international indexes and domestic indexes. This right will be revoked only if the article is rejected or the author(s) withdraw from publication. For more information on the subject, please check the commitment form.
7. Policy on complaints and appeals
If the authors disagree with the editorial decision on their manuscripts, they have a right to appeal. Authors who wish to appeal an editorial decision should contact the Editor-in-Chief of the Applied Chemistry Today. In such cases the Editor-in-Chief will review the manuscript, the editorial and peer reviewers' comments and gives his/her decision for accepting or rejecting a manuscript. Editor-in-Chief may, if so required, send the manuscript to a new handling editor for a fresh editorial review and to new reviewer for further peer reviewing. In such case, the final decision maker will be the Editorial board of the journal.
- How to Make a Complaint against the Staff of Journal, Editorial Board or Publisher
The procedure to make a complaint is easy. The complaint can be made by writing an e-mail. Please email to: sjac@semnan.ac.ir
All complaints will be acknowledged within three working days.
8. policies on data sharing and reproducibility
Authors may archive the final published version of their articles in personal or institutional repositories immediately after publication.
9. Post-Publication Discussions
This journal allows debate post publication on journal’s site, through "Send letter to the editor. Our mechanisms for correcting, revising or retracting articles after publication depends on the content of the received comment and must the sent comments are useful and applicable for readers/authors.
- Correction and retraction policy
The corrections must be made by the author during the revision step.
For Adding or Removing a new author to manuscript should be requested from the corresponding author and all authors must signature it.
Please bear in mind that:
Adding or Removing a new author to manuscript is possible before acceptance and publication.
Adding or Removing a new author to manuscript is impossible after acceptance and publication.
- Deceased Authors:
The policies of JACT in the case of deceased authors are as follows:
Before acceptance of the manuscripts The name of the deceased author can be removed from the manuscript according to the agreement of all of the authors. This decision is depended on the contribution of the deceased author and the final decision needs the approval of the editor of JACT.
If the deceased author is the corresponding of the submitted manuscript, it is necessary to change the corresponding author. The new corresponding author must be selected with the consent of all authors.
After acceptance of the manuscripts removing or adding the name of the deceased author is not possible.
The authors can change the deceased corresponding author after acceptance. The new corresponding author must be selected with the consent of all authors.
It should be noted that the name of the deceased author should be mentioned in the footnote of the paper.
- Journal retracts a publication if: