Policies, Ethics and Malpractice Statement

 Politiques, Éthique et Déclaration de Négligence

 Políticas, Principios y Declaración de Negligencia

The European Scientific Journal (ESJ) is the flagship publication of the European Scientific Institute.

ESJ is committed to upholding the highest editorial ethical standards and best practices for academic publishing.

The Journal and the Publisher will take all possible measures to prevent publication malpractice and will adhere to the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and its Core Practices. The ESJ will follow COPE recommendations for investigating violations of publication ethics.

The ESJ asks that all authors submitting their works for publication attest that the submitted works are original and that contributions have not been copied or plagiarized in whole or in part from other works.

The ESJ asks authors to disclose actual or potential conflicts of interest with their work. Similarly, the ESJ is committed to the objective and fair peer-review of submitted works. It is committed to preventing actual or potential conflict of interests during the peer review process.

Ethical policies

ESJ will adhere to processes of COPE to investigate potential ethical violations during the publication process:

ESJ is vigilant in upholding high ethical standards for research and publishing and will take appropriate actions on forms of misconduct such as (but not limited to):

  • Authorship: Submitting multi-author drafts without the consent of all authors, improper attribution of author credits such as the exclusion of contributing authors, or inclusion of authors making an insufficient contribution.
  • Data fabrication and falsification: Manipulative, deceptive, or willful suppression and misrepresentation of data or omitting confounding or contradictory data.
  • Plagiarism and misuse of intellectual property: Using the expression, language, ideas, and thoughts of existing or previously published research and materials without appropriate reference to the original source and willful misrepresentation of the work of others as one's original work.
  • Non-compliance with common research practices: Failure to comply with established, accepted, and ethical practices in the design and performance of methodological research processes; manipulating procedures or outcomes to obtain pre-determined or desired results, the willful use of inappropriate statistical or analytical methods to distort or misrepresent results and the improper reporting of data.
  • Non-conformity to research guidelines: All research must conform to appropriate institutional, national, and recognized guidelines, standards, and laws. The Journal will not tolerate violations of applicable local regulations and law involving funds, care of animals, human subjects, drugs, biological or chemical materials.

Suspected cases of misconduct should be reported to the ESJ Ethics Committee. All cases will be carefully considered in strict confidence. In handling allegations, ESJ adheres to the guidelines and flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Concerns of any form of publication misconduct, as described here or in other standards and guidelines, such as authorship issues, plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, citation manipulation, figure manipulation, or any other forms of misconduct, should be reported to the ESJ Editorial Office immediately at contact@eujournal.org

Research Involving Animals

Investigators who utilize animals in their research shall provide a statement that research was performed in compliance with applicable institutional, state, national, and international rules, guidelines, and regulations for the humane use of animals in research.

Research Involving Human Subjects

Investigators who utilize human subjects in their research shall provide a statement that research was performed in compliance with the Helsinki accords for Ethical Principles For Medical Research Involving Human Subjects. In addition, investigators shall seek approval for research by their local Institutional Review Board (or equivalent) and utilize informed consent as governed by that IRB.

ESJ Ethics Committee

The Ethics Committee consists of the ESJ Managing Editor, Editor-in-Chief, and Associate Editors. The Managing Editor chairs it. Its primary role is to evaluate and disposition complaints received by the Editorial Office.

Within seven (7) days of receipt of an allegation of misconduct, the ESJ Managing Editor forwards the allegation to all the committee members and other interested parties. Committee members review the allegation complaint and express their opinion within two (2) weeks of its receipt. If necessary, the Managing Editor will solicit the opinion of ESJ reviewers. Opinions from the Advisory Editors may also be solicited. Within four (4) weeks from the receipt, a final decision on the allegation will be made and sent to the parties. Occasionally, this timeframe might be prolonged depending on the complexity of the allegation.

The ESJ Ethics Committee has successfully resolved all recent allegations of publication misconduct. The Erratum, Corrigendum, and Retraction notes for these cases have been posted on the ESJ website when appropriate.

Corrections and Retractions

ESJ publishes corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern as appropriately and quickly as possible. We follow the ICMJE and COPE guidelines where applicable.

ESJ will issue a notice of correction to document and correct substantial errors that appear in online articles when these errors significantly affect the content or understanding of the work reported (e.g., error in data presentation or analysis) or when the error affects the publication's metadata (e.g., misspelling of an author's name). In these cases, ESJ will publish a correction linked to the original article.

In very rare cases, we may choose to correct the article itself and re-post it online. If that course is taken, a correction notice will also be created to document the changes to the original article.

Authors who wish to alert ESJ to a situation where a correction may be warranted are requested to contact us with the relevant details (Journal, full citation of the article, and description of the error) at contact@eujournal.org

Authorship

ESJ requires all named authors to have contributed to an article in all of the following ways:

  • Made substantial contributions to the design of the work or the analysis or interpretation of data.
  • Made substantial contribution to the written draft as submitted and agreed to the final submitted version, and completed a substantial contribution to revising it.
  • Can agree to be accountable for all aspects of accuracy or integrity of the work and will be willing and able to answer questions related to any part of the work.

Authors should refer to the full submission guidelines described on our Submission pages.

Conflicts of Interest

The European Scientific Journal requests authors provide a conflict of interest statement for each author to warrant no such conflicts exist.

All authors must declare funding sources, whether a study was funded, and the role of funders in any aspects of the work (e.g., research design, data analysis, writing of the submitted work, or influence over publication decisions).

All reviewers must declare any conflicts of interest before agreeing to review a manuscript.

All members of the ESJ Editorial Board must declare any conflicts of interest before joining the Board.

Editorial Board

The ESJ Editorial Office consists of an Editor in Chief, an Advisory Editor, Managing Editor, and several Associate Editors.

The Editorial Board consists of several specialty chief editors and ESJ reviewers.

This editorial office operates as the governing body of the Journal, makes decisions on the editorial scope or direction of the Journal, and makes collaborative decisions about any developments.

The editor section also features several committed community members as recognition for their repeated contributions to the Journal, and who are recognized experts in the field.

All members of the ESJ Editorial Board must declare any conflicts of interest before joining the Board. Each ESJ reviewer has its profile, which is publicly available on the ESJ's website (editorial board section). The profile consists of the domain of expertise, number of reviews conducted for ESJ, and date of joining the Editorial Board.

Ethics of the peer-review process

ESJ is a fully peer-reviewed journal. All papers undergo initial screening by the members of the Editorial Office. Papers that are considered for publication are subjected to a single-blind peer-review process. Most of the papers are reviewed by two or more independent reviewers.

The single-blind peer-review process means that the author is unaware of the reviewers' identity during the review process. Still, the Journal supports open reviewing and gives authors and reviewers the option to make their names and reports publicly available alongside the published paper.

The Journal does not guarantee manuscript acceptance under any circumstances.

The Journal always strives to perform a fast and efficient review process for every paper but cannot guarantee a specific time in which a decision can be made.

Peer reviewers are selected based on subject area expertise and can be drawn from our existing pool of contributors or identified by a search of the Editor. Author-suggested reviewers are also acceptable. However, the specialty chief editors and the members of the editorial office are instructed of being cautious when relying their decisions on these review reports.

All peer reviewers warrant that they have no conflict of interests, provide unbiased opinions on the scientific soundness of the work, and treat the contents of the article with the utmost confidentiality.

The European Scientific Journal encourages all our reviewers to follow the Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Our goal is to enhance research and peer review standards globally.

Part of our mission is to ensure that our reviewing community is equipped with the knowledge to spot potential publication ethical concerns and the tools to report and deal with these concerns. In support of this mission, we encourage peer reviewers and Journal Editors to participate in the free Introduction to Publication Ethics eLearning module offered by COPE.

Copyright and Access

All articles accepted for publication are made available immediately with free access on the ESJ website after receipt of the article processing charge (APC) of €97 and assignment of a publication license to the Journal.

All ESJ articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). With this license, authors retain copyright to their manuscript but allow others to share and redistribute the material in any medium or format. However, the license does not permit commercial reuse. First publication rights are granted to the publisher. The publisher is not responsible for subsequent usage of the work. The author' is responsible for bringing an infringement action if so desired.

Archiving

As of May 2016, ESJ uses Portico as an archiving platform. Portico is among the largest community-supported digital archives in the world. Working with libraries and publishers, they preserve e-journals, e-books, and other electronic scholarly content to ensure continued access.

Every ESJ edition appears in a printed version, along with the online content. Thousands of hard copies have been disseminated to Universities and individuals worldwide.

Ownership and management

European Scientific Journal is published by the European Scientific Institute, ESI, with offices in Spain and Macedonia. Full details and contact information for the publisher can be found at: http://euinstitute.net/

Advertising Policy

The ESJ does not accept paid advertising on its website or journals. Article-processing charges support the ESJ. The ESJ Editorial Office may, from time to time, use the website to provide notification of programs and conferences sponsored by either the ESI or the ESJ.

Our Commitment to the Academic Community

  • Inclusiveness
    We are a global community of authors, expert editors, and reviewers at every career stage hailing from 178 countries worldwide.
  • Broad scope
    We publish across numerous academic disciplines across the social sciences, humanities, life, natural, and medical sciences.
  • Open Review
    At ESJ, the authors and reviewers are empowered to choose the level of openness of the peer-review process. We encourage reviewers to reveal their names and publish review reports alongside the final article.
  • Low Publication Fee
    Since its foundation in 2011, ESJ has set and maintained the lowest possible publication fees. This policy, ESJ supports researchers, especially those from developing countries, to publish their papers despite limited economic resources.
  • Best Practices
    The European Scientific Institute, ESI, is a signatory of DORA (The Declaration on Research Assessment, SDG Publisher Compact (UN Initiative), and the Initiative for Open Citations.
  • Agility
    ESJ is committed to a prompt, respectful, and thorough peer review of all submitted manuscripts.