Publication ethics

Editorial Responsibilities

The editor is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society will be published. The editor is guided by the policies of the journal's Editorial Board and constrained by legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

Editors must hold no conflict of interest with regard to the articles they consider for publication. If an Editor feels that there is likely to be a perception of a conflict of interest in relation to their handling of a submission, the selection of reviewers and all decisions on the paper shall be made by the Editorial Board. Editors have a responsibility to protect the anonymity of reviewers as per the highest academic standards

Editors shall evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content free from any racial, gender, sexual, religious, ethnic, or political bias.

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editors own research without the express written consent of the author.

Authors responsibilities

Authors warrant that their manuscript is their original work that it has not been published before and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. The Authors also warrant that the manuscript is not and will not be published elsewhere (after the publication in the Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society) in any language without the consent of the copyright holder.

Authors warrant that the rights of third parties will not be violated, and that the publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Authors are exclusively responsible for the contents of their submissions, the validity of the experimental results and must make sure that they have permission from all involved parties to make the data public.

Authors wishing to include figures or text passages that have already been published elsewhere are required to obtain permission from the copyright holder(s) and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from the authors.

Authors must make sure that all only contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors and, conversely, that all contributors who have significantly contributed to the submission are listed as authors.

It is the responsibility of each author to ensure that papers submitted to Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society are written with ethical standards in mind and that they not contain plagiarism. Authors affirm that the article contains no unfounded or unlawful statements and does not violate the rights of others.

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the authors obligation to promptly notify the journal Editor or publisher and cooperate with the Editor to retract or correct the paper.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism, where someone assumes another's ideas, words, or other creative expression as one's own, is a clear violation of scientific ethics. Plagiarism may also involve a violation of copyright law, punishable by legal action.

Plagiarism may constitute the following:

  • Word for word, or almost word for word copying, or purposely paraphrasing portions of another author's work without clearly indicating the source or marking the copied fragment (for example, using quotation marks);
  • Copying equations, figures or tables from someone else's paper without properly citing the source and/or without permission from the original author or the copyright holder.

Please note that all submissions are thoroughly checked for plagiarism.  

Any paper which shows obvious signs of plagiarism will be automatically rejected and authors will be permanently or temporarily forbidden to publish in the journal.

If an attempt at plagiarism is found in a published paper will be automatically retracted, authors will be permanently or temporarily forbidden to publish in the journal.

 

Conflict-of-Interest Statement*: Public trust in the peer review process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how well a conflict of interest is handled during writing, peer review, and editorial decision making. A conflict of interest exists when an author (or the author's institution), reviewer, or editor has financial or personal relationships that inappropriately influence (bias) his or her actions (such relationships are also known as dual commitments, competing interests, or competing loyalties). These relationships vary from those with negligible potential to those with great potential to influence judgment, and not all relationships represent true conflict of interest. The potential for a conflict of interest can exist whether or not an individual believes that the relationship affects his or her scientific judgment. Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal, the authors, and of science itself. However, conflicts can occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic competition, and intellectual passion.

Informed Consent Statement*: Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without informed consent. Identifying information, including patients' names, initials, or hospital numbers, should not be published in written descriptions, photographs, and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) gives written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires that a patient who is identifiable be shown the manuscript to be published. Authors should identify Individuals who provide writing assistance and disclose the funding source for this assistance.  Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential. Complete anonymity is difficult to achieve, however, and informed consent should be obtained if there is any doubt. For example, masking the eye region in photographs of patients is inadequate protection of anonymity. If identifying characteristics are altered to protect anonymity, such as in genetic pedigrees, authors should provide assurance that alterations do not distort scientific meaning and editors should so note.  The requirement for informed consent should be included in the journal's instructions for authors. When informed consent has been obtained it should be indicated in the published article.

Human and Animal Rights Statement*: When reporting experiments on human subjects, authors should indicate whether the procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration, the authors must explain the rationale for their approach, and demonstrate that the institutional review body explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should be asked to indicate whether the institutional and national guide for the care and use of laboratory animals was followed.       

* International Committee of Medical Journal Editors ("Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals") -- February 2006