AUC GEOGRAPHICA

Ethical rules for authors, reviewers and editors: (These rules are derived from the Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE).

Ethical rules for authors

By submission of the manuscript to the journal, author(s) guarantee(s) that the research as well as the text is original and has not been already published (or submitted for publication) in any language. In exceptional cases, the author might contact the editor and explain his/her reasons for re-publication. Authors are not allowed to submit the same manuscript for consideration to more than one journal concurrently.

Authors are obliged to acknowledge properly any work of others that has been used during the research as well as during the elaboration of the manuscript and properly quote and cite other works that have been used during the course of research. Any sort of plagiarism or infringement of copyright rights must be avoided. All copyright laws and conventions applicable to a given manuscript must be respected. Any material protected by copyright (esp. figures, or extensive quotations) should be reproduced only with written permission by copyright holder and properly acknowledgement. Authors should guarantee that results of their research are properly presented (to allow possible replication of the research by other researchers) and objectively interpreted. Limitations of the data and of research have to be clearly stated. Any fraudulent research procedures or fraudulent interpretation of results are unacceptable.

All persons that made a significant contribution to the research, such as contribution to research focus, design, execution of the research or the interpretation of the results should be listed as co-authors. In case other persons participated in some minor way to research undertaken this should be referred to in acknowledgement. Financial support of all sources used in funding of the research should be acknowledged. All authors are required to clearly state in their paper financial or other forms of potential conflict of interest that might influence the results or interpretation of their research. The corresponding author is responsible for guaranteeing that all co-authors are included in the paper as well as that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

In case the work reported involves using materials, procedures or equipment involving special risks, the authors must identify these risks in the paper.

Authors might be requested by the Editors to provide the original data used for a given research and, upon request of the editors should provide public access to these data. Authors should store data for a period of at least 10 years.

In case a major error is discovered by the author(s) in his/her/their work that has been already published, he/she/they must inform the editor as soon as possible and suggest the editor correction of the paper or even its retraction.

Ethical rules for reviewers

Reviewers should assist the editor with his/her publication decision of a given manuscript and provide the guidance to the author(s) on how to improve the manuscript.

In order to guarantee a speedy and fair review process, reviewers are required to inform the editor as soon as possible whether the topic of a given manuscript is within their field of expertise and whether they will be able to review the manuscript in due time.

Reviewers are strictly required to treat submitted manuscripts as confidential documents and should especially refrain from sharing or discussing the manuscript with anybody else except the editor. They are required to prepare an objective review and support their comments with clear arguments. They are also required to report any violation of publication ethics or suspicion of plagiarism to the editor.

Reviewers cannot make any personal use of the information obtained during the review process. Reviewers should decline reviewing manuscripts in which they have any conflicts of interest, including both collaborative and competitive relationships with any of the authors or their institutions.

Ethical rules for editors

The editor is responsible for the publication decision on the submitted articles. The editor´s decision is final. The editor´s decision should properly reflect his/her own judgment of the scientific merit of the paper, as well as the reports prepared by the reviewers. The editor will make a special effort to avoid any copyright infringement, plagiarism or other misconduct of the authors. In their decision, the editor would be guided solely by the quality of the paper and would disregard any other aspects such as citizenship, ethnicity, gender, religion, political, sexual or any other orientation of the author(s).

The editor cannot make any personal use of rejected manuscripts. The editor(s) is/are especially obliged to maintain the anonymity of both the authors and reviewers. Likewise, the editor is not allowed to forward any information about the manuscripts submitted to a person except the author(s), reviewers, editorial advisers and the publisher.