Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
Atlas Publishing, LLC follows high standards of ethics in all its publishing materials: journal articles and books. The publisher, editors, and authors, are responsible to implement and enforce these high standards of ethics (www.publicationethics.org).
Publication Decision
The ultimate responsibility to publish an article or reject it lies on the shoulder of the journal editor. After receiving review reports from the peer-reviewers, the editor takes a decision to publish or reject the article. He/she may also consult with other editors and/or reviewers to take this decision.
Confidentiality
Information contained in the submitted manuscript must not be disclosed by the editor or the editorial staff to any parties other than the reviewers, other editorial advisors, and the publisher.
Fair Play
All Atlas Publishing, LLC’s editors must evaluate manuscripts based on the merit of their contribution to the field of study and intellectual content with no consideration of the authors’ race, religion, gender, political views, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, or citizenship.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
The editors are not allowed to use materials in a submitted manuscript in their research without a written consent from the authors.
I. Reviewers’ Duties
Peer reviews review manuscripts and submit their review reports to the editor. These reviewers’ reports assist the authors to improve their manuscripts and the editor to take an editorial decision about the manuscript. If a reviewer is unable to review a manuscript for any reason, he/she should refrain from reviewing the manuscript and inform the editor.
a. Confidentiality
All manuscripts received by the editor must be treated as confidential documents and not shown or discussed with others unless the editor authorizes it.
b. Standards of Objectivity
Reviewers should be objective in their reviews, leave apart any personal criticism of the author or his/her research group, and support their views with clearly stated arguments.
c. Acknowledgement of Sources
Reviewers should strive to identify any uncited published works by the authors and report it to the editor. Reviewers should also report any similarities between the manuscript under review and any other published work they might know of.
d. Disclosure and Conflict of Interest
Reviewers should keep confidential all information and ideas obtained from the manuscript they are reviewing and must not use them for their personal advantage. They also should not review a manuscript with any apparent conflict of interest.
II. Authors Duties
a. Reporting Standards
Authors are responsible to submit original research findings that are accurate with an objective discussion of their significance to the field or discipline of study. It is unethical and unacceptable to knowingly report fraudulent and inaccurate statements in any submitted manuscript to any journal published by Atlas Publishing, LLC.
b. Data Access and Retention
Atlas Publishing, LP or the journal’s editor may ask the authors to provide the raw data of their manuscript for review purposes and to be accessible as practiced by several prominent publishers such as the Public Library of Science (PLoS; www.plos.org) and the International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (http://www.stm- assoc.org). They also should keep this data for at least 5 years after publication.
c. Originality and Plagiarism
By submitting the article, all the authors attest firmly that:
Authors must cite all publications used to determine the nature of their submitted manuscript.
d. Authorship of the Paper
Authors are those who made a significant contribution to the submitted study during its design, conception, execution, and interpretation and it is the responsibility of the corresponding author to insure that all authors contributed to the study.
e. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest
All financial and substantive conflict of interest should be disclosed by all authors of the manuscript. Authors should also disclose all sources of financial support for the submitted manuscript.
f. Fundamental Errors in Published Works
If errors or inaccuracies are discovered in a manuscript by an author, he/she is responsible to report them to the publisher or the editor and be engaged in the process of retracting or correcting the manuscript.