ETHICS IN PUBLISHING

Submission of a manuscript implies that the work described has not been published before (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis); that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; that its publication has been approved by all coauthors, if any, as well.

1. Authorship and Author’s responsibilities

The 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.

The authors must present accurate the data, avoiding fabrication (inventing data or results); falsification (manipulating research materials, equipment, processes, or changing or omitting data or results); image manipulation (inappropriate adjustment of an image that alters the scientific meaning of the image).

Authorship for articles with multiple authors

Regarding authorship, contributors who meet at least two of the following criteria may be included:

• made a significant intellectual contribution to the theoretical development, system or experimental design, prototype development, and/or the analysis and interpretation of data associated with the work contained in the article;
• contributed to drafting the article or reviewing and/or revising it for intellectual content;
• • approved the final version of the article as accepted for publication, including references.

The corresponding author has the following duties:

• to maintain the correspondence with the Editorial Board throughout the review process;
• to be the contact between the co-authors and the journal;
• to obtain feedback from the all co-authors regarding all steps in the review process, as well as their approval of the final version of the article as accepted for publication.

Co-authors remain responsible for work submitted, reviewed, and published under their names.

2. Plagiarism: Definition and Context

Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable and is considered a serious breach of professional conduct, with potentially severe ethical and legal consequences.

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 constitue 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.

Self-plagiarism, as a related issue, is the word for word or almost word for word reproduction of portions of one's own copyrighted work without proper citation of the original material. Any text, idea, paraphrase from any public source (Internet, published papers, printed or eBooks etc.) which is already available to the readers must be cited, irrespective of the authors. It is not allowed to repeat the same arguments and ideas, even when they have first been published in little known publications with limited circulation in other fields. The exception to this is if the paper features a “Related Work” section.

It is unnacceptable that research results from other papers be presented as though they were original work from the present paper. Any text that needs to be reprodused “as is” should be quoted, and proper references provided. Quoting of such text should be done very sparingly. It is not acceptable to reproduce large quantities of text from other sources (multiple phrases, a larger pagragraph, an entire section). The quoted text should be no longer than 8 rows, on A4 format, TNR12 or Arial 11.

To prevent plagiarism, online Sistem Antiplagiat Software (www.sistemantiplagiat.ro) and Turnitin application (https://www.e-nformation.ro/integrity) were used for all submitted papers.

3. Post publication corrections and discussions

Where post-publication corrections or retractions need to be made, or if an article is to be removed, these will be accompanied by a correction or retraction notice to indicate the incorrect elements of the article and the extent of the corrections made, or the basis for the article’s retraction or removal.

If an error is discovered within the metadata records for published articles, a request for correcting the error may be submitted to the Editorial office. Requests shall identify the error, recommend an appropriate correction to the metadata, and provide a statement of justification for correcting the error. Acceptable requests include: an author name is either missing from or spelled incorrectly; author affiliation is incorrect or missing; title of publication is incorrect; author order is incorrect; publication has missing text; publication has missing or incorrect graphics or figures; publication has an error in publication identifiers (DOI, ISSN or ISBN); and publication has been truncated or is missing pages. Such requests should be verifiable from comparing original submissions with the published work or the requester has provided sufficient documentation to justify the correction. Corrections are usually made within a short time period after publication (typically within 7 working days).

The article will be corrected and will appear online, and for the print version of the journal, an erratum will be made that will be published in a subsequent issue of the journal.

Removals are only to be made in rare circumstances, where not doing so would infringe copyright or cause harm. In the case of an article’s removal, the contents of the article will be removed from circulation. It will not be downloadable as a file or displayed on the article's webpage. A notice of retraction will be issued in the same manner as a standard retraction notice, and it will include the reason(s) for the article’s removal. The original article’s metadata will remain, linked to the retraction notice.

4. Complaints and Appeals Process

The Editorial Board will carefully consider complaints, appeals and allegations in line with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This applies both for pre- and post-publication.

When a complaint is made, it must be passed to the journal’s Editor, who must then inform the publisher, National Research and Development Institute for Industrial Ecology ECOIND, and address the issue following COPE guidelines. Pending the outcome of an investigation, the published record will be updated accordingly, with a post-publication notice in the form of either a Correction or a Retraction. This notice will be linked to the original article. A permanent digital object identifier (DOI) and universal resource locator (URL) link between the notice and the full article enhances transparency and the integrity of the publication record; only in rare cases, where it is in the public interest, an article will be removed.

Well-evidenced appeals to editorial decisions are welcome and will be handled by the journal’s Editor in the first instance, who will assess the appeal’s validity. If valid, the journal’s editorial board and/or external peer reviewers will review the appeal. A new editorial decision will be made based on the results of this review.

To submit a complaint or raise an issue of potential misconduct to the journal, or to appeal an editorial decision:

• Contact the journal's Editor with an explanation of your complaint or appeal at office@rjeec.ro
• If the response to your complaint is not satisfactory raise the matter with the publisher, ECOIND (ecoind@incdecoind.ro), who will investigate the complaint and decide whether a further investigation is required following COPE guidelines.
• Especially complex cases may be submitted directly to COPE for guidance on how to proceed.

Please submit complaints or appeals by email, by visiting the journal’s ‘Contact’ page. Our aim is to acknowledge complaints or appeals within 5 days of receipt, and to keep complainants updated throughout the process.

5. Policies on Conflicts of Interest/Competing Interests

Competing interests can be financial, commercial, legal, familial, or professional. Authors must declare any conflict or competing interests that are relevant to the published article (as well as those that may be perceived to be relevant by others). To ensure transparency, neither editors nor board members may be involved in editorial decisions about their own scholarly work. Any published article that lists editors or board members as authors must include a ‘Competing Interests’ statement.

6. Data Sharing and Reproducibility

We encourage authors of articles published in the journal to share their research data where relevant, including, but not limited to, raw data, processed data, software, algorithms, protocols, methods, and materials.