Publishing Ethics

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

All papers are subject to a double-blind peer-review process based on an initial screening by the editor criteria for evaluation include a significant contribution to the field, conceptual quality, appropriate methodology and, clarity of exposition. The publication of an article in a “double-blind peer-reviewed” journal is essential in the development of a consistent and respected network of knowledge. In double-blind peer-review, articles written by ‘prestigious’ or renowned authors are considered based on the content of their papers, rather than on the author’s reputation. It is therefore essential to agree upon standards of expected ethical behaviour for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the authors, the journal editor, and the peer reviewers. The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.

Ethical norms are very important to ensure the quality of scientific articles, the probity and credibility of the research results and,  the credit that the authors receive for the published articles.

The Central European Journal of Geography and Sustainable Development (CEJGSD), identified by ISSN: 2668-4322, subscribes to principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) on how to deal with acts of misconduct thereby committing to investigate allegations of misconduct to ensure the integrity of research. Submitting a manuscript to CEJGSD means that all of the authors have read and agreed to the content of the manuscript and confirmed its compliance with the journal’s policies.

CEJGSD follows the Committee on Publication Ethics' 'Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors'. Except for book reviews and editorial introductions, all papers published in CEJGSD are subject to double-blind peer review, typically by two or three reviewers. This standard also applies to papers authored or coauthored by members of the CEJGSD editorial board. Peer reviewers will be asked to abide by the Committee on Publication Ethics' 'Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers'.

PUBLICATION AND AUTHORSHIP

Open access policy

CEJGSD is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access.

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

In this regard, the only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

In respect of the BOAI definition, CEJGSD's governing body strongly recommends, for the authors who would like to republish a work that has been previously published in our journal, to include an acknowledgment with the mention of its first publication of the scientific paper, in the further publication.

License terms

Access to the electronic format of the journal is free and unrestricted. This is equivalent to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License [BY-NC]. So, referring to the journal’s content:

(a) Any article published in CEJGSD can be freely used and shared (free access to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format), as long as it is attributed to the author(s) and the journal by citing the name of the author(s) and the name of the journal [Attribution - BY].

(b) The authors of the articles and the journal itself allow all types of non-commercial use of the papers and, on the contrary, restrict their use for commercial purposes [Non-commercial use - NC].

(c) Users can use, reuse and build upon the material published in the journal but only for non-commercial purposes.

Charges, Article processing charges

CEJGSD does not require any fees or charges for manuscript processing and/or publishing materials in the journal.

Revenue sources

CEJGSD has no revenue sources (e.g., author fees, subscriptions, advertising, reprints, etc.). Journal receives all institutional  and organizational support from the Petroleum-Gas University of Ploiești.

Advertising

CEJGSD does not accept advertisement, and has no advertising policy including types of advert, influence of advertisements on reader/user behavior.

Direct marketing

CEJGSD has no indirect or direct marketing activities about the publisher or journal.

Access

CEJGSD accepts open access journal policy for authors and users. Journal users have whole rights to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link the full text of published papers in CEJGSD. So, all articles are made freely available to the widest audience as much as possible. This corresponds to the BOAI and CC BY-NC 4.0 definitions.

Authors copyright and publishing rights

Authors who publish in CEJGSD agree to the following terms:

Authors retain copyright and grant this journal right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work, with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Authors can enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g. post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g. in institutional repositories or on their website) before and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as an earlier and greater citation of published work.

Role of the funding source

You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement, then this should be stated.

EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

Central European Journal of Geography and Sustainable Development (CEJGSD) has an editorial board whose members are recognized experts in the field. The full names and affiliations of the members are provided on the journal’s Web site. CEJGSD provides contact information for the editorial office on the journal’s Web site.

CEJGSD and its publisher follows the COPE Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers.

Editors must secure a correct and unbiased, but also competent review by making sure of the double blindness of the review process, assigning submission to reviewers based on matching the research areas, and providing solutions to potential conflicts during the reviewers and authors while keeping each other’s identity undisclosed to its counterpart. The main responsibility is to ensure an unbiased evaluation of the ethnic or geographic origin, gender, sexual orientation, and ethical or political beliefs.

Editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article and they should have no conflict of interest to the articles they reject/accept.

The editor must ensure that information regarding manuscripts submitted by the authors is kept confidential. The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their research purposes without the author's explicit written consent. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

The editors promote the publication of correction or retraction when errors are found in the paper. Nevertheless, they should preserve the anonymity of the reviewers.

AUTHOR’S RESPONSIBILITIES

The authors are obliged to participate in the peer-review process and apply the requirements made by the reviewers to have their article published in CEJGSD. Also, the authors have to state that all data in the article are real and authentic and should provide retractions or corrections of mistakes each time they consider it necessary. All authors have significantly contributed to the research. All authors are obliged to provide retractions or corrections of mistakes.

All authors should have articles with a list of references and indicate (if necessary) the financial support for the research.It is forbidden to publish the same research in more than one journal.

Authors will submit only entirely original works, and will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should also be cited.

In general, manuscripts describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable. Manuscripts that have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted.

Authors should acknowledge all sources of data used in the research and cite publications that have been influential in research work. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission of the author of the work involved in these services.

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors.

The authors should consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript. Any change in the authorship list is not acceptable unless a clear reason is communicated to the editor.  If you need to make a change to the authorship (any addition, deletion, or rearrangement), please write to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal: (a) a clear reason for the change and (b) written confirmation (a signed letter) of all authors that they agree with the change. The author being added or removed should also send a written confirmation to the journal. Please note that a change is only possible before the manuscript has received a notification of acceptance and only if the change request has been approved by the journal editor. No changes can be made after publication of the article.

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in the submitted manuscript, the author should promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper. If the editor learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error, the author should promptly retract or correct the paper or provide evidence to the editor of the correctness of the original paper.

Suggestions for authors

Please try to complete all requested documents and writing rules for delivering an article. This helps you both by speeding up the evaluation process of the article and provides convenience for publication. Every evaluation process (secretariat, editor, field editor) of the article please do not hesitate to contact me. You can contact with the corresponding person by his/her CEJGSD e-mail address.

If the article has a history (a conference note, it is turned into an article after proceeding in a conference, the article is prepared to show the outcomes of a research project or generated from a thesis work, etc.), please declare this situation with a postscript. If you do not get any feedback from the editor about your article within three weeks, you can contact immediately.

As part of our efforts to improve transparency and unambiguous attribution of scholarly contributions, corresponding authors of published papers must provide their Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID) iD; co-authors are encouraged to provide ORCiD iDs. More information on the benefits of assigning an ORCiD iD can be found here: https://orcid.org/about/membership

PEER REVIEW / RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE REVIEWERS

The peer-reviewing process assists the editor and the editorial board in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper. All of CEJGSD’s content is subjected to peer-review. Peer-review is defined as obtaining advice on individual manuscripts from reviewers’ experts in the field. Peer-review is clearly described on CEJGSD’s Web site.

Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and withdraw from the review process, so that the manuscript could be sent to another reviewer.

Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be disclosed to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.

Reviews of submitted manuscripts should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate and the reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. The reviewers should be objective and should not have any conflict of interest concerning the research, the authors, and/or the research funders. Reviewers should point out relevant published work that is not yet cited.

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer's research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Reviewers are required to inform the Editor-in-Chief if they cannot assess an article if it falls beyond their competence, is similar to an article published elsewhere, or determines a conflict of interests. Otherwise, they should complete the review process in due time by submitting a complete Review Form. No other means of communication can replace the Review Form. In the absence of this document, the submission is reassigned to a different reviewer.

A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

The reviewers’ professional, objective, and thorough review process will contribute to the quality of work and enhance the quality of published research.

Publishing Schedule

Time of peer-review process ends in 8-10 weeks after submission (1 week for initial check, 6-8 weeks for peer-review process, 1 week for final decision). Author(s) should complete revision requests 4 weeks before 30 June and 30 December of every year (journal publication days). Publication period of CEJGSD is twice a year (biannually).

Reject Rate

The rejection rate increased with the prestige of the journal, but also due to the numerous submissions received from countries which, due to cultural reasons, do not treat the  Instructions for Authors (Preparation for manuscripts) as mandatory rules and ignore them. Currently, the standards of the journal correspond to those of an international journal with respect to contents and format.

The image below display the rejection rate for each year since 2019. 

Year

   Reject Rate (%)

2019

36.36

2020

23.07

2021

37.50

2022

69.56

2023

60.80

 PUBLISHING ETHICS ISSUES

CEJGSD’s editors enforce a rigorous peer-review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication.

The editorial board assures the authors that they will monitor the publishing ethics and that they will maintain the academic integrity of the journal.

The fundamental principles that define CEJGSD are transparency and integrity.

(a) By transparency, we mean that all the journal's stakeholders – readers, authors, referees, editors, publishers, etc. – are fully aware of the decision processes that affect them.

(b) The integrity of the publication process is paramount. It includes maintaining an objective review process focused on scientific quality, proper acknowledgment of sources, and a respect for confidentiality where required.

Plagiarism and copyright infringement

Plagiarism, data fabrication, and image manipulation are not tolerated. Plagiarism is not acceptable in the Central European Journal of Geography and Sustainable Development submissions. Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your publications, without giving any credit to the source.

Authors are responsible for ensuring that their works are unique and that they fully acknowledge the source of any content which is not entirely the authors’ own. The journal will check articles for plagiarism (i.e. reproducing any content without attribution and permission) using Turnitin Software and considers the inclusion of plagiarised content to be misconduct by the authors. If plagiarism is identified, the COPE guidelines on plagiarism will be followed. If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, articles will be withdrawn from the journal.

Authors and readers are encouraged to inform the publisher and Editor-in-Chief if they notice anything that should be corrected. Reported errors will be investigated by the publisher and Editor-in-Chief, and discussed with the authors. The appropriate correction will be made after this consultation. Articles will be retracted if there is evidence of unethical research, unreliable data, misconduct or plagiarism, or if there are sufficient mistakes to invalidate the article.

Simultaneous submission

Authors should make sure their paper is based on original–never before published–research. Intentionally submitting or re-submitting work for duplicate publication is considered a breach of publishing ethics.

Post-publication discussions and corrections

Central European Journal of Geography and Sustainable Development accepts discussion and corrections on published articles by the reader. In case the reader giving discussions and corrections toward a published article, the reader can contact by email to Editor-in-Chief by explaining the discussions and corrections. If accepted (by Editor-in-Chief), the discussions and corrections will be published in the next issue as Letter to Editor. Respected authors can reply/answer the discussions and corrections from the reader by sending the reply to Editor-in-Chief. Therefore, Editors may publish the answer as Reply to Letter to Editor.

DIGITAL PRESERVATION AND JOURNAL’S ARCHIVING POLICY

Digital preservation aims to ensure continuous access to digital information through archiving electronic content, abstracting/indexing services, and author self-archiving. We do our best to provide high-quality metadata for digital archiving purposes. All our articles maintain good metadata and they are captured by the Google Scholar search engine. They are also available in the form of PDFs and readers can easily download and read the content of papers from our website. Yet, authors are encouraged to upload their articles on personal and institutional websites after publication. The journal website exists also in an off-line format, allowing for its being moved on a different server if technical (or other) issues make it necessary. The journal content is also fully available through special databases and content aggregators, including DOAJ, Index Copernicus International and EuroPub - Directory of Academic and Scientific Journals. In this case, the journal offers the articles free of any charge.