The publisher establishes and maintains a publisher- level ethical framework to support responsible scholarly publishing. This framework provides guidance for journals operating under the publisher and defines general ethical expectations applicable across all publishing activities.
The ethical framework is intended to promote transparency, accountability, and consistency in scholarly communication. Detailed operational ethics are defined and implemented at the individual journal level.
The publisher respects the autonomy of journal editorial boards and does not participate in editorial decision-making. Editorial responsibility, including peer-review management and content evaluation, rests exclusively with the respective journal editors.
The publisher’s role is limited to ensuring that journals maintain clearly documented ethical policies and governance structures.
The publisher promotes adherence to accepted standards of research integrity. Journals are expected to implement procedures to address issues such as plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, and other forms of academic misconduct.
Specific procedures for handling allegations of misconduct, corrections, and retractions are established and managed by individual journals.
The publisher supports transparency in scholarly publishing. Journals are expected to clearly disclose information related to editorial structure, peer-review processes, author responsibilities, and reviewer responsibilities on their respective websites.
Conflicts of interest and funding disclosures are managed at the journal level in accordance with documented journal policies.
The publisher provides oversight at the policy level to ensure that journals operate within a defined ethical framework. This oversight does not extend to intervention in editorial or peer-review decisions.
The publisher may review policy compliance where necessary to maintain consistency with its ethical standards.
The publisher does not assume responsibility for the scholarly content of individual articles. Responsibility for content accuracy, originality, and compliance with ethical standards lies with authors and journal editorial boards.
The publisher recognizes that ethical standards evolve over time. The publisher reviews its ethical framework periodically to ensure continued relevance and alignment with recognized scholarly publishing practices.