The ethical policy upheld by JREE complies with the guidelines of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and is in line with the codes of conduct approved by the Committee of the Editorial Board. Readers, authors, reviewers, and editors should follow these ethical policies when working with the journal. The ethical policy is liable to determine which of the typical research papers or articles submitted to the journal should be published in the concerned issue. For more relevant information as well as publishing and ethical guidelines, please visit http://publicationethics.org.

Note

Currently, JREE is not a member of Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE), but remains voluntarily committed to Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and complies with the highest ethical standards and associated laws. Simply put, JREE does its best to adhere to the COPE as much as possible. When working with the journal mentioned, authors, editors, and reviewers must abide by its code of Publication Ethics and Conduct as stated on this page. JREE board members welcome any international publishers to provide them with special services so that internationalization, greater recognition, prefect global impact, and publicity to approach COPE standard criteria can all be achieved.

 

Duties and Responsibilities of Publishers

(https://publicationethics.org/core-practices)

  1. MERC ensures that editorial decisions on manuscript submissions are final.
  2. MERC ensures that the decision on manuscript submissions is only made based on professional judgment and will not be affected by any commercial interests.
  3. MERC is committed to maintaining the integrity of academic and research records.
  4. MERC monitors the ethics of Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Editorial Board Members, Reviewers, Authors, and Readers.
  5. MERC always checks plagiarism and fraudulent data issues in the submitted manuscript.
  6. MERC is always willing to publish corrections, clarifications, and retractions involving its publications as and when required.

Duties and Responsibilities of Editors

(http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf)

  1. The Editors of the journal should have full authority to reject/accept a manuscript.
  2. The Editors of the journal should maintain the confidentiality of submitted manuscripts under review or until they are published.
  3. The Editor-in-Chief should take a decision on submitted manuscripts, whether to be published or not with other editors and reviewers
  4. The Editors of the journal should preserve the anonymity of reviewers.
  5. The Editors of the journal should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.
  6. The Editors of the journal should maintain academic integrity and strive to meet the needs of readers and authors.
  7. The Editors of the journal should be willing to investigate plagiarism and fraudulent data issues and willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.
  8. The Editors of the journal should limit themselves only to intellectual content.
  9. The Editors of the journal must not disclose any information about submitted manuscripts to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
  10. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent.

Duties and Responsibilities of Reviewers

(http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Peer%20review%20guidelines.pdf)

  1. The Reviewers of the journal should assist editors in making a decision on the publishing of submitted manuscripts.
  2. The Reviewers should maintain the confidentiality of invited manuscripts.
  3. The Reviewers should provide comments in time which will help editors to make a decision on the publishing of submitted manuscripts.
  4. The Reviewers are bound to treat the manuscript received for peer reviewing as confidential and must not use the information obtained through peer review for personal advantage. 
  5. The Reviewers' comments and arguments against each invited manuscript should be technical, professional, and objective.
  6. The Reviewers must not review the manuscripts that hold conflicts of interest with any of the authors, companies, or institutions.
  7. The Reviewers should disclose and try to avoid any conflict of interest.

Duties and Responsibilities of Authors

(http://publicationethics.org/files/International%20standards_authors_for%20website_11_Nov_2011.pdf)

  1. Manuscripts must be submitted only in English and written in sound grammar and proper terminology.
  2. Manuscripts must be submitted with the knowledge that they have not been published elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, or thesis) and are not currently under consideration by another journal or publisher.
  3. The submitting (corresponding) author is responsible for ensuring that the manuscript article publication has been approved by all the other co-authors.
  4. To sustain the peer-review system, authors have an obligation to participate in the peer review process to evaluate manuscripts from others. 
  5. It is also the authors' responsibility to ensure that the manuscripts coming from a particular institution are submitted with the approval from the necessary institution.
  6. It is a condition of the manuscript submission that the authors allow their paper to be edited for the purpose of readability.
  7. Authors are requested to clearly identify who provided financial support for the conduct of research and/or preparation of the manuscript and briefly describe the role of the funder/sponsor in any part of the work.
  8. A Copyright release and conflict of interest disclosure form must be signed by the corresponding author in case of multiple authorships prior to the acceptation of the manuscript, by all authors, for publication to be legally responsible towards the Journal ethics and privacy policy.
  9. Under open-access license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited properly.
  10. All authors have agreed to allow the corresponding author to serve as the correspondent with the editorial office so that the edited manuscript can be reviewed and proofed.
  11. When author(s) discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s responsibility to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher to retract or correct the manuscript. 
  12. All authors must know that that the submitted manuscripts under review or published with JREE are subject to screening using Plagiarism Prevention Software. Plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. 
  13. All authors must ensure that they have read the final checklist for submission before submitting their paper to the JREE. For more details, kindly review the link: (http://www.jree.ir/journal/authors.note

Principles of Transparency

(http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Principles_of_Transparency_and_Best_Practice_in_Scholarly_Publishing.pdf)

  1. Peer review process: JREE is a single- blind peer reviewed electronic and print quarterly publication concerned with all aspects of environmental science and management. This process, as well as any policies related to the journal’s peer review procedures, is clearly described on the journal’s Web site (http://www.jree.ir/journal/process).
  2. Governing Body: JREE has a very strong editorial board, whose members are recognized experts in the subject areas included within the journal’s scope. The full names and affiliations of the journal’s editors are provided on the journal homepage (http://www.jree.ir/journal/editorial.board).
  3. Contact information: Journal provides the contact information for the editorial office of JREE (http://www.jree.ir/journal/contact.us).
  4. Author fees / Access: The Journal database is fully open access and the full texts of published articles are available for everyone who can get access to the Journal website free of cost. Besides, the authors never pay any charges for submission, article processing and publication.
  5. Copyright: Journals made clear the type of copyright under which authors work will be published.  Upon acceptance of manuscript, authors will be asked to complete a 'Journal Publishing Agreement' (http://www.jree.ir/journal/authors.note)
  6. Identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct: Editor-in-Chief takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification/fabrication, among others.
  7. Web site: The journal homepage (http://www.jree.ir/) states the necessary steps and measures taken by the Journal to ensure high ethical and professional standards.
  8. Name of journal: The name of Journal of Renewable Energy and Environment (JREE) is unique such that it would remain exclusive and not easily confused with another journal.
  9. Conflicts of interest: Authors are requested to make evident whether impending conflicts exist or not when submitting their articles to JREE through the Conflict-of-Interest Disclosure form (Jree Conflict of Interest Form).
  10. Publishing schedule: The publication periodicity is clearly indicated on the website (http://www.jree.ir/).
  11. Archiving: The journal plan for the electronic backup and preservation of access to the journal content is clearly indicated on (Self-Archiving Policy).

Violation of Publication Ethics

(http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Full%20set%20of%20flowcharts.pdf)

  1. Plagiarism: Plagiarism refers to intentional use of someone else’s ideas or other original material as if they are the owner. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation is considered by JREE Journals as plagiarism. All manuscripts under review or published with JREE are subject to screening using plagiarism prevention software. Thus, plagiarism is a serious violation of publication ethics. The development of CrossCheck is a service that helps editors to verify the originality of papers. CrossCheck is powered by the Ithenticate software from iParadigms, known in the academic community as providers of Turnitin.  For a searchable list of all journals in the CrossCheck database, please visit: www.ithenticate.com/search[a5] 
  2. Data Fabrication and Falsification: Data fabrication and falsification means that the researcher did not really carry out the study, but made up data or results and had recorded or reported fabricated information. Data falsification means that the researcher did the experiment, but manipulated, changed, or omitted data or research findings.
  3. Simultaneous Submission: Simultaneous submission occurs when a manuscript (or substantial sections from a manuscript) is submitted to a journal when it is already under consideration by another journal.
  4. Duplicate Publication: Duplicate publication occurs when two or more papers, without full cross referencing, share essentially the same hypotheses, data, discussion points, and conclusions.
  5. Redundant Publications: Redundant publications involve the inappropriate division of study outcomes into several articles, most often consequent to the desire to plump academic vitae.
  6. Improper Author Contribution or Attribution: All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. Don’t forget to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians.
  7. Citation Manipulation: Citation manipulation refers to excessive citations in the submitted manuscript such that they do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely for the purpose of increasing citations to a given author’s work, or to articles published in a particular journal. This leads to misrepresenting the importance of the specific work and journal in which it appears and is thus a form of scientific misconduct.
  8. Sanctions: In the event that there are documented violations of any of the above mentioned policies in any journal, regardless of whether or not the violations occurred in a journal, the following sanctions will be applied: (i) Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript; (ii)Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submitted to any journal published by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript; (iii) Prohibition to be imposed for a minimum of 36 months against all of the authors for any new submissions to any journal, either individually or in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript; and (iv) Prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the editorial board of any journal.

Handling Cases of Misconduct

(http://publicationethics.org/files/Sharing%20_of_Information_Among_EiCs_guidelines_web_version.pdf)

Once JREE confirms a violation against JREE’s publication ethics, JREE addresses ethical concerns diligently following an issue-specific standard practice as summarized below.

  1. The first action of the journal editor is to inform the Editorial Office of JREE by supplying copies of the relevant material and a draft letter to the corresponding author asking for an explanation in a nonjudgmental manner.
  2. If the author’s explanation is unacceptable and serious unethical conduct appears to have taken place, the matter is referred to the Publication Committee via editorial office. After deliberation, the Committee will decide whether the case is sufficiently serious to warrant a ban on future submissions. 
  3. If the infraction is less severe, the Editor, upon the advice of the Publication Committee, sends the author a letter of reprimand and reminds the author of JREE publication policies; if the manuscript has been published, the Editor may request the author to publish an apology to the journal in order to make possible correcting the record.
  4. Notification will be sent to the corresponding author and any work by the author responsible for the violation or any work these persons coauthored that is under review by JREE journal will be rejected immediately.
  5. The authors will be prohibited from serving on JREE editorial board and serving as a reviewer for JREE. JREE reserves the right to take more measures.
  6. In extreme cases, notifications will be sent to the affiliations of the authors and the authors will be prohibited from submitting their work to JREE for 5 years.
  7. In serious cases of fraud that result in retraction of the article, a retraction notice will be published on the journal and will be linked to the article in the online version. The online version will also be marked “retracted” with the retraction date.