Ethics of scientific publications

The authors submitting manuscripts for publishing in The Journal of Soils and Environment should ensure that their work is original; in the case the authors have used the work and/or words of others, this has been appropriately cited or quoted and permission has been obtained where necessary. we require submitting authors to supply an ORCID ID. We encourage all co-authors to link their ORCID iDs to their author accounts on the journal’s website. To learn more about ORCID, please visit http://orcid.org/content/initiative.

The authors should properly acknowledge in their manuscript the work of others. Authors should cite publications that have influenced the reported work and that give the work appropriate context within the larger scholarly record. In this relation it should be noted that The Journal of Soils and Environment welcomes citing all source pertinent to the topic and theme of their manuscript, regardless of however long ago it was published, hence not limiting themselves to the most recent publications. 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.

The authors should also ensure that their manuscript submitted for publication in The Journal of Soils and Environment does not describe essentially the same research that was previously published elsewhere.

Plagiarism, if any, in all its forms is unacceptable; the journal performs checking for plagiarism as the first step after the manuscript’s submission.

The authors should explicitly acknowledge the funding sources for their research.

Submitted manuscripts should comply with the journal’s instructions for formatting the manuscripts for publication, since The Journal of Soils and Environment does not charge its authors for article processing.

All authors of the submitted manuscripts should comply with the authorship criteria, agree to submitting the manuscript for publication in the journal, and, if the manuscript is published, participate actively in its discussion on the journal’s website. The authors should provide rebuttals or corrections in the case any errors are revealed during the pre-publication processing of the article or after its publication.

The editors of The Journal of Soils and Environment are ultimately responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. Such decisions should be based solely on the rigor of the work and its importance to researchers and readers.  The editors are guided by the journal’s policy in their decision-making. The Editor-in-Chief may confer with other editors or reviewers in making these decisions.

The editors ensure the absence of the conflict of interest between all the parties involved in the manuscript processing for publication, including the anonymity of reviewers.  

Research articles submitted for publishing in The Journal of Soils and Environment are commonly reviewed by at least two external and independent reviewers; where necessary the editor seeks additional opinions. The managing editor selects reviewers with suitable expertise in the field, heeding the need for appropriate and diverse representation. The editor reviews all disclosures of potential conflicts of interest and suggestions for self-citation made by reviewers in order to determine whether there is any potential for bias.

The Editorial Board of The Journal of Soils and Environment believes that peer review is a crucial aspect of scholarly communication and scientific method. Peer reviews for The Journal of soils and environment are double-blinded. Reviews help the editor in making decisions concerning the manuscript and in general are also helpful for the author in improving the paper.    Reviewers are asked to treat authors and their work as they would like to be treated themselves and to adhere to the good reviewing etiquette.

Any selected referee who feels unqualified or has no time to review the manuscript notifies the editor, declining the invitation to review.

Any manuscripts received for review are treated as confidential documents. Reviewers do not share the review/information about the paper with anyone.

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own 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.