Code of ethics
EDITOR’S RESPONSIBILITIES
We follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s Core Practices. In addition, some key points are listed below.
The Editors in Chief, the Editorial Staff and the members of the Editorial Board, as well as of the Advisory Board, are required to not disclose any information on the contributions received to any subject other than the Authors and the reviewers.
The Editors in Chief, the Editorial Staff and the members of the Editorial Board guarantee the correctness of the systems used to evaluate, accept or reject the papers submitted by the Authors.
The Editors in Chief, assisted by the person responsible for the Review-process, supervise the Review-process and the anonymity of the reviewers with respect to the specific paper under review.
The Editors in Chief, assisted by the members of the Editorial Board, identify the external Referee(s) on the basis of competence in order to obtain an adequate evaluation of each paper submitted to the Journal for publication.
If the Editors in Chief detects or receives reports of errors or inaccuracies, conflicts of interest or plagiarism in a paper published, they must verify their validity, give timely notice to the Author and take the necessary actions to clarify the matter. If necessary, the paper will be withdrawn and/or a note will be published signaling its withdrawal.
The Editors in Chief will also take all necessary actions to protect the Journal and, in case of plagiarism, the plagiarized Author.
REVIEWER’S RESPONSIBILITIES
We follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s Core Practices. In addition, some key points are listed below.
The reviewer who feels unqualified to review the assigned manuscript or affirms that he or she cannot meet the deadline for completion of the review should immediately notify the editors and excuse himself or herself from the process of reviewing this manuscript.
The reviewer should inform the editors and recuse himself or herself from reviewing the manuscript if there is a conflict of interest. Specifically, the reviewer should recuse himself or herself from reviewing any manuscript authored or coauthored by a person with whom the reviewer has an obvious personal or academic relationship, if the relationship could introduce bias or the reasonable perception of bias.
The reviewer should treat the manuscript in a confidential manner. The manuscript should not be disclosed to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editors.
The reviewer should approach the peer-review job objectively. Personal criticism of the author is unacceptable.
The reviewer should not use for his or her own research any part of any data or work
reported in submitted and as yet unpublished articles.
The reviewer should immediately notify the editors of any similarities between the
manuscript under review and another paper either published or under consideration by another journal. The reviewer should immediately call to the editor’s attention a manuscript containing plagiarized material or falsified data.
AUTHOR’S RESPONSIBILITIES
The author should not submit concurrent manuscripts (or manuscripts essentially
describing the same subject matter) to multiple journals. Likewise, an author should not submit any paper previously published in English. Previous publication in Italian is not incompatible with submitting the English version.
The author should honestly gather and interpret his or her research data.
The author should guarantee that the works he or she has submitted are original. If the author has used work and/or words by others, appropriate citations are required.
Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
The author should indicate explicitly all sources that have supported the research and also declare any conflict(s) of interest.
The author should give due acknowledgement to all of those who have made contributions to the research. Those who have contributed significantly to the research should be listed as coauthors.