Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics and Allegation of Research Misconduct

Treubia recognizes the significance of ethical principles in academic publishing and is dedicated to upholding a high standard of ethical behavior. To ensure transparency and ethical conduct throughout the publication process, Treubia adheres to rigorous peer-review standards. In line with the COPE Best Practice Guidelines, this publication ethics statement establishes clear expectations for all stakeholders, including authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher (BRIN). With this ethical policy serving as a valuable guide, Treubia aims to promote publication ethics and prevent malpractice among all stakeholders of the journal.

Publisher Commitment to Ethical Publishing

The publication of a peer-reviewed article in Treubia Journal is a vital component in creating a reputable and coherent knowledge network. It reflects the quality of the author's work and the institutions that support them and upholds the scientific method. Thus, it is crucial to establish ethical standards for all parties involved in the publishing process, including the author, editor, peer reviewer, publisher, and society.

As the publisher of Treubia, BRIN recognizes its duty to oversee all stages of publishing and acknowledges its ethical and other responsibilities. It is committed to ensuring that editorial decisions remain independent and unbiased, unaffected by commercial revenue from advertising, reprints, or other sources. Additionally, the Treubia Editorial Board and BRIN will facilitate communication with other publishers or journals as needed and appropriate.

Allegation of Research Misconduct

Research misconduct refers to several actions, such as fabrication, falsification, citation manipulation, and plagiarism, that can occur during the production, performance, review, or reporting of research and the writing of articles. It is the responsibility of editors to ensure the accuracy and integrity of the scientific record, particularly when articles that have been published are involved in such irregularities.

To address any suspicions of misconduct fairly, editors and editorial boards follow the best practices of COPE, including an investigation of allegations made by individuals with no relevant conflicts of interest. If misconduct is suspected, the corresponding author is contacted to provide a detailed response, and additional review and involvement of experts, such as statistical reviewers, may be sought.

When there is sufficient evidence of misconduct, submitted manuscripts are rejected, and published papers may be retracted, with a link to the original article. However, for cases where misconduct is unlikely, clarifications, additional analyses, or both, published as letters to the editor, often accompanied by a correction notice and correction to the published article, can suffice.

BRIN are expected to conduct thorough investigations of allegations of scientific misconduct. It is the critical responsibility of authors, journals, and institutions to guarantee the accuracy of the scientific record. Treubia will continue to fulfill its responsibilities by responding appropriately to concerns about scientific misconduct and taking necessary actions, such as corrections, retractions with replacement, and retractions, to maintain the validity and integrity of the scientific record.

Authorship and Contributorship

Authors should ensure that the authorship of their research publications accurately reflects the contributions made by each individual involved in the work and its reporting. Only those who have significantly contributed to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the study should be listed as authors. Others who have made significant contributions must be acknowledged as co-authors. In cases where major contributors are listed as authors, those who have made less substantial or purely technical contributions should be listed in an acknowledgement section. Additionally, authors should confirm that all authors have reviewed and agreed to the final version of the manuscript and their inclusion as co-authors.

Complaints and Appeals

Treubia has a well-defined process for managing grievances lodged against the journal, Editorial Staff, Editorial Board, or Publisher. The complaints will be thoroughly explained to the concerned individual regarding the nature of the complaint. The scope of complaints covers any issue related to the journal's operational procedures, such as the editorial process, unethical citation practices, biased editors/reviewers, peer-review tampering, and so on. The complaint cases will be handled in compliance with COPE's guidelines.

Data Access, Retention and Reproducibility

In order to uphold the integrity and transparency of research, authors are strongly encouraged to provide the raw data used in their study to the editorial team during the review process. Additionally, authors should be willing to make this data available to the public, if feasible, or retain it for a reasonable period of time following publication. It is the author's responsibility to ensure that their data can be reproduced, thus allowing other researchers to verify and build upon their findings.

Ethical Oversight

When conducting research that involves potentially hazardous chemicals, procedures, equipment, humans, or animals, the author must disclose these hazards in the manuscript to comply with ethical research practices. Additionally, if necessary, the author must obtain legal ethical clearance from relevant associations or organizations. For research involving confidential data or business/marketing practices, authors must explain how they will securely protect the data or information.

Duties of Author:

1. Reporting Standards: Authors have a duty to report research accurately and honestly, without any manipulation or falsification of data. Manuscripts should provide enough detail and references to allow replication of the work. Fraudulent or inaccurate statements are unacceptable, and manuscripts should follow the journal's submission guidelines.
2. Originality and Plagiarism: Authors must ensure that their work is original and not submitted concurrently to multiple publications. Relevant previous work should be properly acknowledged and referenced, with citations to the primary literature where possible. Original wording taken directly from other publications should be appropriately cited.
3. Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publications: Authors should not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal or publish redundant manuscripts describing the same research in more than one journal. Multiple publications from a single research project should be identified as such, and the primary publication should be referenced.
4. Acknowledgement of Sources: Authors should acknowledge all sources of data used in the research and cite publications that influenced the nature of the reported work.
5. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: Authors are required to reveal any financial or other significant conflicts of interest that could potentially impact the result or interpretation of their manuscript, and they must disclose all sources of financial support for their research project.
6. Fundamental Errors in Published Works: In case the author identifies any major mistake or inexactitude in the manuscript they submitted, it is their responsibility to inform the journal editor or publisher right away and work together to retract or correct the paper.

Duties of Editor

1. Decision on Publication: The editor shall decide whether to accept, reject or ask for revisions to the manuscript based on the review report from the editorial board. This decision should be guided by the importance and validity of the work, and editors should adhere to the policies of the journal's editorial board and legal requirements related to plagiarism, copyright infringement, and libel. The editor can consult with other editors or reviewers while making the decision, but they must be accountable for everything they publish and maintain the quality and integrity of the published record.
2. Manuscript Review: The editor should evaluate each manuscript for originality and ensure fair and wise peer review. They should clarify the peer review process in the information for authors and identify the parts of the journal that are peer-reviewed. The editor must choose appropriate peer reviewers who have sufficient expertise and no conflicts of interest. For more details on the complete review policy, refer to the journal.
3. Fairness: The editor must ensure that manuscripts are reviewed for their intellectual content, irrespective of the authors' sex, gender, race, religion, or citizenship. Editorial independence and integrity are crucial in making fair and unbiased decisions.
4. Confidentiality: The editor must keep the information regarding manuscripts confidential, including potential breaches of data protection and patient confidentiality. Properly informed consent for the research presented and publication must be required.
5. Disclosure and Conflict of Interest: The editor must not use any unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research without written consent from the author. Editors must not be involved in decisions about papers in which they have a conflict of interest.

Duties of Reviewer

1. Contribution to Editorial Decisions: Reviewers play a role in helping the editor make decisions on whether to publish or reject a manuscript, and may also provide feedback to help authors improve their work.
2. Confidentiality: Reviewers should maintain the confidentiality of the manuscript and not share it with others unless authorized by the editor.
3. Acknowledgement of Sources: Reviewers should ensure that authors have properly cited all sources used in their research, and should inform the editor of any concerns they have about the ethical aspects of the work. If reviewers become aware of any irregularities or potential misconduct, they should inform the editor immediately but should not personally investigate further.
4. Objectivity: Reviewers should provide an objective assessment of the manuscript and provide clear and constructive feedback to the authors. They should follow the journal's instructions for providing feedback and avoid any conflicts of interest.
5. Disclosure and Conflict of Interest: Reviewers should not use any privileged information obtained during the review process for personal gain and should avoid reviewing manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest. They should inform the editor if they suspect any potential conflict of interest.
6. Promptness: Reviewers should respond to the review request in a timely manner and inform the editor if they cannot meet the deadline for completing the review.

Intellectual Property (Copyright Policy)

This Journal policy about intelectual property or copyright is declared here.

Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections

Treubia welcomes post-publication discussions and corrections from readers regarding published articles. If a reader wishes to provide discussions and corrections, they can contact the Editor in Chief via email and explain their feedback. If the Editor in Chief accepts the discussions and corrections, they will be published in the next issue as a Letter to the Editor. The authors of the original article are allowed to reply to the discussions and corrections by sending their response to the Editor in Chief, who may publish it as a Reply to the Letter to the Editor.

Peer-Review Process Policy

Our peer-review process policy is designed to ensure that each submission is evaluated based on its novelty, objectivity, methodology, scientific impact, conclusions, and references. The corresponding author will receive the reviewers' comments and is expected to take appropriate actions and provide responses. The Editorial Board will then review the comments and make a final decision based on the reviewer's recommendations. More information on our peer-review process and policy can be found here.

Plagiarism Screening Policy

Treubia has a strict policy against plagiarism and self-plagiarism, and any papers found to contain such issues will be promptly investigated and rejected. The Editorial Board of MEV is committed to ensuring that all published articles do not exceed a similarity score of 30%. To achieve this, Treubia employs a comprehensive plagiarism screening policy which can be found here.

Article Withdrawal Policy; Corrections and Retractions

Treubia has established policies for handling article withdrawal, retraction, removal, and replacement. These standards are outlined in our policy guidelines here.

Author Fees

Archiving Policy

Digital archive

Treubia  is committed to the permanent availability and preservation of scholarly research and to ensure accessibility by converting and upgrading digital file formats to comply with the newest technology standards. We work in partnership with organizations as well as maintaining our own digital archive.

Local Archive

TREUBIA maintains a local state-of-the-art facility to store a complete, accurate digital version of paper published. The current format standards are XML and .pdf; with most files being retained in both formats. Website archiving All of TREUBIA electronic content (website, manuscripts, etc.) is stored on three different sources. Content on one server is online and accessible to the readers. The copy of the same content is kept as a backup on two other sources. In case of failure of one server, any one of the other sources can be made online and website expected to be accessible within 24-36 hours.

Systems Backup

All Journal in BRIN are performed once a week in the form of incremental backups. All Journals are built in a cloud computing environment where the system is regularly backed up for applications, databases and electronic documents

Self-archiving

TREUBIA support self-archiving. TREUBIA permit and encourages authors to make their research visible and accessible to the peers by uploading the final published version of their articles in personal or institutional repositories immediately after publication, while providing bibliographic details that credit, if applicable, its publication in the journal.

Indexing

TREUBIA's Abstracting/Indexing services store many essential information about the articles. Additionally, two of our journal’s Abstracting/Indexing services archive not only the metadata about the article, but the electronic versions of the articles, as well. Therefore, copies of the articles are available to the scientific community through their systems as an alternative to the journals own.

All published articles are assigned to Digital Object Identifier (DOI)- CrossRef. TREUBIA deposits publications in multiple digital archives around the world to guarantee long-term digital preservation. All published articles are indexed in Dimensions, Google Scholar, and Garuda. All articles are permanently archived and available in PDF formats. TREUBIA makes article metadata available in compliance with Open Archives Initiative protocols, enabling automated 'harvesting' of our research articles for inclusion in any other digital archives. We support non-exclusive digital archiving of research articles by as many international archives as possible, to ensure the security and permanent accessibility of that research.

TREUBIA is a participant in the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) initiative. LOCKSS will enable any library to maintain their own archive of content from the journal and other publishers, with minimal technical effort and using cheaply available hardware.

If journal stops publishing

TREUBIA intend and expect to continue to publish our journal for a very long time. If, due to some rare, unfortunate circumstances, we are forced to stop publishing the journal, the manuscripts published in the journal will be kept online and accessible to the readers for at least 10 more years. When required under specific conditions, such as discontinuation of the collection or catastrophic failure of the website, the content will be accessible through LOCKSS and CLOCKSS.  

The LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system to ensure a secure and permanent archive for journal content, and the CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system to ensure a secure and permanent archive for the journal.

In the Event of Notice of Possible Litigation

If a written claim or complaint, subpoena, or other formal demand is made against the TREUBIA for which documentation that could support or refute such a claim exists in the instituion computer system (e.g., e-mails, written records or review records), the managing editor receiving the claim shall notify the secretariat as to the particulars of the claim immediately. The secretary will work with editor and manager to notify those involved that any files associated with the event cannot be destroyed and perform targeted backups of the files of involved parties to assure that they are preserved.

Information that secretariat or editors store on a local computer or other local media should also be retained and backed up to a secure location on our institution server. All paper records are also required to be kept and produced if required by legal action or demand. Secretariat and editors are prohibited from destroying any data upon notice of a potential claim. Deliberate destruction of identified data is a serious offense, and any person who deliberately destroys identified data will be subject to disciplinary.

Article Withdrawal Policy

It is a general principle of scholarly communication that the editor of a learned journal is solely and independently responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal shall be published. In making this decision the editor is guided by policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.  An outcome of this principle is the importance of the scholarly archive as a permanent, historic record of the transactions of scholarship. Articles that have been published shall remain extant, exact and unaltered as far as is possible. However, very occasionally circumstances may arise where an article is published that must later be retracted or even removed. Such actions must not be undertaken lightly and can only occur under exceptional circumstances. 

This policy has been designed to address these concerns and to take into account current best practice in the scholarly and library communities.  As standards evolve and change, we will revisit this issue and welcome the input of scholarly and library communities. We believe these issues require international standards and we will be active in lobbying various information bodies to establish international standards and best practices that the publishing and information industries can adopt.  See also the National Library of Medicine's policy on retractions and the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) concerning corrections and retractions.

Article withdrawal

Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Articles in Press (articles that have been accepted for publication but which have not been formally published and will not yet have the complete volume/issue/page information) that include errors, or are discovered to be accidental duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our journal publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors (such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like), may be “Withdrawn” from TREUBIA Journal Archive. Withdrawn means that the article content (HTML and PDF) is removed and replaced with a HTML page and PDF simply stating that the article has been withdrawn according to the TREUBIA Policy on Article in Press Withdrawal with a link to the current policy document.

Article retraction

Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Occasionally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication.The retraction of an article by its authors or the editor under the advice of members of the scholarly community has long been an occasional feature of the learned world. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this best practice is adopted for article retraction by TREUBIA:

• A retraction note titled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the authors and/or the editor is published in the paginated part of a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list.
• In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article.
• The online article is preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.
• The original article is retained unchanged save for a watermark on the .pdf indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”
• The HTML version of the document is removed.

The mechanism of retraction follows the Retraction Guidelines of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) which can be accessed at https://publicationethics.org/files/retraction-guidelines-cope.pdf

Article removal: legal limitations

In an extremely limited number of cases, it may be necessary to remove an article from the online database. This will only occur where the article is clearly defamatory, or infringes others’ legal rights, or where the article is, or we have good reason to expect it will be, the subject of a court order, or where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk. In these circumstances, while the metadata (Title and Authors) will be retained, the text will be replaced with a screen indicating the article has been removed for legal reasons.

Article replacement

In cases where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk, the authors of the original article may wish to retract the flawed original and replace it with a corrected version. In these circumstances the procedures for retraction will be followed with the difference that the database retraction notice will publish a link to the corrected re-published article and a history of the document.

Plagiarism Screening Policy

Plagiarism is committed when one author uses another work (typically the work of another author) without permission, credit, or acknowledgment. Plagiarism takes different forms, from literal copying to paraphrasing the work of another. 

• Literal copying is reproducing a work word for word, in whole or in part, without permission and acknowledgment of the original source. Literal copying is obvious plagiarism and is easy to detect by comparing the papers in question.
• Substantial copying is reproducing a substantial part of a work, without permission and acknowledgment of the original source. In determining what is “substantial,” both the quantity and the quality of the copied content are relevant. Quality refers to the relative value of the copied text in proportion to the work as a whole. Where the essence of a work has been reproduced, even if only a small part of the original work, plagiarism may have occurred.
• Paraphrasing; copying may take place without reproducing the exact words used in the original work, i.e. without literal or substantial copying. This type of copying is known as paraphrasing, and it can be the most difficult type of plagiarism to detect.

Treubia will immediately investigate and reject papers leading to plagiarism or self-plagiarism. Treubia investigation on suspected plagiarism will be based on COPE's guidance:

• Suspected plagiarism in a submitted manuscript here

• Suspected plagiarism in a published article here

Plagiarism screening will be conducted by Treubia Editorial Board using Crossref Similarity Check plagiarism screening service powered by iThenticate. Treubia Editorial Board will ensure that every published article will not exceed 30% similarity Score.  

About the Crossref Similarity Check service, please visit: https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/

For a searchable list of all journals in the Crossref Similarity Check database, please visit: www.ithenticate.com/search

Related to plagiarism issue, Treubia retraction policy can be found at: