Ethical Standards

Ethical oversight

The Editor-in-Chief will be tasked with overseeing compliance to these standards, as well as responding to complaints and appeals. In case of potential conflict of interest, the Editor-in-Chief will delegate this function to one or more associate editors who will arrive to an independent decision.

Reporting standards

Authors of original research reports should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an impartial discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

Authorship of the paper

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors, but no one else, even if s/he is head of a lab or only obtained funding.

The corresponding author should ensure that all contributing co-authors are included in the author list. The corresponding author will also verify that all co-authors have approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

Data access and retention

Authors could be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the paper for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release. Authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least ten years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center). JAEX strongly encourages the use of data repositories such as https://data.world or open-data.spr.ac.uk.

Originality, plagiarism, and acknowledgement of sources

Authors will submit only entirely original works, and will appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should also be cited. Texts generated by AI such as ChatGPT are unacceptable. If AI was used during the development of the text, for instance in data analysis or visualization, this should be mentioned in the text.

Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication

In general, papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.Manuscripts that have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted. In addition, manuscripts under review by the journal should not be resubmitted to copyrighted publications.

Reproducibility

By submitting a manuscript, the author(s) retain the rights to the published material. In case of publication the work can be further used according to the CC-BY license [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/], which allows others to copy, distribute and transmit the work as well as to adapt the work and to make commercial use of it, citing information of the original publication.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

All authors should include a statement disclosing any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that may be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Post-publication discussions

A paper may give rise to commentaries. By reviewers or others JAEX encourages frank but polite dialogue. When deemed by the Editor-in-Chief to advance knowledge, such commentaries will be published along with the target paper or later as a commentary or letter to the editor. The original author(s) will have the opportunity to respond to such commentaries.

Fundamental errors in published works

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate with the editor to correct the paper in form of an erratum or retract the paper if the mistake fundamentally invalidates the paper.

Additional information

JAEX  follows the general guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, see https://publicationethics.org) and will update its standards accordingly.