Publication Ethics
Publishing Ethics, Principles and Malpractice Statement
Publishing Ethics
The editors of METALLA are committed to ensuring ethics and quality in research. We therefore expect all acting and involved persons in the journal (authors, reviewers and editors) to follow our publication principles (see below) and our ethical principles. With regard to the ethical aspects associated with the processes of text submission, editorial decision-making, text editing and text publication, the journal follows the publication principles of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the guidelines and code of conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The publisher's obligations and expectations of participating authors, reviewers and editors in the process are outlined below:
Duties for authors
Authors reporting results of original research in the submitted article should provide an objective discussion of the significance of the research. The underlying data should be accurately reflected in the manuscript. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate information constitutes unethical behaviour and is unacceptable. Review articles should also include objective, comprehensive and accurate representations of the state of the art.
Authors should ensure that their work is all original and that if the work and/or words of others have been used, this has been appropriately identified. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
Simultaneous submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable (see below).
Authors must not ask editorial board members and potential reviewers for information about their submission before editorial decisions have been made. Furthermore, they must also not ask for information about discussions afterwards, except perhaps to ask for general advice on resubmission.
Conflicts of interest
Your articles will not be peer-reviewed by reviewers who have a conflict of interest with at least one author of the submission. When you submit your article for review, you must list/name any conflicts of interest (COI) that you are aware of.
A reviewer and an author automatically have a COI if:
one of the reviewers was the doctoral supervisor or supervisor of the other; or, if they had a joint institutional affiliation within the last two years; or if they have published two or more jointly authored papers within the last three years; or if they belong to the same family.
It is the responsibility of all authors to ensure that COI information is correct. Submissions with incorrect or incomplete conflict of interest information may be rejected without consideration of their merits.
Irregular submissions
Irregular submissions typically fall into two categories:
Parallel Submissions:
A parallel submission occurs when authors submit essentially the same material to one or more other publication outlets with overlapping review periods.
Plagiarism:
Plagiarism occurs when substantial parts of existing publications are copied and submitted virtually unchanged, without the addition of new material and without proper citation of sources, by other "authors". Similarly, all cases of text reuse ("self-plagiarism") before and after publication will be rejected (see Text Recycling: Forum discussion topic March 2013 | COPE: Committee on Publication Ethics). Such submissions will be rejected if discovered.
Duties for reviewers
The anonymous double-blind peer review process assists the editors in making editorial decisions. All manuscripts received for peer review must therefore be treated confidentially. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal gain.
Peer reviews should be conducted objectively; personal criticism of the author is unacceptable. Reviewers should clearly articulate their observations and support them with arguments so that authors can use them to improve the work.
Any selected reviewers who feels unqualified to review research presented in a manuscript or knows that a rapid review is not possible should notify the editor and excuse themselves from the review process. Reviewers should not review manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest arising from competitive, collaborative or other relationships or affiliations with any of the authors, companies or institutions associated with the submitted work.
In cases of suspected or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the editor, in close cooperation with the editors-in-chief, shall take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and amend the article in question. This includes the immediate publication of an erratum or, in serious cases, the complete retraction of the work concerned.
Confidentiality
Reviewers must keep all information about the assigned submission confidential. They must not disclose information about the authors, submission content, other reviews or discussions to anyone else. To obtain an independent opinion on a submission, do not discuss the submission with other potential reviewers or the editorial team before writing your review.
Conflicts of interest
Reviewers should not review a submission if they have a conflict of interest with at least one author of the submission (see above).
Anonymity
Review submissions to reviewers are anonymous, i.e. no author names appear on a submission. Of course, reviewers may recognise authors in other ways, but the reviewer should not take extra measures just to discover the authors of a submission.
Review content
Reviewers should judge a submission primarily on its overall professional quality and merit as a scientific publication. The reviewer should provide a clear professional rationale for your assessment or recommendation. The reviewer not use rude, derogatory or unhelpful language in the review.
Irregular submissions
Irregular submissions typically fall into two categories:
Parallel Submissions:
A parallel submission occurs when authors submit essentially the same material to one or more other publication outlets with overlapping review periods.
Plagiarism:
Plagiarism occurs when substantial parts of existing publications are copied and submitted virtually unchanged, without the addition of new material and without proper acknowledgement of the source, by other "authors". This also includes all cases of text reuse ("self-plagiarism").
If you believe you have identified a submission in violation of the rules, contact the editor who assigned the submission to you. Do not take action on your own.
Duties for editors
Editors are responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted should be published. In doing so, they shall be guided by the principles of the Journal's Editorial Board.
Editors should evaluate submitted manuscripts besed on their intellectual content and professional academic merit and without regard to age, colour, religion, creed, disability, marital status, veteran status, national origin, race, sex, genetic predisposition or carrier status, or sexual orientation or political philosophy.
Confidentiality and anonymity
Editors must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisors and the publisher, if applicable. In any case, the double-blind review process must be followed, i.e. editors must not break the anonymity between authors and reviewers.
Editors may not use unpublished information for their own research without the express written consent of the author and without properly citing the relevant paper.
Editors shall ensure that no author names appear on a review submission and that no funding information, acknowledgements or identifying information appears within the document.
Allegations of misconduct
Editors should take allegations of misconduct seriously and respond appropriately when there are ethical complaints about a submitted manuscript or published work.
Publication policy
The above points aim to ensure a transparent publication process and to follow ethical publication practices.
If you have found something that contradicts our stated goals of ethical and high quality publications, please do not hesitate to contact us. We will investigate the incident and try to resolve a possible problem as soon as possible.
If the management of the journal is the target of your complaint or you believe we have a conflict of interest with your complaint, please contact a member of the journal's editorial board (see Editorial Team/Boards) as an independent third party instead.
The publisher and the journal evaluate submitted manuscripts based on their intellectual content and professional academic merit and without regard to age, colour, religion, creed, disability, marital status, veteran status, national origin, ethnicity, gender, genetic predisposition or carrier status, or sexual orientation or political philosophy.
Guidelines for authorship and contributors
Authors of articles accepted for publication in METALLA must have significantly contributed to the work to be published.
Data and reproducibility statement
To enable reproducibility of results, we strongly encourage authors to share experimental data, primary sources or other important data. Failure to share may result in rejection of the submitted work.
Ethical aspects
When applicable, we expect authors to follow a responsible disclosure process. In addition, all contributors to the journal must follow publication ethics and keep personal data confidential.
Intellectual property, copyright and publication licences
The German Mining Museum Bochum (Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum) as publisher of the journal Metalla and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Ruhr University Bochum) as data repository have been granted the simple perpetual, non-exclusive right of use for the reproduction, distribution, storage and archiving of the contribution/work by the author(s). The copyright remains with the author (and the other authors).
All articles and other contributions to the journal METALLA are published free of charge (platinum open access) under the licence CC-BY 4.0 International (Creative Commons — Attribution 4.0 International — CC BY 4.0). In exceptional cases, other CC licences are also accepted and marked (e.g. in the METALLA Sonderheft).
Contributions that have already been published or considered elsewhere cannot be considered for the Metalla. Likewise, all cases of text reuse ("self-plagiarism"), double publication and plagiarism before and after publication will be rejected (see https://publicationethics.org/text-recycling-guidelines).
Journal management
In the spirit of the Open Access Initiative, the online journal METALLA is operated with third-party funding from the German Federal Government and the Leibniz Research Museum for Georesources German Mining Museum Bochum at no cost/fee to authors or readers. This is done to support the Open Access initiative of the Leibniz Association and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the non-profit objectives of the German Mining Museum Bochum.
For publication and journal management, we use the Open Journal System (OJS, Open Journal Systems) developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) and hosted by the University Library of Ruhr-Universität Bochum (University Library of Ruhr-Universität Bochum).
Peer review process
Submitted articles are peer-reviewed in a double-blind manner. If, during the review of a submission, a reviewer encounters problems that do not appear resolvable without a third opinion, we expect that the editorial board will be consulted. The editorial board will, if an article is rejected by either reviewer, refer to the opinion of a third reviewer before making a final editorial decision.
Reviewers are expected to report any case of conflict of interest, scientific misconduct or similar to the Managing Editor. The METALLA editorial team reviews special (e.g. Sonderheft) issues and other contributions.
Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections
If you find an error in a published article or contribution, we would appreciate it if you would inform the editorial staff in writing. We will carefully examine each case in consultation with the respective author, the reviewers and/or the editorial board of the journal and, if necessary, publish or insert erratum/errata for the corresponding issue.
