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EDP Journals’ position and practice as regards ethical principles and academic publishing

Ethical Publication Practices

EDP promotes ethical publication practices.

Indeed, EDP journals are committed to the highest standards of publishing integrity and academic honesty. Editors, reviewers and authors are encouraged to refer to The Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) for all aspects of publication ethics.
Serious misconduct (for example, data fabrication, falsification or plagiarism) is taken seriously into consideration and is further investigated. When a suspicion of misconduct turns out to be confirmed, the available sanction is applied.
Occasionally, or on a regular basis, Crosscheck can be used by a journal to identify a case of misconduct.

All journals make clear their aims and scope, editorial policy and manuscript requirements in terms of presentation and submissions.

Journals' instructions are available to any contributor.
Authors are expected to pursue objectiveness and rigour in all aspects of their work. Publications should be basically correct and sound and the results should represent a significant step forward, and not just a minor improvement on earlier work.
The list of authors should accurately reflect who did the work. Journal instructions for authors explain the concepts of academic authorship and require that nobody who meets the journal's criteria for authorship has been omitted from the list.
Journals only consider work that has not been published and is not being considered for publication elsewhere.
Editors, authors and peer reviewers are encouraged to disclose interests that might appear to affect their ability to present or review data objectively.
Journals recommend the use of a specific copyright and make it available on the journal pages.

Editorial decisions and strong editorial processes are built on a sustainable and efficient publishing system run by an Editorial Committee.

Editors, specially selected for their great expertise, are committed to ensuring the quality of their journals and that what is reported is ethical, accurate and relevant to their readership.
They have full independence and are not dictated to or influenced by any factors (political, commercial, etc.). There is no interference between the publishers and the editors’ editorial decisions. The relationship between the editor and the journal owner and publisher is set out in a formal contract.
It is made clear that editors should be transparent and should respect the confidentiality of the information they are dealing with.

All published articles are subjected to rigorous peer review.

Journals' policy uses mainly blinded peer review and multiple reviewers. In addition, peer review involves assessment by external reviewers.
Referees are requested to provide unbiased and constructive comments aimed, whenever possible, at improving the work.
Reviewers are encouraged to provide timely reviews.
Reviewers are required to keep the information confidential.
Journals' guidelines for peer reviewers, explicitly describing their roles and responsibilities, are provided during the reviewing procedure.