Ethics statement

This journal has a commitment to the ethics and quality of its publications. We defend an ethical behavior of all parties involved in the publication in our journal: authors, editors and referees. We do not accept plagiarism or any other unethical behavior

Publication ethics: A journal shall also have policies on publishing ethics. These should be clearly visible on its website, and should refer to: i) Journal policies on authorship and contributorship; ii) How the journal will handle complaints and appeals; iii) Journal policies on conflicts of interest / competing interests; iv) Journal policies on data sharing and reproducibility; v) Journal’s policy on ethical oversight; vi) Journal’s policy on intellectual property; and vii) Journal’s options for post-publication discussions and corrections.

Responsibilities of the Editor-in-Chief:

• Confidentiality: The Editor-in-chief and other members of the editorial team should not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript, but to peer reviewers and area editors.
• Disclosure and conflicts of interest: The Editor-in-chief shall not use unpublished materials presented in a manuscript that has been submitted to the journal for their own research without the express written consent from the author. The Editor-in-chief should refuse to evaluate manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest due to competitive issues related to the manuscripts.
• Involvement and co-operation in investigations: the Editor-in-chief must take the necessary measures whenever ethical complaints are submitted regarding a submitted manuscript or a published paper.

Responsibilities of the Associate Editors and Peer Reviewers:

• Punctuality: any associate editor or peer reviewer who does not feel qualified to analyze a paper or is aware that its immediate reading will be impossible should immediately notify the editor.
• Objectiveness: peer reviews must be conducted objectively. Area editors and reviewers should express their points of view clearly and be supported by fundamented arguments.
• On the sources: the peer reviewers should identify those relevant published works that were not cited by the authors and draw the editor’s attention to any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript being evaluated and any other published article of which he is personally aware.
• Disclosure and conflict of interest: privileged information or ideas obtained by the associate editor and/or peer reviewer through the reading of the manuscripts must be kept confidential and should not be used for personal gain. The associate editor or the peer reviewer should not evaluate manuscripts in which he has conflicts of interest due to competitive issues related to the manuscripts.

Responsibilities of the Authors:

• General rules: The authors state that no data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support their conclusions. Fraudulent or intentionally inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
• Originality and plagiarism: No data, text, or theories by other authors should be presented as if they were the author’s own (“plagiarism”). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied using quotation marks (verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased). Important note: the journal may use software to screen for plagiarism.
• Multiple, redundant and simultaneous publication: an author should not publish papers describing basically the same research in more than one journal. Sending the same manuscript to more than one journal at a time and / or publishing the same article in more than one journal constitutes unethical editorial behavior and is unacceptable.
• Authorship: Consent to submit must be given explicitly by all co-authors, prior to submitting the manuscript.
• Conflicts of interest: all authors must disclose in the manuscript any financial,  institutional or personal conflict that may influence the results or the interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project must be disclosed.
• Access to data: Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc.

Responsibilities of the Technical Editors of Scientific Journals:

• We are committed to ensuring the timeliness and appropriateness of our publications.
• Our articles are peer-reviewed to ensure the quality of scientific publication. This journal uses CrossCheck (anti-traffic software from CrossRef).

This statement is based on the recommendations of Elsevier and on the Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors do Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE.