The Theory and Practice in Child Development (T&PICD) follows strict ethical standards for publication to ensure high-quality scientific publications and public trust in research findings. Our publication ethics policy is mainly based on the “Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors” published by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
T&PICD adheres also to the “Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing” jointly published by COPE, the Directory of Open Access Journals, the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association and the World Association of Medical Editors.
Ethical standards summarized below provide guidelines for editors, reviewers and authors who contribute to T&PICD. For more detailed information on ethical issues, please see the COPE’s guidelines.
Ethical Guidelines for Editors
Editorial Process
Editors should strive to ensure that peer review at their journal is fair, unbiased and timely and to provide authors with information about the ongoing review and publication process.
Editorial Decisions
Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication should be based on the paper’s quality, importance and originality, the study’s validity and its relevance to the journal’s scope. The manuscripts must be evaluated without regard to the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, institutional affiliation or political philosophy.
Confidentiality
Editors and editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the authors, reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript cannot be used by the editor or the editorial board members for their own research purposes or their personal advantage in any way.
Ethical Guidelines for Reviewers
Accountability
Peer reviewers play a central role in ensuring the integrity and quality of the scholarly publication. They must conduct reviews in an ethical and accountable manner. The review report should be prepared by reviewer himself/herself, unless he/she has permission from the journal’s editor to involve another person. Reviewers must refrain from suggesting that authors include citations to theirs (or an associate’s) work, unless there is a valid reason. All suggestions must be based on valid academic or technological criteria.
Objectivity
Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. They should refrain from making unfair negative comments or including unjustified criticisms of any competitors’ work that is mentioned in the manuscript.
Competing interests
Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have competing, or conflicting, interests. Competing, or conflicting, interests may be personal, financial, intellectual, professional, political or religious. If reviewers are currently employed at the same institution as any of the authors or have been mentors, mentees, close collaborators or joint grant holders, they should not agree to review.
Promptness
Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and withdraw from the review process.
Confidentiality
Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of the peer review process and refrain from using information obtained during the peer review process for your own or another’s advantage, or to disadvantage or discredit others.
Suspicion of ethics violations
If the reviewers come across any irregularities with respect to research and publication ethics (e. g. plagiarism), they should let the journal’s editor know. They should cooperate, in confidence, with the journal and not to investigate on their own.
For more detailed information on ethical issues regarding peer reviewers, please refer to “COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers“.
Ethical Guidelines for Authors
Authorship
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Significant contributions mean;
– significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or interpretation of the reported study,
– drafting manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
The corresponding author should verify that all co-authors have approved the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission for publication. Those who contributed to the work but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the “Acknowledgements” section.
Originality and acknowledgement of sources
Manuscript should be an original work, and authors should cite the others’ works, words, ideas or figures used in the manuscript. All sources used must be appropriately cited. Reuse of text that is copied from another source must be apropriately quoted. Citations and quotations should be made according to Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition).
Reporting standards
Authors should present an accurate account of the work performed, especially regarding data collection and their analysis and interpretation. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the manuscript. The study should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is one of the most important threats to scholarly publication quality and academic integrity, and is not acceptable in any way in T&PICD. Plagiarism may take different forms, from showing someone else’s work as their own, to copying or paraphrasing parts of other studies without proper attribution, or to use research data collected or produced by others without permission and proper attribution.
All manuscripts submitted to T&PICD are routinely screened for plagiarism. T&PICD's editors use Turnitin to check the manuscripts for plagiarism and text duplication. If editors suspect a plagiarism case during the peer review process, they follow the paths set in the COPE’s guidelines. If the plagiarism is confirmed, the manuscript will be rejected.
Data Fabrication
Practices such as fabricating or manipulating data, manipulating images and other visual objects, deliberately selecting analysis tools or methods to support a particular conclusion constitute unethical behavior and are strictly forbidden in T&PICD.
Article Retraction
Published articles in T&PICD should remain extant and intact. However, under exceptional circumstances involving plagiarism, data fabrication and redundant publication or involuntary data errors, articles may need to be retracted, removed or replaced in order to protect the integrity of the literature. The need for a retraction will be determined by the Editor-in-Chief, but may be initiated, in cases of flawed data or conclusions, at the request of the author(s).
To retract an article, a notice of retraction will be published. This notice of retraction will:
- include the title and authors of the article, the reason for the retraction and who is retracting the article;
- be published online and be linked to the online version of the article.
Data Availability
We encourage authors to make the research data on which their manuscript is based openly available either by depositing into a public repository or by uploading the data and files as supplementary materials with the submission. You can find a research data repository to deposit your data at www.re3data.org.
Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication
A manuscript that has already been published or is currently under review in another journal cannot be submitted in T&PICD. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. If the paper has been published in a language other than English, it can be submitted provided this is clearly and properly declared. Papers based on a thesis or extended version of a paper presented at a conference can be submitted.
Ethical Oversight
In educational sciences, as well as in others fields such as medicine, researchers must comply with some ethical rules while using human subjects, working on vulnerable populations or handling confidential data. T&PICD adheres to “Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research” published by the British Educational Research Association (BERA). We encourage authors who will submit their manuscript to T&PICD adopt these ethical guidelines and apply them in their research process.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Authors should include a statement disclosing any financial or other substantive conflicting, or competing, interest that may be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support should be disclosed.