Publication Ethics / Peer Review Process

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Journal of the Black Sea / Mediterranean Environment is an international journal committed to provide a platform where standards of publication ethics are the major aspect of the editorial and peer-review process. The Editorial process for a manuscript consists of a review, blind and peer-reviewed, followed by editor’s decision to accept or decline the submission.

Journal of the Black Sea / Mediterranean Environment abides by the following principles defined by COPE’s Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing specified by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The relevant duties and expectations of all parties involved in the publishing process including editors, reviewers, authors and others are required to adhere to the publication ethics guidelines and malpractice statements defined below.

Authors’ Ethical Responsibilities

Authors of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed and the results, followed by an objective discussion of the significance of the work. The manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Review articles should be accurate, objective and comprehensive, and it should be clearly identified as such. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour are unacceptable.
Authors may be requested raw data on their framing of evaluation processes; in such a case authors should be ready to submit the expected data and information to the editorial board for at least five years.
Authors should ensure that they have written and submit only entirely original works, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the work reported in the manuscript should also be cited. Plagiarism takes many forms, from “passing off” another’s paper as the author’s own, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another’s paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behaviour and is unacceptable.
The work submitted for publication must have not been published in another journal or submitted at the same time.
Corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the author list and verify that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication.
Authors should disclose any conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the work should be disclosed (including the grant number or other reference number if any).
Authors should ensure that they have properly acknowledged the work of others, and should also cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately (from conversation, correspondence or discussion with third parties) must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source.
If the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, authors must clearly identify these in the manuscript. If the work involves the use of animals, the authors should ensure that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committee(s) has approved them; the manuscript should contain a statement to this effect.
Authors are obliged to participate in the peer review process and cooperate fully by responding promptly to editors’ requests for raw data, clarifications, and proof of ethics approval, patient consents and copyright permissions. In the case of a first decision of “revisions necessary”, authors should respond to the reviewers’ comments systematically, point by point, and in a timely manner, revising and re-submitting their manuscript to the journal by the deadline given.
When authors discover significant errors or inaccuracies in their own published work, it is their obligation to promptly notify the journal’s editors or publisher and cooperate with them either to correct the paper in the form of an erratum or to retract the paper. If the editors or publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error or inaccuracy, then it is the authors’ obligation to promptly correct or retract the paper or provide evidence to the journal editors of the correctness of the paper.

Referees’ Ethical Responsibilities

Peer review assists editors in making editorial decisions and, through editorial communications with authors, may assist authors in improving their manuscripts.
The evaluation should be carried out on time and on the below ethical responsibility.
Reviews should be conducted objectively and observations formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can use them for improving the manuscript. Personal criticism of the authors is inappropriate.
Referees should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. A reviewer should also notify the editors of any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other manuscript (published or unpublished) of which they have personal knowledge.
Referees who has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript and the work described therein should immediately notify the editors to declare their conflicts of interest and decline the invitation to review so that alternative referees can be arranged.

Editors’ Ethical Responsibilities

Editors evaluate submitted manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic value (importance, originality, validity, clarity) and its relevance to the journal’s scope, without regard to the authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnic origin, citizenship, religious belief, political philosophy or institutional affiliation. Personal information about the articles is kept confidential.
Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, referees, potential referees, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
The editors will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions connected to the papers.
The editors ensure that all submitted manuscripts being considered for publication undergo peer-review by at least two referees who are experts in the field. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for deciding which of the manuscripts submitted to the journal will be published, based on the validation of the work in question, its importance to researchers and readers, the referees’ comments, and such legal requirements as are currently in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

Publisher’ Ethical Responsibilities

In cases of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the editors, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and to amend the article in question.

Conflict of Interest

The journal requires the authors and all individuals taking part in the evaluation process to disclose any existing or potential conflict of interest (such as financial ties, academic commitments, personal relationships, institutional affiliations) that could unduly influence one’s responsibilities. To disclose potential conflicts of interest, the ICMJE Potential Conflict of Interest Disclosure Form should be filled in and submitted by authors as explained in the Author Form of the journal. Cases of a potential conflict of interest are resolved within the scope of COPE Conflict of Interest Flowcharts and ICMJE Conflict of Interest guidelines

Besides conflict of interest, all financial support received to carry out research must be declared while submitting the paper.

Corrections, Retraction, Expression of Concern

Editor should consider publishing correction if minor errors that do not effect the results, interpretations and conclusions of the published paper are detected. Editor should consider retraction if major errors and/or misconduction that invalidate results and conclusions are detected.

Editor should consider issuing an expression of concern if there is evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors; there is evidence that the findings are not reliable and institutions of the authors do not investigate the case or the possible investigation seems to be unfair or nonconclusive.

The guidelines of COPE and ICJME are taken into consideration regarding correction, retractions or expression of concern.

Retraction

Journal follows COPE’s Retraction Guidelines in case of retraction.

The editor has the right to retract an article if:

There is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable; either as a result of a major error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error), or as a result of fabrication (e.g. of data) or falsification (e.g. image manipulation).
It contains plagiarised content.
It has been published elsewhere without proper attribution.
It contains material or data without authorisation for use.
There is copyright infringement or there is some other serious legal issue.
It reports unethical research.
There is evidence that the peer-review process is compromised or manipulated.
The author(s) failed to disclose a significant competing interest (also known as a conflict of interest) that, in the opinion of the editor, would have unduly influenced the interpretation of the work or the recommendations of the editors and peer reviewers.

In case of retraction the following steps are followed:

Retraction notice including article title is published in a subsequent issue of the journal. The retraction notice is paginated and listed in the table of contents.
A link is provided between the retraction notice and the original article in the electronic version.
The online article is preceded by a page containing the retraction notice; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.
The original article remains unchanged, except for a watermark on the .pdf on each page stating that it has been “retracted”.

Article Removal for Legal Reasons

In the following circumstances, except the metadata (title and authors), the text of the article is removed and a page informing that the article has been removed for legal reasons replaces the article.

The article is found to be defamatory or to infringe the legal rights of others, and retraction is not deemed to be an adequate solution.
The article has been, or is reasonably likely to be the subject of a court order.
There is a significant risk to public health.

Peer Review Process

Manuscripts are only accepted for review if they have been authorized by each individual author and have never been published in or submitted to another journal.

The online submitted manuscript is pre-checked by the Technical Assistant. If there is no problem in terms of spelling rules of journal, the editor assesses the suitable ones based on their originality, methodology, significance of the topic covered, and adherence to the journal’s scope.

The editor guarantees a fair double-blind peer assessment of the chosen submissions and assesses them for their scientific merit regardless of the authors’ political ideology, gender, ethnic background, citizenship, or religious beliefs.

Associate editors send the chosen papers to at least two external national and international reviewers for review, and the editor makes a publication decision after the authors make changes that support the referees’ assertions.

Editor does not allow any conflicts of interest between the authors, editors and reviewers and is responsible for final decision for publication of the manuscripts in the Journal.

Reviewers’ judgments must be objective. Reviewers’ comments on the following aspects are expected while conducting the review.

Is the subject of article within the scope of the journal?
Is this an original contribution with some significant findings?
Does the title and abstract clearly and sufficiently reflect its content?
Are the presentation, organization and length satisfactory?
Are the interpretations and conclusions justified by the data?
Are the data analyses appropriate and rigorous?
Are sampling strategy and/or experiments well designed?
Are all tables and figures relevant clear and concise?
Are all references necessary and adequate?
Are there any ethical issues surrounding the paper?
Is the quality of the English satisfactory?

Is the paper acceptable for publication:
– in its present form?
– with minor revisions?
– with major revisions? or
– unacceptable

If accepted, the paper is acceptable for publication as:
– Research Article
– Short Communication
– Review Article, or
– Others (specify)

An online software is used to check the final version of submitted manuscripts for plagiarism before publishing. Reviewers must ensure that all the information related to submitted manuscripts is kept confidential and must report to the editor if they are aware of copyright infringement and plagiarism on the author’s side.

A reviewer who feels unqualified to review the topic of a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself/herself from the review process.

Artificial Intelligence Policy

The Artificial Intelligence Policy, prepared in light of developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and practices in scholarly publishing, sets out the editorial and ethical principles that authors, reviewers, and editors should follow when using such technologies.

The following source has been considered in the preparation of the AI policy:

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) – Authorship and AI tools

AI-assisted technologies (such as large language models [LLMs], chatbots, or image generators) can develop and produce a wide variety of content, including text, images, audio, and synthetic data. When used ethically and safely, these capabilities can increase productivity and foster innovation, but when used without human guidance, they pose risks such as inaccurate and biased results, omissions and errors in citations, deficiencies in protecting privacy and intellectual property rights, and potential violations of authors’ and publishers’ rights.

The Journal the following core principles to avoid these risks in the use of AI:

Details of any AI used in the production of content (including but not limited to text, figures, images, and code) must be declared and clearly explained in the appropriate section of the paper (as an acknowledgement and/or in the methods section).
No AI tool may be listed as an author in any scientific paper.
Authors are responsible for the accuracy, completeness, and originality of their work, even if AI is used in any way; they are responsible for the proper referencing and attribution of others’ ideas, data, words, or other materials.
Reviewers and editors must not upload submitted work, in whole or in part, to any generative AI application.

In the editorial processes of the journal, tools are available to assist editors in identifying AI-generated content.

On the other hand, it is common to use AI tools that provide suggestions for improving and enhancing readability, language, and grammar, and such AI tools can be used in the journal under the supervision of editors and authors.

For Autors

Authors are required to declare if they have used AI-assisted technologies (such as large language models [LLMs], chatbots, or image generators) in the creation of their submitted work.
Authors should explain, both in the cover letter and in the appropriate section of the submitted paper (as a footnote and/or in the methods section), which AI tool and which version of it they have used and for what purpose.
Authors should also indicate how they used the AI tool and how they assessed the validity of the results obtained using this technology, and what aspects of the paper, manuscript content, data or supporting files were influenced by the use of the AI tool or were generated by AI.
It is the authors’ responsibility to ensure the accuracy, validity and appropriateness of content and citations generated by AI-assisted technologies and to eliminate potential errors, inconsistencies and biased results.
Authors should always check the original sources to eliminate possible plagiarism, recognising that there is a potential for plagiarism in texts produced with AI-assisted technologies. They should confirm that they have checked and that the sources are original.
AI-assisted tools (such as ChatGPT) cannot be listed as authors because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work, and these responsibilities are essential to authorship. Therefore, authors are responsible for all material involving the use of AI-assisted technologies. Authors should ensure that all statements in the article that state the hypotheses, interpretations, conclusions, limitations, and implications of the study represent their own opinions.
Studies created by authors using AI tools in the following ways, which substitute for the basic researcher’s and author’s responsibilities, violate the principles of scientific publishing and publication ethics, and such studies are not eligible for inclusion in publications:

- Generation of text or code without rigorous review,
- Generation of synthetic data to replace missing data without a robust methodology,
- Creation of any inaccurate, synthetic content, including abstracts or supplementary materials,
- Creation and manipulation of images and figures (pictures, graphs, data tables, medical images, image snippets, computer codes and formulae) or original research data (enhancing, hiding, moving, removing or adding a particular feature within an image or figure) using AI.

For Reviewers

It is essential to maintain confidentiality in the peer review process and not to share or use the reviewed work in this process. (COPE – Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers)

Reviewers should not upload a manuscript or part of a manuscript submitted to them for review to generative AI tools or large language models to assist in the review, evaluation or decision-making process, as uploading content to such AI tools by reviewers violates the authors’ privacy and property rights.
Reviewing a scientific paper is a responsibility that can only be undertaken by human beings. The critical thinking and original evaluation required for peer review is beyond the scope of this technology, and there is a risk that the technology will produce inaccurate, incomplete or biased conclusions about the paper. The peer review report and decision letters should reflect the personal assessment of the reviewers and editors of the submitted content. The reviewer is responsible and accountable for the content of his/her report.
AI tools may be used in a limited way to improve the quality of the language of the peer review report (for translation or language editing) in the context of peer review. If such use is made, the reviewer must declare the use when submitting the report.
Reviewers who suspect inappropriate or undisclosed use of generative AI in a submission should report their concerns to the editor.

For Editors

Editors are obliged to ensure that the confidentiality of the manuscripts submitted to the journal is maintained during the evaluation process, and it is essential that the peer-reviewed work is not shared or used outside the parties involved in that process. (COPE – Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors) (COPE – Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors).

Editors should not upload a submitted article, or any part of it, to generative Artificial Intelligence tools or Big Language Models to assist in the review, evaluation or decision-making process, as this may violate authors’ privacy and property rights.
Managing the editorial review of a scientific article implies responsibilities that can only be attributed to humans. Generative AI or AI-assisted technologies should not be used by editors to assist in the evaluation or decision-making process of an article, as the critical thinking and original evaluation required for this task is beyond the scope of this technology and there is a risk that the technology will produce inaccurate, incomplete or biased conclusions about the article. The editor is responsible and accountable for the editorial process, the final decision and its communication to the authors.
Editors should not use generative AI tools to compose decision letters or abstracts of unpublished research.
Editors may use generative AI tools to help find appropriate reviewers.
If editors suspect the use of generative AI in a submitted manuscript or a submitted referee report, they should conduct an editorial review of the matter and consider the policy.