Publishing Ethics
The ECOPERSIA adheres to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and maintains the highest ethical standards in line with established regulations. The journal is committed to thoroughly investigating any allegations of misconduct to uphold research integrity. All submissions will be screened using plagiarism detection software.
Process for identification of and dealing with allegations of research misconduct
The editors of ECOPERSIA are responsible for identifying and preventing the publication of papers that involve research misconduct, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, and data falsification or fabrication. If plagiarism is identified, the COPE guidelines on plagiarism will be followed.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is "wrongful appropriation" and "stealing and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions" and the representation of them as one's original work. The idea remains problematic with unclear definitions and unclear rules. Plagiarism is not in itself a crime but can constitute copyright infringement. In academia and industry, it is a serious ethical offense. Plagiarism and copyright infringement may overlap to a considerable extent, but they are not equivalent concepts, and many types of plagiarism do not constitute copyright infringement, which is defined by copyright law and may be adjudicated by courts.
Plagiarism (including self-plagiarism) or other breaches of publication ethics are taken seriously at ECOPERSIA. The rights of authors are protected, and claims of plagiarism or misuse of articles published in the journal are investigated. We use iThenticate (advanced Plagiarism-checking software) in processing the submitted manuscripts to ensure their originality.
All types of plagiarism are strictly prohibited. Manuscripts involved in plagiarism will automatically be rejected, and the authors will not have the right to submit any new manuscript temporarily (for a period of six months). The Editors and reviewers are strongly prohibited from further processing of such misconduct.
If an article is found to have plagiarized other work or contained third-party copyright material without authorization or adequate acknowledgements, or where authorship of the article is contested, ECOPERSIA reserves the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies; removing the article from the journal; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author’s institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; proscription of the author from publication in the journal or proper legal action under the principles of COPE.
Editorial Policies
1. Authorship
All authors must ensure that the submitted manuscript is original, has not been published elsewhere, and is not concurrently under consideration for publication in any other journal. The text, illustrations, tables, and all other materials included in the manuscript must not infringe any existing copyright or other rights. If it is needed to reproduce the already published copyright material, e.g., figures, tables, photos, etc., with the permission of the original author(s). Submitted manuscripts should not violate copyrights or personal/entity proprietary rights, and they should contain no abusive, defamatory, obscene, or fraudulent statements. Duplicated submissions will be immediately rejected. The above-mentioned requirements should be acknowledged and declared within the cover letter at the time of submission (see the sample). The authors should keep a high level of English language in their manuscripts prior to submission. The corresponding author has to be authorized by all co-authors, and he/she is responsible for ensuring the accuracy of all details and descriptions before submission.
The list of authors should include anyone who has significantly contributed to the writing of the article. The authors/co-authors are generally someone who fully meets the following conditions: (1) Significant participation in the design or implementation of the article (idea), analysis or interpretation of the data of the article (idea); (2) Helping to correct and edit the article (idea) in response to the reviewers; (3) Final approval of all authors to the published version; (4) Consent to respond to all scientific aspects of the article (idea) to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or correctness of each part of the work are properly reviewed and resolved.
The contribution of each author (with the clear abbreviation of their names) should be clearly stated at the end of the manuscript or on a separate page. Generally accepted definitions can be used for the role(s) of each author, e.g., Administration; Funding acquisition; original drafting; Photography; Review & editing; Sampling and field work; Software and programming, etc.
Relative scientific or professional influences of contributors should be considered while specifying principal authorship, authorship order, and other publication credits. In accordance with the COPE guidelines, ECOPERSIA allows the authors to correct authorship/correspondence within a submitted/accepted manuscript before publication, for a valid reason. All authors – including those to be added or removed – must agree to any proposed changes. Contact the Editorial office of the Journal should you require to request any changes to the authorship list and/or order. A fully completed and signed form is needed to change the authorship.
All authors should explain all the following conditions in their article before the reference list: Acknowledgments, Author Contributions, Ethical permission, Funding/ Support, Conflict of interest, and AI Use Declaration MUST be completely added before the reference list. As of the beginning of 2025, all the above-mentioned items have been deemed obligatory and required to appear within the published article.
2. Handling the complaints and appeals
ECOPERSIA follows COPE Guidelines for handling complaints against the journal, its staff, editorial board, or publisher. All appeals should be directed to the Editor-in-Chief, who may decide to seek advice from the Subject Editors or the Editorial Board. If the authors wish to request a journal editor’s decision, please submit a request letter to the journal’s online editorial office. Please explain clearly the basis for an appeal to the editor, and why you disagree with the editor’s and/or reviewers’ decision. The authors must provide clear responses (new information, new data, any evidence, or conflicts of interest) to any comments that contributed to the rejection decision.
3. Conflicts of interest
Articles published in ECOPERSIA must be accompanied by a conflict of interest statement. This statement must be declared by the authors that they do not have any potential conflicts of interest. Any direct or indirect financial interests or other factors that may have led to potential bias in the scientific or commercial aspects of the work by the various funding personnel or institutions should be clarified accordingly. These must be disclosed when it is directly or indirectly related to the work that the authors describe in their manuscript. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication in ECOPERSIA. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to inform the co-authors of the issues and to express the statement both in the cover letter to the Editor-in-Chief, in the manuscript, and in the respective form for declaration of Conflict of Interest at the time of submission. A statement is also required confirming that there is no dispute over the ownership of the data in the articles. This statement has to already be properly attributed via co-authorship or acknowledgments. In the cases that a reviewer suspects an undisclosed conflict of interest in a submitted manuscript or a reader suspects an undisclosed conflict of interest in a published article, ECOPERSIA will follow COPE’s guidelines.
4. Data sharing and reproducibility
The authors are expected to archive all data used to derive their published results in a public repository. The accepted manuscripts are required to include a data availability statement indicating whether shared data are available in repositories that guarantee preservation. The selected repository should follow the “Fair Data Principles,” which require it to be freely searchable, reusable, and permanently accessible. The statements about shared data should describe how the data can be accessed using a permanent identifier (a DOI, or an accession number) from the repository where the data are shared. In cases where legal, ethical, commercial, or other reasons prohibit data sharing, or when the authors do not intend to share the data, you must provide an appropriate data availability statement.
5. Ethical oversight
COPE’s flowcharts and guidelines address how to confront any ethical misbehavior. The Journal also follows the guidelines outlined in the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in the field of natural resources and marine sciences.
7. Post-publication discussions and corrections
It is the responsibility of the authors, when they discover a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published paper, to promptly notify the journal Editor. The corrections will be made by the Editor-in-Chief in accordance with the journal’s discretion. The action for the correction of the article depends on the publication stage. The authors have the right to raise any required corrections during the proofreading process, up to three times. The corrections to a published article can also be published under an “addendum” in the subsequent issue of the journal. On the other hand, anyone may inform the Editor-in-Chief and/or Editorial members at any time about a suspected unethical behavior or any type of misconduct by giving the necessary information/evidence to start an investigation. When a document is presented about a real error or mistake in a published article, the editor and members of the editorial board evaluate all of these documents based on their individual merits. Depending on the extent of the error or plagiarism and its impact on the overall integrity of the published study, the original article may be considered for retraction or correction, based on the severity of the claimed issue.
The Editor-in-Chief makes the decision regarding the initiation of an investigation. During an investigation, any evidence will be treated as strictly confidential and made available only to those directly involved. The accused will always be given the chance to respond to any charges made against them. Minor misconduct will be dealt with by those involved and no other parties. The simplest action is to communicate with both authors and reviewers, issuing a warning, regardless of the type of minor issue and whenever it has occurred. This may be followed by publishing a correction of a paper, e.g., when sources properly quoted in the text are omitted from the reference list, or publishing an erratum, e.g., if the error was made by editorial staff.
In the case of Major misconduct, the Editor-in-Chief, in consultation with the Editorial Board, or when needed, with a team of experts, makes the decision on the basis of available evidence to define the course of action to be taken. The possible outcomes are as follows, which can be used separately or jointly. 1) Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct; 2) Informing officially the author's/reviewer's affiliating institution; 3) The formal, announced retraction of publications from the journal in accordance with the retraction policy; 4) A ban on submissions from an individual for a defined period; 4) Referring a case to a professional organization or legal authority for further investigation and action; 5) Publication of a formal announcement or editorial describing the misconduct.
7. Retraction Policies
Articles subject to clear evidence of major breaches in publication, duplicate publication without proper attribution, fabrication and falsification, failure in disclosing the major conflict of interest, infringement of copyright, “plagiarism”, unethical issues in research, unreliable findings and major errors, using data or material that needs authorization, and bogus claims of authorship can be considered for “retracting”. Generally, withdrawal or retraction of an accepted and published paper is mainly done in order to correct the errors and to preserve the integrity of science, but not for the punishment of the author(s).
According to COPE guidelines, retraction notices will be publicly linked to the retracted article(s), including the title, authors, reasons for retraction, retractor, and date. The URL to the original article will be retained unchanged, but each page on the source PDF file will be indicated by the watermarked retraction note.
Policies for using Artificial Intelligence
Authors are solely responsible for the originality, accuracy, and integrity of their manuscript and must ensure that it adheres to all of ECOPERSIA' publication ethics policies. This includes accepting full accountability for any content produced by AI tools and any violations of publication ethics that may occur.
Although AI can contribute to the writing process, it cannot be considered an author of the manuscript and does not meet authorship criteria. AI programs cannot handle conflicts of interest or manage copyright and license agreements.
Text generated by AI, machine learning, or similar algorithms cannot be used in papers published in ECOPERSIA. If technology (AI chatbot ChatGPT and other large language models - LLMs) were used in writing the whole or parts of the manuscript and generating the images or graphical elements, it must be clearly disclosed in the “Materials and Methods” or "Acknowledgments" sections. The authors must provide a detailed explanation of which AI tools were used and how they were used. This guideline also aligns with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) position statement on the use of AI or AI-based technology in the preparation or generation of a scientific paper.
Ethics and responsibilities for the Editors
Manuscripts submitted to the ECOPERSIA are processed and published at the responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board within the determined scopes. The ultimate responsibility for editorial decisions lies with the Editor-in-Chief and/or respective Subject Editor. In the case of the accepted manuscripts, the name of the subject editor appears inside the published paper. Linguistic or copyediting of the manuscript is not expected from the editors, since they have to focus on its scientific aspect, readability, conceptual contents, and the structure for future applicability. Editors are asked not to explain the information of both reviewers and authors to each other, as well as to others. The same attitude of the editorial board members toward evaluating the received manuscript solely on scientific quality, without considering the authors or their organizational affiliations. It is the commitment of the Editor-in-Chief and the subject editors to do the review process of all manuscripts within the specified time. They are also responsible for selecting expert reviewers from among all relevant scientists with no conflicts of interest with any of the respective authors.
Assessing the novelty and consistency of the contents within each manuscript should be done by the subject editor. All editors have to strictly avoid disclosing the unpublished information before publication. Changing the order of authors or adding/deleting the names of authors by editors is strictly prohibited (see above for procedures of changes in authorship). Editors must ensure that the review steps and thorough corrections are completed for the refereed manuscripts before the acceptance notice.
Code of Ethics in ICZN
Since the scope of the journal is essentially emphasizing the Systematics/taxonomy, all the authors, reviewers and editors should follow the Code of Ethics in ICZN - Appendix A (the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature - https://code.iczn.org), when dealing with issues in zoological nomenclature: 1) Authors proposing new names should observe the following principles (2-7), which together constitute a "Code of Ethics"; 2) A zoologist should not publish a new name if he or she has reason to believe that another person has already recognized the same taxon and intends to establish a name for it (or that the taxon is to be named in a posthumous work). A zoologist in such a position should communicate with the other person (or their representatives) and only feel free to establish a new name if that person has failed to do so in a reasonable period (not less than a year); 3) A zoologist should not publish a new replacement name (a nomen novum) or other substitute name for a junior homonym when the author of the latter is alive; that author should be informed of the homonymy and be allowed a reasonable time (at least a year) in which to establish a substitute name; 4) No author should propose a name that, to his or her knowledge or reasonable belief, would be likely to give offence on any grounds; 5) Intemperate language should not be used in any discussion or writing which involves zoological nomenclature, and all debates should be conducted in a courteous and friendly manner; 6) Editors and others responsible for the publication of zoological papers should avoid publishing any material which appears to them to contain a breach of the above principles; 7) The observation of these principles is a matter for the proper feelings and conscience of individual zoologists, and the Commission is not empowered to investigate or rule upon alleged breaches of them.
Ethics and responsibilities for the Reviewers
The double-blind peer-review process helps us ensure fair peer reviews free of bias or conflicts of interest. In the case of well-known authors, the selected reviewers should even state they have no conflict of interest before accepting the review. Otherwise, he/she should inform the editor and decline to review. Accordingly, the review should not be influenced by non-scientific issues arising from the manuscript's origin (ethnicity, nationality, political, or religious affiliations). In case of the incompatibility of the subject of the article with the expertise of the reviewers, they must announce it to the editorial office at the earliest opportunity. We encourage the invited reviewers to provide details and accurate information about their areas of expertise. It is clear that impersonating another person can constitute serious misconduct. The reviewers are invited to perform accurate and impartial reviews within a certain time period. The reviewers' comments and suggestions should be explicit, transparent, and non-inflammatory, avoiding derogatory or libelous remarks. The insulting or uninformative reports by the reviewer(s) will be rescinded. The reviewers must strictly avoid disclosing unpublished information before publication. They also should not use the data/information/ideas obtained from the manuscript for their own and/or third parties’ advantage.