Editorial Policies and Ethics
1. Authorship Rules
Only people who made substantial intellectual contributions can be listed as authors.
To qualify as an author, a person must meet all ICMJE criteria:
- Contributed to data acquisition, analysis, or interpretation
- Drafted or critically revised the manuscript
- Approved the final version for publication
- Agreed to be accountable for the integrity and accuracy of the work
Instead, they should be listed in the Acknowledgments section.
2. Contributors vs Authors
Two categories must be clearly separated:
- Authors: People who meet all authorship criteria and appear in the byline.
- Contributors: People who helped but do not meet full authorship criteria, such as:
- technical assistance
- data collection support
- administrative help
3. Prohibited Practices
These are unethical and forbidden:
- Paying someone to be an author
- Selling authorship positions
- Listing someone who did not contribute
- Gift authorship (adding famous researchers for prestige)
Authors must list the institution where the research was conducted as the primary affiliation.
⚠️ Misrepresenting affiliation (for example using a famous institution without being affiliated) is considered publishing misconduct and may trigger an investigation.
5. Authors' Contribution Roles
Examples of roles include:
- Conceptualization – research idea
- Methodology – designing methods
- Investigation – conducting experiments
- Data curation – organizing data
- Formal analysis – statistical analysis
- Visualization – figures and charts
- Software – coding
- Funding acquisition – securing grants
- Supervision – research oversight
- Project administration – managing the project
- Writing – original draft – writing first version
- Writing – review & editing – revising the manuscript
- Validation – verifying results
- Resources – providing materials/equipment
6. Corresponding Author Responsibilities
The corresponding author and the other authors of the manuscript are responsible for the selection of the contributors as authors based on the criteria mentioned above. This is not the responsibility of the editors of our journals. Moreover, “the corresponding author is the one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more coauthors”. These tasks may be delegated to other author(s) (ICMJE). The corresponding author is responsible for:
- Communicating with the journal
- Managing the submission process
- Ensuring ethical compliance
- Handling peer review communication
- Responding to questions after publication
At submission, authors have to disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models (LLMs), chatbots, or image creators) in the production of submitted work. Authors who use such technology should describe, in the submitted work (and in the cover letter, if submitted) in the appropriate section if applicable, how they used it (ICMJE).
8. Changing Authors
Changing the author list is strongly restricted.
- Must be requested through the platform
- Allowed only in exceptional cases
- Changes after acceptance are usually rejected
- Journals may contact institutions if manipulation is suspected
- Only real contributors can be authors
- Everyone’s role must be clearly defined
- Authorship cannot be bought or gifted
- Institutions and contributions must be truthful
B. ETHICS and MISCONDUCT
Research Ethics
• If the research described involves human subjects or experimental animals, the authors must give details in the manuscript of the approval obtained for the protocol from the Ethics Committee of the institution in which the research was undertaken.
• Experiments on live vertebrates or higher invertebrates must be demonstrated to be ethically acceptable and in accordance with institutional and national guidelines or regulations for the use and welfare of laboratory animals.
• If the manuscript reports medical research involving human subjects, authors must include a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects, and that the research was carried out according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. Any form of registration that may identify a patient must be excluded from the content of the paper. When clinical images of patients are submitted it is the responsibility of the authors to obtain, prior to submission, full informed consent by the patient for the use of the photographs, and to ensure that full anonymity is preserved.
Publication Ethics
• We subscribe to the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics on publication ethics guidelines. The manuscript should be an original work (we do not accept manuscripts that were previously published (either in full or partial)) and can’t be submitted to other journals while in review with us. The submitted manuscript should contain no material, instruction or statements that can cause harm, or infringe upon the rights or the privacy of others. The work included in the accepted manuscript should respect general principles of good scientific practice, such as maintaining professional standards, documenting results, rigorously questioning all findings, and honestly attributing any contributions made by partners, competitors and predecessors. Duplicate submissions, Redundant Publication, Plagiarism, Citation Manipulation,
Data Fabrication and Inadequate Authorship Attribution will result in the rejection of the manuscript (retraction if the manuscript was already published) and interdiction of the 1st and corresponding authors to submit manuscripts to any journal published by Applied Systems srl for a period of at least 5 years.
• All conflict of interests related to the research work, as well as the financial support have to be recognized and disclosed in the manuscript.
• All individuals with a significant scientific contribution to the manuscript have to be included as authors and informed of / agreed with the terms and conditions of this agreement
• All non-scientific contributors (such as those providing reagents) should be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript
• The corresponding author will take the responsibility for any inadequate practice, such as plagiarism; our journals, editors, reviewers and publishing house can’t be made responsible for any inadequate practice performed by authorsOur Editors reserve the right to reject a paper on ethical grounds.
Retractions
• At suggestions of the Editor/Editorial Board, any already published article can be retracted on either ethical or scientific backgrounds. We are following the Committee on Publication Ethics’ guidlines (COPE’s guidelines), published here.
Scientific background: the Editors should have “clear evidence that findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct or honest erros”
Ethical background: “the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper crossreferencing, permission or justification”, “it constitutes plagiarism” or “it represents unethical research”.
“Retracted articles should be clearly identified as such in all electronic sources (e.g. on the journal website and any bibliographic databases). Editors are responsible for ensuring that retractions are labelled in such a way that they are identified by bibliographic databases (which should also include a link to the retracted article). The retraction should appear on all electronic searches for the retracted publication.” (COPE guildlines)
C. CONFIDENTIALITY
Applied Systems will not share information about the unpublished manuscripts with any third party outside our editorial board and publishing group. The Editor(s) and reviewers of a manuscript have to keep the submitted manuscripts (and all the information related to them) confidential. Both the editor(s) and the reviewers must declare all the potential conflict of interest and be constructive and objective in their comments.
In concordance with the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers, the reviewers should:
- “only agree to review manuscripts for which they have the subject expertise”
- “respect the confidentiality of peer review and not reveal any details of a manuscript”
- “not use information obtained during the peer-review process for their own or any other person’s or organization’s advantage”
- “declare all potential conflicting interests”
- “be objective and constructive in their reviews, refraining from being hostile”
- “acknowledge that peer review is largely a reciprocal endeavor”
- “provide journal with personal and professional information that is accurate”
- “recognize that impersonation of another individual during the review process is considered serious misconduct”
If the reviewers want to have someone else to help them with the review, they first have to obtain the approval from the editor.
D. CONFLICT OF INTEREST
The editor, reviewers and the authors of a manuscript have to disclose if they have any conflict of/competing interests (either financial or nonfinancial). The authors’ conflict of interest statement is included within their manuscript. If the authors do not have any conflicts of interest, the accepted manuscript will include the following statement: “The authors declare no conflicts of interest”.
“A conflict of interest is a set of circumstances that creates a risk that professional judgement or actions regarding a primary interest will be unduly influenced by a secondary interest." “Primary interest refers to the principal goals of the profession or activity, such as the protection of clients, the health of patients, the integrity of research, and the duties of public office. Secondary interest includes not only financial gain but also such motives as the desire for professional advancement and the wish to do favors for family and friends, but conflict of interest rules usually focus on financial relationships because they are relatively more objective, fungible, and quantifiable. The secondary interests are not treated as wrong in themselves, but become objectionable when they are believed to have greater weight than the primary interests” (Acocella, N. and Di Bartolomeo, G. and Piacquadio, P.G. [2009], "Conflict of interest, (implicit) coalitions and Nash policy games", in: Economics Letters, 105: 303-305).
NOTE: As of April 20, 2020 any article submitted, accepted and published by Discoveries, having any of the authors also editors of the journal, has to disclose this in the Conflict of Interest statement! Please include a statement such as the following: "Disclosure: xx is a member of the editor board of the journal Discoveries."
E. REFERENCES
All ideas presented in the manuscript that come from external sources must be accordingly cited. We acknowledge that the authors usually build their work on their previous findings and they have to be cited in the submitted manuscript. However, the authors should avoid citing with predilection their own articles. Moreover, the authors should not cite sources that do not read (the validity of the cited sources have to be established), advertising materials, and should try to cite the main experimental work instead of the subsequent published reviews.
F. RESEARCH INVOLVING HUMAN SUBJECTS and MATERIAL, and CLINICAL DATASETS
Manuscripts that include research involving human subjects must contain details on the approval obtained for the protocol from the Ethics Committee of the institution in which the research was conducted (or an appropriate Ethics Committee).
The authors have to respect the right for privacy of the participants in the study. An informed consent has to be obtained by the authors before the study is performed and a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements or Methods sections confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects, and that the research was carried out according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki. If the informed consent was not obtained, the authors have to explain why. The authors have to also prove that the privacy of the participants is not affected.
I. RESEARCH INVOLVING ANIMAL STUDIES
Manuscripts that include research involving animals must follow the recommendation of the ICLA (International Council for Laboratory Animal Science) - Ethics and Animal Welfare Committee and should contain a statement on the appropriateness of the animal procedures/approval obtained for the employed protocol from the Ethics Committee of the institution in which the research was conducted (or an appropriate Ethics Committee).
Examples of such statements in our already published articles:
- “All animal experiments and study protocols were approved by local authorities, complying with German animal protection laws (AZ 50.203.2-AC 37, 26/05).” Curaj A et al., Discoveries, 2015, April-June; 3(2): e45. DOI: 10.15190/d.2015.37
- “Animal experiments were approved by local authoritis and complied with animal protection statutes" Schuh A et al, Discoveries 2014, Jan-Mar; 2(1): e9. DOI: 10.15190/d.2014.1
J. DATA AVAILABILITY AND REPOSITORIES
All data that is important for the conclusions of the manuscript has to be included in either the main body of the manuscript or in the Supplementary Information (which can contain an unlimited amount of data in any form the authors consider appropriate for easy accessibility, including 2D or 3D movies, power point slides, pictures, tables and text. We also encourage the use of the many available repositories for data deposition. Check Nature’s, NIH’s or BMC Central’s lists of repositories.
K. CORRECTIONS
All changes made to a manuscript affecting its scientific or non-scientific content, including any change to the authorship, will be corrected by the publication of an Erratum, linked to the original article and indexed. These changes should be approved by all authors and the editor.
M. RECOMMENDATIONS, APPRECIATIONS, CRITIQUES AND CONCERNS
Any inquiry, recommendation, critique and/or complain should be sent to the Editorial Board by e-mail at submission@discoveriesjournals.org
Applied Systems and the Editorial Board are committed to respond to, and address them as soon as possible.