STATEMENT OF THE MILITARY TECHNICAL COURIER ON ETHICAL CONDUCT
NOTE: The editorial policy of the Military Technical Courier is based on the COPE Core Practices, common COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing as well as on the best accepted practices in scientific publishing. The Military Technical Courier has been a COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) member since 2nd May 2018 and a member of OASPA (Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association) since 27th November 2015. The editorial office applies Checklist for open access publishers on implementing the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. This document is part of the UNESCO Open Science Toolkit, designed to support implementation of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. It has been produced in partnership with OASPA.
The main scope of the Military Technical Courier scientific journal is publishing scientific articles after peer reviewing. In the editing process leading to publishing scientific articles, it is necessary to reach an agreement on ethical principles in the behavior of all parties involved (Editorial Office i.e. Editor, members of the Editorial Board, reviewers, and authors alike). The aforementioned principles and practices are defined by this Statement of the Military Technical Courier on Ethical Conduct.
Measures, activities, responsibilities, and duties of the Military Technical Courier Editorial Office
The Editorial Office of the Military Technical Courier does not charge for submitting manuscripts from their authors nor from third parties. The whole process of processing and publishing is completely free of charge for authors – from the manuscript submission services through processing to the article publishing services. There are no hidden costs whatsoever.
The Editorial Office decides finally which manuscripts are to be published. Decisions are based only on manuscript values. In making decisions, there is no discrimination on the basis of race, sex/gender, religion, ethnic origin or political beliefs. In making decisions, the Editorial Office is guided by the Journal’s policy, complying with legal regulations dealing with libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
Manuscripts are kept as confidential material. No information and/or ideas from manuscripts are to be used for private purposes without authors’ explicit consent in writing.
In its work, following the recommendations of the Centre for Evaluation in Education and Science (CEON/CEES), the Editorial Office uses the Serbian Citation Index (SCIndeks) ASSISTANT electronic editing system which provides full transparency of the publishing process (developed on the basis of the OJS platform) while being fully responsible for accepting and publishing articles.
The editing process in the Military Technical Courier consists of the following steps of the Editorial Office:
1. After receiving manuscripts, the Office asks the authors to fill in the Authorship Statement in which they: specify their contribution to the manuscript; confirm that they are familiar with the Journal’s policy regarding the retraction of already published articles; confirm that the submitted manuscript is an original paper written and signed by its authors, not previously published, not considered for publication elsewhere and not concurrently sent for review to other journals; confirm that the manuscript and the additional material contain neither any false statements that could be considered defamation, any false claims nor material that in any way endangers personal or property rights of natural or legal persons; confirm that they do not have a conflict of interest that could cast doubt on the article’s integrity and the credibility of the results published in it; confirm that they have obtained permission from copyright holders to use all content from copyright-protected works and other copyright-protected material used in the manuscript; and confirm that they have acknowledged the sources in the manuscript and supplementary material.
2. Before the Editor attends to the manuscript, the Editorial Office checks the manuscript content for plagiarism in order to establish the originality of submitted papers and prevent plagiarism and duplication. The Military Technical Courier does not publish plagiarized papers. The Editorial Office is of the opinion that plagiarism i.e. using another’s ideas, words or other creative ways of contributing without acknowledging their source and presenting them as one’s own is serious violation of research and publication ethics. Plagiarism may also involve copyright infringement which is violation of law.
Plagiarism involves:
- Verbatim or nearly verbatim copying or paraphrasing parts of other authors’ texts without clear citing of the source purposefully, in order to hide the source;
- Copying equations, data or graphical presentations from documents of others without clearly acknowledging the source and/or without the authorization of the original author or copyright holder;
A manuscript showing obvious signs of plagiarism is rejected automatically. In case plagiarism is found in an already published article, the article is revoked (retracted) following the procedure given in point 6.
In order to prevent plagiarism, the Journal uses the iThenticate/CrossRef system within the SCIndeks Assistant service for checking manuscripts. The results obtained by such checking are verified by the Editorial Office in accordance with the COPE guidelines and recommendations.
Military Technical Courier does not allow the use of generative AI nor AI-assisted technologies such as Large Language Models for writing papers. The use of these technologies is allowed exclusively for improving the language and readability of papers but only under strong supervision of authors. The Editorial Office of the Military Technical Courier may use forensic tools and special software to identify unethical writing of papers with the help of generative artificial intelligence and AI-assisted technologies. Papers found to have used these technologies unethically will be rejected during the editing and review process or they will be subsequently retracted if these malpractices are found in already published articles.
3. After being checked for plagiarism, a manuscript is dealt with by the Editor who continues the publishing process by choosing peer reviewers. Neither the Editorial Team nor the Editor in charge of the particular manuscript are allowed to be in a conflict of interest in the case of the manuscript in question.
If there is a conflict of interest, it is up to the Editorial Board to decide on peer reviewers and further actions regarding the manuscript. The Editorial Board members who might be in a conflict of interest are also excluded from the decision-making process in the case of the manuscript in question.
4. Manuscripts are sent to reviewers only after the initial assessment stating that, based on their form and content scope, they are eligible for publication in the Military Technical Courier. Special care is taken that the initial assessment does not last longer than necessary.
The Military Technical Courier makes use of double-blind peer review of all papers.
It is mandatory for the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Team members to take appropriate measures that authors and reviewers remain anonymous to each other during and after the reviewing process, in accordance with the double-blind peer review method. The Editorial Team of the Military Technical Courier can give information on the submitted manuscript only to the author, reviewers or potential reviewers if necessary.
Every manuscript has to be reviewed by at least two reviewers who are not aware of each other’s identity and who review the manuscript independently of each other. Reviewers are chosen solely based on whether they have relevant knowledge for the particular paper review. They must not have the same affiliation as the paper author(s) and they are not allowed to have been co-authors with them in the recent past. Possible suggestions of manuscript authors on engaging particular reviewers are not accepted.
The purpose of a review is to help the Editorial Team make a decision whether the paper should be accepted or rejected and to improve the quality of the manuscript through the process of communication with the Editor, authors and other reviewers. During the reviewing process, the Editor-in-Chief may ask the author to submit additional information, including raw data, if it is necessary for assessing the manuscript. The Editor and the reviewers should treat such information as confidential and should not use it for any other purpose.
The reviewing process usually lasts for four weeks maximum, and only exceptionally up to three months. The period of time from the manuscript submission to its publishing is approximately 90 days.
If authors have some serious and justifiable concern with reviews, the Office checks whether the reviews in question are objective and of academic standard. If the objectivity or quality of these reviews are questionable, the Editor engages additional peer reviewers.
Additional reviewers are also engaged when the decisions of the assigned reviewers are contradictory (accept/reject) or somehow incompatible.
The final decision on the acceptance of a manuscript for publication is made exclusively by the Editorial Team.
5. In extreme cases, especially when the choice of journals is limited due to the paper’s narrow subject field, it is acceptable that the members of the Editorial Team of the Military Technical Courier may also be authors of scientific articles published in it. However, in this case, the Editorial Team ensures that the double-blind review process is even more transparent and more rigorous. This means that the Editorial Office will make every effort to maintain the integrity of the review and to minimize any bias by having another associate editor handle the review procedure independently of the editor – author in a completely transparent process. The Editorial Team will take special care that a reviewer does not recognize the author’s identity. As an extra precaution, if and when such an article is published, the Editorial Team may accompany the article with a note about a high level of transparency of the editing and reviewing processes in question.
6. In case of the violation of the rights of the Military Technical Courier, copyright holders or authors as well as in case of multiple publication, fake authorship, plagiarism, data manipulation or any other malpractice, the published article must be retracted.
Articles can also be retracted for correcting numerous and/or fundamental flaws which cannot be dealt with by post-publication corrections. Retractions are issued by the Editorial Team, the author(s) or by both parties based on mutual agreement.
A retraction notice has a form of a separate paper listed in the Contents of an issue, classified as “Retraction”.
Retractions are published in accordance with the COPE Guidelines elaborated by the CEON/CEES in its database where the Military Technical Courier is primarily indexed.
The CEON/CEES publishes the national citation index where the metadata of retraction notices and related retracted articles must be clearly and appropriately marked and mutually cross-linked. An electronic version of the original article (the one being retracted) is provided with a HTML link to the retraction notice. Retracted articles are retained in their original form but with a watermark on each page of the PDF document indicating that the article in question is RETRACTED.
7. The Editorial Office is open to academic, scientifically based, collegial and productive exchange of opinions and critiques as well as for expressing possible disagreements regarding the results in articles published in the Military Technical Courier by enabling polemics and reactions to be published in the Journal’s section “Letters to the Editor”.
Measures, activities, responsibilities, and duties of the Military Technical Courier reviewers
Reviewers are required to assess the scientific and professional values of manuscripts in a qualified and timely manner. They have to focus especially on the genuine contribution and originality of manuscripts. A review should be completely unbiased and the reviewer’s assessment unambiguous and backed with arguments.
Reviewers assess manuscripts with regard to the compliance of the content with the Journal’s character, importance and effectiveness of the content, convenience of the methods applied, scientific value of the presented information as well as with regard to the style, tone and form of the text. A review has a standard form which comprises assessment of particular elements of a manuscript, general assessment and final recommendation. Personal criticism of the author is unacceptable.
Reviewers must not be in a conflict of interest with authors or research funders. If such a conflict exists, the reviewer is obliged to inform the Editor about it in due time. Reviewers should not accept to review papers out of the scope of their full competence.
They should notify the Editor-in-Chief if they have a reasonable doubt about the author violating ethical standards. A duty of reviewers is to call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge. Also, hey should recognize relevant sources which have not been taken into account in the manuscript. They may recommend citing particular references but must not insist on citing articles published in the Military Technical Courier or their own papers if there is no justification for doing so.
Their suggestions should aim at improving the manuscript’s quality. If they conclude the paper deserves to be published but with corrections, they are required to provide detailed instructions.
Manuscripts sent to reviewers must be treated as confidential documents. The material from manuscripts must not be used for reviewers’ own research without the author’s explicit consent in writing.
The Editorial Office of The Military Technical Courier encourages reviewers to verify their reviews on their personal profile pages on the Web of Science platform, according to the instructions on the page Registration in Web of Science.
When reviewers submit their peer reviews to The Military Technical Courier, they will be asked whether they would like to track, verify and showcase them on the WoS platform. Reviewers can further use their verified peer reviews as evidence of their contribution to the scientific community in applications for promotion, grants, etc.
The reviewing policy of the Military Technical Courier:
- allows visibility of the review in public (only after the article has been published),
- shows titles of reviewed articles to reviewers (only after the article has been published).
Меasures, activities, responsibilities and duties of the Military Technical Courier authors
Authors undertake that the manuscripts are their original contribution, that they have not been published before, and that they are not considered for publication elsewhere.
Parallel submission represents violation of ethical codes which eliminates the manuscript in question from being further considered for publication in the Military Technical Courier. A paper already published elsewhere cannot be published in the Military Technical Courier.
Authors are fully responsible for the complete content of their manuscripts. The manuscript should not contain unfunded or illegal statements nor infringe on the rights of others.
When writing their papers, authors are not allowed to use generative AI nor AI-assisted technologies such as Large Language Models. These technologies are not to be used for the realization of the key authors’ task which is to draw scientifically based conclusions and recommendations. Artificial intelligence tools can be used in the process of research to analyze and draw conclusions from data.
Authors are required to make sure that their team mentioned in the manuscript consisits only of individuals whose contribution to the content of the manuscript is significant. If there were other individuals who participated in some other important moments of the research project or in the manuscript preparation, their contribution is to be mentioned in a footnote or in a separate note (Acknowledgement).
The name and the code number of the research project from which the paper originates must be given in a note, as well as the full name of the funding institution. In case the paper has been presented orally elsewhere with the same title or a similar one, the details of such a communication have to be metioned in a note as well.
Authors’ duty is to correctly and completely quote the sources which had a significant influence on the content of the research and the manuscript. Fragments of the manuscript, including the text, equations, graphical presentations, figures and tables, directly included from the works of others, must be clearly marked e.g. by quotation marks with a precise reference to the original source (page number) or in a separate paragraph if they are bigger in size.
Full references of all citations in the main text must be given in a separate section (References) in a uniform way, complying with the citation style used in the Military Technical Courier (Harvard Style Manual). The Reference Section contains only the cited sources, not all sources used in the preparation of the manuscript.
In case authors find an error in their article after its publication, they are obliged to promptly notify the Editor-in-Chief (or the Editorial Office) and cooperate in the process of retracting or correcting the article.
Authors are under the obligation to declare in their manuscript whether there is a financial or any other conflict of interest that may influence the results or interpretations of the results.
If the research involves chemicals, activities or equipment posing risk to the health of humans or animals, this must be clearly stated in the manuscript.
When submitting their manuscript, authors agree to comply with the editorial policy of the Military Technical Courier and they confirm such compliance by submitting the Authorship Statement.
Handling allegations of misconduct
Any individual or institution may notify the Editor and/or Editorial Team of ethical malpractice and other misconduct by supplying undisputed information/evidence to start an enquiry. The procedure for investigating the case raised with the supplied evidence is as follows:
- Editor-in-Chief determines to start investigation;
- all evidence is considered confidential during investigation and is available only to those directly involved in the case;
- individuals suspected of ethical breaches are given a chance to respond to the allegations;
- if a misconduct is confirmed, it is further established whether there is a minor or a major violation of publication ethics.
Minor issues not affecting either the integrity of the paper or that of the Journal, e.g. misunderstanding or misapplication of publication standards, are dealt with by directly communicating authors and reviewers, without third parties involved, in one of the following ways:
- authors and/or reviewers are sent a letter of warning;
- a correction notice is published, e.g. when a source, otherwise properly cited within the main text, has been omitted from the Reference List;
- an erratum is published, e.g. when an error is made by the Editorial staff.
Serious, major violations of the ethical code may lead to different measures:
- a separate note or a leading article is published, describing the case;
- afilliate institution of the author/reviewer is officially notified;
- the published article is retracted;
- publishing in the Journal is prohibited for a defined period of time;
- relevant organisations and regulatory bodies are informed about the case for taking course of actions within their competence.
These measures may be taken separately or jointly. In the process of handling the case, relevant expert organisations, bodies or individuals are consulted when necessary.
In resolving ethically controversial issues, the Editorial Team follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Disclaimer
The views in the published articles do not represent the views of the Editor, the Editorial Office, the Editorial Team or the Editorial Board of the Military Technical Courier journal. Authors take full legal and moral responsibility for the information and opinions expressed in their articles. The publisher will not be held liable in any way for any claims or damages.
Conflict of interest
Advertising
Advertising is not allowed in the Military Technical Courier.
Details on the ethical conduct of the Military Technical Courier are also available on the Journal pages: Publication Policy, Journal Quality Management and Article Quality Support via the website of the Serbian Citation Index (SCIndex) – publisher of the national citation index, i.e. publisher of the base in which the Military Technical Courier is primarily indexed.
