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Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS) is committed to upholding the best ethical practices in publication, error correction or retraction if necessary. Any form of plagiarism, unethical behavior or malpractice is completely unacceptable at NEJCS. Authors must certify that the contents of their manuscript are original, have not been previously published anywhere fully or partially, and are not currently being reviewed by any other journals. We, at NEJCS, believe that it is the responsibility of editors, authors, and reviewers to comply with the accepted ethical standards and guidelines. NEJCS strictly follows the COPE's guidelines for publication ethics, as summarized below:

1. Research methods and results: Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS) will only accept work and results of properly approved research. The research work must be approved by the institutional review board if human or animal subjects are involved in the research. An informed consent must be obtained, and privacy must be maintained in the case of human subjects. Medical studies are required to be appropriately registered and regional guidelines must be followed while conducting them. Authors are required to clearly refer to the guidelines in the manuscript.
   The authors must understand that it is unethical to submit manuscripts with any type of fabricated and falsified data, or selectively reported results. Manuscripts with any discrepancies in data and results will not be accepted or appropriate action will be taken if found out later.
2. Data use and availability: Any form of data theft or use of data without due credits is not accepted. Collected experimental data must be retained for a reasonable period and should be available to present in case requested. The data collected during the experiments must be preserved securely to avoid any theft and misuse. Serious precautions must be taken to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of the research subjects while sharing the data. It is encouraged that the authors provide a declaration statement about the data availability in their manuscripts.
3. Authorship: It is expected that the authorship should be limited to those (and include everyone) who have made a significant contribution in conceiving the study concepts, designing the work, implementing them, interpreting the results, and writing the manuscript. Any other individual who does not qualify for the authorship but has contributed to the work, must be duly acknowledged. All institutional affiliations must be listed for every author in the manuscript.
4. Conflicts of interest: According to the COPE Good Publication Practice guidelines (2003): ‘Conflicts of interest arise when authors, reviewers, or editors have interests that are not fully apparent and that may influence their judgments on what is published. They have been described as those which, when revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived.’ Conflict of interest might be caused by financial support and involvements, personal obligations, research fundings, employment relationships, etc. NEJCS requires a formal declaration of any conflicting interests with the article. If there is no conflict of interest, it must be declared as well.
5. Peer review: Northeast Journal of Complex Systems (NEJCS) evaluates the quality of submitted papers using the peer review process, which is an essential component of scientific publishing. The editors base their decision on the initial assessment and the observations and their justifications made by the reviewers. Every manuscript that is submitted to NEJCS goes through a preliminary editorial review. This stage of examination looks at the document's fundamental structure, language, syntax, and suitability for the journal. The manuscript may be rejected at this stage if if the topic is out of the scope of the journal, the methodology and experiments are not sufficiently described, relevant recent scientific literature is not cited properly, and/or for other justifiable reasons.
   The manuscript that passed the initial editorial examination is sent to external peers for more in-depth evaluation and review. Reviewers are requested to assess the manuscript's originality, fit to the scope of the journal, relevance to the existing literature, technical soundness of the methods and experiments, significance and quality of the results, interpretation of the results, how they support the conclusions, and other aspects of the work. Additionally, reviewers are requested to evaluate the impact and contribution of the work towards the growth and advancement of the scientific field of complex systems.
   Reviewers communicate their opinions to the editors who are responsible for making a final decision to accept, reject, or request revision of the article. The authors are informed of the decision along with the comments and concerns provided by reviewers and editors. If the decision calls for a revision, the authors are expected to address the issues raised by the reviewers and the editors and update the manuscript accordingly.
6. Redundant publication: The manuscript cannot be submitted simultaneously to more than one journal by the authors. Redundant publication refers to the situation when significantly overlapped results are published as different articles without proper citations and justifications. NEJCS discourages simultaneous and redundant publications and, if necessary, manuscripts must be submitted with proper cross referencing and explanation.
7. Plagiarism: Presenting someone else's work as one’s own without proper citations (plagiarism) and submitting own results with overlapping content from other articles without referencing (self-plagiarism) is not acceptable. Reproducing text from other articles, submitting results of someone else's study as own, or using figures and other resources from any article without due credit are some of the examples of plagiarism. We routinely use standard plagiarism checking tools to detect plagiarism. If articles are found to be plagiarized, strict actions will be taken.
8. Duties of editors: The editorial board will decide whether to publish a piece after taking reviewers' suggestions into account. Editorial judgments are completely based on the intellectual merit of the text and are not influenced by the authors’ sex, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, citizenship and other demographic or personal characteristics. Information regarding the manuscript will be kept confidential and will not be disclosed to anyone other than corresponding author(s), editorial board, and reviewers. Editors have a responsibility to ensure that there are no conflicts of interest between authors and reviewers.
9. Duties of reviewers: Since reviewers' suggestions ultimately determine whether an article will be accepted, the review of the manuscript must be objective, and any opinions expressed must be supported by relevant evidence. A manuscript should be treated by reviewers as privileged confidential information that should only be shared with authorized parties. If a reviewer does not find her-/himself suitable to review the manuscript or is unable to do so in a timely fashion, it should be communicated to the editors as early as possible. Reviewers are required to alert the editorial board if they discover any conflicts of interest with the authors.
10. Dealing with misconduct: Authors should ensure that the ideas, methodologies, or the findings discussed in the manuscript are original, accurate and significant. Any sort of dishonesty, content overlap without the required citations and credits, and willful misinformation are all considered unethical behavior and are not accepted. At any point of time, authors are required to notify the editorial board of any inaccuracy or substantial error they may have found. In case of small honest errors which are not affecting the overall findings or in case there are issues with the author list or affiliations, errata might be published. However, in case of unethical research, plagiarism, misconduct, or unreliable findings, articles will be retracted.
    We strive to follow the best publication practices and adhere to the guidelines issued by COPE. If anyone believes that any of the guiding principles were compromised during the process, concerns should be raised with relevant details by contacting the editor. Concerns will be handled according to the standard guidelines and recommendation of editorial board.