Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

This page contains three of SSG's policies: the ethics statement (Section 1), the handling of research misconduct (Section 2), and submissions by editors and staff (Section 3).

SSG journals follow the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), including its Core Practices and flowcharts. They also follow the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, WAME, version 4, 2022). This statement explains what is expected of each party. It also describes what happens when those expectations are not met.

1.1 Duties of editors

Editors:

• Judge manuscripts only on their originality, validity, clarity, and relevance to the journal's scope.
• Keep all information about a submission confidential. This includes its existence, content, reviewers, and decision. Information is shared only with the people involved in handling it.
• Do not use unpublished material from a submission in their own research without the author's written consent.
• Declare any conflict of interest. Where one exists, they step aside from handling the manuscript (see Competing Interests and Funding).
• Make sure reviewers are qualified and independent, and that their reports are fair and constructive.
• Act on any concern about research or publication misconduct, whether raised before or after publication, following the procedures in Section 2.
• Never ask authors to cite the journal, the editor's own work, or the work of colleagues, unless the reference is directly relevant and scientifically justified.
• Publish corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern whenever needed (see Corrections and Retractions).

1.2 Duties of reviewers

Reviewers:

• Accept an invitation only if they have the expertise and can submit their report on time. Otherwise they decline promptly.
• Declare any conflict of interest and decline if it could affect their judgement.
• Keep the manuscript and their review confidential, and never upload them into AI tools (Generative AI Policy).
• Give an objective and specific report, with clear reasons. Personal criticism of the authors is not acceptable.
• Tell the editor about any substantial similarity to other work they know of. They also report any suspected data manipulation, image manipulation, or ethical problem.
• Recommend citations only where they are scientifically necessary. Reviewers must never ask authors to cite the reviewer's own work just to raise citation counts.
• Do not contact the authors directly.

1.3 Duties of authors

Authors:

• Submit original work that is not under consideration anywhere else, and has not been published before (see Preprints and Prior Publication for preprints and conference papers).
• Report their methods and results accurately and in enough detail for others to reproduce the work. Fabrication, falsification, and selective reporting are misconduct.
• Cite the work of others properly, and get permission to reuse any copyrighted figures or tables.
• Include as authors everyone who meets the authorship criteria, and only those people (Authorship and Contributorship).
• Disclose all funding and competing interests (Competing Interests and Funding).
• Confirm that ethical approval and consent were obtained where required (Research Ethics).
• Make their data available as described in Research Data, and give the raw data to the editor on request.
• Disclose any use of generative AI (Generative AI Policy).
• Tell the editor promptly about any significant error they find in their work, before or after publication, and cooperate in correcting it.

1.4 Duties of the publisher

SSG:

• Protects editorial independence (Editorial Independence) and keeps business matters separate from editorial decisions.
• Gives editors the tools they need, including a submission system, similarity screening, and access to COPE resources.
• Keeps published content available and takes steps to preserve it (Open Access and Copyright, section 5).
• Supports editors in investigating misconduct, and publishes corrections and retractions without delay.
• Keeps the website accurate and up to date, including the board listings, policies, fees, and indexing claims.
• Screens submissions for similarity, and its editors look for signs of paper-mill activity (Section 2.2).

1.5 Sanctions

When misconduct is confirmed, editors may take one or more of these actions, depending on how serious it is:

• Reject the manuscript.
• Publish a correction or retraction.
• Inform the authors' institutions or funders.
• Ban the authors from submitting to SSG journals for a set period.
• Remove reviewers or editors from the journal.

Sanctions are applied only after the procedure in Section 2 has been completed, including giving the people concerned a chance to respond.

1.6 Conflicts of interest: publisher services

SSG offers optional commercial services to researchers (Author Services and StepSphere). To prevent conflicts of interest, these services are kept fully separate from editorial decision-making, as described in our Editorial Independence and Separation of Commercial Services policy. Editors and reviewers must declare any conflict of interest related to a manuscript, and must not take part in decisions where such a conflict exists.

SSG investigates every credible concern about research or publication misconduct, before or after publication. Investigations follow the relevant COPE flowcharts, and the people concerned are always given a chance to respond before any decision is made.

2.1 What we treat as misconduct

• Fabrication: making up data, results, images, or participants.
• Falsification: changing data, images, or methods so that the research is misrepresented. This includes adjusting an image beyond what is acceptable (see section 2.3).
• Plagiarism: using someone else's text, ideas, data, or figures without proper credit. This includes copying text with words swapped out (sometimes called "tortured phrases"), and text-only or machine translation of another person's work.
• Redundant or duplicate publication: publishing the same work, or substantially the same work, more than once without disclosing it and citing the original.
• Text recycling (self-plagiarism): reusing your own published text without citing it. Limited reuse of standard methods text is acceptable if it is cited.
• Authorship misconduct: see Authorship and Contributorship, section 5.
• Peer review manipulation: suggesting fake reviewers or email addresses, agreeing to review each other's work in exchange (review rings), or contacting reviewers.
• Citation manipulation: citing irrelevant work to boost the citations of a person, journal, or group. This includes citation cartels, and coercive citation by editors or reviewers.
• Paper mill output: manuscripts produced or sold by a third party, often with fabricated data or authorship for sale.
• Ethics violations: research done without the approval or consent required (Research Ethics).

2.2 Screening at submission

• Every manuscript is checked for similarity using Crossref Similarity Check (powered by iThenticate) before peer review, and again after revision and language editing. The editor considers both the overall similarity percentage (excluding the reference list) and the content of the matches. Matches in the methods, or in the author's own preprint or thesis, are judged differently from copied results or discussion. A similarity percentage is never used on its own as a measure of plagiarism. Manuscripts with overall similarity above 20% (excluding references) are not sent for review until the editor has examined the matches. If the overlap is in the results, discussion, or conclusions, or is not properly cited, the manuscript is rejected or returned to the authors. The same applies if the check after revision shows substantial new overlap.
• Editors look for signs of paper mill activity. These include unusual or meaningless phrasing, references that do not match the content, generic or repeated images, mismatched email domains, and authorship changes that appear at a late stage.
• Images and figures may be checked for duplication or manipulation.

2.3 Images and figures

Adjusting brightness, contrast, or colour balance is acceptable if it is applied to the whole image and does not hide or create any feature. Moving, removing, adding, or duplicating parts of an image is not acceptable. Neither is combining images without clearly marking where they join. Authors must keep the original, unprocessed files and give them to the editor on request.

2.4 How concerns are handled

1. Receiving the concern: anyone may raise a concern, including readers, reviewers, and editors, by emailing editorial-office@scientificstepsgroup-ssg.com. Anonymous concerns are investigated if they contain specific, checkable evidence.
2. First assessment: the Editor-in-Chief and the editorial office decide promptly whether the concern is credible and falls within the journal's remit.
3. Contacting the authors: the corresponding author is told about the concern and asked to respond within a reasonable time. They may be asked to provide the raw data.
4. Further steps: if the response is not satisfactory, or no response comes, the journal contacts the authors' institution and asks it to investigate. The journal may consult independent experts.
5. Outcome: the editor decides on the action needed. The options are no action, a correction, an expression of concern, a retraction, or the sanctions listed in Section 1.5. The outcome is shared with the authors and with the person who raised the concern.

People who raise concerns in good faith are protected. Their identity is kept confidential unless they agree to be named.

2.5 Records

The editorial office keeps a confidential record of every case, with the correspondence and the decisions made. These records are used to see whether the same problems keep coming back, and to improve the journal's processes.

Editors, board members, and SSG staff may submit their own research to SSG journals. Their manuscripts go through exactly the same review as any other submission. They have no access to their own file and no part in the decision.

3.1 Safeguards

• The submitting editor or board member takes no part in handling their manuscript. They have no access to reviewer identities, reviewer reports before the decision, or editorial discussion.
• Who handles it: a submission from a board member is handled by the Editor-in-Chief or another editor with no conflict. A submission from the Editor-in-Chief is handled by another senior editor, who makes the final decision independently.
• At least two reviewers who are independent of the editorial board are always used.
• Staff of the publisher may submit only in their own research field, and are handled in the same way.

3.2 Disclosure

The published article includes an Editorial disclosure, for example: "[Name] is a member of the Editorial Board of [Journal]. They were not involved in the editorial handling of, or the decision on, this manuscript, and had no access to its peer review." A disclosure is not needed for an Editorial written by the Editor-in-Chief, which is clearly labelled as an Editorial.