Science, Engineering and Health Studies (SEHS) promotes the COPE international standards for responsible research publications. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of editors, peer reviewers, and authors.

Journal Editors

Publication decision 

The SEHS will not accept articles which have been published (except in the form of an abstract) or are being considered for publication by another journal. Papers being considered here should not be submitted to other journals.

The editor of the SEHS is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.

Confidentiality

The editor and editorial staff must ensure the confidentiality of the submitted manuscripts until they are published, except only in the case of suspicion of double submission or the manuscripts that have been under revision or have been published elsewhere. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review process must be kept confidential and not allowed to be used for personal advantages.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be quoted or referenced by an editor without the express written consent of the author. Information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Editors recuse themselves from the review process when they have a conflict of interest or personal stake in the publication of a research work. 

Reviewers

Contribution to editorial decisions

Peer reviewers assist the editors in making the decision of publishing a manuscript and also assist the author(s) in improving the quality of the manuscript.

Confidentiality

Reviewers should respect the confidentiality of the review process. They should not discuss aspects of the work under review with other researchers until such time as the article is published. Unpublished materials disclosed in a manuscript under review must not be quoted or referenced by a reviewer without the express written consent of the author, requested through the editor. Information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

Standards of objectivity

Manuscripts should be reviewed objectively in the context of the reviewer's expertise in the field. Personal opinions without backing evidence should not be used as criteria for review decisions.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

The reviewers must not use any information obtained through peer review process for personal advantages. The reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest with the author(s), companies, or institutions affiliated to the manuscripts. 

Author(s)

Authorship

All authors must have agreed to the submission and to the order of their names on the title page. They must also have agreed that the corresponding author may act on their behalf throughout the editorial review and publication process.

Originality and plagiarism

Research articles submitted to the SEHS must not been published previously and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.

The authors of papers that report on original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. Conclusions should be based on the evidence presented in the paper and not on personal opinions.

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted. Authors should acknowledge ideas and previously published results by citing these works in the paper and listing them in the references. Any attempt of plagiarism, data fabrication/falsification, citation manipulation will result in the rejection of the submitted manuscripts.  SEHS reserves the right to use plagiarism detecting software to screen submitted papers at all times.

Human or animal subjects

If the research work involves the use of animals or human participants/volunteers, the authors should ensure that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines.

Authors must include a statement in the manuscript that approval from the ethic committee was obtained for the experiments/clinical trials involving human subjects. Authors must state the approval code in the manuscript.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

All funding source must be disclosed in the acknowledgments and any conflicts of interest should be stated. All submission must include disclosure of all relationship that could be viewed a potential conflict of interest. The corresponding author must confirm that the corresponding author had final responsibility for the decision to submit for publication and had full access to all the data in the study.

Privacy statement

The names, affiliations and email addresses entered in the journal website will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.