Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Author Responsibilities

All authors must warrant that:

• Their articles are original, have not not been published before, are not under consideration for publication anywhere else and do not infringe the intellectual property right of any other person or entity. Conference presentations and posting on preprint servers such as arXiv do not constitute prior publication.
• Their articles contain nothing that is unlawful, defamatory, or which would, if published, constitute a breach of a contract or agreement.

If required, authors must make available all necessary formal and documented ethical approval from an appropriate research ethics committee (for instance, in case of handling personal information about individuals or of studies involving human, animals, chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards)

Fabrication, falsification or misrepresentation of reported data (with the intent to mislead), fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical research conduct and are unacceptable.

The authors should guarantee that they have written entirely original articles. Failure to accurately cite/quote material which has previously been published constitutes plagiarism and is an unethical research conduct. Authors should take into consideration that the copyright for previously published material (including author’s own previous publications) may rest with its publisher. It is the responsibility of the authors to ensure they have the necessary copyright permissions for any material included in their articles.

If a submission is found to contain plagiarized (including self-plagiarized) material (material that has previously been published elsewhere without proper crossreferencing, permission or justification) will be rejected. Also the following are unacceptable:

• close replication of the author's own previously published work without acknowledgement of the source (duplicate publication);
• parallel submission of the same results to more than one journal (duplicate submission).

If it is demonstrated that an article published in Surveys in Mathematics and its Applications:

• contains plagiarized (including self-plagiarized) material (we use sistemantiplagiat.ro plagiarism detection service)
• reports falsified/fabricated data
• reports unethical research

then the article will be retracted. A notice of retraction containing the reasons and basis for the retraction, who is retracting the article, as well as the explanations from the authors will be linked to the retracted article.

For the case of honest errors (for instance, miscalculations or gap in the proof), corrections may be made to the article by submitting a traditional erratum/corrigendum article. The erratum/corrigendum article will appear in a future volume and will link back and forth on the web to the original article online.

All the authors listed for an article must have made a significant contribution to its content, and all those who qualify for authorship should be listed.

All co-authors must see and approve the final version of the paper and must agree to its submission for publication.

The authors are usually listed in alphabetical order, however the order of authorship should be a joint decision of the coauthors.

Referee/Reviewer Responsibilities

Any invited referee/reviewer who feels unqualified to review a manuscript or knows that completing the report is impossible in a reasonable period of time (usually specified by the editor) should notify the editor to contact other reviewers.

Referees/reviewers should respect the confidentiality of peer review and not expose any details of a manuscript or their reports, during or after the peer?review process (including the situation when the referee/reviewer declines the invitation to review the manuscript), except if authorized by the editor.

Referees/reviewers should express their points of view unambiguously with proper supporting arguments, without be influenced by the origins of a manuscript, by the nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender or other characteristics of the authors, or by commercial considerations. Their reviews should be constructive and containing no hostile comment.

Referees/reviewers should inform the editor if there is any considerable similarity or overlap between the manuscript under review and any other published data of which they are aware. They also should indicate relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors, but they should not suggest that authors include citations merely to increase the visibility of the referees’/reviewers’ works.

Editor Responsibilities

The editors of the journal are responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal should be published. Their decisions are based on the referees’/reviewers’ reports. Editors should take all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the material they publish.

Editors should treat all authors with politeness, honesty, impartiality, and transparency without regard to nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender or other characteristics of the authors, or by commercial considerations.

Editors should give impartial consideration to each manuscript submitted for consideration for publication. The decisions to accept or reject an article for publication should be based on the article’s relevance, originality and clarity.

Editors must protect the confidentiality of authors’ material.

In cases of alleged scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, editors should initially contact the authors and allow them to respond to the concerns. If the explanations of the authors are unsatisfactory, the editors should request an investigation (by the institution or other appropriate bodies). In cases of proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism (including self-plagiarized) then the article will be retracted A notice of retraction containing the reasons and basis for the retraction, who is retracting the article, as well as the explanations from the authors will be linked to the retracted article.

Authors must declare any potential conflict of interest (professional or financial). Particularly, they must disclose all sources of funding for the research reported in the article.

Referees/reviewers must disclose to editors any conflicts of interest that could affect their opinions on the manuscript, and they should decline the invitation to review the manuscript if they believe it to be appropriate.

Editors should not making decisions on manuscripts that conflict with their own interest (for instance, those submitted from their research collaborators, competitors, or those addressing a subject in which they have financial gain). If they may have a potential or actual conflict of interest, editors should delegate handling of the manuscript to other editors.

A paper submitted by an editor or by authors whose relationship with editor might create the perception of favoritism will be handled by another editor. The other editor will select referees/reviewers and make all decisions on the paper.

This procedure applies to complaints about the publishing policies, procedures and actions of publishing and editorial board of the journal.

Complaints may be made by email or letter. The complaint should be directed initially to the editor the complainant is already in contact with over the relevant matter or to the managing editor.

All complaints will be acknowledged within seven working days of receipt if made by email or post.

If possible a definitive response will be made within 30 days. If this is not possible an interim response will be given within 30 days. Interim responses will be provided until the complaint is resolved.

If a complainant remains unhappy after a reply considered definitive by managing editor or publisher, the complainant may complain to an external body.