COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts
Aerospace Defense is committed to follow and apply guidelines and flowcharts of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in its reviewing and publishing process and issues. For more information on COPE’s Guidelines & Flowcharts please see: (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts-new/translations).
COPE’s Code of Conduct and Best Practices for Editors
(https://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf), (https://publicationethics.org/files/2008%20Code%20of%20Conduct.pdf)
- Everything published in the journal is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief. This means that the editors must:
- Strive to meet the needs of readers and authors;
- Strive to constantly improve their journal;
- Have processes in place to assure the quality of the material they publish;
- Champion freedom of expression;
- Maintain the integrity of the academic record;
- Preclude business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards;
- Always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
Best Practice for Editors would include:
- Actively seeking the views of authors, readers, reviewers and editorial board members about ways of improving their journal’s processes.
- Encouraging and being aware of research into peer review and publishing and reassessing their journal’s processes in the light of new findings.
- Supporting initiatives designed to reduce research and publication misconduct.
- Supporting initiatives to educate researchers about publication ethics.
- Assessing the effects of their journal policies on author and reviewer behavior and revising policies, as required, to encourage responsible behavior and discourage misconduct.
Relations with Readers
- Readers should be informed about who has funded research or other scholarly work and whether the funders had any role in the research and its publication and, if so, what this was.
Best practice for editors would include:
- Ensuring that all published reports and reviews of research have been reviewed by suitably qualified reviewers including statistical review.
- Adopting processes that encourage accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting including technical editing and the use of appropriate guidelines and checklists.
- Considering developing a transparency policy to encourage maximum disclosure about the provenance of non-research articles.
- Adopting authorship or contributorship systems that promote good practice (i.e. so that listings accurately reflect who did the work) and discourage misconduct (e.g. ghost and guest authors).
- Informing readers about steps taken
