Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Práticas da História: Journal on Theory, Historiography and Uses of the Past is a peer-reviewed journal committed to excellence in publication ethics. All parties involved (editor, scientific board, editorial board, authors, reviewers and editorial editor) agree on the publication ethical standards and defend the principles described in the Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement, based upon the Code of Conduct and Guidance of Good Practices for editors of journals of the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE (available at http://publicationethics.org/).

 

1.    Responsibilities of the Editor and Editorial Board

a) Deciding which  manuscripts submitted to the journal should be published. In making these decisions, they are guided by the policies of the journal (Guidelines for Submission and Publication of Manuscripts, available at http://www.praticasdahistoria.pt/pt/submissoes/normas-de-submissao/) and by legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The Editor and the Editorial Board may turn down submitted articles before the peer review process, when concluding that they  do not fall into the requirements of the journal.

b) Providing guidance to guest editors, authors and reviewers on their responsibilities and duties, new policies and developments.

c) Providing the new editorial board members with guidelines on everything that is expected of them and keeping existing members updated on new policies and developments.

d) Evaluating manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic and intellectual merit, without regard to the author(s)’ age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, ethnic origin, religious belief, citizenship, political orientation, social class or institutional affiliation.

e) Ensuring a fair and unbiased double-blind peer review of the manuscripts and that all information related to them is kept confidential. The journal will follow, as a rule, double-blind peer review and, when agreed with the authors and reviewers, only blind-peer review. They also ensure that both authors’ and peer reviewers’ identities are protected.

f) Ensuring that appropriate reviewers are selected, safeguarding any conflicts of interests.

g) Developing and maintaining a database of suitable reviewers and updating it on the basis of the reviewers’ performance.

h) Considering the articles submitted by any member of the Editorial Board for publication, ensuring that the peer review process will be carried out without the participation of the author.

i) Ensuring that unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript are not used inby any member of the Editorial Board  or any reviewer  without the express written consent of the author.

j) Taking reasonable responsive measures when ethical complaints are presented concerning a submitted or published manuscript. In cases of suspected misconduct, they follow the COPE flowcharts, available at http://publicationethics.org/files/Full%20set%20of%20flowcharts.pdf.

k) Publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies whenever needed.

l) Ensuring all diligences to investigate any allegations of malpractice conducted by a member of the Editorial Board, author or reviewer and inform all parties involved of the process of the investigation and its results, giving them equative opportunity to respond. Any information on malpractice and unethical behaviour should be reported to the Editor, Editorial Board and to the Institutes that support them (IHC and CHAM) that should analyse the information seriously and proceed accordingly.

 

2.    Responsibilities of the Invited Editors

a) Defining the subject matter and role of every article in a thematic issue.

b) Providing clear guidelines to authors regarding the topic and boundaries of their contributions and the overall design of the issue.

c) Ensuring, in collaboration with the Editorial Board and the Scientific Board, that appropriate reviewers are selected for all the articles (whether they have been commissioned or submitted as a result of a call for papers).

d) Analysing the submitted articles and approve those that are within the scope of the thematic issue, taking into consideration the guidelines for submission and all legal aspects that have to do with libel, plagiarism, and violation of copyright.

e) Establishing a timeline, with the Editorial Board, for submission, peer review, revision and final paper submission with the executive editorial board, and ensuring that all deadlines are met.

f) Writing the Introduction to the issue.

 

3.   Duties and responsibilities of the members of the Scientific Board and of the external reviewers

The Journal understands that scientific peer-reviewing is an essential tool in academic publishing process for the significant contribution it may offer to the quality of the works and to compliance to scientific ethical principles and good practices. Also understands that peer-reviewing must be guided by the principle of collaborative evaluation. Within such positioning, it values the role of the independent body of specialists that constitute the Scientific Board, to whom the Editorial Board and Guest Editors resort to evaluate works submitted or help in the process of identifying external reviewers, when such evaluation may not be ensured by its members. In a moment of the growing debate around the advantages and disadvantages of blind or open peer-reviewing, the journal maintains as orientating principle the method of double-blind peer-review; however, it may be considered the adoption of blind peer review or open peer-review. In any case reviewers are given the choice to reveal their identity to the authors when issuing their report.

The specialists contacted by the Journal to evaluate an article are expected to express, within the requested deadline, their availability or unavailability to perform the task. When deciding, they should consider their capacity to evaluate the theme and capacity to keep deadlines, as well as eventual conflicts of interest and guaranty of the author’s anonymity.

Duties of the reviewers:

a) Delivering their evaluation within the agreed deadlines.

b) Complying to the ethical principles consensually associated with the evaluation processes, namely:

- Keeping the confidentiality of the papers, respecting the intellectual property and rights of the authors, not sharing, or using in self-benefit the ideas or data conveyed.

- Keeping impartiality not discriminating the author’s origins, believes or orientations that may show in the works under appreciation, namely: age, gender, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, religious belief, nationality, political orientation, social class, or institutional affiliation.

c) Adopting an attitude of cordiality, objectivity, and reasonableness in the evaluation of the papers, grounding with clarity the judgement of the strengths and weaknesses of the article.

d) Being guided by a collaborative spirit in order to produce an informed evaluation, namely suggesting bibliography, detailing aspects of the work that could be more expanded or well-reasoned, and being prepared to clarify any doubts raised by the authors about the evaluation, as well as to reappraise the improved versions of the work if requested by the editors.

e) Communicating to the editors eventual violations of copyright or practices of plagiarism by the authors, including self-plagiarism.

 

4.   Duties and responsibilities of the Authors

a) obeying to the submission norms publicized by the journal and cooperating in the process of review and revision.

b) avoiding submitting simultaneously the same paper or redundant papers to different journals or books. Also, they should not submit papers that are under process of evaluation by other editors.

c) In the case of submitting papers translated from works previously published, authors have the duty of clarifying the situation with the editors and guarantee the necessary permits.

d) Plagiarism is a behaviour ethically unacceptable, constituting a serious offense of intellectual rights. The papers submitted must recognize, through quotation and appropriate bibliographical referencing, all publications whose ideas and sources have contributed to the maturation of the work. It is also ethically recommended that they recognize contributions of conversations, correspondence and personal or public discussions, as well as those resulting from previous evaluations of the papers. It is not acceptable the use of ideas or data accessed in confidential processes without the express permission of the authors.

e) Self-plagiarism is ethically condemnable, as it jeopardises the evaluation of the originality of the works under appreciation, the rights of edition and may be used to overvalue curriculums. It is the duty of authors to disclose appropriately their published works that in any way have contributed to the paper under appreciation.

f) Print and manuscript sources need to be adequately detailed, being recommended the safeguarding and public accessibility, when possible, of their data processing

g) It is the authors’ responsibility to provide the due authorizations to reproduce contents of sources that are not under public domain or that have been obtained near private and public entities.

h) Declaring eventual conflicts of interests regarding the work under evaluation, and also acknowledging the agencies and projects that have financed the research and publication.

i) Should authors find significant mistakes or inaccuracies in their work after publication , they have the duty to notify the Editorial Board and to cooperate in its correction or withdrawal from publication.