Ethical Rules for Research and Publication

Chapter 1. General Rules

Article 1 (Purpose) The policies are offered to provide the fundamental principles and direction to maintain the ethics and integrity in all submitted papers to Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment (J. Soil Groundw. Environ.).

Article 2 (Application) The policies are applied to all papers submitted to J. Soil Groundw. Environ. for publication.

Article 3 (Terminology)

1. Research ethics: It is related to integrity in research including fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, dual publication,

    salami publication, imalas publication, self-plagiarism, authorship, and research duplication.

2. Publishing ethics: It is related to integrity in publication of research including authorship, conflict of interest, duplication

    publication, and ethics for review and editing process.

3. Fabrication: It is the intentional act of making up data or results and recording or reporting results.

4. Falsification: It is manipulation of research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting/suppressing data

    or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.

5. Plagiarism: It is the appropriation of another person s ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate

    credit.

6. Dual publication: It is important to ensure that the research work is only published once. It includes salami publication,

    imalas publication and self-plagiarism.

    1) Salami publication: Data gathered by one research project is reduced to the least publishable unit and separately

        reported in multiple publications.

    2) Imalas publication: It is the same sequential publication of essentially the same results.

    3) Self-plagiarism: It is the redundant publication presenting the previously published work, tables, and figures without a

        proper citation.

7. Research duplication and publication: It is the act of publication of the same research results from more than two

    research projects for the same research.

8. Authorship: Omission of the authors who are scientifically and technically contributed to the research data and results or

    addition of the authors who did not make substantial contribution to the research data and results.

9. Conflict of interest: Editors, authors, peer reviewers or institutes related to publication process have responsibility to

    disclose interests that might appear to affect their ability to present or review data objectively including relevant

    financial or personal interests.

10. Withdrawal: After the paper is accepted but not yet published, and authors admit that the accepted papers contain

      errors, it may be submitted more than once or infringe our research publishing ethics.

11. Retraction: In a published paper, when the conclusion of the paper is found to be faulty logic or based on falsified or

      fabricated data, or plagiarized data has been published or duplicate publication exist, the paper may be removed from

      the journal and the related links.

Chapter 2. Research Ethics

Article 4 (Counterfeit, Falsification, Plagiarism) The author shall have the responsibility of security, health and welfare of societies. By realizing the social impact of the research, the author shall obey the research ethics of this society without counterfeit, falsification, or plagiarism in the submitted manuscript.

Article 5 (Attitude as Professionals) The author shall continue to maintain or improve his/her academic and technical abilities. Ethical Rules for Research and Publication

Chapter 3. Publishing Ethics

Article 6 (Authorship)

1. The Editorial Board can request an explanation on the contribution of each individual listed in the manuscript when there

    is a suspicion on authorship or there is a report on misconduct of authorship.

2. If there is a request of addition or deletion of authors in the accepted manuscript, the Editorial Board can request a letter

    of consent of existing authors or a written document explaining role of the authors.

Article 7 (Conflict of Interests) The author shall disclose, if any, private and special conflict of interests, including a financial support, affect the research.

Article 8 (Duplicate Publication and Errors)

1. When the author submits a manuscript, he/she shall d.eclare that the submitted manuscript is not published in other

    journals and the author will not submit the manuscript to other journals even after acceptance in this journal.

2. When the author finds errors in the manuscript, he/she shall request the correction of them. Also when the author finds

    significant errors, he/she shall retract the manuscript before publication

Chapter 4. Ethics of Reviewers

Article 9 (Ethics of Reviewers)

1. Reviewers include all the editors and peer reviewers.

2. A reviewer shall respect independence of authors of a manuscript as professional intellectuals.

3. An editor shall be polite, concise and clear in the mail and e-mail to readers, authors and peer reviewers. During issuing

    rejection of the manuscript, the editor also shall clarify that the decision is based on the quality of the submitted

    manuscript, not on that of the author, which shall be admitted by the author.

4. A reviewer shall evaluate faithfully the submitted manuscript within the due time and the reviewer shall report the

    review result to the Editorial Board.

5. If a misconduct of a reviewer is perceived, the editor in chief can call a meeting of the Editorial Board and then make a

    decision of attention, warning, exclusion of reviewing or ban on manuscript submission to the journal on the reviewer.

Article 10 (Conflicts of Interests)

1. A reviewer shall objectively judge a manuscript with avoiding conflicts of interest and shall describe the review results

    with adequate grounds.

2. The conflicts of interests affecting the review of the manuscript include financial interest, competition between private

    interests, research competition and intellectual interest, which shall be informed to the Editorial Board.

3. The editors or peer reviewers shall avoid a decision of the manuscript that is directly related to their interests.

Article 11 (Review Invitation) When inviting a review of a manuscript, the editor shall give an advice on how the peer

reviewer to do if there is a relationship of interests with the submitted manuscript or the authors.

Article 12 (Secrecy Declaration)

1. A reviewer shall treat a manuscript received for review as a confidential document and shall neither disclose nor discuss

    it with others except, as necessary, to persons from whom specific advice may be sought.

2. The editor shall not disclose the identity of a reporter on ethics violations.

3. The editor shall not disclose the identity of an author and the decision procedure, except for an official decision on the

    ethics violation.

Chapter 5. Response against Ethical Violations

Article 13 (Summoning and Voting)

1. The head of the editing committee shall summon its members upon detecting, or receiving reports on, any acts of

    violation against research or publishing ethics.

2. Decisions of the editing committee will only be effective with the presence of more than half of the enrolled members,

    and will be resolved on the basis of majority votes.

3. Members of the committee related, in any way, to the act of violation may propose suggestions, but shall not be allowed

    to participate in the decision making process of the related issue.

Article 14 (Evaluation)

1. For a suspected violation of research ethics, the organization, which the corresponding researcher was affiliated to during

    the periods of the research, is liable for verification responsibilities, and the editing committee may request relevant

     investigations to be conducted by the organization itself.

2. For a suspected violation of publishing ethics, decisions must be made by gathering relevant data, and if disciplinary

    measures seem necessary, the researcher must be given a chance to vindicate.

Article 15 (Vindication)

1. Prior to making any final decisions regarding the issue of ethical violations, the committee must grant the corresponding

    researcher at least one opportunity to vindicate. This may be done through documents, or through a “non-official

    vindication assembly”.

2. During a non-official vindication assembly, the committee must keep the corresponding researcher’s identity and the

    progress of the assembly as confidential, and shall not disclose any related information to the public.

3. In case the researcher refuses to vindicate, the committee must allow for one more chance to make appeal, after which,

    if refused, the committee may proceed with making decisions concerning the act of violation.

Article 16 (Reversal of Decisions) The committee may choose to reverse their decisions after the vindication.

Article 17 (Preservation of Documents) After final decisions have been made, the committee must preserve all relevant data, including assembly recordings, for a period of 5 years commencing from the date of final decisions.

Article 18 (Disciplinary Measures) Depending on the degree of misconduct, the committee may make decisions to

impose various levels of disciplinary measures on the corresponding researcher as follows:

1. Sending a letter with educational motifs.

2. Sending an official letter to the head of affiliated organization, or institute providing research fund.

3. Publishing article in J. Soil and Groundwater Env. regarding misconduct or duplicated publication.

4. Publishing article by the head of the editing committee in J. Soil and Groundwater Env. on the entire processes related

    to the misconduct.

5. Prohibiting submission of papers for a set period of time (personnel, or organization, responsible for misconduct).

6. Official removal, or cancellation, of relevant publication.

7. Notifying editors of other journals and index organizations.

8. Reporting to other organizations capable of conducting further investigation and other relevant measures.

Article 19 (Reporting) The editing committee must report all decided matters, along with relevant supporting evidences,

to the Research Publishing Ethics Committee at once.

Chapter 6. Publishing Ethics Committee

Article 20 (Members) The publishing ethics committee is composed of one representative as the chairperson of the

KoSSGE and five and up to ten members elected from the chief editor, the Editorial Board members, and the board of

directors.

Article 21 (Matters for Decision)

1. The committee reserves the right to make a final decision for taking corrective and disciplinary action against authors

    who are involved in the violation of the publishing ethics.

2. The committee makes a decision by a majority of votes with a 50percent attendance and can provide explanatory

    opportunity to authors suspected of violation based on their attendance to the committee.

3. The committee shall keep a written record of its meeting minutes on file.

4. The committee shall submit a written decision to the board of directors containing the contents of ethics violation,

    a list of the participated committee members and deliberation procedure, the supporting reason and evidence,

    an explanatory note of authors suspected of violation, and an overall processing procedure.

Chapter 7. Supplementary Provision

1. The amendment or abolition of the regulations above is imposed by the approval of the board of directors according

    to the rules of revision regulation of the KoSSGE.

2. Items unspecified in the regulation above are to follow the decision of the Editorial Board.

3. The regulations above will be implemented starting on November 1st, 2013