Transparency & Ethics

Research integrity, transparency and ethics

The publication of a paper in a peer-reviewed journal, such as the Journal of Spatial and Organizational Dynamics, is an essential building block in the development of a coherent and respected network of knowledge. It is also a direct reflection of the quality of work of the authors and the institutions that support them.

Publication ethics

The Journal of Spatial and Organizational Dynamics is committed to meet and preserve standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process. We guide our action based on the following policy of ethics:

All submitted papers to the Journal of Spatial and Organizational Dynamics must be original and free of unethical practices.
Unethical practices include plagiarism, data falsification, data fabrication, paper slicing, paper written by someone else for the authors, and other practices that violate the generally accepted research ethics principles.
Concerns about unethical practices can be expressed by the Editor-in-Chief, guest editors, editorial board members, reviewers, authors, readers and other people who have encountered such practices.
The Editor-in-chief is responsible for inspecting all alleged unethical practices.
In case of an alleged unethical practice, the Editor-in-chief informs the authors of the paper, provides the necessary evidence and invites the authors to provide explanation.
All submissions to the Journal of Spatial and Organizational Dynamics are checked for presence of unethical practices with a software of plagiarism detection before being sent to the reviewers.
If an unethical practice is identified during the review process, the review process is stopped until the case is clarified. The review process continues if the alleged unethical practice is not proved.
If an alleged unethical practice is corroborated for a paper that has not been yet sent for review, is currently under review or has been accepted but not published yet, the paper is rejected.
If an alleged unethical practice is substantiated for a paper that has already been published, the paper is retracted and a retraction notice is published in the next available volume of the journal. For completeness of the bibliographic records, the text of the retracted paper remains online, but with a watermark “Retracted”.
In case of a second substantiated unethical practice, the authors will be banned from submitting a paper to the Journal of Spatial and Organizational Dynamics for a period of five years.

Data Storage and Documentation

The Journal of Spatial and Organizational Dynamics encourages data sharing wherever possible, unless this is prevented by ethical, privacy, or confidentiality matters. The authors publishing in the journal are therefore encouraged to make their data, scripts, and other artefacts used to generate the analyses presented in the paper available via a publicly available data repository; however, this is not mandatory. If the study includes original data, at least one author must confirm that he or she had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Conflict of Interest

The Journal of Spatial and Organizational Dynamics requires that all authors disclose any potential sources of conflict of interest. Any interest or relationship, financial or otherwise that might be perceived as influencing an author's objectivity is considered a potential source of conflict of interest. These must be disclosed when directly relevant or directly related to the work that the authors describe in their paper. The existence of a conflict of interest does not preclude publication. If the authors have no conflict of interest to declare, they must also state this at submission. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to review this policy with all authors and collectively to disclose with the submission all pertinent commercial and other relationships.

Funding

Authors should list all funding sources in the Acknowledgments section. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of their funder designation.

Authorship

The list of authors should accurately illustrate who contributed to the paper and how. All those listed as authors should qualify for authorship according to the following criteria:

Have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data;
Been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
Given final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content; and
Agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributions from anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed, with permission from the contributor, in an Acknowledgments section (for example, to recognize contributions from people who provided technical help, collation of data, writing assistance, acquisition of funding, or a department chairperson who provided general support). Prior to submitting the paper all authors should agree on the order in which their names will be listed in the paper.

Use of participant images or case details

Images and information from individual participants will only be published where the authors have obtained the individual's free prior informed consent. Authors do not need to provide a copy of the consent form to the publisher of the journal; however, in signing the author license to publish, authors are required to confirm that consent has been obtained. In addition, it is recommended to the authors that this information be included in a statement to this effect within their paper.