Precious Metals
Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement
Precious Metals is a peer reviewed scientific and technological journal. To give a guarantee of high academic rigor and scientific nature of Precious Metals, the ethical standards for publication that all parties involved in the act of publishing an article for this journal, including the editors, the editorial board, the author, the peer reviewers and the editorial office must follow are as follows. This statement is based on COPE’s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.
1 DUTIES OF EDITORS
1.1 Reception and Academic Misconduct Detection
After a manuscript is submitted in the submission system: http://www.j-preciousmetals.com, or submitted to: bjba@ipm.com.cn / gjsz@chinajournal.net.cn in the template of the journal, academic misconduct detection is conducted by editorial staff, and the report will be provided to the reviewers. Manuscript which is seriously suspected misconduct will be rejected. For manuscripts pass the detection, reception notifications will be sent to the author. The review results will be informed to authors generally within two months. The author should contact with editor office (bjba@ipm.com.cn) if the waiting time is longer than two months.
1.2 External Audit of Article
Each article will be blind peer reviewed reviewers that are experts in the area of the particular paper. On the premise that the editors do not have any conflict of interest with the article and/or author, editors have complete responsibility and authority to reject or accept the article. An article is accepted only when reasonably certain.
1.3 Confidential Agreement in Peer Review
Any editorial staff is supposed to have rights and duties to keep both private information of reviewers and submitted manuscripts confidential. Any information about a submitted manuscript must not be disclosed to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher. A certain or some possible peer reviews can be proposed to be evaded, which editors will consider in external audit.
1.4 Monitoring and Safeguarding Academic Ethics
All members of editorial committee board and editors have rights and duties to monitor and safeguard academic ethics, as well as preclude business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.
1.5 Maintain Journal Scientific Nature
Editors need to edit and process the accepted manuscript before printing. Problems such as standardization in the manuscript will be communicated with the author if necessary. If serious problems in printed paper are found, corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies are always willing to be published when needed to maintain the integrity of the academic record without plagiarism and fraudulent data.
2 DUTIES OF REVIEWERS
2.1 Objectivity
Personal evaluation and criticism of the author in person are not allowed. Reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments and reviews should be conducted objectively.
2.2 Confidentiality
Reviewers are obliged to the rules of blind peer review. Private information or ideas obtained through blind peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Without any authorization by the Chief Editor, the information of the submitted manuscript must not be shown to, or discussed with, others.
2.3 Punctuality
Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the assigned manuscript or unable to provide a prompt review should notify the editorial office and excuse himself or herself from the review process.
2.4 Acknowledgment of Sources
Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Based on the academic misconduct detection report, reviewers give a judgment of seriously suspected misconduct; and if a reviewer finds any substantial similarity or overlap between the submitted manuscript and any other published works, he or she should inform to the editorial office.
2.5 Avoid Interest Conflict
If any reviewer find that the submitted manuscript has conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions, the reviewer should not review that manuscripts and notify to the editorial office.
3 DUTIES OF AUTHORS
3.1 Peer Review Agreement
Authors submit manuscripts to this journal are regarded as obey the demands of blind peer review. Authors can complain of the review result to the editorial office, but are not allowed to obtain any personal information of reviewers by any way.
3.2 Academic Standardization
Authors of papers of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance, academic and/or application value. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior are unacceptable.
3.3 Originality
The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, this must be appropriately cited or quoted. All papers published by this journal are committed to publishing only original material, i.e., material that has neither been published elsewhere, nor is under review elsewhere. Paper that is found to have been plagiarized from a manuscript by other authors, whether published or unpublished, will incur plagiarism sanctions.
3.4 Acknowledgment of Sources
Authors should cite relevant references and corresponding citation if any statement in the submitted paper had been previously published or reported elsewhere. Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. The references list should be cited with the demand of Chinese National standard “GB/T 7714-2005 Rules for content, form and structure of bibliographic references”, and the format of list can be seen the relative document in website of http://www.j-preciousmetals.com.
3.5 Acknowledgment of Funding Sources
If the research reported in the manuscript is financially supported by one or several funding sources, the formal name/s and number/s should be acknowledged in the foot margin of the first page.
3.6 Authorship
The authorship of a paper should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the paper, such as the supervisor of graduate student. All listed authors must have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the manuscript and approved all its claims. It is important to list everyone who made a significant scientific contribution, including students and laboratory technicians. All those who have no relationship with the paper are strictly forbidden to be listed as co-authors.
3.7 Revise and Retraction Demand
It is the responsibility of author to promptly notify the editorial office by bjba@ipm.com.cn or gjsz@chinajournal.net.cn if the author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his or her own published work to retract or correct the paper. Manuscripts needing revision must be finished within two months. If the author has some difficulty to finish, statement should be reported to the editorial office. If a manuscript needing revision is not returned to the editorial office for six months, it will be regarded as retraced automatically by the author.
3.8 Copyright Assignment Agreement
The author retains the copyright of his or her paper. The author takes sole responsibility for his or her views. The editorial office has the rights of word alteration and copyright of the printed paper. The author agrees to transfer the copyright of printed paper to the editorial office automatically, including the rights of electronic publishing, multimedia publishing, net publishing, and publishing in other styles. The author could NOT authorize the other publisher reprint or extract the paper without permission of Precious Metals Editorial Office.
It will be regarded as agreeing to the copyright agreement when the author contributes to this journal.
If the author do not permit the article to be revised in the text, or reproduced, excerpted, included, please declare when contribute to the journal.
4 SANCTIONS
In the event that there are documented violations of any of the above mentioned policies in any journal, regardless of whether or not the violations occurred in Preciousmetals, the following sanctions will be applied:
4.1 Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript.
4.2 Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submits to Precious Metals by any of the authors of the infringing manuscript.
4.3 Prohibition against all of the authors for any new submissions to PreciousMetals, either individually or in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript, as well as in combination with any other authors. This prohibition will be imposed for a minimum of five years.
The above appointments and policies come into effect from the day of their promulgation. All members of editorial office, editorial board, authors, reviewers, the publisher and the society have the rights to monitor and safeguard the appointments and policies above.
Precious Metals Editorial Office
April 2015