Ethics
Statement on publication ethics: this journal follows the COPE Core practices (1), COPE Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (2) and COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers (3)
1. Allegations of misconduct
Argument Journal takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, pre-publication and post-publication. The editorial staff takes reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred, including plagiarism, citation manipulation, data falsification/fabrication etc. In case of such allegations identified or brought to the attention of the editor, the editorial staff shall follow COPE guidelines in dealing with them.
2. Authorship and contributorship
By submitting a paper to be published in Argument Journal, the author integrally and tacitly takes the responsibility for respecting the Copyright and for his/her property over the material submitted. The article submitted should clearly mention authors and/or contributors. In case of disputes the editorial staff shall follow COPE guidelines in dealing with them.
All the authors and co-authors must sign the Copyright agreement.
3. Complaints and appeals
Any complaints and appeals, regarding the journal, the editorial staff, editorial board or publisher should be brought to the attention of the journal coordinator through e-mail. The Journal coordinator will investigate the matter and respond to the complaint.
In case of complaints regarding the scientific content, the Journal coordinator will take into consideration the author’s arguments and the reviewer’s report upon deciding the appropriate course of action in accordance with COPE guidelines.
4. Conflicts of interest/competing interests
In order to avoid conflicts of interest, Argument Journal appeals to a board of peer reviewers for decisions regarding publishing (as submitted by the author/with minor or major revisions/not recommended for publishing) for all its papers, less those in “Students’ opinion” and “Reviews” sections which are approved by the Journal coordinator and the editorial staff.
Argument Journal implements a system of double blind peer review (the names of the authors and of the reviewers are not known to each other).
Reviewers must respect the confidentiality of the peer review process and refrain from using information obtained during the peer review process for your own or another’s advantage, or to disadvantage or discredit others. They should not involve anyone else in the review of a manuscript (including early career researchers they are mentoring), without first obtaining permission from the journal. The names of any individuals who have helped with the review should be included so that they are associated with the manuscript in the journal’s records and can also receive due recognition for their efforts.
Reviewers should remain unbiased by considerations related to the nationality, religious or political beliefs, gender or other characteristics of the authors, origins of a manuscript or by commercial considerations. If they discover a competing interest that might prevent them from providing a fair and unbiased review, they should notify the journal and seek advice. Similarly, they should notify the journal as soon as possible if they find they do not have the necessary expertise to assess the relevant aspects of a manuscript so as not to unduly delay the review process. If they suspect the identity of the author(s) they should notify the journal if this knowledge raises any potential competing or conflict of interest.
5. Data and reproducibility
Articles submitted must follow the template provided on the Journal website and take into account all the guidelines referring to format, writing, structure, references etc.
The editorial staff verifies that the authors followed all the instructions stated in the Journal template and can request re-writing or approval for certain corrections.
The Copyright to the work remains with the author/s. They may republish portions of the paper in future works in keeping with professional publication ethics. They may distribute digital or printed editions of the article, may post them on personal or institutional websites, or deposit them in repositories.
The journal is available in open access and it applies a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License policy – Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International – meaning that the published materials can be copied and redistributed in any medium or format, with adequate attribution, with no derivatives and only for non-commercial purposes.
6. Ethical oversight
The authors assume, by signing the Copyright statement, that the paper submitted to Argument journal has not been previously published in other publications.
Any suspicion of ethics violations like irregularities with respect to research and publication ethics should be made known to editorial staff.
Authors have the obligation to cooperate with the editorial staff and provide any data requested in regard to the article submitted and its content if clarification is needed.
Authors have the obligation to correct and rewrite the article as required by the editorial team and the reviewers in order to ensure the coherence, clarity and quality of the printed materials.
Argument Journal has access to sistemantiplagiat.ro to screen for plagiarism, besides verification made by editors and reviewers. All the submitted manuscripts are checked for plagiarism during the peer review process. The journal does not condone any kind of plagiarism (direct plagiarism, self-plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism etc.). If the case, dependent on the gravity of the plagiarism (>5%), the editorial staff will either ask the author/s to solve the paragraphs identified as being plagiarized (for 5-30% plagiarism) or they retain the right to reject the manuscript from being published (for a plagiarism of more than 30%).
7. Intellectual property
By submitting a paper to be published in Argument Journal, the author integrally and tacitly takes the responsibility for respecting the Copyright and for his/her property over the material submitted (the full text belongs to the author/s and isn't the subject of any kind of plagiarism, copying or compilation; the used sources – including photos, drawings, tables etc. – have been cited acknowledging the copyrights or the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License policy – CC BY 4.0). For this purpose, the author/s will download, fill in, sign and send the copyright form provided on the Journal webpage.
The Copyright to the work remains with the author/s who grant Argument journal the right to edit, adapt, (re)publish, (re)print, sell, display, and/or distribute digital or printed editions of the article, in whole or in part, in contexts related to the specific activities of the journal, by signing the publishing agreement.
8. Journal management
The editorial staff is clearly named on the Journal webpage and the printed material.
The Journal has a coordinator and members of editorial staff responsible with announcements, communication with authors and reviewers, the process of peer-reviewing, proofreading and template-accordance verification, pagination etc.
9. Peer review process
Argument Journal implements a system of double blind peer review.
Reviewers must follow journals’ instructions for writing the review which will be sent to them with the paper/s to be reviewed. Reviewers must be objective and constructive in their review, providing feedback that will help the authors to improve their manuscript, be professional and refrain from being hostile or inflammatory and from making libellous or derogatory personal comments or unfounded accusations.
The reviewers will follow the coherence and quality of the material sent for publication, the originality of the approached subject, the clearance of structure and the scientific quality of the articles.
Every article will be reviewed by two reviewers and their reports (after deleting the name of the reviewer) will be sent to the author/s.
Authors have the obligation to correct and rewrite the article as required by the editorial team and the reviewers in order to ensure the coherence, clarity and quality of the printed materials.
10. Post-publication discussions and corrections
The debate of the articles post-publication is encouraged through letters to the coordinator or on any platform publishing the open access articles which allows comments or interactions.
In case that correcting, revising or retracting articles is needed the editorial staff will ensure the process on the Journal website and/or announce/request modifications on other platforms accordingly.