Sustainable Structures

ISSN: 2789-3111 (Print)

ISSN: 2789-312X (Online)

Publication Ethics

Statements

Sustainable Structures (SUST) follows the core practices of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and COPE’s guidelines, which are available in the following active link https://publicationethics.org/core-practices. Core practices are the policies and practices journals and publishers need, to reach the highest standards in publication ethics and they cover the following important aspects of journal publication:

          Allegations of misconduct

Authorship and contributorship

Complaints and appeals

Conflicts of interest

Data and reproducibility

Ethical oversight

Intellectual property

Journal management

Peer review processes

Post-publication discussions

Impartiality

International authors are invited to submit scientific or technical papers based on original research to Sustainable Structures (SUST; Sustain Struct.). Unbiased consideration is given to all manuscripts for publication regardless of the race, gender, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, political philosophy, sexual orientation, age or reputation of the authors. 

Peer Review Policy

Similarity Check

Similarity Check process will be carried out for all submitted manuscripts and the similarity index should be lower than 15% unless the authors provide rational justifications.

Invitation to review an article

To uphold impartiality, referees must carefully consider any potential or perceived conflict of interest before agreeing to review any manuscript. The invited reviewer must contact the editorial office to declare any conflict of interest in the following instances: (a) if the review has any competing interest with the authors; (b) if the reviewer is a co-worker or is collaborating with one of the authors; (c) if the reviewer is in a position to exploit the authors’ work (commercially or otherwise); (d) if the reviewer is in a position which prevents him/her from giving an objective opinion of the work.

Single-blind peer review

Sustainable Structures operates a single-blind peer review policy. The referees know the identity of the authors but authors do not know the identity of the referees. Referee names are kept strictly confidential. Referees are asked not to transmit reports directly to the authors. In most cases, at least five referees are chosen for the peer review process. One of the members from the groups of Editors-in chief and/or Associate Editors, whoever is responsible for overseeing the peer review process, will have the right to make a final decision based on at least three reviewers' comments.

Peer review process

Initial checks

All submissions will be initially checked by one of Assistant Editors to decide whether (1) they are correctly formatted/prepared, (2) follow the ethical policies of the journal, (3) fit the scope of the journal and (4) scientifically sound. If required, relevant subject matter experts from the editorial committee will be consulted during the initial screening process. Manuscripts that do not meet the journal's requirements and standards will be rejected before peer-review. After the initial check, the assistant editor will forward the manuscripts to the Editor-in-Chief or Associate Editors, who will make initial decisions on whether the manuscripts shall be sent for peer-review. Manuscripts that do not meet the journal requirements and/or standards will be returned to the author(s) for revision and resubmission. Rejection decision at this stage will be verified by one of the Editors-in-chief or Associate Editors. 

Peer-review

After an initial check, all types of papers including invited papers published in the journals go through a vigorous peer-review procedure. At least three independent reviews will be considered. Minor or major revisions may be requested from author(s). The final decision regarding acceptance is usually made by the Editor-in-chief or Associate editors.

The manuscripts are thoroughly reviewed by the editorial department for any scientific misconduct such as the similarity index with published materials should not be more than 15%. Once the initial checks are complete, the editorial department will send the manuscript to experts for review. The manuscript must be revised according to the comments of the reviewers as well as the editorial department. The manuscript should be revised within the specified time and the revised manuscripts shall be unified and edited by the editorial committee for final examination. Once a manuscript has been accepted, no modification or alteration of the authors’ affiliation shall be allowed, and the addition or deletion of authors shall not be permitted. 

Ethical Policy

Research results

Authors should not falsify or misrepresent data or results, and should keep objective, unbiased and truthful in all aspects of their work. Authors should strive to avoid mistakes in research and exercise due diligence in presenting high quality work for publication. They should critically assess the likelihood of experimental, methodological and human errors and avoid self-deception and bias. Where possible they should conduct an internal review to assess the validity of their work before publication.

Source materials

Sustainable Structures publishing does not require the raw data from an experiment to be submitted for publication. However, we expect that all authors follow established best scientific practice and record (and retain) source material of experiments and research results, in an auditable manner that allows for scrutiny and verification by other scientists. Exceptions may be appropriate to preserve privacy or patent protection. There may also be specific instructions from your funding agency or university.

Editorial Policies

Authorship and Contribution

The listed authors include all of the individuals who have made substantial contributions to the intellectual content of an article in terms of the conception, drafting, and revising of the work and the acquisition, analysis, and interpretation of the data. Their approval is required for the submitted version as well as any substantially modified version to which they have contributed. Further, all of the listed authors are considered personally responsible for all aspects of the work and must guarantee that any questions regarding its accuracy or integrity—even for aspects of the work in which an individual author did not personally take part—are appropriately examined, resolved, and documented in the article.

Please note that submissions by any individual other than one of the listed authors will not be considered. We expect all authors will take responsibility for the content of the manuscript they submitted. The information of contributions of all authors are urged to be described, as SUST may contact all authors by email to ensure the authorship.

Editors and Journal Staff as Authors

In the circumstances where Editors or editorial staff of the journal submit their own studies to the journal, they shall not be involved in the reviewing process, and the review process must be made transparently and rigorously. Submissions authored by editors or editorial staff of the journal will be handled by another editor who has least Conflicts of interest (COIs) with the authors to minimize the bias.

Author duties

Acceptance of a manuscript for publication in the journal carries with it an understanding that the author, when requested, will fulfill an obligation to contribute their expertise to the review of others' manuscripts.

Conflicts of Interest

Conflicts of interest (COIs) may indicate the potential to influence the validity or objectivity of research. Editors, authors, and reviewers may be involved into COIs, and Sustainable Structures (SUST) considers it essential to identify and seek to mitigate them so as to ensure the integrity of its role in the dissemination and preservation of knowledge. Failure to declare competing interests may result in decline of a manuscript.

Authors: SUST requires a declaration from all authors of a manuscript regarding any potential Conflicts of interest (COIs) that could be relevant to the integrity or reliability of the scientific and professional judgment presented therein, as well as that of otherwise unassociated studies in the same journal. Potential conflict, unless already declared, will be held in confidence while the paper is under review. If the article is accepted for publication, the potential conflict of interest will be included in the acknowledgments. If there is, in fact, no conflict of interest, the authors should state plainly.

Reviewers: Reviewers should declare any COIs when they are assigned a manuscript and disclose this information to the editor, who will then assess whether they should proceed with the review process. 

Editors: Editors, including Editors-in-Chief, and Associate Editors should be aware of their own potential COIs. If the Editors have authored or coauthored the manuscripts submitted to SUST, Editors might be perceived to be influenced by the relationship. SUST expects the Editor(s) to declare any COIs or potential COIs.

Submission declaration and verification

Submission of an article implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract, a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically. To verify compliance, your article may be checked by Crossref Similarity Check and other originality or duplicate checking software.

Plagiarism, duplicate/redundant publication

Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving any credit to the original source. Plagiarism is strictly not acceptable in any submissions. All sources must be cited at the point they are used, and reuse of wordings must be limited, be attributed to, or quoted, in the text. Manuscripts that are detected to have plagiarism will be rejected (if unpublished) or retracted (if published), as appropriate. Duplicate submission/publication refer to the practice of ubmitting the same study to two journals or publishing more or less the same study in two journals. These submissions/publications can be nearly simultaneous or years later.

All submissions will be checked by Turnitin.  

Fabrication and Falsification

The authors of submitted manuscripts or published articles in which the results are found to have been fabricated, falsified, or subjected to image manipulation, will be sanctioned, and their published articles will be retracted immediately.

Handling cases of misconduct

Sustainable Structures (SUST) follows COPE’s guidelines  (https://publicationethics.org/) in dealing with allegations strictly.

Our relationship with our authors is based on trust and we publish submitted material in good faith. We believe that employers have the prime responsibility for ensuring their researchers’ good conduct and for the provision of ethical training and leadership.

However, it is our responsibility to maintain the integrity of the scientific record as far as possible. If a possible breach of this ethical policy, or similar misconduct affecting article(s) in our journals, is brought to our attention, we will ask the authors to respond. Whilst journals do not have the resources or legal legitimacy to fully investigate all allegations of scientific misconduct, we will seek advice from an article’s referees and/or the journal's Editorial Board.

In handling corrections to the published record, we follow the STM Guideline for the Preservation of the Objective Record of Science (2006).

SUST reserves the right not to work with authors who are abusive to our staff, referees or editors.

Research data

This journal requires and enables you to share data that supports your research publication where appropriate, and enables you to interlink the data with your published articles. Research data refers to the results of observations or experimentation that validate research findings. To facilitate reproducibility and data reuse, this journal also encourages you to share your software, code, models, algorithms, protocols, methods and other useful materials related to the project.

Data statement

To foster transparency, we require you to state the availability of your data in your submission if your data is unavailable to access or unsuitable to post. This may also be a requirement of your funding body or institution. You will have the opportunity to provide a data statement during the submission process. 

Open Access

Sustainable Structures (SUST) makes all content freely available to all researchers worldwide. All published papers have DOI numbers registered through Crossref (https://www.crossref.org/). Content is published online to provide timely communication to the community and keep publication times to a minimum. The PDF edition of all published papers for SUST could be downloaded freely from the journal website: http://www.sustain-dpl.com/journal/sust.

Copyright, Licensing and Repository policy

Sustainable Structures (SUST) publishes all articles under an open-access license, which means that the articles remain accessible to all without charge and without technical or legal barriers and that they can be reused with proper acknowledgment and citation. Financial support for the open access publication is provided by Sustainable Development Press Limited (SDPL) once manuscripts have been accepted. The authors’ institutions or research funding agencies won’t pay any fees for the open access publication. More specifically, SUST publishes articles under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) License. Sustainable Structures is committed to open access publishing as a means to foster the exchange of research among scientists, especially across disciplines.

The copyright and other proprietary rights related to papers published by Sustainable Structures are retained by the authors. If the authors reproduce any text, figures, tables, or illustrations from the papers published by Sustainable Structures in their own future research, they must cite the originally published version. Sustainable Structures (SUST) allow authors to deposit versions of their work in an institutional or other repository of their choice. They are further asked to inform Sustainable Structures’ editorial office of any exceptional circumstances in this regard at the time of submission, for which exceptions may be granted at the discretion of the publisher. Articles published in Sustainable Structures are likely to contain material republished with permission under a more restrictive license. When this situation arises, it should be indicated; it is the responsibility of the authors to seek permission for reuse from the copyright holder.

All papers are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original papers are properly cited.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.