The African Journal of Environmental Science and Technology require authors to adhere to the ethical standards required of researchers in scientific writing. Specifically, the journal requires all authors to adhere to the ethical standards as prescribed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Authorship
Inclusions of a person who do not meet authorship requirement as specified by the editorial policies or the exclusion of a person who meets the requirement is a violation of ethical requirements of the journal.
Plagiarism
The journal considers plagiarism a serious offense. Submitted manuscripts should be the original works of the author(s). The journal will follow COPE guidelines in suspected cases of plagiarism. The Merriam Webster Online dictionary defines plagiarizing as:
-
to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
-
use (another's production) without crediting the source
-
to commit literary theft
-
present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
The journal is committed to eliminating manuscripts with possible cases of plagiarism from its review and publication process. The journal uses the iThenticate plagiarism detection application to check each manuscript for possible cases of plagiarism. Plagiarism check is the first step in the manuscript review process. Manuscripts that are found to contain unacceptable level of similarity with other published works are immediately rejected. See Peer Review Policy.
Duplicate manuscripts
It is unethical for authors to submit a manuscript to the African Journal of Environmental Science and Technology and at the same time, submit the same manuscript to another journal either within Academic Journals or any other publisher. This includes the submission of manuscripts derived from the same data in such a manner that there are no substantial differences in the manuscripts. Duplicate submission also includes the submission of the same/similar manuscript in different languages to different journals.
Fabrication and falsification of data
Fabrication, manipulation or falsification of data is a violation of this publication ethics. The journal shall employ the COPE guidelines in suspected cases of fabrication and falsification of data.
Citations manipulation
Authors should use only citations that are relevant to their manuscripts. Addition of references which are not relevant to the work is strongly discouraged. Similarly, irrelevant self-citation to increase one’s citation is unethical.