The European Educational Researcher

Ethics

Research and Publication Ethics

The European Educational Researcher (EUER) is committed to publishing and widely disseminating high-quality content. It is critical that the editorial operations of EUER be governed by rigorous ethical standards that are both transparent and fair. We recognize that the scholarly publishing ecosystem is complex and includes editors, authors, reviewers, and publishers. Our expectation is that all involved have a shared understanding and acceptance of EUER’s policies on publication ethics and malpractice. Our policies are closely aligned with COPE’s (Committee on Publication Ethics) Core Practices document, which can be accessed at COPE Core Practices

Research Ethics

When reporting on research that involves human subjects, human material, human tissues, or human data, authors must obtain approval from the local institutional review board or other appropriate ethics committee before undertaking the research to confirm the study meets national and international guidelines. As a minimum, a statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board must be stated in Section ‘Institutional Review Board Statement’ of the article.

For non-interventional studies (e.g. surveys, questionnaires, social media research), all participants must be fully informed if anonymity is assured, why the research is being conducted, how their data will be used and if there are any risks associated.

The submitted manuscript will be scrutinized by the editorial office and upon request, documentary evidence (blank consent forms and any related discussion documents from the ethics board) must be supplied.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

The editors of this journal enforce a rigorous peer-review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The editors of EUER take such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero-tolerance policy.

International Standards for Editors

The editor-in-chief’s responsibility is to determine which submissions to EUER  will be published. He ensures that decisions are made only on the basis of the manuscript’s merit and that the author’s race, gender, religious or political beliefs, ethnicity, or citizenship are not considered.

Confidentiality

EUER reveals information concerning a submitted manuscript only to the corresponding author, editorial board members, or the publisher as is required or otherwise appropriate.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest

EUER’s editors will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Editors will recuse themselves from monitoring manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

  • The Editorial Board must keep information pertaining to all submitted manuscripts confidential.
  • The Editorial Board is responsible for making publication decisions for submitted manuscripts.
  • The Editorial Board must strive to meet the needs of readers and authors.
  • The Editorial Board must evaluate manuscripts only for their intellectual content.
  • The Editorial Board must strive to constantly improve EUER’s quality.
  • The Editorial Board must maintain the integrity of the academic record.
  • The Editorial Board must disclose any conflicts of interest and preclude business needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.
  • The Editorial Board must always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed.

International Standards for authors

Authors wishing to publish their papers in EUER must abide by the following:

  • Any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission.
  • Authors should accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.
  • Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the paper so that other researchers can replicate the work.
  • Raw data should preferably be publicly deposited by the authors before the submission of their manuscripts. Authors need to at least have the raw data readily available for presentation to the referees and the editors of the journal if requested. Authors need to ensure appropriate measures are taken so that raw data is retained in full for a reasonable time after publication.
  • Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not tolerated.
  • When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
  • Authors must notify EUER of any conflicts of interest.
  • The submitted manuscripts should not contain any information that has already been published. If you include already published figures or images, please obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CC-BY license.
  • Plagiarism, data fabrication, and image manipulation are not tolerated.

Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving any credit to the original source.

Reuse of text that is copied from another source must be between quotes and the original source must be cited. If a study’s design or the manuscript’s structure or language has been inspired by previous works, these works must be explicitly cited.

If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript will be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, we will retract the paper.

If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, we will reject the manuscript. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we will retract the paper.

Irregular manipulation includes: 1) introduction, enhancement, moving, or removing features from the original image; 2) grouping of images that should obviously be presented separately (e.g., from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels); or 3) modifying the contrast, brightness or color balance to obscure, eliminate or enhance some information.

Our in-house editors will investigate any allegations of publication misconduct and may contact the authors’ institutions or funders if necessary. If evidence of misconduct is found, appropriate action will be taken to correct or retract the publication. Authors are expected to comply with the best ethical publication practices when publishing with EUER.

The papers before being sent for reviewing are first checked by anti-plagiarism software (turnitin.com). We define plagiarism as a case in which a paper reproduces another work with at least 10% similarity and without citation. 10% does not include references and quotations.

If evidence of plagiarism is found before/after acceptance or after the publication of the paper, the author will be offered a chance for rebuttal. If the arguments are not found to be satisfactory, the manuscript will be retracted and the author sanctioned from publishing papers for a period to be determined by the responsible editor(s).

Citation Policy

Authors should ensure that where the material is taken from other sources (including their own published writing) the source is clearly cited and that where appropriate permission is obtained.

Authors should not engage in excessive self-citation of their own work.

Authors should not copy references from other publications if they have not read the cited work.

Authors should not preferentially cite their friends’, peers’, or institution’s publications.

Authors should not cite advertisements or advertorial material.

Author(s) Rights

It is important to check the policy for the journal to which you are submitting or publishing to establish your rights as an author. EUER’s standard policies allow the following re-use rights:

  • The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions.
  • The journal allows the author(s) to obtain publishing rights without restrictions.
  • You may do whatever you wish with the version of the article you submitted to the journal.
  • Once the article has been accepted for publication, you may post the accepted version of the article on your own personal website, your department’s website, or the repository of your institution without any restrictions.
  • You may use the published article for your own teaching needs.
  • You may use the article in a book authored or edited by you at any time after publication in the journal.
  • When posting or re-using the article please provide a link to the appropriate DOI for the published version of the article on EUER.
  • You may post a revised personal version of the final text (including illustrations and tables) of the article on your personal or institutional website or server, with a link (through the relevant DOI) to the article as published, provided that such postings are not for commercial purposes.
  • You may present the article at a meeting or conference and distribute copies of the article to the delegates attending such meeting.

Copyright without Restrictions

The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright without restrictions and will retain publishing rights without restrictions.

The submitted papers are assumed to contain no proprietary material unprotected by patent or patent application; responsibility for technical content and for protection of proprietary material rests solely with the author(s) and their organizations and is not the responsibility of the EUER or its Editorial Staff. The main (first/corresponding) author is responsible for ensuring that the article has been seen and approved by all the other authors. It is the responsibility of the author to obtain all necessary copyright release permissions for the use of any copyrighted materials in the manuscript prior to the submission.

International Standards for Reviewers

  • Reviewers must keep information pertaining to the manuscript confidential.
  • Reviewers must bring to the attention of the Editor Board any information that may be a reason to reject the publication of a manuscript.
  • Reviewers must evaluate manuscripts only for their intellectual content.
  • Reviewers must objectively evaluate the manuscripts based only on their originality, significance, and relevance to the domains of the journal.
  • Reviewers must notify EUER about any conflicts of interest.
  • EUER’s reviewers will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the authors’ explicit written consent. Reviewers will recuse themselves from reviewing manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships/connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.

Finally

EUER makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in our publications. However, EUER makes no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in the publications are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by EUER. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. EUER shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to, or arising out of the use of the Content.