Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics & Malpractice Statement

The International Journal of Games and Social Impact (IJGSI) publication ethics and malpractice statement is adapted from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the International Standard for Responsible Research for Editors (Kleinert & Wager, 2011).

Editorial Policy

The Editor and Editorial Board for the IJGSI follow the International Standard for Responsible Research for Editors (Kleinert & Wager, 2011). In summary:

  • Editors are accountable and should take responsibility for everything they publish;
  • Editors should make fair and unbiased decisions independent from commercial consideration and ensure a fair and appropriate peer review process;
  • Editors should adopt editorial policies that encourage maximum transparency and complete, honest reporting;
  • Editors should guard the integrity of the published record by issuing corrections and retractions when needed and pursuing suspected or alleged research and publication misconduct;
  • Editors should pursue reviewer and editorial misconduct;
  • Editors should critically assess the ethical conduct of studies in humans and animals;
  • Peer reviewers and authors should be told what is expected of them;
  • Editors should have appropriate policies in place for handling editorial conflicts of interest.

Additionally, the Editor and Editorial Board are responsible for publishing the manuscripts, ensuring their scientific quality, and managing the publication within a reasonable time.

The Editorial Team is responsible for:

  • Improve the quality of the journal from a scientific and graphic point of view;
  • Contribute and encourage scientific debate;
  • Encourage the publication of manuscripts and debate on emerging themes of international interest;
  • Be impartial in managing the articles proposed for publication;
  • Keep confidentiality about the received articles, as well as their content until their publication;
  • Promote a democratic culture, guaranteeing the divergence of opinions and the possibility of criticism regarding the published works. However, the editors reserve the right to decide whether the criticisms presented are appropriate, substantiated, and convincing.

Authorship

The authors are primarily responsible for their content and originality. Failure to comply with appropriate behaviour may render the authorization for publication unfeasible. In the case of co-authorship, all authors should have contributed to the publication. All authors should note the comments and corrections suggested by the reviewers. Clearly indicate the corresponding author.

IJGSI follows the authorship criteria set out by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The ICMJE recommend that authorship be based on the following four criteria:

  • Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
  • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
  • Final approval of the version to be published; AND
  • Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Copyright Notice

IJGSI is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship, with no commercial intent and under the same license.

 Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:

  • Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under the BY-NC-SA License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship, with no commercial intent and under the same license.
  • Authors can enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Please, contact the Editorial team before.
  • Authors are not requested submission or processing fees. Under open-access politics, articles are fully available upon publication. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g. in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).

Open Access Statement

This is an open-access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or their institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking the publisher's or the author's prior permission.

The full text of all content must be available for free and open access without delay.

  • No embargo period
  • No requirement for users to register to read content

 IJGSI follows the DOAJ definition of open access.

Misconduct

IJGSI takes issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarised other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of the department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

IJGSI will follow the guidelines of The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in dealing with allegations.

Claims

Whenever the authors consider it pertinent, they are entitled to submit their complaints to the publishers. The process will be addressed by letter to the editors. Publishers undertake to respond to all complaints submitted.

Conflicts of Interest

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) states in its Guidelines on Good Publication Practice (2003) that: ‘Conflicts of interest arise when authors, reviewers, or editors have interests that are not fully apparent and that may influence their judgments on what is published.’

Conflict of interest may arise when academic and professional friendships exist with members of the editorial team. In this situation, members of the editorial team safeguard the conflict of interest by submitting the review of the articles to external reviewers, following the above process (blind assessment). The anonymity of the author and the evaluator will avoid any favours. Impartiality and intellectual independence are a right that should be guaranteed in publishing.

Financing

If the research was publicly or privately funded, it should be mentioned in the conflict of interest statement.

Data Protection

Protecting the confidentiality of individual information is a guarantee of commitment by the Editors. The Editors will demand from the authors of the empirical research articles the guarantee of the same procedure and that the research subjects have expressed their written consent to participate in the research. This problem does not arise when it is understood that empirical research articles, even without the consent of the research subjects, do not harm the dignity of the subjects involved.

Dissemination

All authors give the IJGSI's wording the right to index, in international networks, the published articles.

Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.

Post-Publication Corrections

IJGSI allows debate after publication through emails to the editor-in-chief and editorial board. The email address to be used for this purpose is ijgsi@ulusofona.pt. This will allow us to correct and revise articles after publication.