Publisher Ethics

Applied Environmental Research is an academic journal that understands the importance of ethics in academic publication. Therefore, all parties involved in the publication process should follow “The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)” (https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Guidelines) guidelines. The plagiarism detection tool “Turnitin” will be used to ensure originality of all submitted manuscripts. Any manuscript that has a similarity index of more than 30% will be either returned to the author for revision and clarification or rejected. Failure to do so will result in outright rejection of the manuscript, effectively terminating the review process. In addition, to prevent bias and conflict of interest, the journal follows a double-blind peer review policy for all manuscripts the journal receives.

Editor Ethics

Editors make the final decision on whether a manuscript is accepted or rejected based on the suggestions and comments of peer reviewers. The editorial team consists of the Editorial Board, the Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editors. Generally, the Editorial Board will give advice and guidelines on academic aspects. Editorial board members may also serve as reviewers. The Editorial Team consists of experts in the various research areas covered by the themes of the journal. Based on the research area of the submitted manuscript, the Editor-in-Chief will assign the manuscript to an appropriate Associate Editor. The Associate Editor is in charge of assigning the manuscript to reviewers with appropriate area of interest and expertise, and they will make the final decision for potential publication. The final decision will be made by the Editor, except in cases with conflicts of interest or differences of opinion. To proceed with the publication process, all editors of the journal should follow the guidelines given below:

• The editors must uphold all ethical principles in decisions related to the journal.
• The editors must select reviewers who have relevant expertise and do not have any conflicts of interest with the authors of the manuscript.
• The editors must not disclose the identity of the reviewers to the authors and vice versa.
• The editors must not disclose any information from a manuscript before its publication.
• Information or comments from the reviewers must be kept confidential and should not be used for personal advantage.

Author Ethics

Authorship of a manuscript should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the manuscript, including conception, experimental design, interpretation of the experimental result and the writing. In addition, authors must follow the guidelines listed below:

• A manuscript must not be published in any journal before submission to Applied Environmental Research. If some results reported in the submitted manuscript have been published in a proceeding, this must be stated and presented as a note in the manuscript.
• Authors can submit the manuscript to other journals only after the manuscript has been declined by the journal.
• The corresponding author has to sign the copyright transfer agreement with the journal after the manuscript is accepted.
• All authors are accountable for any scientific mistakes and arguments as well as plagiarism.
• It is the duty of the corresponding author to respond to all the comments and suggestions of the reviewers. If authors do not agree with any comments of a reviewer, the authors should provide an explanation. However, the final decision is at the discretion of the assigned Associate Editor or the Editor-in-Chief.
• Applied Environmental Research follows a strict policy regarding authorship changes. Approval of authorship change should be obtained from all authors if any author wishes to change the order of authors, i.e., add/delete an author or change the corresponding author.

Reviewer Ethics

Reviewers play a very important role in manuscript publication. Their comments and suggestions help authors improve their manuscript quality and ensure that the manuscript is worthy of publication and will contribute to academic knowledge. Furthermore, reviewers may have an influence on the final manuscript with their comments and suggestions. To achieve the aims of the review process, the reviewers are expected to perform their roles in accordance with the following guidelines:

• Reviewers should decline the review request if the manuscript’s research area is not within their expertise.
• Reviewers should give comments and opinions based solely on their expertise and without any conflicts of interest.
• Reviewers must not disclose information or results from any manuscript prior to its publication.
• Reviewers should inform their Editor if they suspect that a manuscript contains duplicated works of other published articles.