World Journal of Environmental Biosciences is committed to adhering closely to the ethical guidelines set by Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) and maintain the high standards of publication process set standards and provide guidelines for best practices to meet these requirements.
Originality and Data Sharing Policy
All submissions are required to be original, with the entire work or substantial portions of it not having been previously published or currently under consideration elsewhere. Any significant overlap with another article must be appropriately cited in the submission. Plagiarism, including self-plagiarism, is rigorously checked upon submission, and articles identified with clear instances of plagiarism will be declined.
Authors should be mindful that employing AI-based tools like large language models (LLMs), generative AI, for generating article content does not align with our authorship standards. The responsibility for the originality, validity, and integrity of the submitted content rests entirely with the authors. Consequently, the use of LLMs and similar tools does not fulfill the criteria for authorship. In cases where submitted articles contain content infringing on copyright, they may be rejected unless the problematic sections can be removed.
Data Accessibility for Replication: The inclusion of source data is essential to facilitate the replication of studies and the analysis of data by others. This transparency allows for a thorough understanding of the research findings. Authors should ensure that others can access and, in some cases, reuse the provided data.
Mandatory Source Data Submission: Authors are required to submit the source data for publication. Failure to provide source data without a valid justification may result in the rejection of the article.
Preprint Server Submissions: Articles previously shared on preprint servers, such as ArXiv, SSRN, bioRxiv, or MedRxiv, are eligible for submission to our journal.
Data Guidelines Compliance: Authors are encouraged to adhere to our data guidelines for detailed information on the type of data required, acceptable storage locations, and recommended presentation formats when publishing an article in our journal.
Ethical and Security Considerations: Authors are aware that there may be instances where openly sharing data is not feasible due to ethical, security, or data protection concerns. In such cases, authors should communicate these concerns to the editorial team during the submission stage. Our policies are designed to accommodate the publication of papers associated with sensitive data while maintaining an appropriate level of security.
Research involving human and animals
All investigations involving human subjects, encompassing individuals, human data, or materials, must align with the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval for all protocols must have been secured from the respective ethics committee (such as an Institutional Review Board, IRB) affiliated with the authors' institution, adhering to national and international guidelines. When submitting an article, comprehensive details of this approval are required, including information on the institution, review board name, and permit number(s). All studies involving human subjects must expressly include written consent of the patients or volunteers. If the patient is deceased or incapable of providing informed consent, the patient’s next-of-kin, beneficiary, or legal guardian should provide the consent.
In studies focusing on human attributes like race/ethnicity, age, disease/disabilities, religion, sex/gender, sexual orientation, or other socially constructed groupings, a rationale for the chosen definitions and categories is necessary. Authors should clarify whether any regulations on human categorization were mandated by relevant funding agencies. Additionally, the description of different groups should employ language that is non-stigmatizing and appropriate.
When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the institutional and/or national guidelines for the care and use of laboratory animals were followed. Voucher numbers of plant materials used in the study must also be provided.
Data Availability
All original research articles submitted to World Journal of Environmental Biosciences must incorporate the source data that underlies the reported results, along with explicit details regarding any software employed for result processing. The provision of source data is imperative to enable others to replicate and analyze the study and, under certain circumstances, reuse the data. Failure to furnish source data for publication, without a valid justification, may lead to the rejection of the article.
Acknowledging that there might be instances where openly sharing data is not feasible due to ethical, security, or data protection concerns, authors are urged to communicate this to the editorial team during the submission stage.
Retractions
Articles may undergo retraction for various reasons, such as inadvertent errors acknowledged by the authors (e.g., mistakes related to sample mixing or the use of faulty scientific tools), research misconduct like data fabrication, duplicate or overlapping publication, fraudulent manipulation of data, clear instances of plagiarism, and unethical research practices. The retraction notice for any article will explicitly state the reason for retraction and identify the party initiating the retraction. The retraction notice will be linked to the retracted article, which typically remains accessible on the site, clearly marked as retracted, including the PDF version.
Retraction of an article generally occurs either at the authors' request or at the initiative of the publisher following an institutional investigation. The gravity of the reasons for retraction is often such that the entire study or significant portions of it are deemed unsuitable for inclusion in the scientific literature.
The content of a retracted article will only be removed in instances where legal constraints have been imposed upon the publisher, copyright holder, or author(s), such as in cases of clear defamation or infringement of legal rights, or if a court order is involved. In such situations, the site will retain bibliographic information for the article, along with details regarding the circumstances leading to the content removal.
In rare cases, if false or inaccurate data posing a significant health risk have been published, the original erroneous version(s) may be removed, and a corrected version may be published. The reason for this partial removal will be explicitly stated in the latest version.
CRediT
All authors should have made a clear contribution to the published article. As a guide, authors should refer to the criteria for authorship that have been developed by The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).
Individuals who have made contributions that fall outside the criteria for authorship, such as providing solely technical or writing assistance, should be acknowledged in the 'Acknowledgments' section.
Changes in Authorship
Confirmation of alterations to the list of authors requires the consensus of all authors. In situations where an author is unresponsive, the corresponding author assumes the responsibility of facilitating communication. The editorial team is not authorized to intervene in resolving authorship disputes; any disagreements among authors should be resolved within the respective institution(s) of the authors.
Duties of Editors
The editor is responsible for the final decision regarding the acceptance or rejection of articles. Editors will consider existing COPE Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. The editor may be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding issues such as libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism. The editor shall ensure that the peer-review process is fair, unbiased, and timely. Research articles must typically be reviewed by at least two external and independent reviewers, and where necessary, the editor should seek other opinions.
The editor shall select reviewers who have suitable expertise in the relevant field, taking account of the need for appropriate, inclusive, and diverse representation. The editor shall review all disclosures of potential conflicts of interest and suggestions. Any potential editorial conflicts of interest should be declared to the publisher in writing before the editor's appointment and then updated if and when new conflicts arise.
Editors are not involved in decisions about papers that they have written themselves. In evaluating the submitted works, the editors should limit themselves only to the intellectual content. The editors must ensure the confidentiality of the submitted works until they are published. The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed journal is an essential building block in developing a logical and valued network of knowledge. It directly indicates the quality of the authors' work and the institutions that support them. Peer-reviewed articles support and exemplify the scientific method. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer, the publisher, and the society.
Duties of Reviewers
Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions, and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper. Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication. Reviewers are generally asked to treat authors and their work as they would like to be treated themselves and observe good reviewing etiquette.
Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and decline to participate in the review process. Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Reviewers must not share the review or information about the paper with anyone or contact the authors directly. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.
A reviewer should be alert to potential ethical issues in the paper and should bring these to the editor's attention, including any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which the reviewer has personal knowledge. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation.
Duties of Authors
Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed and an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Authors may be asked to provide the research data supporting their paper for editorial review and comply with the journal. Authors should be prepared to provide public access to such data, if practicable, and should be ready to retain such data for a reasonable number of years after publication. Authors may refer to the journal’s guidelines.
The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works. If the authors have used the work and words of others, this has been appropriately cited or quoted, and permission has been obtained where necessary. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been significant in determining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission of the author of the work involved in these services.
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Where others have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the paper. All co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.
Suppose the work involves the use of animal or human subjects. In that case, the author should ensure that the manuscript contains a statement that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committees have approved them. Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.
All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript.
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work, they must promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
Announcements regarding scientific activities such as conferences, symposium, are published for free. Advertisements can be either published or placed on website as banners.
Harassment
World Journal of Environmental Biosciences has a zero-tolerance policy towards any form of harassment directed at authors, reviewers, or editorial staff.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
