Independence
Gazettes ensures that the editorial decisions of its Journals are kept completely separate from its business. No one outside the Editorial Board can get involved in, interfere with, or even comment on editorial decisions under any circumstances. In other words, editorial independence mandates that all concerns or complaints about editorial decisions are dealt within the editorial structures of the Journal, which typically include the Executive Editor, the Managing Editor, and the Associate Editors. Gazettes makes it clear that any deviation from the strict application of editorial independence means undermining the integrity of the principle of editorial independence.
Gazettes ensures that the editorial decisions of its Journals are kept completely separate from its business. No one outside the Editorial Board can get involved in, interfere with, or even comment on editorial decisions under any circumstances. In other words, editorial independence mandates that all concerns or complaints about editorial decisions are dealt within the editorial structures of the Journal, which typically include the Executive Editor, the Managing Editor, and the Associate Editors. Gazettes makes it clear that any deviation from the strict application of editorial independence means undermining the integrity of the principle of editorial independence.
Authorship
Authorship is restricted to those who have made significant contributions to a work. All authors by default carry some degree of responsibility for any paper they coauthor. Coauthors who make limited contributions to a paper are responsible for their contributions and may not have responsibility for other results. Each coauthor may not even be familiar with the entirety of the research presented in the paper. However, all coauthors together should agree on an appropriate system for reviewing the accuracy of the entire results. For example, some coauthors are made accountable for the accuracy and verifiability of the entire paper. Mostly these are authors responsible for the analysis and the integrity of the data, for writing the manuscript, for presenting at conferences, or for providing guidance to young colleagues.
Author contributions must be described using either contributor roles taxonomy (CRediT), or the preferred, Gazettes role allocation methodology (GRAM). Contributors who do not meet the above criteria for authorship can be mentioned in acknowledgments if they are willing to be named.
Throughout editorial consideration, a single corresponding author is responsible for providing all necessary manuscript information and for speaking on behalf of all authors. Pre-acceptance, the corresponding author must check that the manuscript is properly formatted according to guidelines and complies with all Gazettes policies, that all authors have seen the final draft of the manuscript being submitted and agreed to the author list and author contributions, that all authors have consented to any changes in the manuscript’s authorship. Post-acceptance, the corresponding author must ensure that all authors have seen the final proofread and copy-edited version of the manuscript before it is published, and continue to be the point of contact for queries about the paper. In some cases, especially after publishing, multiple corresponding authors may be allowed.
Gazettes does not allow authorship or name changes after a DOI has been generated. In case of an authorship dispute, the Journal will not mediate. If the authors are unable to resolve the dispute among themselves, the case will be deferred to the concerned authors' institutions. The Journal will consider the institutional recommendations following authorship investigations but will reserve the right to pass its own decision.
Conflicts
All conflicts of interest, which include affiliations, funding sources, and competing interests, that might be perceived as sources of bias related to the submitted content, must be disclosed by authors, reviewers, and editors. A competing interest is said to exist when one’s professional judgment about the submitted content is, or could reasonably be, influenced by other interests. Financial competing interests include but are not limited to patents, stocks, paid employment, received payment, or financial connections to any entity related to the subject matter of the content. Non-financial competing interests include but are not limited to membership of a government or similar advisory board, relationship with organizations such NGOs, research institutions, or charities, membership of lobbies, advocacy organizations, companies whose activities might affect the objectivity of the content, or personal relationships and beliefs that could interfere with an unbiased editorial process. Authors are required to complete the relevant sections and declare affiliations, funding sources, and competing interests in the online submission portal. Reviewers and editors are required to recuse themselves from handling a submission if any competing interest makes them unable to make an impartial judgment or evaluation.
Confidentiality
Editors, authors and reviewers are required to maintain confidentiality about the editorial and peer review process. If a reviewer wishes to consult colleagues during assessment of a manuscript, the reviewer must inform the editor first and should see that confidentiality is maintained. The names of any such colleagues must be provided to the Journal with the final report. Correspondence with the Journal, reviewers' reports and other confidential material may not be published, disclosed or publicized by the authors without prior written consent unless otherwise declared as part of a transparent peer review. Gazettes reserves the right to contact regulatory bodies, funders, and the authors’ institutions in case of suspected publishing misconduct.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is copying of ideas, text, or results, or attempting to misattribute original authorship in any other way. Plagiarism can be said to have clearly occurred if large portions of text were copy-pasted without appropriate attribution. Such manuscripts will not be considered and suitable software may be used for screening. Gazettes reserves the right to demand appropriate explanation from the authors if any such matters are brought to direct attention after publication. Unlike some publishers, Gazettes may not necessarily involve authors' institutions, and the concerns will be discussed within the Editorial Board first. Authors are advised to take care, and use direct quotes and identify all original sources, even if reusing parts of own published work.
Ethics
Gazettes only considers submissions that are considered ethically sound as adjudicated by the editors.
For all experiments involving human participants, authors must include a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all human participants, or provide appropriate reasons as to why this was not necessary. All experiments must have been conducted according to relevant external declarations and policies that require depositing trial information. For studies involving animals, authors must report the species, strain, sex, and age of the animal subjects, steps taken to mitigate suffering, welfare and the fate of the subjects at the end of the experiment.
Experiments involving the use and clinical applications of human embryonic stem cells and related materials, including human embryos and gametes, must include a statement confirming that all experiments were performed according to relevant regulations. The statement must identify the institutional and licensing committees approving the experiments and describe any relevant details. Copies of approval, consent, and description of the conditions of donation of the materials for research may be requested by the editors.
Data
Authors are required to make all data, including list of materials, code, and associated protocols promptly available to readers upon publication to allow others to replicate and build on work published in Gazettes. Authors must also include a data availability statement in the methods section which should state the availability of the minimal dataset that would be necessary to interpret, replicate and build upon the published work. The preferred way to share large data sets is via public repositories. Please use DataCite to look for appropriate repositories. If no specific repositories exist, please use general repositories like Figshare, Zenodo, Dryad or OSF.
Errata
Gazettes publishes corrections for scientific errors, made by either the Journal or the authors, that do not affect the overall conclusions of a published article. If pervasive in nature, the article may be retracted by the authors or the Journal. Articles may also be retracted in case of accidental errors, scientific misconduct, or plagiarism. Errata are published at the discretion of the Journal editors.
Embargo
As an open access publisher Gazettes has zero embargo on its published articles. However, it uses a strict embargo policy on articles accepted for publication, and the reporting of such a scientific article by the media is embargoed until the day of publication. Authors are strictly advised to avoid media coverage of material they have submitted to Gazettes, although uploading of the submitted material to public not-for-profit preprint servers is allowed. If responding to requests from the media with regard to a preprint or conference presentation, authors may provide explanation of the work, or information about its context, keeping the details of the peer review and editorial process confidential. In these circumstances, media coverage will not affect editorial consideration. Researchers approached by reporters in response to a preprint are advised to make it clear that the paper is yet to undergo peer review, that the results are provisional and may change. They should however be aware that such coverage may hinder coverage by other media at the time of publication.
Conduct
All submitted work should be free of fabrication and falsification. Many authors are liable to believe that reviewers or other individuals apprised of the submitted work may steal their research ideas. Gazettes requires all reviewers to treat submitted material in confidence until it has been published and takes any substantiated allegation of theft and scientific misconduct seriously.
Authors should disclose details of preprints if any, such as DOI and licensing terms, during submission of the manuscript. By submitting to Gazettes the submitting author agrees on behalf of all authors that the work is original, has not previously been published and is not currently under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that the authors have necessary permission to use any material which has been sourced from third parties, such as illustrations, photographs, charts, or maps.
Rights
For Gazettes to accept a manuscript, authors must check the appropriate licensing boxes in the submission portal in order to allow the publisher exclusive rights to their material. Gazettes uses CC BY 4.0 license across all sixteen Journals, which allows distribution, adaption, or reuse of the published material for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, as long as the Journal article is fully and properly cited. The authors will retain copyright at all times.
Access
Immediately upon publication, authors may post the link to the published paper on personal or institutional web pages through which users can freely access it from the Gazettes website. It is the authors' responsibility to ensure that the preprint record is updated with a publication reference, including the DOI and a URL link to the published version of the article on the Journal website. PDFs and print issues must be purchased and are not meant for distribution.