1. Purpose and Commitment
Technical Report Press is committed to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics, academic integrity, editorial independence, and responsible scholarly communication. The press expects all journals, editors, reviewers, authors, editorial board members, guest editors, publishing staff, and contributors to follow ethical practices throughout the submission, peer review, editorial decision, production, publication, and post-publication stages.
This Publication Ethics policy applies to all journals, special issues, proceedings, books, edited volumes, reports, and other scholarly publications published or managed by Technical Report Press. Individual journals may have additional subject-specific requirements, but no journal policy may reduce the ethical standards described here.
The purpose of this policy is to protect the integrity of the scholarly record, ensure fair and transparent editorial handling, prevent publication misconduct, and support trust among authors, reviewers, editors, readers, institutions, indexing services, and the wider academic community.
2. General Ethical Principles
Technical Report Press expects all published work to be original, accurate, transparent, properly attributed, ethically conducted, and free from misconduct. Editorial decisions must be based on scholarly merit, relevance, originality, methodological soundness, clarity, ethical compliance, and contribution to knowledge.
The press does not accept unethical publishing practices, including plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, data falsification, image manipulation, citation manipulation, peer-review manipulation, inappropriate authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, or misleading reporting.
All individuals involved in publication are expected to act honestly, respectfully, confidentially, and professionally.
3. Editorial Independence
Editorial decisions are made independently by the editors of each journal. Decisions must not be influenced by the author’s nationality, institution, seniority, gender, personal background, political views, commercial interests, personal relationships, or ability to pay publication fees.
Where a journal charges publication fees, such fees must not influence editorial decisions. Acceptance, rejection, revision requests, reviewer selection, and publication timing must be based only on academic and editorial considerations.
Editors must protect the independence of the peer-review process and should not allow publishers, sponsors, advertisers, institutions, or third parties to interfere with editorial judgment.
4. Responsibilities of Authors
Authors are responsible for ensuring that their manuscripts are original, accurate, complete, and ethically prepared. By submitting a manuscript to a journal published by Technical Report Press, authors confirm that the work has not been published previously and is not under consideration by another journal, unless this has been clearly disclosed and permitted by the journal.
Authors must ensure that:
The manuscript represents original scholarly work.
All sources, quotations, ideas, data, images, tables, figures, and third-party materials are properly cited.
The research has been conducted according to applicable ethical, legal, institutional, and professional standards.
All listed authors have made a meaningful scholarly contribution.
All authors have reviewed and approved the submitted version.
The manuscript does not contain fabricated, falsified, manipulated, or misleading data.
Conflicts of interest and funding sources are fully disclosed.
Ethical approval, participant consent, animal research approval, fieldwork permission, or other approvals are obtained where required.
Any use of artificial intelligence tools is disclosed where required by the press or journal policy.
Authors must cooperate with editors during peer review, revision, proof correction, and any post-publication investigation.
5. Originality, Plagiarism, and Text Reuse
All submissions must be original. Plagiarism in any form is unacceptable. Plagiarism includes copying or closely paraphrasing text, ideas, data, figures, tables, maps, photographs, software, methods, or design materials from another source without proper acknowledgment.
Self-plagiarism or excessive reuse of the author’s own previously published work without disclosure is also unacceptable. Authors may build on their earlier work, but they must clearly cite the previous publication and explain the new contribution of the submitted manuscript.
Technical Report Press and its journals may use similarity-checking tools to identify possible plagiarism, duplicate publication, or inappropriate text reuse. A similarity report is not used mechanically; editors assess the context, source type, citation practice, and extent of overlap before making a decision.
Manuscripts containing serious plagiarism may be rejected. If plagiarism is discovered after publication, the press may issue a correction, expression of concern, or retraction.
6. Duplicate Submission and Duplicate Publication
Authors must not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Duplicate submission wastes editorial and reviewer resources and may lead to rejection or other editorial action.
Duplicate publication occurs when substantially the same work is published more than once without proper disclosure, citation, or justification. This includes publishing the same data, analysis, figures, or conclusions in multiple articles without transparency.
If a manuscript is based on a thesis, dissertation, preprint, conference paper, working paper, project report, or previously circulated document, authors should disclose this at submission and explain how the manuscript differs from the earlier version.
7. Authorship and Contributorship
Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial scholarly contributions to the conception, design, execution, analysis, interpretation, drafting, or critical revision of the work. All authors should approve the final version and accept responsibility for the integrity of the manuscript.
The following practices are not acceptable:
Guest authorship
Gift authorship
Honorary authorship
Ghost authorship
Exclusion of eligible contributors
Addition or removal of authors without proper approval
Misrepresentation of author contributions
The corresponding author is responsible for communication with the journal and for ensuring that all authors are aware of the submission, revision, acceptance, and publication process.
Requests for authorship changes after submission must be submitted in writing with a clear explanation. The journal may require written confirmation from all authors before approving any change.
8. Conflicts of Interest
Authors, reviewers, editors, guest editors, and editorial board members must disclose any conflict of interest that could influence, or appear to influence, the research, review, editorial decision, or publication process.
Conflicts of interest may include financial relationships, employment, consultancies, institutional affiliations, funding arrangements, personal relationships, academic competition, legal disputes, ownership interests, paid expert testimony, or project sponsorship.
Authors should include a conflict of interest statement in the manuscript. If there is no conflict of interest, authors may state:
“The author(s) declare no conflict of interest.”
Editors and reviewers with conflicts of interest should decline involvement or request reassignment.
9. Funding Disclosure
Authors must disclose all sources of financial support, grants, institutional funding, sponsorship, or material support connected with the research or publication.
The funding statement should identify the funder and, where applicable, the grant number or project number. Authors should also state whether the funder had any role in study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or publication decision.
If the research received no external funding, authors may state:
“This research received no external funding.”
10. Research Involving Human Participants
Research involving human participants, interviews, surveys, focus groups, observations, personal data, identifiable information, medical records, community participation, or private information must follow applicable ethical standards.
Where required, authors must obtain approval from an institutional ethics committee, review board, or relevant authority before conducting the study. Informed consent must be obtained where applicable.
Manuscripts should protect the privacy, dignity, safety, and confidentiality of participants. Identifying information should not be published unless explicit permission has been obtained.
If ethical approval was not required, authors should state this clearly and explain the reason where necessary.
11. Research Involving Animals
Research involving animals must follow applicable institutional, national, and international standards for animal welfare and ethical research. Authors must obtain animal ethics approval where required and should describe the approval information in the manuscript.
Authors should report animal research transparently and responsibly, including relevant details about study design, animal care, welfare measures, and efforts to reduce harm.
Manuscripts that do not provide adequate ethical information for animal research may be returned, rejected, or subject to further inquiry.
12. Clinical, Medical, and Health-Related Research
Where journals published by Technical Report Press consider clinical, biomedical, or health-related manuscripts, authors must comply with relevant ethical and regulatory requirements.
Clinical studies should include appropriate ethical approval, informed consent, trial registration where applicable, and transparent reporting of methods, outcomes, harms, and limitations.
Patient privacy must be protected. Case reports, clinical images, and identifiable health information must not be published without appropriate consent.
13. Data Integrity and Research Transparency
Authors must present data, analysis, images, findings, and conclusions honestly and accurately. Fabrication, falsification, selective reporting, misleading presentation, or manipulation of data is not acceptable.
Authors should describe methods and analysis clearly enough for readers to evaluate the reliability of the work. Where applicable, authors should retain underlying data, code, field notes, laboratory records, images, survey files, interview records, or other supporting materials for a reasonable period after publication.
Journals may request access to data, code, images, or documentation during review or after publication if concerns arise.
14. Data Availability
Authors should provide a data availability statement where applicable. This statement should explain whether the data supporting the findings are publicly available, available upon reasonable request, restricted for ethical or legal reasons, or not applicable.
Examples include:
“The data supporting the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.”
“The data used in this study are publicly available at [repository/source].”
“No new data were generated or analyzed in this study.”
Data sharing must comply with ethical approval, consent agreements, privacy obligations, confidentiality requirements, and legal restrictions.
15. Images, Figures, and Visual Materials
Images, figures, maps, photographs, charts, microscopy images, laboratory images, design drawings, and other visual materials must be presented accurately. Manipulation that changes the meaning, interpretation, or evidentiary value of visual material is not acceptable.
Any adjustment to images should be applied consistently and should not obscure, remove, enhance, or misrepresent information. Authors must disclose relevant image processing where necessary.
Third-party images, figures, maps, drawings, tables, and other materials must be properly credited and used with permission where required.
16. Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools
Technical Report Press permits responsible and transparent use of artificial intelligence tools, but AI tools cannot be listed as authors or replace human accountability.
Authors remain fully responsible for all submitted content, including text, references, data, code, images, analysis, and conclusions prepared with AI assistance. Authors must verify the accuracy of AI-assisted content and must not include fabricated references, unsupported claims, plagiarized text, or misleading material.
Substantial use of AI tools for writing, translation, data analysis, code generation, image generation, figure preparation, or interpretation should be disclosed in the manuscript or cover letter according to the press’s Artificial Intelligence Policy.
Reviewers and editors must not upload confidential manuscripts or review materials to public AI tools where confidentiality cannot be assured.
17. Citation Ethics
Authors should cite relevant, reliable, and appropriate sources. Citations should support the claims made in the manuscript and should not be used to manipulate citation counts or artificially increase the visibility of specific authors, journals, editors, reviewers, or institutions.
Citation manipulation is not acceptable. This includes excessive self-citation, unnecessary citation of a journal, coercive citation requests, irrelevant references, or citation arrangements intended to influence metrics rather than scholarly accuracy.
Reviewers may suggest additional citations only where they are genuinely necessary for scholarly completeness, accuracy, or context.
18. Peer Review Integrity
Technical Report Press supports fair, confidential, and objective peer review. The peer-review model may vary by journal, but each journal must clearly state whether it uses single-blind, double-blind, open, or another review model.
Reviewers must evaluate manuscripts based on scholarly quality, originality, methodology, clarity, ethical compliance, and relevance. They must not use confidential manuscript content for personal advantage.
Peer-review manipulation is a serious ethical violation. This includes fake reviewer identities, fabricated reviewer reports, inappropriate reviewer suggestions, manipulation of editorial systems, undisclosed conflicts of interest, or attempts to influence reviewers improperly.
19. Responsibilities of Reviewers
Reviewers should accept review invitations only when they have suitable expertise, sufficient time, and no conflict of interest.
Reviewers must:
Keep manuscripts confidential.
Provide fair, constructive, and evidence-based comments.
Avoid personal criticism or discriminatory language.
Declare conflicts of interest.
Notify the editor of suspected ethical problems.
Complete reviews within the agreed timeframe.
Avoid using unpublished material for personal advantage.
Reviewer recommendations are advisory. Final decisions are made by editors.
20. Responsibilities of Editors
Editors are responsible for managing submissions fairly, confidentially, and independently. Editorial decisions should be based on academic quality, originality, relevance, ethical compliance, peer-review reports, and editorial judgment.
Editors must:
Protect the confidentiality of manuscripts and peer review.
Select qualified and impartial reviewers.
Avoid handling manuscripts where they have conflicts of interest.
Treat authors fairly and respectfully.
Respond appropriately to ethical concerns.
Make decisions without commercial or personal influence.
Preserve the integrity of the scholarly record.
Editors should ensure that corrections, retractions, appeals, and complaints are handled according to transparent procedures.
21. Responsibilities of the Publisher
Technical Report Press is responsible for supporting ethical publishing practices across its publications. The press works to ensure that journals maintain appropriate editorial policies, peer-review standards, publication ethics, open access policies, metadata quality, digital preservation, and transparency.
The publisher must not interfere with editorial independence. The role of the publisher is to support editors, protect the scholarly record, maintain publishing infrastructure, handle policy matters, and respond to ethical concerns.
The press may investigate publication ethics issues, coordinate with journal editors, request information from authors or reviewers, publish corrections or retractions, and communicate with institutions or indexing services where necessary.
22. Special Issues and Guest Editors
Special issues must follow the same ethical, editorial, and peer-review standards as regular journal issues. Guest editors must act independently, declare conflicts of interest, maintain confidentiality, and ensure fair peer review.
Special issue submissions should not receive automatic acceptance. Manuscripts submitted to special issues must be evaluated according to scholarly merit and journal standards.
Guest editors must not handle manuscripts where they have conflicts of interest. The journal’s editor-in-chief or responsible editor should oversee the special issue process.
23. Editorial Board Conduct
Editorial board members are expected to support the journal’s academic quality, ethical standards, peer-review integrity, and reputation. They should provide advice, review manuscripts where appropriate, promote ethical publishing, and disclose conflicts of interest.
Editorial board membership should not be used to guarantee publication, influence editorial decisions improperly, or promote personal or institutional interests.
24. Corrections
A correction may be published when an article contains an error that does not invalidate the main findings but requires public clarification. Corrections may address errors in author information, data, figures, tables, references, funding information, conflict of interest statements, ethical declarations, or other publication details.
Corrections should be clearly linked to the original article and should explain the nature of the correction.
25. Retractions
A retraction may be issued when an article is found to contain serious errors, unreliable findings, plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabricated data, falsified data, unethical research, manipulated images, peer-review manipulation, or other major breaches of publication ethics.
A retraction notice should identify the article, explain the reason for retraction, and remain linked to the original article. The original article may remain accessible with a clear retraction label to preserve the scholarly record.
26. Expressions of Concern
An expression of concern may be issued when serious concerns have been raised about a published article but the investigation is not complete, the evidence is inconclusive, or an institutional response is pending.
The expression of concern should be linked to the article and updated when the investigation reaches a conclusion.
27. Post-Publication Discussion
Technical Report Press supports responsible post-publication discussion. Readers, authors, reviewers, institutions, and members of the academic community may contact the relevant journal if they identify possible errors, ethical concerns, or matters requiring clarification.
Concerns should be submitted with clear evidence and sufficient detail. The journal will assess the concern and determine whether further action is needed.
28. Handling Allegations of Misconduct
When allegations of misconduct are raised, the journal or press will review the matter carefully and confidentially. The process may include:
Initial assessment of the concern;
Review of manuscript files, published article, data, images, or correspondence;
Request for explanation from authors, reviewers, or editors;
Consultation with editorial board members or subject experts;
Contact with institutions, funders, or ethics committees where appropriate;
Decision on correction, rejection, retraction, expression of concern, or other action.
All parties should cooperate with ethical investigations. Retaliation against individuals who raise concerns in good faith is not acceptable.
29. Appeals
Authors may appeal an editorial decision if they believe that there has been a procedural error, misunderstanding, conflict of interest, or significant factual mistake in the review or decision process.
Appeals must be submitted in writing and should provide a clear explanation and supporting evidence. Appeals are reviewed by the editor, another senior editor, or the publisher where appropriate.
An appeal does not guarantee reversal of the decision. The outcome of the appeal may be to uphold the original decision, request further review, invite revision, or take another appropriate action.
30. Complaints
Complaints about editorial handling, peer review, publication ethics, journal policies, production, corrections, or publisher conduct should be submitted in writing to the relevant journal or to Technical Report Press.
Complaints will be reviewed respectfully and confidentially. The press may request additional information and may involve editors, editorial board members, or independent advisers where necessary.
31. Confidentiality
Manuscripts, peer-review reports, reviewer identities, editorial correspondence, author responses, and unpublished research materials are confidential. Editors, reviewers, staff, and others involved in the publication process must not disclose confidential information except as required for editorial handling, ethical investigation, production, indexing, or legal compliance.
Reviewers must not contact authors directly unless specifically authorized by the editor.
32. Privacy and Personal Data
Technical Report Press collects and uses personal information only for legitimate publishing purposes, including manuscript submission, peer review, editorial communication, production, indexing, archiving, and publication administration.
Personal information should be handled according to the press’s Privacy Policy and applicable data protection requirements. Published author information and article metadata become part of the scholarly record.
33. Intellectual Property and Copyright
Authors must ensure that submitted manuscripts do not infringe copyright, trademarks, database rights, moral rights, privacy rights, or other intellectual property rights.
Authors are responsible for obtaining permission for third-party material where required. Any material reproduced or adapted from another source must include appropriate credit.
Copyright and licensing terms should be clearly stated at the journal and article level.
34. Advertising, Sponsorship, and Commercial Influence
Where journals or publisher websites include advertisements, sponsorship, or promotional content, such material must be clearly distinguishable from editorial content.
Advertisements, sponsors, funders, or commercial partners must not influence editorial decisions, peer review, acceptance, rejection, correction, or retraction.
35. Archiving and Preservation
Technical Report Press supports the long-term preservation and accessibility of scholarly content. Published articles, metadata, DOI records, corrections, retractions, and related notices should be maintained as part of the permanent scholarly record.
The press may work with indexing services, repositories, archives, libraries, and preservation platforms to support discoverability and long-term access.
36. Policy Updates
Publication ethics standards and scholarly publishing practices continue to develop. Technical Report Press may update this policy from time to time to reflect changes in ethical guidance, editorial practice, technology, legal requirements, and publishing standards.
The latest version of this policy should be made available on the publisher website and, where appropriate, linked from journal websites.
37. Contact
Questions, appeals, complaints, or concerns related to publication ethics should be directed to the relevant journal’s editorial office or to Technical Report Press through the official contact details provided on the publisher website.
Authors should include the journal title, manuscript title, manuscript ID if available, author names, and a clear description of the matter when contacting the press or journal about an ethical issue.