The following statement clarifies the ethical behaviour of all parties involved in the act of publishing an article in General Chemistry Journal, including the author, the editor, the reviewer, and the publisher (Department of Chemistry, Universitas Negeri Manado, Indonesia). This statement is based on The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. 

Completeness of ethical policies for publication of scientific journals follows standards set by COPE (https://publicationethics.org), includes:

1. Allegations of Misconduct
2. Authorships and Contributorship
3. Complaints and Appeals
4. Conflict of Interest / Competing Interests
5. Data and Reproducibility
6. Ethical Oversight
7. Intellectual Property
8. Journal Management
9. Peer-Review Processes
10. Post-publication Discussions and Corrections

 

 

Duties of Authors

1. Reporting Standards: Authors should present an accurate account of the original research performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Researchers should present their results honestly and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate data manipulation. A manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable. Manuscripts should follow the submission guidelines of the journal.
2. Originality and Plagiarism: Authors must ensure that they have written entirely original work. The manuscript should not be submitted concurrently to more than one publication unless the editors have agreed to co-publication. Relevant previous work and publications, both by other researchers and the authors’ own, should be properly acknowledged and referenced. The primary literature should be cited where possible. Original wording taken directly from publications by other researchers should appear in quotation marks with the appropriate citations.
3. Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publications: The author should not in general submit the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently. It is also expected that the author will not publish redundant manuscripts or manuscripts describing the same research in more than one journal. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Multiple publications arising from a single research project should be clearly identified as such and the primary publication should be referenced
4. Acknowledgment of Sources: Authors should acknowledge all sources of data used in the research and cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given.
5. Authorship of the Paper: The authorship of research publications should accurately reflect individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting. Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. Others who have made significant contributions must be listed as co-authors. In cases where major contributors are listed as authors while those who made less substantial, or purely technical, contributions to the research or to the publication are listed in an acknowledgment section. Authors also ensure that all the authors have seen and agreed to the submitted version of the manuscript and their inclusion of names as co-authors.
6. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: All authors should clearly disclose in their manuscript any financial or another substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
7. Fundamental Errors in Published Works: If the author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in the submitted manuscript, then the author should promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
8. Hazards and Human or Animal Subjects: The author should clearly identify in the manuscript if the work involves chemicals, procedures, or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use.

 

Duties of Editor

1. Publication Decisions: Based on the review report of the editorial board, the editor can accept, reject, or request modifications to the manuscript. The validation of the work in question and its importance to researchers and readers must always drive such decisions. The editors 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 libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editors may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision. Editors have to take responsibility for everything they publish and should have procedures and policies in place to ensure the quality of the material they publish and maintain the integrity of the published record.
2. Review of Manuscripts: Editor must ensure that each manuscript is initially evaluated by the editor for originality. The editor should organize and use peer review fairly and wisely. Editors should explain their peer review processes in the information for authors and also indicate which parts of the journal are peer-reviewed. The editor should use appropriate peer reviewers for papers that are considered for publication by selecting people with sufficient expertise and avoiding those with conflicts of interest.
3. Fair Play: The editor must ensure that each manuscript received by the journal is reviewed for its intellectual content without regard to sex, gender, race, religion, citizenship, etc. of the authors. An important part of the responsibility to make fair and unbiased decisions is the upholding of the principle of editorial independence and integrity. Editors are in a powerful position by making decisions on publications, which makes it very important that this process is as fair and unbiased as possible.
4. Confidentiality: The editor must ensure that information regarding manuscripts submitted by the authors is kept confidential. Editors should critically assess any potential breaches of data protection and patient confidentiality. This includes requiring properly informed consent for the actual research presented, consent for publication where applicable.
5. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: The editor of the Journal will not use unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript for his own research without the written consent of the author. Editors should not be involved in decisions about papers in which they have a conflict of interest

 

Duties of Reviewers

1. Confidentiality: Information regarding manuscripts submitted by authors should be kept confidential and be treated as privileged information. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
2. Acknowledgement of Sources: Reviewers must ensure that authors have acknowledged all sources of data used in the research. Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. The reviewers should notify the journal immediately if they come across any irregularities, have concerns about ethical aspects of the work, are aware of substantial similarity between the manuscript and a concurrent submission to another journal or a published article, or suspect that misconduct may have occurred during either the research or the writing and submission of the manuscript; reviewers should, however, keep their concerns confidential and not personally investigate further unless the journal asks for further information or advice.
3. Standards of Objectivity: Review of submitted manuscripts must be done objectively and the reviewers should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. The reviewers should follow journals’ instructions on the specific feedback that is required of them and unless there are good reasons not to. The reviewers should be constructive in their reviews and provide feedback that will help the authors to improve their manuscript. The reviewer should make clear which suggested additional investigations are essential to support claims made in the manuscript under consideration and which will just strengthen or extend the work
4. Disclosure and Conflict of Interest: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.  Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers. In the case of double-blind review, if they suspect the identity of the author(s) notify the journal if this knowledge raises any potential conflict of interest.
5. Promptness: The reviewers should respond in a reasonable time-frame. The reviewers only agree to review a manuscript if they are fairly confident they can return a review within the proposed or mutually agreed time-frame, informing the journal promptly if they require an extension. In the event that a reviewer feels it is not possible for him/her to complete a review of the manuscript within a stipulated time then this information must be communicated to the editor so that the manuscript could be sent to another reviewer.

 

The editors of this journal enforce a rigorous peer-review process together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high-quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. The editors of General Chemistry Journal take such publishing ethics issues very seriously and are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero-tolerance policy.

Authors wishing to publish their papers in General Chemistry Journal must abide by the following:

• Any facts that might be perceived as a possible conflict of interest of the author(s) must be disclosed in the paper prior to submission.
• Authors should accurately present their research findings and include an objective discussion of the significance of their findings.
• Data and methods used in the research need to be presented in sufficient detail in the paper so that other researchers can replicate the work.
• Raw data should preferably be publicly deposited by the authors before submission of their manuscript. Authors need to at least have the raw data readily available for presentation to the referees and the editors of the journal if requested. Authors need to ensure appropriate measures are taken so that raw data is retained in full for a reasonable time after publication.
• Simultaneous submission of manuscripts to more than one journal is not tolerated.
• Republishing content that is not novel is not tolerated (for example, an English translation of a paper that is already published in another language will not be accepted).
• If errors and inaccuracies are found by the authors after publication of their paper, they need to be promptly communicated to the editors of this journal so that appropriate actions can be taken. 
• Your manuscript should not contain any information that has already been published. If you include already published figures or images, please obtain the necessary permission from the copyright holder to publish under the CC-BY license. 
• Plagiarism, data fabrication, and image manipulation are not tolerated.
• Plagiarism is not acceptable in the General Chemistry Journal.

  Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving any credit to the original source.

  Reuse of text that is copied from another source must be between quotes and the original source must be cited. If a study's design or the manuscript's structure or language has been inspired by previous works, these works must be explicitly cited.

  If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, we may publish a correction or retract the paper.

• Image files must not be manipulated or adjusted in any way that could lead to misinterpretation of the information provided by the original image.
  

  Irregular manipulation includes: 1) introduction, enhancement, moving, or removing features from the original image; 2) grouping of images that should obviously be presented separately (e.g., from different parts of the same gel, or from different gels); or 3) modifying the contrast, brightness or colour balance to obscure, eliminate or enhance some information.

  If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed during the peer review process, we may reject the manuscript. If irregular image manipulation is identified and confirmed after publication, we may correct or retract the paper.