“Journal of Hydroecology” adheres to the principles of research integrity and standardized publishing. Taking into consideration relevant publishing ethics guidelines, such as those outlined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) [1], the journal has formulated editorial and publishing ethics standards based on its actual working conditions. The journal will rigorously adhere to and implement national policies and regulations related to editorial and publishing activities, standardizing the behaviors of journal editors, reviewers, and authors throughout the editorial and publishing process. The journal welcomes scrutiny from the academic community and society at large.
Duties of Editors
Publication decisions
The editor of the journal is responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. 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 libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers in making this decision.
Fair play
An editor will at any time evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
Confidentiality
The editor and any editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
Unpublished materials disclosed in submitted manuscripts should not be used in the editor’s own research without the author’s explicit written consent. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal gain. Editors should request all contributors to disclose relevant competing interests and collaborative interests. If competing or collaborative interests are disclosed after publication, they should be corrected.
Duties of Reviewers
Contribution to editorial decisions
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.
Promptness
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 excuse himself from the review process.
Confidentiality
Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.
Standards of objectivity
Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.
Acknowledgement of sources
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. A reviewer should also call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
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.
Duties of Authors
Reporting standards
Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as 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. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.
Data access and retention
Authors are asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data (consistent with the ALPSP-STM Statement on Data and Databases), if practicable, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.
Originality and plagiarism
The submitted manuscript is an original submission, unpublished and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Plagiarism, including the replication of the author's previously published work, either in whole or in part without proper citation, is not permitted by this journal.
This journal rejects submissions of papers written entirely or significant parts (such as research methods, results, and explanatory analysis of results) using AI tools. The author must be a natural person responsible for the authenticity, completeness, and scientificity of the content of the paper. If the main content of the paper is generated by AI tools, once discovered, the editorial department will handle it seriously as academic misconduct.
Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication
An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
Acknowledgement of sources
Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.
Authorship of the paper
All individuals who have made substantive contributions to the research project should be listed as authors, but the number of authors should be controlled in the authorship byline. If there are others who have participated in some substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged as contributors or listed. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate authors are included in the paper, and that all listed authors are aware of and have reviewed the final version of the manuscript, and have agreed to its submission for publication.
Hazards and Human or Animal Subjects
For studies involving animal experimentation and clinical research on humans, it is necessary to provide a clear description in the paper of the sources of experimental animals, informed consent of the subjects, etc. Authors should specify the name of the ethics committee responsible for review and approval, clarify whether their research procedures comply with the ethical standards of that committee, and provide proof of approval and approval number from the committee. If the research involves chemicals, procedures, or equipment, and if these chemicals, procedures, or equipment pose any risks during use, the authors must explicitly indicate these risks in the manuscript, such as flammability, toxicity, and potential hazards in the operation process.
Disclosure and conflicts of interest
All authors should proactively disclose any financial or other substantial conflicts of interest that may influence the results of their manuscript, and disclose all sources of financial support for the project, to avoid potential conflicts of interest arising from the publication of their findings.
Fundamental errors in published works
When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.
Informed Consent
Everyone has the right not to be violated. Each participant has the right to know how their personal data or identifiable images will be represented in the final paper. Therefore, before incorporating data or images into the manuscript, all participants should provide informed consent in writing. Except for information necessary for the content of the research and information for which participants have given informed consent, detailed personal information of participants (such as names, birthdates, ID numbers, and other information) should not appear in the textual portion or images of the final paper.
In some cases, it may be difficult to achieve complete anonymity. If there are any doubts, informed consent should be obtained. For example, obscuring the eye region in participants' photographs provides sufficient protection for anonymity. If identifying features, such as genetic characteristics, are altered to protect anonymity, authors should ensure that these alterations do not distort scientific significance. The informed statement should include the following statements:
Informed Consent: "Informed consent has been obtained from all individual participants in the manuscript."
If the manuscript provides information about the identity of participants, the following statement should be included:
"All personal identity information in this paper has been obtained with informed consent from all individual participants."
Consequences of Violating Publishing Ethical Standards and Academic Misconduct
This journal conducts academic misconduct detection on each submission through the technology system of “China National Knowledge Infrastructure” Article Multi-Label Classification (AMLC). This journal has a zero-tolerance policy for violations of publication ethics and academic misconduct. Once academic misconduct is confirmed, the editorial department will take the following actions:
1. The authors must provide a written apology to the editorial department and compensate for any corresponding financial losses.
2. For unpublished confirmed manuscripts, the editorial department will immediately cease publication. For already published papers, a statement declaring the invalidity of the paper will be published in the latest issue of the journal and on the official website.
3. Notify major databases that the paper in question is suspected of academic misconduct for online retraction.
4. Send a letter to the author’s affiliated institution, reporting the situation.
5. The author of a confirmed academic misconduct paper will not be allowed to submit or publish any articles in this journal for a period of 5 years, and the case of academic misconduct will be reported to the relevant publishing associations.
6. Editors and peer reviewers found to be in violation of publication ethics and academic misconduct will be dismissed.
7. Individuals who violate the law will be subject to legal consequences.
https://publicationethics.org/