Publication Ethics

APS ASU Publishing Ethics Guidelines are according to Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), following a set of recommended core practices.

APS ASU Publishing Ethics Tips for Authors

  1. Declare to your chosen journal that your manuscript is not published elsewhere.
  2. Declare a ‘conflict of interest’ prior to submission, which is the confirmation that you have no competing interests to disclose, can occur when you (or your employer or sponsor) have a financial, commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organizations, or with the people working with them, that could influence your research.
  3. Check all co-authors meet criteria for authorship and ensure appropriate acknowledgments made in the manuscript.
  4. Include appropriate funding statements in the manuscript.
  5. Include informed consent and provide assurances that participants’ rights are protected.
  6. Respect for the rights of human subjects in research according to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki, and provide related institutional ethical approval .
  7. Register clinical trials.
  8. Justify conducted research using animals including the methodology and sample size, and provide related institutional ethical approval.
  9. Be alert to any bias and follow guidelines for accurate and complete reporting of research.

10. Inform the journal if you later find any error in your research.

11. Sign a copyright agreement.

12. Avoid plagiarism according to COPE, , multiple submissions or redundant publications (or 'salami' publications), and respect intellectual property.

13. Avoid Ghost Authorship; where someone has been involved in writing the paper but is not included in the list of authors. As well as Gift (Guest) Authorship; where someone is added to the list of authors who has not been involved in writing the paper.

Ready to submit a paper? Ethics Checklist

Before submition, make sure to

  • Read the journal’s instructions for authors, check and follow any instructions regarding data sets, ethics approval, or statements.
  • Name all authors on the paper, and the online submission form.
  • Reference all used materials in the text clearly and thoroughly, so that other researchers can replicate the work.
  • Carefully checke data and included any supplemental data required by the journal.
  • Declare any relevant competing interests to the journal.
  • Obtaine (written) permission to any reused figures, tables, and data sets.
  • Only submit the paper to one journal at a time.

Things to Avoid:

  • Don’t copy your abstract into your cover letter, instead explain in your own words the significance of the work, the problem that is being addressed, and why the manuscript belongs to our journal.
  • Don’t use too much jargon or too many acronyms, keep language straightforward and easy to read.
  • Avoid too much details – keep your cover letter to a maximum of one page, as an introduction and brief overview
  • Avoid any spelling and grammar errors, and ensure your letter is thoroughly proofed before submitting.

Finally, notify all the co-authors once you have submitted the paper.

In accordance with the quality assurance principle of COPE, the following practices are developed by APS ASU:

  • requesting of corresponding author to sign a copyright agreement.
  • requesting of corresponding author to declare any relevant competing interests to the journal. 
  • adopting system for detecting plagiarism (e.g. software, searching for similar titles) in submitted items (either routinely or when suspicions are raised).
  • adopting system for detecting spelling and grammar errors.

The journal policy follows a rigorous peer-review process with strict ethical standards to ensure high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publications. Cases of plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation, inappropriate authorship credit are handled very seriously with a zero-tolerance policy.