The ethical policy of the journal of water and wastewater is based on the Committee on Publication

 Ethics (COPE) guidelines.

 Readers, authors, reviewers and editors should follow these ethical policies once working with the journal of water and wastewater.

 For information on this matter in publishing and ethical guidelines please visit http://publicationethics.org

 All papers submitted to the journal are evaluated by a group of consulting editors to determine whether the topic is within the scope of the journal and to evaluate adherence to word limits and journal format. Papers also are assessed for originality, scientific quality, clarity of presentation, and conciseness. Before papers are sent for double blind peer review, they are screened for possible plagiarism, and authors must submit a Competing Financial Interests Declaration form on behalf of all authors. Papers selected for review are assigned to an Associate Editor, who identifies reviewers and makes recommendations to the Editor-in-Chief. Members of the Editorial Review Board serve as a pool of potential reviewers of papers. Both the Board of Associate Editors and the Editorial Review Board are composed of leading scientists from all segments of water and wastewater  technology and management. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer.

 

  Obligations of Editors

 The primary responsibility of the journal editor and associate editors is to ensure an efficient and fair review process of manuscripts submitted for publication, and to establish and maintain high standards of technical and professional quality. Criteria of quality are: originality of approach, concept and/or application; profundity; and relevance to the water quality and management.

 An editor shall give unbiased consideration to all manuscripts offered for publication, and shall judge each on its merits without regard to any personal relationship or familiarity with the author(s), or to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, professional association, or political philosophy of the author(s).

 The editor and editorial staff shall disclose no information about a manuscript under consideration to anyone other than those from whom professional advice regarding the publication of the manuscript is sought. The names of reviewers shall not be released by the editors or editorial staff.

 An editor who authors or coauthors a manuscript submitted for consideration to the journal with which that editor is affiliated, shall not review that work. If after publication, the editor-author's work merits ongoing scientific debate within the journal, the editor-author shall accept no editorial responsibility in connection therewith.

 An editor shall avoid conflicts of interest and/or the appearance thereof. An editor shall not send a manuscript to reviewers who are known to have personal bias in favor of or against the author or the subject matter of that manuscript.

 Unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a submitted manuscript are confidential and shall not be used in the research of an editor or associate editor, or otherwise disseminated except with the consent of the author and with appropriate attribution.

 If an editor is presented with convincing evidence that the substance, conclusions, references or other material included in a manuscript published in the journal are erroneous, the editor, after notifying the author(s) and allowing them to respond in writing, shall facilitate immediate publication of an errata.

 If possible, an editor shall also facilitate publication of appropriate comments and/or papers identifying those errors. If an editor is presented with convincing evidence that a manuscript or published paper contains plagiarized material or falsified research data, the editor shall forward such evidence to the Research Deputy in Iran Ministry of Science, Research and Technology.

 

Obligations of Authors

 An author's central obligation is to present a concise account of the research, work, or project completed, together with an objective discussion of its significance.

A submitted manuscript shall contain detail and reference to public sources of information sufficient to permit the author's peers to repeat the work or otherwise verify its accuracy.

An author shall cite and give appropriate attribution to those publications influential in determining the nature of the reported work sufficient to guide the reader quickly to earlier work essential to an understanding of the present work. Information obtained by an author privately, from conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, shall not be used or reported in the author's work without explicit permission from the persons from whom the information was obtained. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, shall be treated in the same confidential manner.

The submitted manuscript shall not contain plagiarized material or falsified research data.

Fragmentation of research papers shall be avoided. An engineer or scientist who has done extensive work on a system or group of related systems shall organize publication so that each paper gives a complete account of a particular aspect of the general study.

It is inappropriate for an author to submit for review more than one paper describing essentially the same research or project to more than one journal of primary publication.

Scholarly criticism of a published paper may sometimes be justified; however, personal criticism is never appropriate.

To protect the integrity of authorship, only persons who have significantly contributed to the research or project and paper preparation shall be listed as coauthors. The corresponding author attests to the fact that any others named as coauthors have seen the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. Deceased persons who meet the criterion for coauthorship shall be included, with a footnote reporting date of death. No fictitious name shall be given as an author or coauthor. An author who submits a manuscript for publication accepts responsibility for having properly included all, and only, qualified coauthors.

It is inappropriate to submit manuscripts with an obvious commercial intent.

It is inappropriate for an author to either write or coauthor a Discussion of his or her own paper; except in the case of a rebuttal or Closure to criticism or Discussion offered by others.

 

  Obligations of Reviewers

 Because qualified manuscript review is essential to the publication process, all engineers and scientists have an obligation to do their fair share of reviews.

If a reviewer feels inadequately qualified or lacks the time to fairly judge the work reported, the reviewer shall return the manuscript promptly to the editor.

A reviewer shall objectively judge the quality of a manuscript on its own merit and shall respect the intellectual independence of the author(s). Personal criticism is never appropriate.

A reviewer shall avoid conflicts of interest and/or the appearance thereof. If a manuscript submitted for review presents a potential conflict of interest or the reviewer has a personal bias, the reviewer shall return the manuscript promptly without review, and so advise the editor.

Unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations contained in a submitted manuscript are confidential and shall not be used in the research of a reviewer, or otherwise disseminated except with the consent of the author and with appropriate attribution.

If a reviewer receives for review a manuscript authored or coauthored by a person with whom the reviewer has a personal or professional relationship, the existence of this relationship shall be promptly brought to the attention of the editor.

A reviewer shall treat a manuscript received for review as a confidential document and shall neither disclose or discuss it with others except, as necessary, to persons from whom specific advice may be sought; in that event, the identities of those consulted shall be disclosed to the editor.

Reviewers shall explain and support judgments adequately so that the editor and author(s) may understand the basis for their comments. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument has been previously reported shall be accompanied by the relevant citation.

A reviewer shall call to the editor's attention any substantial similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any published paper or any manuscript submitted concurrently to another journal.

A reviewer shall not use or disclose unpublished information, arguments or interpretations contained in a manuscript under consideration, except with the consent of the author and with appropriate attribution.

If a reviewer has convincing evidence that a manuscript contains plagiarized material or falsified research data, the reviewer shall notify the editor.

 This Journal is a member of The Committee on Publication Ethics(COPE)

https://publicationethics.org/members/journal-water-wastewater-ab-w-fdlb

When faced with cases of suspected misconduct, Journal follows the instructions mentioned in this flowcharts:

ENGLISH [COPE flowcharts, PDF, 546KB]

 These ethical standards were obtained and developed after investigation  and review of " The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).