Ethics in publishing

KOMAG Publishing follows the COPE guidelines for dealing with potential acts of misconduct. Cases of plagiarism, data falsification, image manipulation, and incorrect authorship are not tolerated at Mining Machines.
If evidence of misconduct is found, the following actions may be taken: withdrawal of the published paper; publication of a correction or statement of concern; refusal to submit in the future; a notice of misconduct sent to the author's local institution, supervisor and/or bioethics committee.

The editors and reviewers of Mining Machines Quarterly are guided by the best ethical practices for publication. They are required to disclose any potential conflicts of interest that may arise during the editorial and review process; They are also required to promptly report any ethical concerns about an article that is being processed/reviewed. Editors and reviewers are expected to handle all articles with confidentiality. The editors make every effort to ensure that no inaccurate or misleading data, opinions or statements appear in Mining Machines. Responsibility for data and opinions appearing in articles rests with the author.

Authors are expected to follow ethical standards when publishing in Mining Machines.

Ethical declaration

Authors should adhere to the highest standards of conduct, including openness and honesty; They should act with integrity and trustworthiness. Authors are asked to disclose any ethical issues related to the study presented in the article or declare that the study was conducted in accordance with ethical standards.

Preliminary assessment

All submitted manuscripts will be checked by the Editor for proper preparation and compliance with the journal's ethical principles. Manuscripts received are checked for potential plagiarism using an anti-plagiarism program. Articles that do not comply with the journal's ethical policy or do not meet the journal's standards will be rejected before review. Incomplete manuscripts that are not prepared in the recommended style (not prepared in the article template) will be returned to the authors without scientific review. After these checks, the Editorial Board consults with the Editor-in-Chief of the journal to determine whether the manuscript fits within the scope of the journal and is scientifically valid. Articles that do not have sufficient priority for publication will be rejected immediately. The editors reserve the right to reject an article for insufficient language quality. Rejection decisions at this stage will be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief/Deputy Editor. Some articles may have two or three rounds of review. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the final decision to accept or reject articles. The decision of the Editorial Board is final.

The procedure for reviewing articles follows the recommendations described in the booklet “Good practices in review procedures in science.”

Authors, by submitting their articles for publication in the journal, agree to have them reviewed.

Submitted articles are subject to the overall evaluation of the Editorial Board and then evaluated by reviewers.

At least two independent reviewers, employed at institutions other than the author(s), are appointed. The reviewers guarantee independence of opinion, no conflicts of interest, no personal or business ties with the authors of the articles, and respect for confidentiality.

The recommended form of review is a model in which the author/authors do not know each other's identities (the so-called “double - blind review process”). Review results are uploaded to Open Journal Systems 3.4.0.4, which is open source journal management and publishing software developed, supported and freely distributed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) under the GNU General Public License, which is used by our Publishing House.

The reviewer issues a review that explicitly states whether the article is qualified for publication or rejected.

The final decision to qualify an article for publication is made by the Editor.

Rules on errors in published works

If the author(s) discovers significant errors or inaccuracies in their texts, they are obliged to immediately notify the journal's editors in order to withdraw the text or correct the errors that have occurred.

Verifying materials already published and preventing conflicts of interest

The editorial team, based on the COPE Principles, may withdraw an article from publication, express doubts about its content, or decide on the need to make corrections to material already published.  Unpublished articles may not be used by members of the editorial team or any other persons involved in publishing procedures without the written consent of the authors.

Conflicts of interest

A conflict of interest occurs when an author (or the entity he or she represents), reviewer or editor is involved in economic or personal relationships that inappropriately influence his or her actions. Other, related terms for this phenomenon are conflict of commitment and conflict of loyalty. Conflict of interest can also occur when the affected individual is unaware of it.

All authors are asked to disclose any actual or potential conflicts of interest, including any financial, personal or other affiliations with other individuals or organizations, within three years of the start of the submitted work that could improperly influence or be perceived to influence their work. The relevant statement must be made directly on the Article Submission Sheet.

Reviewers are not allowed to use the reviewed papers for their personal needs and benefits. They should also not evaluate texts where there may be a conflict of interest with the author(s).

Data access and storage

The authors may be asked to provide (in digital form) the output of the study data. They should also be prepared to make the data publicly available, if possible. Authors should ensure that such data are available to other professionals for at least 10 years after publication, preferably through research data repositories (institutional or domain-specific).

Intellectual property

Authors, when submitting a text to the editorial board, guarantee that they have independently written an original scientific work, and if they have used excerpts from the works of other authors, that they have been properly cited. Plagiarism in all its forms is an unethical act and will be made public by the editors. We expect manuscripts to be the result of original research, not previously published or not currently under review by another journal.

All manuscripts for publication in Mining Machines are subjected to anti-plagiarism examination using the Anti-Plagiarism system.

Manuscripts with revealed cases of ghostwriting will be rejected by the editors. Authorship should be limited only to those individuals who have significantly contributed to the preparation of the conception, execution or interpretation of the delivered text. All those who made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors along with the size of their contribution.

Open Access means free, universal, permanent and immediate access for any web user to digital forms of scientific and educational data and content. The Open Access policy adopted by KOMAG Publishing House is based on the belief that the basis for the development of science is openness. It aims to enable authors to increase citability by posting electronic versions of published articles in reference databases, scientific repositories and websites. Immediate dissemination of research results contributes to the growth of new knowledge and increased impact of ongoing research on the development of science. Therefore, Authors of articles qualified for publication in Mining Machines Quarterly are obliged to transfer to the Publisher (KOMAG Institute of Mining Technology) the rights to use the prepared text and its publication in electronic version on the Publisher's website or to grant the Publisher a free license to use and manage the developed works with retention of author's economic rights.

The content will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Non-commercial Use 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0).

Granting the publisher these rights ensures that delays in the dissemination of research results are eliminated, while the authors become more widely recognized. This is because electronic versions of published articles are posted no later than the time of their formal publication.

Principle of scientific integrity

Members of the editorial team are obliged to make every effort to maintain integrity in terms of scientific accuracy of published works. To this end, they may make appropriate corrections, as well as, in the case of suspected fraudulent practices (plagiarism, falsification of research results), decide to withdraw the text from publication.

The editors, if necessary, are always ready to publish also appropriate corrigenda, clarifications or apologies.

Text withdrawal

The editorial team may consider withdrawal of the text if:
1. there is clear evidence of unreliability of study results, fabrication of data, as well as if unintentional errors (e.g., calculation errors, methodological errors) have been made,
2. the research results have been previously published elsewhere,
3. the work bears the signs of plagiarism or violates ethical principles.
The notice of withdrawal of the text should be treated as equivalent to the withdrawal of the article. This notice should contain information about the person (the headline should include at least the title and name(s) of the author(s) of the paper) and the reasons (to distinguish unintentional errors from deliberate misuse) deciding to withdraw the text. Withdrawn texts are not removed from the published version of the journal, but the fact of their withdrawal will be clearly marked.